Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  “No,” he said. “It is not badly out of tune. But if I play, it will be the end of our acquaintance.”

  “Perhaps it may be the beginning,” Cecilia answered, and their eyes met for a moment.

  “If it amuses you, I will try,” said Lamberti, looking away, and sitting down before the keys. “You must be easily pleased if you can listen to me,” he added, laughing, as he struck a few chords again.

  Cecilia sat down in a low chair between him and the window, at the left of the key-board. Her mother glanced at Lamberti with a little surprise, and then went on talking with Guido.

  Lamberti began to play a favourite waltz, not loud, but with a good deal of spirit and a perfect sense of time. Cecilia had often danced to the tune in the spring, and liked it. He broke off suddenly, and made slow chords again.

  “Have you forgotten the rest?” Cecilia asked.

  “No. I was thinking of something else. Did you ever hear this?”

  He played an old Sicilian melody with one hand, and then took it up in a second part, and then a third, that made strange minor harmonies.

  “I never heard that,” Cecilia said, as he looked at her. “I like it. It must be very ancient. Play it again.”

  By way of answer, he began to sing the old song, accompanying himself with the same old harmonies. He had no particular voice, and it was more like humming than singing, so far as the tone was concerned, but he pronounced every word distinctly, and imitated the peculiar intonation of the southern people to perfection.

  “Do you understand?” he asked, when he came to the end.

  “Not a word.” Cecilia asked, “Is it Arabic? It sounds like it.”

  “No. It is our own beloved Italian,” laughed Lamberti, “only it is the Sicilian dialect. If that sort of thing amuses you, I can go on for hours.”

  Many Italians have the facility he possessed, and the good memory for both words and music, and he had unconsciously developed what talent he had, in places where time was long and there was nothing to do. He changed the key and hummed a little Arab melody from the desert.

  Cecilia sat quite still and watched the outline of his head against the light. It was an energetic head, but the face was not a cruel one, and this evening she had not seen what she called the ruthless look in his eyes. She was not at all afraid of him now, nor would she have been even if they had been quite alone in the room. She almost wished to tell him so, and then smiled at the thought.

  So this was the reality of the vision that had haunted her dreams and had caused her such unutterable suffering until she had found strength to break the habit of her imagination. The reality was not at all terrible. She could imagine the man roused to action, fighting for his life, single-handed against many, as she had been told that he had fought. He looked both brave and strong. But she could not imagine that she should ever have cause to be afraid of him again. There he sat, beside her, humming snatches of songs he remembered from his many voyages, his hands moving not at all gracefully over the keys; he was evidently a very simple and good-natured man, willing to do anything that could amuse her, without the slightest affectation. He was just the kind of friend for Guido, and it was her duty to like Guido’s friend. It would not be hard, now that she had got out of the labyrinth of absurd illusions that had made it impossible. She resolutely put aside the recollection of that afternoon at the Villa Madama. It belonged to the class of things about which she was determined never to think again. “Arise and conquer!” She had come back to her real self, and had overcome.

  He stopped singing, but his hands still lay on the keys and he struck occasional chords; and he turned his face half towards her, and spoke in an undertone.

  “I am very sorry if I offended you by not coming more often to your house,” he said. “Guido told me. I thought perhaps you would understand why I did not come.”

  Cecilia looked at him and was silent for a moment, but she felt very strong and sure of herself.

  “Signor Lamberti,” she said presently, “I want to ask you to do something — for me.”

  There was a little emphasis on the last word. He turned quite towards her now, but he still made chords on the instrument, for he knew that the Countess had extraordinary ears. His impulse was to tell her that he would do anything she asked of him, no matter how hard it might be; but he controlled it.

  “Certainly,” he answered. “What is it?”

  “Forget that we met in the Forum, and forget what we said to each other at the garden party. Will you? It was all a coincidence, of course, but I behaved very foolishly, and I do not like to think that you remember it. Will you try and forget it all?”

  “I will try,” Lamberti answered, looking down at the keys. “At all events, I can promise never to remind you of it, as I did just now.”

  “That is what I meant,” Cecilia said. “Let us never remind each other of it. Of course we cannot really forget, in our own selves, but we can begin again from the beginning, this evening, as if it had never happened. We can be real friends, as we ought to be.”

  “Can we?” Lamberti asked the question in a doubtful tone, and glanced uneasily at her.

  “I can, if you can,” she answered courageously, “and I mean to be.”

  “Then I can, too,” Lamberti said, but his lips shut tightly as if he regretted the words as soon as they were spoken.

  “It will be easy, now,” Cecilia went on. “It will be much easier because—” She stopped.

  “Why will it be so much easier?” Lamberti asked, looking down again.

  “We were not going to speak of those things again,” Cecilia said. “We had better not begin.”

  “I only ask that one question. Tell me why it will be easier now. It may help me to forget.”

  “It will be easier — because I do not dream of you any more — I mean of the man who is like you.” She was blushing faintly, but she knew that he would not look at her, and she was sitting in the shadow.

  “On what day did you stop dreaming?” he asked, between two chords.

  “It was last week. Let me see. It was a Wednesday. On Wednesday night I did not dream.” He nodded gravely over the keys, as if he had expected the answer.

  “Did you ever read anything about telepathy?” he asked. “I did not dream of you on Wednesday night either. It seemed to me that I tried to find you and could not.”

  “Were you trying to find me before?” Cecilia asked, as if it were the most natural question in the world.

  “Yes. In my dreams I almost always found you. There was a break — I forget when. The old dream about the house of the Vestals stopped suddenly. Then I missed you and tried to find you. You were always sitting on that bench by the fountain in the villa. Last Wednesday I dreamt I was there, but you did not come.”

  Cecilia shuddered, as if the night air from the open window chilled her.

  “Are you cold?” he asked. “Shall I shut the window?”

  “No, I was frightened,” she answered. “We must never talk about all that again. Do you know, I think it is wrong to talk about them. There is some power of evil—”

  “I do not deny the existence of the devil at all,” Lamberti answered, with a faint smile. “But I think this is only a strange case of telepathy. I will do as you wish; though my own belief is, after this evening, that it is better to talk about it all quite fearlessly, and grow used to it. We shall be much less afraid of it if we look upon it as something not at all supernatural, which could easily be explained if we knew enough about those things.”

  “Perhaps,” Cecilia answered doubtfully. “You may be right. I do not know.”

  “You are going to marry my most intimate friend,” Lamberti continued, “and I am unfortunately condemned to stay in Rome for some time, for a year, I fancy, and perhaps even longer.”

  “Why do you say that you are ‘unfortunately condemned’ to stay?”

  “Because I did my best to get away. You look surprised. I begged the Minister to shorten my leave and s
end me to sea at once, with or without promotion. Instead, I was named a member of a commission which will sit a long time. Since we are talking frankly, I wanted to get away from you, and not to see you again for years. But now that I must stay here, or leave the service, we cannot help meeting; so I think it is more sensible not to take any solemn oaths never to allude to these strange coincidences, or whatever they are, but to talk them out of existence; all the more so, as they seem to have suddenly come to an end. I only tell you what would be easier for me; but I will do whatever makes it most easy for you.”

  “I prayed that they might stop,” said Cecilia, in a very low voice. “I want you to be my friend, and as long as I dreamt of you — in that way — I felt that it was impossible.”

  “Of course,” Lamberti answered, without hesitation. Then, with an attempt at a laugh, he corrected himself. “I apologise for all the things I said to you in my dreams.”

  “Please do not laugh about it.” Her voice was a little unsteady, and she was looking down, so that he could not see her face.

  “It is better not to take it too seriously,” he replied gravely. “Could anything be more absurd than that two people who were mere acquaintances then should fall in love with each other in their dreams? It is utterly ridiculous. Any sane person would laugh at the idea.”

  “Yes; no doubt. But there is more than that. Call it telepathy, or whatever you please, it cannot be a mere coincidence. Do you know that, until last Wednesday, I met you in my dream, just where you dreamed of meeting me, at the bench in the villa?”

  He did not seem surprised, but listened attentively while she continued.

  “I am sure that we really met,” she went on gravely. “It may be in some natural way or not. It does not matter. We must never meet again like that — never. Do you understand? We must promise never to try and find each other in our dreams. Will you promise?”

  “Yes; I promise.” Lamberti spoke gravely.

  “I promise, too,” Cecilia said.

  Then they were both silent for a time. It was like a real parting, and they felt it, and for a few moments each was thinking of the bench by the fountain in the Villa Madama.

  “We owe it to Guido,” Lamberti said at last, almost unconsciously.

  “Yes,” the girl answered; “and to ourselves. Thank you.”

  With an impulse she did not suspect, she held out her hand to him, and waited for him to take it. Neither her mother nor Guido could see the gesture, for Lamberti’s seated figure screened her from them; but he could not have taken her hand in his right without changing his position, since she was seated low on his other side; so he took it quietly in his left, and the two met and pressed each the other for a second.

  In that touch Cecilia felt that all her fear of him ended for ever, and that of all men she could trust him the most, and that he would protect her, if ever he might, even more effectually than Guido. His hand was cool, and steady, and strong, and enfolding — the hand of a brave man. But if she had looked she would have seen that his face was paler than usual, and that his eyes seemed veiled.

  She rose, and he followed her as she moved slowly forward.

  “What a charming talent you have!” cried the Countess in an encouraging tone, when Lamberti was near her.

  “Have you made acquaintance at last?” Guido was asking of Cecilia, in an undertone.

  “Yes,” she answered gravely. “I think we shall be good friends.”

  CHAPTER XVII

  PEOPLE SAID THAT Guido had ceased to be interesting since he had been engaged to be married. Until that time, there had been an element of romance about him, which many women thought attractive; and most men had been willing to look upon him as a being slightly superior to themselves, who cared only for books and engravings, though he never thrust his tastes upon other people, nor made any show of knowing more than others, and whose opinion on points of honour was the very best that could be had. It was so good, indeed, that he was not often asked to give it.

  Now, however, they said that he was changed; that he was complacent and pleased with himself; that this was no wonder, because he was marrying a handsome fortune with a pretty and charming wife; that he had done uncommonly well for himself; and much more to the same purpose. Also, the mothers of impecunious marriageable sons of noble lineage said in their maternal hearts that if they had only guessed that Countess Fortiguerra would give her daughter to the first man who asked for her, they would not have let Guido be the one.

  The judgments of society are rarely quite at fault, but they are almost always relative and liable to change. They are, indeed, appreciations of an existing state of things, rather than verdicts from which there is no appeal. The verdict comes after the state of things has ceased to exist.

  Guido was happy, and nothing looks duller than the happiness of quiet people. Nobody will go far to look at the sea when it is calm, if he is used to seeing it at all; but those who live near it will walk a mile or two to watch the breakers in a storm.

  In the first place, Guido was in love, and more in love with Cecilia’s face and figure than he guessed. In the early days of their acquaintance he had enjoyed talking with her about the subjects in which she was interested. Such conversation generally brought him to that condition of intellectual suspense which was peculiarly delightful to him, for though she did not persuade him to accept her own points of view, she made him feel more doubtful about his own, so far as any of them were fixed, and doubt meant revery, musing, imaginative argument about questions that might never be answered. But he and she had now advanced to another stage. Unconsciously, all that side of his nature had fallen into abeyance, and he thought only of positive things in the immediate future. When he was with Cecilia, no matter how the conversation began, it soon turned upon their plans for their married life; and he found it so infinitely pleasant to talk of such matters that it did not occur to him to ask whether she regarded them as equally interesting.

  She did not; she saw the change in him, and regretted it. A woman who is not really in love, generally likes a man less after he has fallen hopelessly in love with her. It is true that she sometimes likes herself the better for her new conquest, and there may be some compensation in that; but there is something tiresome, if not repugnant to her, in the placid, possessive complacency of a future husband, who seems to forget that a woman has any intelligence except in matters concerning furniture and the decoration of a house.

  Cecilia was not capricious; she really liked Guido as much as ever, and she would not even admit that he bored her when he came back again and again to the same topics. She tried hard to look forward to the time when all the former charm of their intercourse should return, and when, besides being the best of friends, he would again be the most agreeable of companions. It seemed very far off; and yet, in her heart, she hoped that something might happen to hinder her marriage, or at least to put it off another year.

  Her life seemed very blank after the great struggle was ended, and in the long summer mornings before Guido came to luncheon, she was conscious of longing for something that should take the place of the old dreams, something she could not understand, that awoke under the listlessness which had come upon her. It was a sort of sadness, like a regret for a loss that had not really been suffered, and yet was present; it was a craving for sympathy where she had deserved none, and it made her inclined to pity herself without reason. She sometimes felt it after Guido had come, and it stayed with her, a strange yearning after an unknown happiness that was never to be hers, a half-comforting and infinitely sad conviction that she was to die young and that people would mourn for her, but not those, or not that one, who ought to be most sorry that she was gone. All her books were empty of what she wanted, and for hours she sat still, doing nothing, or stood leaning on the window-sill, gazing down through the slats of the blinds at the glaring street, unconscious of the heat and the strong light, and of the moving figures that passed.

  Occasionally she drove out to the
Villa Madama in the afternoon with her mother, and Guido joined them. Lamberti did not come there, though he often came to the house in the evening, sometimes with his friend, and sometimes later. The two always went away together. At the villa, Cecilia never sat down on the bench by the fountain, but from a distance she looked at it, and it was like looking at a grave. In dreams she had sat there too often with another to go there alone now; she had heard words there that touched her heart too deeply to be so easily forgotten, and there had been silences too happy to forget. She had buried all that by the garden seat, but it was better not to go near the place again. What she had laid out of sight there might not be quite dead yet, and if she sat in the old place she might hear some piteous cry from beneath her feet; or its ghost might rise and stare at her, the ghost of a dream. Then, the yearning and the longing grew stronger and hurt her sharply, and she turned under the great door, into the hall, and was very glad when her mother began to chatter about dress and people.

  But one day the very thing happened which she had always tried to avert. Guido insisted on walking up and down the path with her, and they passed and repassed the bench, till she was sure that he would make her sit down upon it. She tried to linger at the opposite end, but he was interested in what he was saying and did not notice her reluctance to turn back.

  Then it came. He stood still by the fountain, and then he sat down quite naturally, and evidently expecting her readiness to do the same. She started slightly and looked about, as if to find some means of escape, but a moment later she had gathered her courage and was sitting beside him.

  The scene came back with excessive vividness. There was the evening light, the first tinge of violet on the Samnite mountains, the base of Monte Cavo already purple, the glow on Frascati, and nearer, on Marino; Rome was at her feet, in a rising mist beyond the flowing river. Guido talked on, but she did not hear him. She heard another voice and other words, less gentle and less calm. She felt other eyes upon her, waiting for hers to answer them, she felt a hand stealing near to hers as her own lay on the bench at her side.