The Child of Pleasure Part 20

She walked on at the same slow pace, her head bent, her face bloodless, towards a seat at the further end of the wood and facing the sea.

It was a wide semicircle of white marble with a back running round the entire length and, for sole ornamentation, a lion's paw at each end as a support. It recalled those antique seats on which, in some island of the Archipelago or in Greece or Pompeii, ladies reclined and listened to a reading from the poets, under the shade of the oleanders, within sight of the sea. Here the arbutus cast the shadow of its blossom and its fruit, and in contrast to the marble, the coral of the stems seemed more vivid than elsewhere.

'I care for everything that interests you; you possess all those things after which I am seeking. Pity from you would be more precious to me than pa.s.sionate love from any other woman. Your hand upon my heart--I know--would cause a second youth to spring up in me far purer than the first and stronger. The ceaseless vacillation which makes up the sum of my inner life would find rest and stability in you. My unsatisfied and restless spirit, harried by a perpetual warfare between attraction and repulsion, eternally and irremediably alone, would find in yours a haven of refuge against the doubts which contaminate every ideal, and weaken the will. There are men more unfortunate, but I doubt if in the whole wide world there was ever one less happy than I.'

He was making use of Obermann's words as his own. In the sort of sentimental intoxication to which he had worked himself up, all his melancholy broodings surged to his lips, and the mere sound of his own voice--with a little quiver of humble entreaty in it--served to augment his emotions.

'I do not venture to tell you all my thoughts. At your side, during the few days since I first met you, I have had moments of oblivion so complete as almost to make me feel that I was back in the first days of my convalescence, when the sense of another world was still present with me. The past, the future were obliterated--as if the former had never been, and the latter never would be. The whole world was without form and void. Then, something like a dream, dim but stupendous, rose upon my soul--a fluttering veil, now impenetrable, now transparent, and yielding intermittent glimpses of a splendid but unattainable treasure. What did you know or care about me in such moments? Doubtless your spirit was far away from me. And yet, your mere bodily presence was sufficient to intoxicate me--I felt it flowing through my veins like blood, taking hold upon my soul with superhuman force----'

She sat silent and motionless, gazing straight before her, her figure erect, her hands rigidly clasped in her lap, in the att.i.tude of one who makes a supreme effort to brace himself against his own weakness. Only her mouth--the expression of the lips she vainly strove to keep firm--betrayed a sort of anguished rapture.

'I dare not tell you all I feel.--Maria, Maria, can you forgive me?--say that you forgive me.'

Two little hands came suddenly from behind the seat and clasped themselves over the mother's eyes, and a voice panting with fun and mischief cried--

'Guess who it is--guess who it is!'

She smiled, and allowed herself to be drawn backwards by Delfina's clinging fingers, and instantly, with preternatural clearness, Andrea saw that smile wipe away all the obscure, delicious pain from her lips, efface every sign that might be construed into an avowal, put to flight the least lingering shadow of uncertainty that he might possibly have converted into a gleam of hope. He sat there like a man who has expected to drink from an overflowing cup and suddenly finds it has nothing but the empty air to offer to his thirsty lips.

'Guess!'

The little girl covered her mother's head with loud, quick kisses, in a kind of frenzy, even hurting her a little.

'I know who it is--I know who it is,' cried Donna Maria--'Let me go!'

'What will you give me if I do?'

'Anything you like.'

'Well, I want a pony to carry back my berries to the house. Come and see what a heap I have collected.'

She ran round the seat and pulled her mother by the hand. Donna Maria rose rather wearily, and as she stood up she closed her eyes for a moment as if overcome by sudden giddiness. Andrea rose too, and both followed in Delfina's wake.

The mischievous child had stripped half the wood of fruit. The lower branches had not a single berry left. With the aid of a stick, picked up goodness knows where, she had reaped a prodigious harvest and then piled up the fruit into one great heap, so intense in colouring against the dark soil, that it looked like a heap of glowing embers. The flowers had apparently not attracted her; there they hung, white and pink and yellow and translucent, more delicate than the flowering locks of the acacia, more graceful than the lily-of-the-valley, all bathed in dim golden light.

'Oh Delfina! Delfina!' exclaimed Donna Maria, looking round upon the devastation, 'what have you done!'

The child laughed and clapped her hands with glee in front of the crimson pyramid.

'You will have to leave it all here.'

'No--no--'

At first she refused, but she thought for a moment, and then said, half to herself with beaming eyes: 'The doe will come and eat them.'

She had probably noticed the beautiful creature moving about in the park, and the thought of having collected so much food for it pleased her and fired her imagination, already full of stories in which deer are beneficent and powerful fairies who repose on silken cus.h.i.+ons and drink from jewelled cups. She remained silent and absorbed, picturing to herself the beautiful tawny animal browsing on the fruit under the flowering trees.'

'Come,' said Donna Maria, 'it is getting late.'

Holding Delfina by the hand, she walked on till they came to the edge of the wood. Here she stopped to look at the sea, which, catching the reflection of the clouds, was like a vast undulating, glittering sheet of silk.

Without a word, Andrea plucked a spray of blossom, so full that the twig it hung from bent beneath its weight, and offered it to Donna Maria. As she took it from his hand she looked at him, but she did not open her lips.

They pa.s.sed on down the avenue, Delfina talking, talking incessantly; repeating the same things over and over again, infatuated about the doe, inventing long monotonous tales in which she ran one fairy story into another, losing herself in labyrinths of her own creation, as if the sparkling freshness of the morning air had gone to her head. And round about the doe she grouped the children of the king, Cinderellas, fairy queens, magicians, monsters--all the familiar personages of those imaginary realms, crowding them in tumultuously with the kaleidoscopic rapidity of a dream. Her prattle sounded like the warbling of a bird; full of sweet modulations, with now and then a rapid succession of melodious notes that were not words,--a continuation of the wave of music already set in motion, like the vibrations of a string during a pause--when in the childish mind, the connection between the idea and its verbal expression met with a momentary interruption.

The other two neither spoke nor listened. To them the little girl's bird-like twittering covered the murmur of their own thoughts, and if Delfina stopped for a moment's breathing s.p.a.ce, they felt as strangely perturbed and apprehensive as if the silence might disclose or lay bare their souls.

The avenue of the Hundred Fountains stretched away before them in diminis.h.i.+ng perspective; a peac.o.c.k, perched upon one of the s.h.i.+elds, took flight at their approach, scattering the rose leaves into a fountain below. A few steps further on, Andrea recognised the one beside which Donna Maria had stood, and listened to the music of the waters.

In the retreat of the Hermes the smell of musk had evaporated. The statue, all pensive under its garland, was flecked with patches of suns.h.i.+ne which filtered through the surrounding foliage. Blackbirds piped and answered one another.

Taken with a sudden fancy, Delfina exclaimed, 'Mamma, I want the wreath again.'

'No, leave it there--why should you take it away?'

'I want it for Muriella.'

'But Muriella will spoil it.'

'Do, please, give it me.'

Donna Maria looked at Andrea. He slowly went up to the statue, lifted the wreath and handed it to Delfina. In the exaltation of their spirits, this simple little episode had all the mysterious significance of an allegory--was in some way symbolical. One of his own lines ran persistently in Andrea's head--

'Have I attained, have I then paid the price?'

The nearer they approached the end of the pathway, the fiercer grew the pain at his heart; he would have given half his life for a word from the woman he loved. A dozen times she seemed on the point of speaking, but she did not.

'Look, mamma, there are Fernandino and Muriella and Ricardo,' cried Delfina, catching sight of Francesca's children; and she started off running towards them and waving her wreath.

'Muriella! Muriella! Muriella!'

CHAPTER V

Maria Ferres had always remained faithful to her girlhood's habit of setting down daily in her journal the pa.s.sing thoughts, the joys, the sorrows, the fancies, the doubts, the aspirations, the regrets and the hopes--all the events of her spiritual life as well as the various incidents of her outward existence, compiling thereby a sort of Itinerary of the Soul which she liked occasionally to study, both for guidance on the path still to be pursued and also to follow the traces of things long dead and forgotten.

Perpetually denied, by force of circ.u.mstances, the relief of self-expansion, enclosed within the magic circle of her purity as in a tower of ivory for ever incorruptible and inaccessible, she found solace and refreshment in the daily outpourings she confided to the white pages of her private book. Therein she was free to make her moan, to abandon herself to her griefs, to seek to decipher the enigma of her own heart, to interrogate her conscience; here she gained courage in prayer, tranquillised herself by meditation, laid her troubled spirit once more in the hands of the Heavenly Father. And from every page shone the same pure light--the light of Truth.

'_September 15th_ (Schifanoja).--How tired I feel! The journey was rather fatiguing and the unaccustomed sea air makes my head ache at first. I need rest, and I already seem to have a foretaste of the sweetness of sleep and the happiness of awaking in the morning in the house of a friend and to the pleasures of Francesca's cordial hospitality at Schifanoja with its lovely roses and its tall cypress trees. I shall wake up to the knowledge that I have some weeks of peace before me--twenty days, perhaps even more, of congenial intellectual companions.h.i.+p. I am very grateful to Francesca for her invitation. To see her again was like meeting a sister. How much and how profoundly I have changed since the dear old days in Florence!

'Speaking to-day of my hair, Francesca began recalling stories of our absurd childish pa.s.sions and melancholies in those days; of Carlotta Fiordelise and Gabriella Vanni and various incidents of that distant school life which seems to me now as though I had never lived it, but only read it of it in some old forgotten book or seen it in a dream. My hair has not fallen, but for every hair of my head there has been a thorn in my destiny.

'But why let my sad thoughts get the upper hand over me again? And why let memory cause me pain? It is useless to lament over a grave which never gives back its dead. Would to Heaven I could remember that, once for all!

'Francesca is still young, and has retained the frank and charming gaiety which, in our school days, exercised such a strange fascination over my somewhat gloomy temperament. She has one great and rare virtue: though she is light-hearted herself, she can enter into the troubles of others and knows how to lighten them by her kindly sympathy and pity.

She is above all things a woman of high intelligence and refined tastes, a perfect hostess and a friend who never palls upon one. She is perhaps a trifle too fond of witty _mots_ and sparkling epigrams, but her darts are always tipped with gold, and she aims them with inimitable grace.