Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  “I am a naval officer,” said Lamberti, as he took the seat the doctor offered him. “Can you tell me whether I am ill or not? I mean, whether I have any bodily illness. Then I will explain what brings me.”

  The doctor looked at him keenly a few seconds, felt his pulse, pressed one ear on his waistcoat to listen to his heart, and then against his back, made him face the light and gently drew down the lower lids of his eyes, and finally stood off and made a sort of general survey of his appearance. Then he made him stretch out one hand, with the fingers spread out. There was not the least tremor. Last of all, he asked him to shut his eyes tightly and walk slowly across the room, turn round, and walk back. Lamberti did so, steadily and quietly.

  “There is nothing wrong with your body,” said the doctor, sitting down. “Before you tell me why you come here, I should like to know one thing more. Do you come of sound and healthy people?”

  “Yes. My father is the Marchese Lamberti. My brothers and sisters are all alive and well. So far as I know, there was never any insanity in my family.”

  “Were your father and mother cousins?” enquired the doctor.

  “No.”

  “Very good. That is all I need to know. I am at your service. What is the matter?”

  “If we lived in the Middle Ages,” said Lamberti, “I should say that I was possessed by the devil, or haunted.” He stopped and laughed oddly.

  “Why not say so now?” asked the doctor. “The names of things do not matter in the least. Let us say that you are haunted, if that describes what troubles you. Very good. What haunts you?”

  “A young girl,” Lamberti answered, after a moment’s pause.

  “Do you mean that you see, or think you see, the apparition of a young girl who is dead?”

  “She is alive, but I have only met her once. That is the strange thing about it, or, at least, the beginning of the strange thing. Of course it is perfectly absurd, but when I first saw her, the only time we met, I had the sensation of recognising some one I had not seen for many years. As she is only just eighteen, that is impossible.”

  “Excuse me, my dear sir, nothing is impossible. Every one is absent-minded sometimes. You may have seen the young lady in the street, or at the theatre. You may have stared at her quite unconsciously while you were thinking of something else, and her features may have so impressed themselves upon your memory, without your knowing it, that you actually recognised her when you met her in a drawing-room.”

  “I daresay,” admitted Lamberti, indifferently. “But that is no reason why I should dream of her every night.”

  “I am not sure. It might be a reason. Such things happen.”

  “And every night when I wake from the dream, I hear some one close the door of my room softly, as if she were just going out. I always lock my door at night.”

  “Perhaps it sometimes shakes a little in the frame.”

  “It began at home. But I have been stopping in the country nearly a fortnight, and the same thing has happened every night.”

  “You dream it. One may get the habit of dreaming the same dream every time one sleeps.”

  “It is not always the same dream, though the door is always closed softly when she goes away. But there is something else. I was wrong in saying that I only met the lady once. I should have said that I have spoken with her only once. This is how it happened.”

  Lamberti told the doctor the story of his meeting Cecilia at the house of the Vestals. The specialist listened attentively, for he was already convinced that Lamberti was a man of solid reason and practical good sense, probably the victim of a series of coincidences that had made a strong impression on his mind. When Lamberti paused, there was a moment’s silence.

  “What do you yourself think was the cause of the lady’s fright?” asked the doctor at last.

  “I believe that she had dreamed the same dream,” Lamberti answered without hesitation.

  “What makes you believe anything so improbable?”

  “Well — I hardly know. It is an impression. It was all so amazingly real, you see, and when our eyes met, she looked as if she knew exactly what would happen if she did not run away — exactly what had happened in the dream.”

  “That was on the morning after you had first dreamt it, you say. Of course it helped very much to strengthen the impression the dream had made, and it is not at all surprising that the dream should have come again. You know as well as I, that a dream which seems to last hours really passes in a second, perhaps in no time at all. The slightest sound in your room which suggested the closing of a door would be enough to bring it all back before you were awake, and the sound might still be audible to you.”

  “Possibly. Whatever it is, I wish to get rid of it.”

  “It may be merely coincidence,” the doctor said. “I think it is. But I do not exclude the theory that two people who have made a very strong impression one on another, may be the subjects of some sort of mutual thought transference. We know very little about those things. Some queer cases come under my observation, but my patients are never sound and sane men like you. What I should like to know is, why did the lady run away?”

  “That is probably the one thing I can never find out,” Lamberti answered.

  “There is a very simple way. Ask her.” The doctor smiled. “Is it so very hard?” he enquired, as Lamberti looked at him in surprise. “I take it for granted that you can find some opportunity of seeing her in a drawing-room, where she cannot fly from you, and will not do anything to attract attention. What could be more natural than that you should ask her quite frankly why she was so frightened the other day? I do not see how she could possibly be offended. Do you? When you ask her, you need not seem too serious, as if you attached a great deal of importance to what she had done.”

  “I certainly could try it,” said Lamberti thoughtfully. “I shall see her to-day.”

  “She may try to avoid you, because she is ashamed of what she did. But if I were you, I would not let the chance slip. If you succeed in talking to her for a few minutes, and break the ice, I can almost promise that you will also break the habit of this dream that annoys you. Will you make the attempt? It seems to me by far the wisest and most sensible remedy, for I am nearly sure that it will turn out to be one.”

  “I daresay you are right. Is there any other way of curing such habits of the mind?”

  “I could hypnotise you and stop your dreaming by suggestion.”

  “Nobody could make me sleep against my will.” Lamberti laughed at the mere idea.

  “No,” answered the doctor, “but it would not be against your will, if you submitted to it as a cure. However, try the simpler plan first, and come and see me in a day or two. You seem to hesitate. Perhaps you have some reason for not wishing to make the nearer acquaintance of the lady. That is your affair, but one more interview of a few minutes will not make much difference, as your health is at stake. You are under a mental strain altogether out of proportion with the cause that produces it, and the longer you allow it to last the stronger the reaction will be, when it comes.”

  “I have no good reason for not knowing her better,” Lamberti said after a moment’s thought, for he was convinced against his previous determination. “I will take your advice, and then I will come and see you again.”

  He took his leave and went out into the bright morning air. It was a relief to feel that he had been brought to a determination at last, and he knew that it was a sensible one, from any ordinary point of view, and that his one great objection to acting upon it had no logical value.

  But the objection subsisted, though he had made up his mind to override it. It was out of the question that he could really be in love with Cecilia Palladio, who was probably quite unlike what she seemed to be in his dreams. He had fallen in love with a fancy, a shadow, an unreal image that haunted him as soon as he closed his eyes; but when he was wide awake and busy with life the girl was nothing to him but a mere acquaintance. His pulse would not beat
as fast when he met her that very afternoon as it had done just now, in the doctor’s study, when he had been thinking of the vision.

  Besides, what Guido had said was quite true. He could not possibly continue not to know Guido’s future wife; and as there was no danger of his falling in love with her when his eyes were open, he really could not see why he should be so anxious to avoid her. So the matter was settled. He took a long walk, far out of Porta San Giovanni, and turned to the right by the road that leads through the fields to the tomb of Cecilia Metella.

  As he passed the great round monument, swinging along steadily, its name naturally came to his mind, and it occurred to him for the first time that Cecilia had been a noble name among the old Romans, that it had come down unchanged, and that there had doubtless been more than one Vestal Virgin who had borne it. The Vestal in his dream was certainly called Cecilia. He was in the humour, now, to smile at what he called his own folly, and as he strode along he almost laughed aloud. Before the sun should set, the whole matter would be definitely at rest, and he would be wondering how he could ever have been foolish enough to attach any importance to it. He followed the Appian Way back to the city, with a light heart.

  CHAPTER IX

  THE VILLA MADAMA was probably never inhabited, for it was certainly never quite finished, and the grand staircase was not rebuilt after Cardinal Pompeo Colonna set fire to the house. That was in the wild days when Rome was sacked by the Constable of Bourbon’s Spaniards and Franzperg’s Germans, and Pope Clement the Seventh was shut up in the stronghold of Sant’ Angelo; and at nightfall he looked from the windows of the fortress and saw the flames shoot up on the slope of Monte Mario, from the beautiful place which Raphael of Urbino had designed for him, and which Giovanni of Udine had decorated, and he told those who were with him that Cardinal Colonna was revenging himself for his castles sacked and burned by the Pope’s orders.

  That was nearly four hundred years ago, and the great exterior staircase was never rebuilt; but in order to save that part of the little palace from ruin unsightly arches were reared up against the once beautiful wing, and because of Giulio Romano’s frescoes and Giovanni of Udine’s marvellous stucco work, the roof has been always kept in good repair. Moreover, a good deal has been written about the building, some of which is inaccurate, to say the least; as, for instance, that one may see the dome of Saint Peter’s from the windows, whereas the villa stands halfway down the slope of the hill on the side which is away from the church, and looks towards the Sabines and towards Tivoli and Frascati.

  Those who have taken the trouble to visit the villa in its half-ruinous condition, and who have lingered on the grass-grown terraces and at the noble windows, on spring afternoons, when the sun is behind the hill, can easily guess what it became when it passed into the ownership of the Contessina Cecilia Palladio. Her guardian, the excellent Baron Goldbirn, had bought it for her because it was offered for sale at a low price, and was an excellent investment as well as a treasure of art; and he had purposed to coat the brown stone walls with fresh stucco, to erect a “belvedere” with nice green blinds on the roof, to hang the rooms with rich magenta damask, to carpet them with Brussels carpets, to furnish them with gilt furniture, to warm the house with steam heat, and to light it with electricity.

  To his surprise, his ward rejected each of these proposals in detail and all of them generally, and declared that since the villa was hers she could deal with it according to her own taste, which, she maintained, was better than Goldbirn’s. The latter answered that as he was sixty-five years old and Cecilia was only eighteen, this was impossible; but that under the circumstances he washed his hands of the matter, only warning her that the Italian law would not allow her to cut down the trees more than once in nine years.

  “As if anything could induce me to cut them down at all!” Cecilia answered indignantly. “There are few enough as it is!”

  “My dear,” the Countess had answered with admirable relevancy, “I hope you are not ungrateful to your guardian.”

  Cecilia was not ungrateful, but she had her own way, for it was preordained that she generally should, and it was well for the Villa Madama that it was so. She only asked her guardian how much he would allow her to spend on the place, and then, to his amazement and satisfaction, she only spent half the sum he named. She easily persuaded a good artist, whom her stepfather had helped at the beginning of his career, to take charge of the work, and it was carried out with loving and reverent taste. The wilderness of sloping land became a garden, the beautiful “court of honour” was so skilfully restored with old stone and brick that the restoration could hardly be detected, the great exterior staircase was rebuilt, the close garden on the other side was made a carpet of flowers; the water that gushed abundantly from a deep spring in the hillside poured into an old fountain bought from the remains of a villa in the Campagna, and then, below, filled the vast square basin that already existed, and thence it was distributed through the lower grounds. There were roses everywhere, already beginning to climb, and the scent of a few young orange trees in blossom mingled delicately with the odour of the flowers. Within the house the floor of the great hall was paved with plain white tiles, and up to the cornice and between the marvellous pilasters the bare walls were hung with coarse linen woven in simple and tasteful patterns and in subdued colours.

  The little gods and goddesses and the emblematic figures of the seasons in the glorious vaults overhead, smiled down upon such a scene as had not rejoiced the great hall for centuries. The Countess had asked all Rome to come, with an admirable indifference to political parties and social discords; and all Rome came, as it sometimes does, in the best of tempers with itself and with its hostess. Roman society is good to look at, when it is gathered together in such ways; for mere looks, there is perhaps nothing better in all Europe, except in England. The French are more brilliant, no doubt, for their women, and, alas, their men also, affect a greater variety of dress and ornament than any other people. German society is magnificent with military uniforms, Austrians generally have very perfect taste; and so on, to each its own advantage. But the Romans have something of their own, a beauty most distinctly theirs, a sort of distinction that is genuine and unaffected, but which nevertheless seems to belong to more splendid times than ours. When the women are beautiful, and they often are, they are like the pictures in their own galleries; among the men there are heads and faces that remind one of Lionardo da Vinci, of Cæsar Borgia, of Lorenzo de’ Medici, of Guidarello Guidarelli, even of Michelangelo. Romans, at their best, have about them a grave suavity, or a suave gravity, that is a charm in itself, with a perfect self-possession which is the very opposite of arrogance; when they laugh, their mirth is real, though a little subdued; when they are grave, they do not look dull; when they are in deep earnest, they are not theatrical.

  Those who went to the Fortiguerra garden party never quite forgot the impression they received. It was one of those events that are remembered as memorable social successes, and spoken of after many years. It was unlike anything that had ever been done in Rome before, unlike the solemn receptions of the chief of the clericals, when the cardinals come in state and are escorted by torch-bearers from their carriages to the entrance of the great drawing-room, and back again when they go away; unlike the supremely magnificent balls in honour of the foreign sovereigns who occasionally spend a week in Rome, and are amusingly ready to accept the hospitality of Roman princes; most of all, it was unlike an ordinary garden party, because the Villa Madama is quite unlike ordinary villas.

  Moreover, every one was pleased that such very rich people should not attempt to surprise society by vulgar display. There were no state liveries, there were no ostentatious armorial bearings, there was no overpowering show of silver and gold, there was no Hungarian band brought expressly from Vienna, nor any fashionable pianist paid to play about five thousand notes at about a franc apiece, to the great annoyance of all the people who preferred conversation to music. Everything was
simple, everything was good, everything was beautiful, from the entrancing view of Rome beyond the yellow river, and of the undulating Campagna beyond, with the soft hills in the far distance, to the lovely flowers in the garden; from the flowers without, to the stately halls within; from their charming frescoes and exquisite white traceries, to the lovely girl who was the centre, and the reason, and the soul of it all.

  Her mother received the guests out of doors, in the close garden, and thirty or forty people were already there when Guido d’Este and Lamberti arrived; for every one came early, fearing lest the air might be chilly towards sunset. The Countess introduced the men and the young girls to her daughter, and presented her to the married women. Presently, when the garden became too full, the people would go back through the house and wander away about the grounds, lighting up the shadowed hillside with colour, and filling the air with the sound of their voices. They would stray far out, as far as the little grove on the knoll, planted in old times for the old-fashioned sport of netting birds.

  Guido had told Cecilia on the previous evening that his friend had returned from the country and was coming to the villa, and he had again seen the very slight contraction of her brows at the mere mention of Lamberti’s name. He wondered whether there were not some connection between what he took for her dislike of Lamberti, and the latter’s strong disinclination to meet her. Perhaps Lamberti had guessed at a glance that she would not like him. He would of course keep such an opinion to himself.

  Guido watched Cecilia narrowly from the moment she caught sight of him with Lamberti — so attentively indeed that he did not even glance at the latter’s face. It was set like a mask, and under the tanned colour any one could see that the man turned pale.

  “You know Cecilia already,” said the Countess Fortiguerra, pleasantly. “I hope the rest of your family are coming?”