“Thank you,” he said, rather curtly, for he was thinking of another answer. “If I take you to Guido, what shall you say to him?”
She drew herself up against the back of the sofa, but the smile still lingered on her lips.
“You must trust me, too,” she answered. “Do you think I can compose set speeches beforehand? When shall we go? How is it to be managed?”
“You often go out with your maid, do you not? What sort of woman is she? A dragon?”
“No!” Cecilia laughed. “She is very respectable and nice, and thinks I am perfection. But then, she is terribly near-sighted, and cannot wear spectacles because they fall off her nose.”
“Then she loses her way easily, I suppose?” said Lamberti, too much intent on his plans to be amused at trifles.
“Yes. She is always losing her way.”
“That might easily happen to her in the Palazzo Farnese. It is a huge place, and you could manage to go up one way while she went up the other. Besides, there is a lift at the back, not to mention the servants’ staircases, in which she might be hopelessly lost. Can you trust her not to lose her head and make the porters search the palace for you, if you are separated from her?”
“I am not sure. But she will stay wherever I tell her to wait for me. That might be better. You see, my only excuse for going to the Palazzo Farnese would be to see the ambassador’s daughter, and she is in the country.”
“I think she must have come to town for a day or two, for I met her this afternoon. That is a good reason for going to see her. At the door of the embassy send your maid on an errand that will take an hour, and tell her to wait for you in the cab at the gate. If the girl is at home you need not stay ten minutes. Then you can see Guido during the rest of the time. It will be long enough, and besides, the maid will wait.”
“For ever, if I tell her to! But you, where shall you be?”
“You will meet me on the stairs as you come down from the embassy. Wear something simple and dark that people have not seen you wear before, and carry a black parasol and a guide-book. Have one of those brown veils that tourists wear against the sun. Fold it up neatly and put it into the pocket of the guide-book instead of the map, or pin it to the inside of your parasol. You can put it on as soon as you have turned the corner of the stairs, out of sight of the embassy door, for the footman will not go in till you are as far as that. If you cannot put it on yourself, I will do it for you.”
“Do you know how to put on a woman’s veil?” Cecilia asked, with a little laugh.
“Of course! It is easy enough. I have often fastened my sister’s for her at picnics.”
“What time shall I come?”
“A little before eleven. Guido cannot be ready before that.”
“But he has a servant,” said Cecilia, suddenly remembering the detail. “What will he think?”
“He has two, but they shall both be out, and I shall have the key to his door in my pocket. We will manage that.”
“Shall you be sure to know just when I come?”
“I shall see you, but you will not see me till we meet on the landing.”
“I knew you could manage it, if you only would.”
“It is simple enough. There is not the slightest risk, if you will do exactly what I have told you.”
It seemed easy indeed, and Cecilia was almost happy at the thought that she was soon to be freed from the intolerable situation into which she allowed herself to be forced. She was very grateful, too, and beyond her gratitude was the unspeakable satisfaction in the man she loved. Instead of making difficulties, he smoothed them; instead of prating of what society might think, he would help her to defy it, because he knew that she was right.
“I should like to thank you,” she said simply. “I do not know how.”
He seemed to say something in answer, in a rather discontented way, but so low that she could not catch the words.
“What did you say?” she asked unwisely.
“Nothing. I am glad to be of service to you. Say the right things to Guido; for you are going to do rather an eccentric thing in order to say them, and a mistake would be fatal.”
He spoke almost roughly, but she was not offended. He had a right to be rough, since he was ready to do whatever she asked of him; yet not understanding him, while loving him, her instinct made her wish him really to know how pleased she was. She put out her hand a little timidly and touched his, as a much older woman might have done. To her surprise, he grasped it instantly, and held it so tightly that he hurt her for a moment. He dropped it then, pushing it from him as his hold relaxed, almost throwing it off.
“What is the matter?” Cecilia asked, surprised.
But at that moment her mother entered the room from the boudoir.
CHAPTER XXIV
IN AGREEING TO the dangerous scheme, Lamberti had yielded to an impulse founded upon his intuitive knowledge of women, and not at all upon his inborn love of anything in which there was risk. The danger was for Cecilia, not for himself, in any case; and it was real, for, if it should ever be known that she had gone to Guido’s rooms, nothing but her marriage with him would silence the gossips. Society cannot be blamed for drawing a line somewhere, considering how very far back it sets the limit.
Lamberti, without reasoning about it, knew that no woman ever does well what she does not like doing. If he persisted in making Cecilia attempt to break gradually with Guido, she would soon make mistakes and spoil everything. That was his conviction. She felt, at present, that if she could see Guido face to face, she could persuade him to give her up; and the probability was that she would succeed, or else that she would be moved by real pity for him and thus become genuinely ready to follow Lamberti’s original advice. The sensible course to follow was, therefore, to help her in the direction she had chosen.
Early in the morning Lamberti was at his friend’s bedside. Guido was much better now, and there was no risk in taking him to his sitting room. Lamberti suggested this before saying anything else, and the doctor came soon afterwards and approved of it. By ten o’clock Guido was comfortably installed in a long cane chair, amongst his engravings and pictures, very pale and thin, but cheerful and expectant. As he had no fever, and was quite calm, Lamberti told him frankly that Cecilia had something to say to him which no one could say for her, and was coming herself. He was amazed and delighted at first, and then was angry with Lamberti for allowing her to come; but, as the latter explained in detail how her visit was to be managed, his fears subsided, and he looked at his watch with growing impatience. His man had been sitting up with him at night since his illness had begun, and was easily persuaded to go to bed for the day. The other servant, who cooked what Guido needed, had prepared everything for the day, and had gone out. He always came back a little after twelve o’clock. At twenty minutes to eleven Lamberti took the key of the door and went to watch for Cecilia’s coming, and half an hour later he admitted her to the sitting room, shut the door after her, and left the two together. He went and sat down in the outer hall, in case any one should ring the bell, which had been muffled with a bit of soft leather while Guido was ill.
Cecilia stood still a moment, after the door was closed; behind her, and she lifted her veil to see her way, for there was not much light in the room. As she caught sight of Guido, a frank smile lighted up her face for an instant, and then died away in a look of genuine concern and anxiety. She had not realised how much he could change in so short a time, in not more than four or five days. She came forward quickly, took his hand, and bent over him, looking into his face. His eyes widened with pleasure and his thin fingers lifted hers to his lips.
“You have been very ill,” she said, “very, very ill! I had no idea that it was so bad as this!”
“I am better,” he answered gently. “How good of you! How endlessly good of you to come!”
“Nobody saw me,” she said, by way of answer.
She smoothed the old pink damask cushion under his head, and instinctively looked to s
ee if he had all he needed within reach, before she thought of sitting down in the chair Lamberti had placed ready for her.
“Tell me,” he said, in a low and somewhat anxious voice, “you did not mean it? You were out of temper, or you were annoyed by something, or — I do not know! Something happened that made you write, and you had sent the letter before you knew what you were doing—”
He broke off, quite sure of her answer. He thought she turned pale, though the light was not strong and brought the green colour of the closed blinds into the room.
“Hush!” she exclaimed soothingly, and she sat down beside him, still holding his hand. “I have come expressly to talk to you about it all, because letters only make misunderstandings, and there must not be any more misunderstandings between us two.”
“No, never again!” He looked up with love in his hollow eyes, not suspecting what she meant. “I have forgotten all that was in that letter, and I wish to forget it. You never wrote that you did not love me, nor that you loved another man. It is all gone, quite gone, and I shall never remember it again.”
Cecilia sighed and gazed into his face sadly. He looked so ill and weak that she wondered how she could be cruel enough to tell him the truth, though she had risked her good name to get a chance of speaking plainly. It seemed like bringing a cup of cold water to the lips of a man dying of thirst, only to take it away again untasted and leave him to his fate. She pitied him with all her heart, but there was nothing in her compassion that at all resembled love. It was the purest and most friendly affection, of the sort that lasts a lifetime and can devote itself in almost any sacrifice; but it was all quite clear and comprehensible, without the smallest element of the inexplicable attraction that is deaf, and dumb, and, above all, blind, and which proceeds from the deep prime cause and mover of nature, and mates lions in the wilderness and birds in the air, and men and women among their fellows, two and two, from generation to generation.
“Guido,” said Cecilia, after a long silence, “do you not think that two people can be very, very fond of each other all their lives, and trust each other, and like to be together as much as possible, without being married?”
She spoke quietly and steadily, trying to make her voice sound more gentle than ever before; but there was no possibility of mistaking her meaning. His thin hand started and shook under her soothing touch, and then drew itself away. The light went out of his eyes and the rings of shadow round them grew visibly darker as he turned his head painfully on the damask cushion.
“Is that what you have come to say?” he asked, in a groan.
Cecilia leaned back in her chair and folded her hands. She felt as if she had killed an unresisting, loving creature, as a sacrifice for her fault.
“God forgive me if I have done wrong,” she said, speaking to herself. “I only mean to do right.”
Guido moved his head on his cushion again, as if suffering unbearable pain, and a sort of harsh laugh answered her words.
“Your God will forgive you,” he said bitterly, after a moment. “Man made God in his own image, and God must needs obey his creator. When you cannot forgive yourself, you set up an image and ask it to pardon you. I do not wonder.”
The cruel words hurt her in more ways than one, and she drew her breath between her teeth as if she had struck unawares against something sharp and was repressing a cry of pain. Then there was silence for a long time.
“Why do you stay here?” Guido asked, in a low tone, not looking at her. “You cannot have anything more to say. You have done what you came to do. Let me be alone.”
“Guido!”
She touched his shoulder gently as he lay turned from her, but he moved and pushed her away.
“It cannot give you pleasure to see me suffer,” he said. “Please go away.”
“How can I leave you like this?”
There was despair in her voice, and the sound of tears that would never come to her eyes. He did not answer. She would not go away without trying to appease him, and she made a strong effort to collect her thoughts.
“You are angry with me, of course,” she began. “You despise me for not having known my own mind, but you cannot say anything that I have not said to myself. I ought to have known long ago. All I can say in self-defence now is that it is better to have told you the truth before we were married than to have been obliged to confess it afterwards, or else to have lied to you all my life if I could not find courage to speak. It is better, is it not? Oh, say that it is better!”
“It would have been much better if neither of us had ever been born,” Guido answered.
“I only ask you to say that you would rather be suffering now than have had me tell you in a year that I was an unfaithful wife at heart. That is all. Will you not say it? It is all I ask.”
“Why should you ask anything of me, even that? The only kindness you can show me now is to go away.”
He would not look at her. His throat was parched, and he put out his hand to take the tumbler from the little table on the other side of his long chair. Instantly she rose and tried to help him, but he would not let her.
“I am not so weak as that,” he said coldly. “My hand is steady enough, thank you.”
She sighed and drew back. Perhaps it would be better to leave him, as he wished that she should, but his words recalled Lamberti’s warning; his hand was steady, he said, and that meant that it was steady enough to take the pistol from the drawer in the little table and use it. He believed in nothing, in no future, in no retribution, in no God, and he was ill, lonely, and in despair through her fault. His friend knew him, and the danger was real. The conviction flashed through her brain that if she left him alone he would probably kill himself, and she fancied him lying there dead, on the red tiles. She fancied, too, Lamberti’s face, when he should come to tell her what had happened, for he would surely come, and to the end of her life and his he would never forgive her.
She stood still, wavering and unstrung by her thoughts, looking steadily down at Guido’s head.
“Since you will not go away,” he said at last, “answer me one question. Tell me the name of the man who has come between us.”
Cecilia bit her lip and turned her face from the light.
“Then it is true,” Guido said, after a silence. “There is a man whom you really love, a man whom you would really marry and to whom you could really be faithful.”
“Yes. It is true. Everything I wrote you is true.”
“Who is he?”
She was silent again.
“Do you hope that I shall ever forgive you for what you have done to me?”
“Yes. I pray heaven that you may!”
“Leave heaven out of the question. You have turned my life into something like what you call hell. Do I know the man you love?”
“Yes,” Cecilia answered, after a moment’s hesitation.
“Do I often meet him? Have I met him often since you have loved him?”
She said nothing, but stood still with bent head and clasped hands.
“Why do you not answer me?” he asked sternly.
“You must never know his name,” she said, in a low voice.
“Have I no right to know who has ruined my life?”
“I have. Blame me. Visit it on me.”
He laughed, not harshly now, but gently and sarcastically.
“You women are fond of offering yourselves as expiatory victims for your own sins, for you know very well that we shall not hurt you! After all, you cannot help yourself if you have fallen in love with some one else. I suppose I ought to be sorry for you. I probably shall be, when I know who he is!”
He laughed again, already despising the man she had preferred in his stead. His words had cut her, but she said nothing, for she was in dread lest the slightest word should betray the truth.
“You say that I know him,” Guido continued, his cheeks beginning to flush feverishly, “and you would not answer me when I asked you if I had often met him since you h
ave loved him. That means that I have, of course. You were too honest to lie, and too much frightened to tell the truth. I meet him often. Then he is one of a score of men whom I know better than all the others. There are not many men whom I meet often. It cannot be very hard to find out which of them it is.”
Cecilia turned her face away, resting one hand on the back of the chair, and a deep blush rose in her cheeks. But she spoke steadily.
“You can never find out,” she said. “He does not love me. He does not guess that I love him. But I will not answer any more questions, for you must not know who he is.”
“Why not? Do you think I shall quarrel with him and make him fight a duel with me?”
“Perhaps.”
“That is absurd,” Guido answered quietly. “I do not value my life much, I believe, but I have not the least inclination to risk it in such a ridiculous way. The man has injured me without knowing it. You have taken from me the one thing I treasured and you are keeping it for him; but he does not want it, he does not even know that it is his, he is not responsible for your caprices.”
“Not caprice, Guido! Do not call it that!”
“I do. Forgive me for being frank. Say that I am ill, if you please, as an excuse for me. I call such things by their right name, caprices. If you are going to be subject to them all your life, you had better go into a convent before you throw away your good name.”
“I have not deserved that!”
She turned upon him now, with flashing eyes. He had raised himself upon one elbow and was looking at her with cool contempt.
“You have deserved that and more,” he answered, “and if you insist upon staying here you must hear what I choose to say. I advised you to go away, but you would not. I have no apology to make for telling you the truth, but you are free to go. Lamberti is in the hall and will see you to your carriage.”
There was something royal in his anger and in his look now, which she could not help respecting, in spite of his words. She had thought that he would behave very differently; she had looked for some passionate outburst, perhaps for some unmanly weakness, excusable since he was so ill, and more in accordance with his outwardly gentle character. She had thought that because he had made his friend speak to her for him he lacked energy to speak for himself. But now that the moment had come, he showed himself as manly and determined as ever Lamberti could be, and she could not help respecting him for it. Doubtless Lamberti had always known what was in his friend’s nature, below the indolent surface. Perhaps he was like his father, the old king. But Cecilia was proud, too.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1039
