Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  It must be jealousy, after all. He fancied that she had known Lamberti before, and that she had been girlishly in love with him, and that when she had met him again she had been startled and annoyed. It was not so hard to imagine that this might be possible, though he could not see why they should both make such a secret of having known each other. But perhaps, by some accident, they had become intimate without the knowledge of the Countess, so that Cecilia was now very much afraid lest her mother should find it out.

  Guido’s reflections stopped there. At any other time he would have laughed at their absurdity, and now he resented it. The plain fact stared him in the face, the fact he had known all along and had forgotten — Lamberti could not possibly have met Cecilia since she had been a mere child, because Guido could account for all his friend’s movements during the last five years. Five years ago, Cecilia had been thirteen.

  He was glad that he had torn up his letter to Lamberti, and that he had not even begun the one to Cecilia, after sitting half an hour with his pen in his hand. Yes, he went over those five years, and then took from a drawer the last five of the little pocket diaries he always carried. There was a small space for each day of the year, and he never failed to note at least the name of the place in which he was, while travelling. He also recorded Lamberti’s coming and going, the names of the ships to which he was ordered, and the dates of any notable facts in his life. It is tolerably easy to record the exact movements of a sailor in active service who is only at home on very short leave once in a year or two. Guido turned over the pages carefully and set down on a slip of paper what he found. In five years Lamberti’s leave had not amounted to eight months in all, and Guido could account for every day of it, for they had spent all of it either in Rome or in travelling together. He laid the little diaries in the drawer again, and leaned back in his chair with a deep sigh of satisfaction.

  He was too generous not to wish to find his friend at once and acknowledge frankly that he had been wrong. He telephoned to ask whether Lamberti had come back from the Villa Madama. Yes, he had come back, but he had gone out again. No one knew where he was. He had said that he should not dine at home. That was all. If he returned before half-past ten o’clock d’Este should be informed.

  Guido dined alone and waited, but no message came during the evening. At half-past ten he wrote a few words on a correspondence card, told his man to send the note to Lamberti early in the morning, and went to bed, convinced that everything would explain itself satisfactorily before long. As soon as he was positively sure that Lamberti and Cecilia could not possibly have known each other more than a fortnight, his natural indolence returned. Of course it was very extraordinary that Cecilia should have felt such a strong dislike for Lamberti at first sight, for it could be nothing else, since she seemed displeased whenever his name was mentioned; and it was equally strange that Lamberti should feel the same antipathy for her. But since it was so, she would naturally draw back from telling Guido that his best friend was repulsive to her, and Lamberti would not like to acknowledge that the young girl Guido wished to marry produced a disagreeable impression on him. It was quite natural, too, that after what Guido had said to each of them, each should have been anxious to show him that he was mistaken, and that they should have taken the first opportunity of talking together just when he should most notice it.

  Everything was accounted for by this ingenious theory. Guido knew a man who turned pale when a cat came near him, though he was a manly man, good at sports and undeniably courageous. Those things could not be explained, but it was much easier to understand that a sensitive young girl might be violently affected by an instinctive antipathy for a man, than that a strong man’s teeth should chatter if a cat got under his chair at dinner. That was undoubtedly what happened. How could either of them tell him so, since he was so fond of both? Lamberti had said that as a last resource, he would try to explain what the trouble was. Guido would spare him that. He knew what he had felt almost daily in the presence of Monsieur Leroy, ever since he had been a boy. Lamberti and Cecilia probably acted on each other in the same way. It was a misfortune, of course, that his best friend and his future wife should hate the sight and presence of one another, but it was not their fault, and they would probably get over it.

  It was wonderful to see how everything that had happened exactly fitted into Guido’s simple explanation, the passing shadow on Cecilia’s face, the evident embarrassment of both when Guido asked each the same question, the agreement of their answers, the readiness both had shown to try and overcome their mutual dislike — it was simply wonderful! By the time Guido laid his head on his pillow, he was serenely calm and certain of the future. With the words of sincere regret he had written to Lamberti, and with the decision to say much the same thing to Cecilia on the following day, his conscience was at rest; and he went to sleep in the pleasant assurance that after having done something very hasty he had just avoided doing something quite irreparable.

  Lamberti had spent a less pleasant evening, and was not prepared for the agreeable surprise that awaited him on the following morning in Guido’s note. He was neither indolent nor at all given to self-examination, and he had generally found it a good plan to act upon impulse, and do what he wished to do before it occurred to any one else to do the same thing; and when he could not see what he ought to do, and was nevertheless sure that he ought to act at once, he lost his temper with himself and sometimes with other people.

  He was afraid to go to bed that night, and he went to the club and watched some of his friends playing cards until he could not keep his eyes open; for gambling bored him to extinction. Then he walked the whole length of the Corso and back, in the hope that the exercise might prevent him from dreaming. But it only roused him again; and when he was in his own room he stood nearly two hours at the open window, smoking one cigar after another. At last he lay down without putting out the light and read a French novel till it dropped from his hand, and he fell asleep at four o’clock in the morning.

  He was not visited by the dream that had disturbed his rest nightly for a full fortnight. Possibly the doctor had been right after all, and the habit was broken. At all events, what he remembered having felt when he awoke was something quite new and not altogether unpleasant after the first beginning, yet so strangely undefined that he would have found it hard to describe it in any words.

  He had no consciousness of any sort of shape or body belonging to him, nor of motion, nor of sight, after the darkness had closed in upon him. That moment, indeed, was terrible. It reminded him of the approach of a cyclone in the West Indies, which he remembered well — the dreadful stillness in the air; the long, sullen, greenish brown swell of the oily sea; the appalling bank of solid darkness that moved upon the ship over the noiseless waves; the shreds of black cloud torn forwards by an unseen and unheard force, and the vast flashes of lightning that shot upwards like columns of flame. He remembered the awful waiting.

  Not a storm, then, but an instant change from something to nothing, with consciousness preserved; complete, far-reaching consciousness, that was more perfect than sight, yet was not sight, but a being everywhere at once, a universal understanding, a part of something all pervading, a unification with all things past, present, and to come, with no desire for them, nor vision of them, but perfect knowledge of them all.

  At the same time, there was the presence of another immeasurable identity in the same space, so that his own being and that other were coexistent and alike, each in the other, everywhere at once, and inseparable from the other, and also, in some unaccountable way, each dear to the other beyond and above all description. And there was perfect peace and a state very far beyond any possible waking happiness, without any conception of time or of motion, but only of infinite space with infinite understanding.

  Another phase began. There was time again, there were minutes, hours, months, years, ages; and there was a longing for something that could change, a stirring of human memories in the boundles
s immaterial consciousness, a desire for sight and hearing, a gradual, growing wish to see a face remembered before the wall of darkness had closed in, to hear a voice that had once sounded in ears that had once understood, to touch a hand that had felt his long ago. And the longing became intolerable, for lack of these things, like a burning thirst where there is no water; and the perfect peace was all consumed in that raging wish, and the quiet was disquiet, and the two consciousnesses felt that each was learning to suffer again for want of the other, till what had been heaven was hell, and earth would be better, or total destruction and the extinguishing of all identity, or anything that was not, rather than the least prolonging of what was.

  The last change now; back to the world, and to a human body. Lamberti was waked by a vigorous knocking at his door, which was locked as usual. It was nine o’clock, and a servant had brought him Guido’s note.

  “My dear friend,” it said, “I was altogether in the wrong yesterday. Please forgive me. I quite understand your position with regard to the Contessina, and hers towards you, but I sincerely hope that in the end you may be good friends. I appreciate very much the effort you both made this afternoon to overcome your mutual antipathy. Thank you. G. d’E.”

  Lamberti read the note three times before the truth dawned upon him, and he at last understood what Guido meant. At first the note seemed to have been written in irony, if not in anger, but that would have been very unlike Guido; the second reading convinced Lamberti that his friend was in earnest, whatever his meaning might be, and at the third perusal, Lamberti saw the true state of the case. Guido supposed that he and Cecilia were violently repelled by each other.

  He did not smile at the absurdity of the idea, for he felt at once that the results of such a misunderstanding must before long place Cecilia and himself in a false position, from which it would be hard to escape. Yet he was well aware that Guido would not believe the truth — that the coincidences were too extraordinary to be readily admitted, while no other rational theory could be found to explain what had happened. If Lamberti saw Cecilia often, Guido would soon perceive that instead of mutual dislike and repulsion the strongest sympathy existed between them, and that they would always understand each other without words. It would be impossible to conceal that very long.

  Besides, they would love each other, if they met frequently; about that Lamberti had not the smallest doubt. His instincts were direct and unhesitating, and he knew that he had never felt for any living woman what he felt for the fair young girl whose unreal presence visited his dreams, and who, in those long visions, loved him dearly in return, with a spiritual passion that rose far above perishable things and yet was not wholly immaterial. There was that one moment when they stood near together in the early morning, and their lips met as if body, heart, and soul were all meeting at once, and only for once.

  After that, in his dreams, there was much that Lamberti could not understand in himself, and which seemed very unlike the self he knew, very much higher, very much purer, very much more inclined to sacrifice, constantly in a sort of spiritual tension and always striving towards a perfect life, which was as far as anything could be, he supposed, from his own personality, as he thought he knew it. The story he dreamed was simple enough. He was a Christian, the girl a Vestal Virgin, the youngest of those last six who still guarded the sacred hearth when the Christian Emperor dissolved all that was left of the worship of the old gods. He bade the noble maidens close the doors of the temple and depart in peace to their parents’ homes, freed from their vows and service, and from all obligations to the state, but deprived also of all their old honours and lands and privileges. And sadly they buried the things that had been holy, where no man knew, and watched the fire together, one last night, till it burned out to white ashes in the spring dawn; and they embraced one another with tears and went away. Some became Christians, and some afterwards married; but there was one who would not, though she loved as none of them loved, and she withdrew from the world and lived a pure life for the sake of the old faith and of her solemn vows.

  So, at last, the Christian believed what she told him, that it was better to love in that way, because when he and she were freed at last from all earthly longings, they would be united for ever and ever; and she became a Christian, too, and after the other five Vestals were dead, she also passed away; and the man who had loved her so long, in her own way, died peacefully on the next day, loving her and hoping to join her, and having led a good life. After that there was peace, and they seemed to be together.

  That was their story as it gradually took shape out of fragments and broken visions, and though the man who dreamt these things could not conceive, when he remembered them, that he could ever become at all a saintly character, yet in the vision he knew that he was always himself, and all that he thought and did seemed natural, though it often seemed hard, and he suffered much in some ways, but in others he found great happiness.

  It was a simple story and a most improbable one. He was quite sure that no matter in what age he might have lived, instead of in the twentieth century, he would have felt and acted as he now did when he was wide awake. But that did not matter. The important point was that his imagination was making for him a sort of secondary existence in sleep, in which he was desperately in love with some one who exactly resembled Cecilia Palladio and who bore her first name; and this dreaming created such a strong and lasting impression in his mind that, in real life, he could not separate Cecilia Palladio from Cecilia the Vestal, and found himself on the point of saying to her in reality the very things which he had said to her in imagination while sleeping. The worst of it was this identity of the real and the unreal, for he was persuaded that with very small opportunity the two would turn into one.

  He hated thinking, under all circumstances, as compared with action. It was easier to follow his impulses, and fortunately for him they were brave and honourable. He never analysed his feelings, never troubled himself about his motives, never examined his conscience. It told him well enough whether he was doing right or wrong, and on general principles he always meant to do right. It was not his fault if his imagination made him fall in love in a dream with the young girl who was probably to be his friend’s wife. But it would be distinctly his fault if he gave himself the chance of falling in love with her in reality.

  Moreover, though he did not know how much further Cecilia’s dream coincided with his own, and believed it impossible that the coincidence should be nearly as complete as it seemed, he felt that she would love him if he chose that she should. The intuitions of very masculine men about women are far keener and more trustworthy than women guess; and when such a man is not devoured by fatuous vanity he is rarely mistaken if he feels sure that a woman he meets will love him, provided that circumstances favour him ever so little. There is not necessarily the least particle of conceit in that certainty, which depends on the direct attraction between any two beings who are natural complements to each other.

  Lamberti was a man who had the most profound respect for every woman who deserved to be respected ever so little, and a good-natured contempt for all the rest, together with a careless willingness to be amused by them. And of all the women in the world, next to his own mother, the one whom he would treat with something approaching to veneration would be Guido’s wife, if Guido married.

  Without any reasoning, it was plain that he must see as little as possible of Cecilia Palladio. But as this would not please Guido, the best plan was to go away while there was time. In all probability, when he next returned, say in two years, he would no longer feel the dangerous attraction that was almost driving him out of his senses at present.

  He had been in Rome some time, expecting his promotion to the rank of lieutenant-commander, which would certainly be accompanied by orders to join another ship, possibly very far away. If he showed himself very anxious to go at once, before his leave expired, the Admiralty would probably oblige him, especially as he just now cared much less for the pr
omised step in the service than for getting away at short notice. The best thing to be done was to go and see the Minister, who had of late been very friendly to him; everything might be settled in half an hour, and next week he would be on his way to China, or South America, or East Africa, which would be perfectly satisfactory to everybody concerned.

  It was a wise and honourable resolution, and he determined to act on it at once. His hand was on the door to go out, when he stopped suddenly and stood quite still for a few seconds. It was as if something unseen surrounded him on all sides, in the air, invisible but solid as lead, making it impossible for him to move. It did not last long, and he went out, wondering at his nervousness.

  In half an hour he was in the presence of the Minister, who was speaking to him.

  “You are promoted to the rank of lieutenant-commander. You are temporarily attached to the ministerial commission which is to study the Somali question, which you understand so well from experience on the spot. His Majesty specially desires it.”

  “How long may this last, sir?” enquired Lamberti, with a look of blank disappointment.

  “Oh, a year or two, I should say,” laughed the Minister. “They do not hurry themselves. You can enjoy a long holiday at home.”

  CHAPTER XI

  THOUGH IT WAS late in the season, everybody wished to do something to welcome the appearance of Cecilia Palladio in society. It was too warm to give balls, but it did not follow that it was at all too hot to dance informally, with the windows open. We do not know why a ball is hotter than a dance; but it is so. There are things that men do not understand.

  So dinners were given, to which young people were asked, and afterwards an artistic-looking man appeared from somewhere and played waltzes, and twenty or thirty couples amused themselves to their hearts’ delight till one o’clock in the morning. Moreover, people who had villas gave afternoon teas, without any pretence of giving garden parties, and there also the young ones danced, sometimes on marble pavements in great old rooms that smelt slightly of musty furniture, but were cool and pleasant. Besides these things, there were picnic dinners at Frascati and Castel Gandolfo, and everybody drove home across the Campagna by moonlight. Altogether, and chiefly in Cecilia Palladio’s honour, there was a very pretty little revival of winter gaiety, which is not always very gay in Rome, nowadays.