At the beginning of the twentieth century Rome has become even more
cosmopolitan than it used to be, for the Romans themselves are turning
into cosmopolitans, and the old traditional, serious, gloomy, and
sometimes dramatic life of the patriarchal system has almost died out.
One meets Romans of historical names everywhere, nowadays, in London, in
Paris, and in Vienna, speaking English and French, and sometimes German,
with extraordinary correctness, as much at home, to all appearance, in
other capitals as they are in their own, and intimately familiar with
the ways of many societies in many places.
Cecilia Palladio, at eighteen years of age, had probably not spent a
third of her life in Rome, and had been educated in different parts of
the world and in a variety of ways. Her father, Count Palladio, as has
been explained, had been engaged in promoting a number of undertakings,
of which several had succeeded, and at his death, which had happened
when Cecilia had been eight years old, he had left her part of his
considerable fortune in safe guardianship, leaving his wife a life
interest in the remainder. His old ally, the banker Solomon Goldbirn of
Vienna, had administered the whole inheritance with wisdom and
integrity, and at her marriage Cecilia would dispose of several millions
of francs, and would ultimately inherit as much more from her mother's
share. From a European point of view, she was therefore a notable
heiress, and even in the new world of millionnaires she would at least
have been considered tolerably well off, though by no means what is
there called rich.
Two years after Palladio's death her mother had married Count
Fortiguerra, who had begun life in the army, then passed to diplomacy,
had risen rapidly to the post of ambassador, and had died suddenly at
Madrid when barely fifty years old, and when Cecilia was sixteen.
The girl had a clear recollection of her own father, though she had
never been with him very much, as his occupations constantly took him to
distant parts of the world. He had seemed an old man to her, and had
indeed been much older than her mother, for he had been a patriot in the
later days of the Italian revolutions, and when still young he had been
with Garibaldi in 1860. Cecilia remembered him a tall, active,
grey-haired man with a pointed beard and big moustaches, and eyes which
she now knew had been like her own. She remembered his unbounded energy,
his patriotic and sometimes rather boastful talk, his black cigars, the
vast heap of papers that always seemed to be in hopeless confusion on
his writing table when he was at home, and the numerous
eccentric-looking people who used to come and see him. She had been told
that he was never to be disturbed, and never to be questioned, and that
he was a great man. She had loved him with all her heart when he told
her stories, and at other times she had been distinctly afraid of him.
These stories had been fairy tales to the child, but she had now
discovered that they had been history, or what passes for it.
He had told her about King Amulius of Alba Longa, and of the twin
founders of Rome, and of all the far-off times and doings, and he had
described to her six wonderful maidens who lived in a palace in the
Forum and kept a little fire burning day and night, which he compared to
the great Roman race over whose destiny the mystic ladies were always
watching. It was only quite lately that she had heard any learned men
say in earnest some of the things which he had told her with a smile as
if he were inventing a tale to amuse her child's fancy. But what he had
said had made a deep and abiding impression, and had become a part of
her thought. She sometimes dreamed very vividly that she was again a
little girl, sitting on his knee and listening to his wonderful stories.
In other ways she had not missed him much after his death. Possibly her
mother had not missed him either; for though she spoke of him
occasionally with a sort of awe, it was never with anything like
emotion.
Count Fortiguerra had been kind to the child, or it might be truer to
say that he had spoilt her by encouraging her without much judgment in
her insatiable thirst for knowledge, and in her unnecessary ambition to
excel in everything her fancy led her to attempt. Her mother, with a
good deal of social foolishness and a very pliable character, possessed
nevertheless a fair share of womanly intelligence, and knew by instinct
that a young girl who is very different from other girls, no matter how
clever she may be, rarely makes what people call a good marriage.
There is probably nothing which leads a young woman to think a man a
desirable husband so much as some exceptional gift, or even some
brilliant eccentricity, which distinguishes him from other people; but
there is nothing which frightens away the average desirable husband so
much as anything of that sort in the young lady of his affections, and
every married woman knows it very well.
The excellent Countess used to wish that her daughter would grow up more
like other girls, and in the sincere belief that a little womanly vanity
must certainly counteract a desire for super-feminine mental
cultivation, she honestly tried to interest Cecilia in such frivolities
as dress, dancing, and romantic fiction. The result was only very
partially successful. Cecilia was dressed to perfection, without seeming
to take any trouble about it, and she danced marvellously before she had
ever been to a ball; but she cared nothing for the novels she was
allowed to read, and she devoured serious books with increasing
intellectual voracity.
Her stepfather laughed, and said that the girl was a genius and ought
not to be hampered by ordinary rules; and his wife, who had at first
feared lest he should dislike the child of her first husband, was only
too glad that he should, on the contrary, show something like paternal
infatuation for Cecilia, since no children of his own were born to him.
He was a man, too, of wide reading and experience, and having
considerable political insight into his times. Before Cecilia was eleven
years old he talked to her about serious matters, as if she had been
grown up, and often wished that the child should be at table and in the
drawing-room when men who were making history came informally to the
embassy. Cecilia had listened to their talk, and had remembered a very
large part of what she had heard, understanding more and more as she
grew up; and by far the greatest sorrow of her life had been the death
of her stepfather.
She was a modern Italian girl, and her mother was a Roman who had been
brought up in something of the old strictness and narrowness, first in a
convent, and afterwards in a rather gloomy home under the shadow of the
most rigid parental authority. Exceptional gifts, exceptional
surroundings, and exceptional opportunities had made Cecilia Palladio an
exception to all types, and as unlike the average modern Italian young
girl as could be imagined.
The sun had already set as the mother and daughter drove away, but it
was still broad day, and a canopy of golden clouds, floating high over
the city, reflected rosy lights through the blue shadows in the crowded
streets. The Countess Fortiguerra was pleasantly aware that every man
under seventy turned to look after her daughter, from the smart old
colonel of cavalry in his perfect uniform to the ragged and haggard
waifs who sold wax matches at the corners of the streets. She was not in
the least jealous of her, as mothers have been before now, and perhaps
she was able to enjoy vicariously what she herself had never had, but
had often wished for, the gift of nature which instantly fixes the
attention of the other sex.
"Why did you not tell me?" asked Cecilia, after a silence that had
lasted five minutes.
The Countess pretended not to understand, coloured a little, and tried
to look surprised.
"Why did you not tell me that you and the Princess wish me to marry her
nephew?"
This was direct, and an answer was necessary. The Countess laughed
soothingly.
"Dear child!" she cried, "it is impossible to deceive you! We only
wished that you two might meet, and perhaps like each other."
"Well," answered Cecilia, "we have met."
The answer was not encouraging, and she did not seem inclined to say
more of her own accord, but her mother could not restrain a natural
curiosity.
"Yes," she said, in a conciliatory tone, "but how do you like him?"
Cecilia seemed to be hesitating for a moment.
"Very much," she answered, unexpectedly, after the pause.
The Countess was so much pleased that she coloured again. She had never
been able to hide what she felt, and she secretly envied people who
never blushed.
"I am so glad!" she said. "I was sure you would like each other."
"It does not follow that because I like him, he likes me," answered
Cecilia, quietly. "And even if he does, that is not a reason why we
should marry. I may never marry at all."
"How can you say such things!" cried the Countess, not at all satisfied.
Cecilia shrank a little in her corner of the deep phaeton and
instinctively drew the edges of her little silk mantle together over her
chest, as if to protect herself from something.
"You know," she said, almost sharply.
"I shall never understand you," her mother sighed.
"Give me time to understand myself, mother," answered the young girl,
suddenly unbending. "I am only eighteen; I have never been into the
world, and the mere idea of marrying----"
She stopped short, and her firm lips closed tightly.
"No, I do not understand," said the Countess. "The thought of marriage
was never disagreeable to me, even when I was quite young. It is the
natural object of a woman's life."
"There are exceptions, surely! There are nuns, for instance."
"Oh, if you wish to go into a convent----"
"I have no religious vocation," Cecilia answered gravely. "Or if I have,
it is not of that sort."
"I am glad to hear it!" The Countess was beginning to lose her temper.
"If you thought you had, you would be quite capable of taking the veil."
"Yes," the young girl replied. "If I wished to be a nun, and if I were
sure that I should be a good nun, I would enter a convent at once. But I
am not naturally devout, I suppose."
"In my time," said the Countess, with emphasis, "when young girls did
not take the veil, they married."
As an argument, this was weak and lacked logic, and Cecilia felt rather
pitiless just then.
"There are only two possible ways of living," she said; "either by
religion, if you have any, and that is the easier, or by rule."
"And pray what sort of rule can there be to take the place of religion?"
"Act so that the reason for your actions may be considered a universal
law."
"That is nonsense!" cried the Countess.
"No," replied Cecilia, unmoved, "it is Kant's Categorical Imperative."
"It makes no difference," retorted her mother. "It is nonsense."
Cecilia said nothing, and her expression did not change, for she knew
that her mother could not understand her, and she was not at all sure
that she understood herself, as she had almost confessed. Seeing that
she did not answer, the excellent Countess took the opportunity of
telling her that her head had been turned by too much reading, though it
was all her poor, dear stepfather's fault, since he had filled her head
with ideas. What she meant by "ideas" was not clear, except that they
were of course dangerous in themselves and utterly subversive of social
order, and that the main purpose of all education should be to
discourage them in the young.
"They should be left to old people," she concluded; "they have nothing
else to think of."
Cecilia had heard very little, being absorbed in her own reflections,
but as her mother often spoke in the same way, the general drift of what
she had said was unmistakable. The two were very unlike, but they were
not unloving. In her heart the Countess took the most unbounded pride in
her only child's beauty and cleverness, except when the latter opposed
itself to her social inclinations and ambitions; and the young girl
really loved her mother when not irritated by some speech or action that
offended her taste. That her mother should not always understand her
seemed quite natural.
They had almost reached their door, the great pillared porch of the
mysterious Palazzo Massimo, in which they had an apartment, for they did
not live in the villa where the garden party was to be given. Cecilia's
gloved hand went out quietly to the Countess's and gently pressed it.
"Let me think my own thoughts, mother," she said; "they shall never hurt
you."
"Yes, dear, of course," answered the elder woman meekly, her little
burst of temper having already subsided.
Cecilia left her early that evening and went to her own room to be
alone. It was not that she was tired, nor painfully affected by a
strange sensation she had felt during the afternoon; but she realised
that she had reached the end of the first stage in life, and that
another was going to begin, and it was part of her nature to seek for a
complete understanding of everything in her existence. It seemed to her
unworthy of a thinking being to act or to feel, without clearly defining
the cause of every feeling and action. Youth dreams of an impossible
completeness in carrying out its self-set rules of perfection, and is
swayed and stunned, and often paralysed, when they are broken to pieces
by rebellious human nature.
The room was very large and dim, for Cecilia had put out the electric
light, and had lit two big wax candles, of the sort that are burned in
churches. The blinds and shutters of the windows were open, and the
moonlight fell in two broad floods upon the pale carpet, half across the
floor. The white bed with its high canopy of lace looked ghostly against
the furthest wall, like a marble sepulchre under a mist. The light blue
damask on the walls was dark in the gloom, and there was not much
furniture to break the long surfaces. The dusky air was cool and pure,
for Cecilia detested perfumes of all sorts.
She sat motionless in a high carved seat, just in the moonlight, one
hand upon an arm of the chair, the other on her breast. She had gathered
her hair into a knot, low at the back of her head, and the folds of a
soft white robe just followed the outlines of her figure. The table on
which the candles stood was a little behind her, and away from the
window, and the still yellow light only touched her hair in one or two
places, sending back dull golden reflections.
The strange young face was very quiet, and even the lids rarely moved as
she steadily stared into the shadow. There was no look of thought, nor
any visible effort of concentration in her features; there was rather an
air of patient waiting, of perfect readiness to receive whatever should
come to her out of the depths. So, a beautiful marble face on a tomb
gazes into the shadows of a dim church, and gazes on, and waits, neither
growing nor changing, neither satisfied nor disappointed, but calm and
enduring, as if expecting the resurrection of the dead and the life of
the world to come. But for the rare drooping of the lids, that rested
her sight, the girl would have seemed to be in a trance; she was in a
state of almost perfect contemplation that approached to perfect
happiness, since she was hardly conscious that her strongest wishes were
still unsatisfied.
She had been in the same state before now--last week, last month, last
year, and again and again, as it seemed to her, very long ago; so long,
that the time seemed like ages, and the intervals like centuries, until
it all disappeared altogether in the immeasurable, and the past, the
present, and the future were around her at once, unbroken, always
ending, yet always beginning again. In the midst floated the soul, the
self, the undying individuality, a light that shot out long rays, like a
star, towards the ever present moments in an ever recurring life of
which she had been, and was, and was to be, most keenly conscious.
So far, the truth, perhaps; the truth, guessed by the mystics of all
ages, sometimes hidden in secret writings, sometimes proclaimed to the
light in symbols too plain to be understood, now veiled in the reasoned
propositions of philosophers, now sung in sublime verse by inspired
seers; present, as truth always is, to the few, misunderstood, as all
truths are, by the many.
But beside the truth, and outshining it, came the illusion, clear and
bright, and appealing to the heart with the music of all the changes
that are illusion's life. Sitting very still in the moonlight, Cecilia
saw pictures in the shadow, and herself walking in the mazes of many
dreams; and she watched them, till even her eyelids no longer drooped
from time to time, and her breathing ceased to stir the folds of white
upon her bosom.
Even then, she knew that she herself was not dreaming, but was calling
up dreams which she saw, which could be nothing but visions after all,
and would end in a darkness beyond which she could see nothing, and in
which she would feel real physical pain, that would be almost
unbearable, though she knew that she would gladly bear it again and
again, for the sake of again seeing the phantasms of herself drawn in
mystic light upon the shadow.
They came and followed one upon another, like days of life. There was
the beautiful marble court with its deep portico, its pillars, and its
overhanging upper story, all gleaming in the low morning sun; she could
hear the water softly laughing its way through the square marble-edged
basins, level with the ground, she could smell the spring violets that
grew in the neatly trimmed borders, she knew the faces of the statues
that stood between the columns, and smiled at her. She knew herself,
young, golden-haired, all in white, a little pale from the night's vigil
before the eternal fire, just entering the court as she came back from
the temple, and then standing quite still for a moment, facing the
morning sun and drinking in long draughts of the sweet spring air. From
far above, the matin song of birds came down out of the gardens of
Caesar's palace, and high over the court the sounds of the Forum began to
ring and echo, as they did all day and half the night.
It was herself, her very self, that was there, resting one hand upon a
fluted column and looking upwards, her eyes, her face, her figure, real
and unchanged after ages, as they were hers now; and in her look there
was the infinite longing, the readiness to receive, which she felt still
and must feel always, to the end of time.
Now, the dream would move on, slowly and full of details. The lithe
dream figure would rest in the small white room at the upper end of the
court, and resting, would dream dreams within that dream; and, looking
on, she herself would know what they were. They would be full of a deep
desire to be free for ever from earth and body and life, joined for all
eternity with something pure and high that could not be seen, but of
which her soul was a part, mingled with the changing things for a time,
but to be withdrawn from them again, maiden and spotless as it had come
amongst them, a true and perfect Vestal.
The precious treasures in the secret places of the little temple would
pass away, the rudely carved wooden image of Pallas would crumble to
dust, the shields that had come down from heaven would fall to pieces in
green corrosion, the sacred vessels would be broken or come to a base
use, the fire would go out and Vesta's hearth would be cold for ever.
At the mere thought, the sleeping face in the vision would tremble and
grow pale for a moment, but soon would smile again, for the fire had
been faithfully tended all the night long.
But it would all pass away, even the place, even Rome herself, and in
the sphere of divine joy the sleeper would forget even to dream, and
would be quite at rest, until the mid-hour of day, when a companion
would come softly to the door and wake her with gentle words and kindly
touch, to join the other Vestals at the thrice-purified table in the
cool hall.
So the warm hours would pass, and later, if she chose, the holy maiden
might go out into the city, whithersoever she would, borne in a high,
open litter by many slaves, with a stern lictor walking before her, and
the people would fall back on either side. If she chanced to meet one of
the Praetors, or even the Consul himself, their guards would salute her
as no sovereign would be saluted in Rome; and should she see some
wretched thieving slave being led to death on the cross upon the
Esquiline, her slightest word could reverse all his condemnation, and
blot out all his crimes. For she was sacred to the Goddess, and above
Consuls and Praetors and judges. But none of those things would touch her
heart nor please her vanity, for all her pure young soul was bent on
freedom from this earth, divine and eternal, as the end of a sinless
life.
The eyes in the dream, the eyes of the girl who stood by the column,
drinking the morning air, had never met the eyes of a man with the wish
that a glance might linger to a look. But she who watched the dream knew
that the time was at hand, and that the dark cloud of fear was already
gathering which was to darken her sun and break by and by in an unknown
fear. She knew it, she, the waking Cecilia Palladio; but the other
Cecilia, the Vestal of long ago, guessed nothing of the future, and
stood there breathing softly, already refreshed after the night's
watching. It would all happen, as it always happened, little by little,
detail after detail, till the dreaded moment.
But it did not. The dream changed. Instead of crossing the marble court,
and lingering a moment by the water, the Vestal stood by the column,
against the background of shade cast by the portico. She was listening
now, she was expecting some one, she was glancing anxiously about as if
to see whether any one were there; but she was alone.
Then it came, in the shadow behind her, the face of a man, moving
nearer--a rugged Roman head, with deep-set, bold blue eye, big brows, a
great jaw, reddish hair. It came nearer, and the girl knew it was
coming. In an instant more, she would spring forward across the court,
crying out for protection.
No, she did not move till the man was close to her, looking over her
shoulder, whispering in her ear. Cecilia saw it all, and it was so real
that she tried to call out, to shriek, to make any sound that could save
her image from destruction, for the kiss that was coming would be death
to both, and death with unutterable shame and pain. But her voice was
gone, and her lips were frozen. She sat paralysed with a horror she had
never known before, while the face of the phantom girl blushed softly,
and turned to the strong man, and the two gazed into each other's eyes a
moment, knowing that they loved.
She felt that it was her other self, and that she had the will to
resist, even then, and that the will must still be supreme over the
illusion. Never, it seemed to her, had she made such a supreme effort,
never had she felt such power concentrated in her strong determination,
never in all her life had she been so sure of the result when she had
willed anything with all her might. Every fibre of her being, every
nerve in her body, every throbbing cell of her brain was strained to
breaking. The two faces were quite close, the longing lips had almost
met--nothing could hinder, nothing could save; the phantasms did not
know that she was watching them.
Suddenly something changed. She no longer saw herself in a vision, she
was herself there, somewhere, in the dark, in the light--she did not
know--and there was no will, nor thought, nor straining resistance any
more, for Lamberto Lamberti held her in his arms, her, Cecilia Palladio,
her very living self, and his lips were upon hers, and she loved him
beyond death, or life, or fear, or torment. Surely she was dying then,
for the darkness was whirling with her, spinning itself into myriads of
circles of fiery stars, tearing her over the brink of the world to
eternity beyond.
One second more and it must have ended so. Instead, she was leaning back
in her chair, between the moonlight and the steadily burning candles, in
her own room, alone. From head to foot she trembled, and now and then
drew a short and gasping breath. Her parted lips were moist and very
cold. She touched them, and they felt like flowers at night, wet with
dew. She pushed the hair from her forehead, and her brow was strangely
damp.
She sprang to her feet with a cry of terror, and stared at the door, for
she was quite sure that she had heard it close softly. It was a heavy
door, that turned noiselessly on its hinges and fitted perfectly, and
she knew the soft click of the well-made French lock when the spring
quietly pushed the bevelled latch-bolt into the socket. In an instant
she had crossed the room and had turned the handle to draw it in. But
the door was locked, beyond all doubt--she had turned the key before she
had sat down in the chair. She felt intensely cold, and an icy wave
seemed to lift her hair from her forehead. Her hand instinctively found
the white button, close beside the door-frame, which controlled all the
electric lamps, and pushed it in, and the room was flooded with light.
She must have imagined that she had heard the sound that had frightened
her.
Half dazed, she moved slowly to the windows, and closed the inner
shutters, one by one, shutting out the cold moonlight, then stood by the
chair a moment, looked at it, and glanced in the direction whence the
vision had come to her out of the shadow.
She did not know how it happened, but presently she was lying on her
bed, her face buried in the pillows, and she was tearing her heart out
in a tearless storm of shame and self-contempt.
What right had that man whom she had so often seen in her dreams to be
alive in the real world, walking among other men, recognising her, as
she had felt that he did that very afternoon? What right had he to come
to her again in the vision and to change it all, to take her in his
violent arms and kiss her on the mouth, and burn the mark of shame into
her soul, and fill her with a pleasure more horrible than any pain? Was
this the end of all her girlish meditation, of the Vestal's longing for
higher things, of the mystic's perfect way? A man's brutal kiss not even
resisted? Was that all? It could not have been worse if on that same day
she had been alone with him in the garden, instead of with Guido d'Este,
and if he had suddenly put his arms round her, and if she had not even
turned her face from his.
It was only a dream. Yes, to-morrow she would awake, if she slept at
all, and the sunshine would be streaming in where the moonlight had
shone, and it would only be a dream, past and to be forgotten. Perhaps.
But what were dreams, then? She had not been asleep, she was quite sure.
There was not even that poor excuse. The man's phantasm had come to her
awake.
And Lamberto Lamberti was nothing to her. Beyond the startling
recognition of a face long familiar, but never seen among the living, he
was to her a man she had met but once, and did not wish to meet again.
She had been aware of his presence near her at the Princess's, and when
he had gone away she had looked at him once more with a sort of wonder;
but she had felt nothing else, she had not touched his hand, the thought
that he would ever dare to seize her roughly in his arms brought burning
blushes to her cheek and outraged all her maiden senses. She had never
seen any man whom she could suffer to touch her; her whole nature
revolted at the thought. Yet, just now, there had been neither revolt
nor resistance; she felt that she had been herself, awake, alive, and
consenting to an unknown but frightfully real contamination, from which
her soul could never again be wholly clean.
The storm subsided, and sullen waves of self-contempt swelled and sank,
as if to overwhelm her drowning soul. She understood at last the
ascetic's wrath against the mortal body and his irresistible craving for
bodily pain.