On the following morning Lamberti went out early, and before nine
o'clock he was in the private study of a famous physician, who was a
specialist for diseases of the nerves. Lamberti had never seen him and
had not asked for an appointment, for the simple reason that his visit
was spontaneous and unpremeditated. He had spent a wretched night, and
it suddenly struck him that he might be ill. As he had never been ill in
his life except from two or three wounds got in fight, he had been slow
to admit that anything could be wrong with his physical condition. But
it was possible. The strongest men sometimes fell ill unaccountably. A
good doctor would see the truth at a glance.
The specialist was a young man, squarely built, with a fresh complexion,
smooth brown hair, and a well-trimmed chestnut beard. At first sight, no
one would have noticed anything remarkable in his appearance, except,
perhaps, that he had unusually bright blue eyes, which had a fixed look
when he spoke earnestly.
"I am a naval officer," said Lamberti, as he took the seat the doctor
offered him. "Can you tell me whether I am ill or not? I mean, whether I
have any bodily illness. Then I will explain what brings me."
The doctor looked at him keenly a few seconds, felt his pulse, pressed
one ear on his waistcoat to listen to his heart, and then against his
back, made him face the light and gently drew down the lower lids of his
eyes, and finally stood off and made a sort of general survey of his
appearance. Then he made him stretch out one hand, with the fingers
spread out. There was not the least tremor. Last of all, he asked him to
shut his eyes tightly and walk slowly across the room, turn round, and
walk back. Lamberti did so, steadily and quietly.
"There is nothing wrong with your body," said the doctor, sitting down.
"Before you tell me why you come here, I should like to know one thing
more. Do you come of sound and healthy people?"
"Yes. My father is the Marchese Lamberti. My brothers and sisters are
all alive and well. So far as I know, there was never any insanity in my
family."
"Were your father and mother cousins?" enquired the doctor.
"No."
"Very good. That is all I need to know. I am at your service. What is
the matter?"
"If we lived in the Middle Ages," said Lamberti, "I should say that I
was possessed by the devil, or haunted." He stopped and laughed oddly.
"Why not say so now?" asked the doctor. "The names of things do not
matter in the least. Let us say that you are haunted, if that describes
what troubles you. Very good. What haunts you?"
"A young girl," Lamberti answered, after a moment's pause.
"Do you mean that you see, or think you see, the apparition of a young
girl who is dead?"
"She is alive, but I have only met her once. That is the strange thing
about it, or, at least, the beginning of the strange thing. Of course it
is perfectly absurd, but when I first saw her, the only time we met, I
had the sensation of recognising some one I had not seen for many years.
As she is only just eighteen, that is impossible."
"Excuse me, my dear sir, nothing is impossible. Every one is
absent-minded sometimes. You may have seen the young lady in the street,
or at the theatre. You may have stared at her quite unconsciously while
you were thinking of something else, and her features may have so
impressed themselves upon your memory, without your knowing it, that you
actually recognised her when you met her in a drawing-room."
"I daresay," admitted Lamberti, indifferently. "But that is no reason
why I should dream of her every night."
"I am not sure. It might be a reason. Such things happen."
"And every night when I wake from the dream, I hear some one close the
door of my room softly, as if she were just going out. I always lock my
door at night."
"Perhaps it sometimes shakes a little in the frame."
"It began at home. But I have been stopping in the country nearly a
fortnight, and the same thing has happened every night."
"You dream it. One may get the habit of dreaming the same dream every
time one sleeps."
"It is not always the same dream, though the door is always closed
softly when she goes away. But there is something else. I was wrong in
saying that I only met the lady once. I should have said that I have
spoken with her only once. This is how it happened."
Lamberti told the doctor the story of his meeting Cecilia at the house
of the Vestals. The specialist listened attentively, for he was already
convinced that Lamberti was a man of solid reason and practical good
sense, probably the victim of a series of coincidences that had made a
strong impression on his mind. When Lamberti paused, there was a
moment's silence.
"What do you yourself think was the cause of the lady's fright?" asked
the doctor at last.
"I believe that she had dreamed the same dream," Lamberti answered
without hesitation.
"What makes you believe anything so improbable?"
"Well--I hardly know. It is an impression. It was all so amazingly real,
you see, and when our eyes met, she looked as if she knew exactly what
would happen if she did not run away--exactly what had happened in the
dream."
"That was on the morning after you had first dreamt it, you say. Of
course it helped very much to strengthen the impression the dream had
made, and it is not at all surprising that the dream should have come
again. You know as well as I, that a dream which seems to last hours
really passes in a second, perhaps in no time at all. The slightest
sound in your room which suggested the closing of a door would be enough
to bring it all back before you were awake, and the sound might still be
audible to you."
"Possibly. Whatever it is, I wish to get rid of it."
"It may be merely coincidence," the doctor said. "I think it is. But I
do not exclude the theory that two people who have made a very strong
impression one on another, may be the subjects of some sort of mutual
thought transference. We know very little about those things. Some queer
cases come under my observation, but my patients are never sound and
sane men like you. What I should like to know is, why did the lady run
away?"
"That is probably the one thing I can never find out," Lamberti
answered.
"There is a very simple way. Ask her." The doctor smiled. "Is it so very
hard?" he enquired, as Lamberti looked at him in surprise. "I take it
for granted that you can find some opportunity of seeing her in a
drawing-room, where she cannot fly from you, and will not do anything to
attract attention. What could be more natural than that you should ask
her quite frankly why she was so frightened the other day? I do not see
how she could possibly be offended. Do you? When you ask her, you need
not seem too serious, as if you attached a great deal of importance to
what she had done."
"I certainly could try it," said Lamberti thoughtfully. "I shall see her
to-day."
"She may try to avoid you, because she is ashamed of what she did. But
if I were you, I would not let the chance slip. If you succeed in
talking to her for a few minutes, and break the ice, I can almost
promise that you will also break the habit of this dream that annoys
you. Will you make the attempt? It seems to me by far the wisest and
most sensible remedy, for I am nearly sure that it will turn out to be
one."
"I daresay you are right. Is there any other way of curing such habits
of the mind?"
"I could hypnotise you and stop your dreaming by suggestion."
"Nobody could make me sleep against my will." Lamberti laughed at the
mere idea.
"No," answered the doctor, "but it would not be against your will, if
you submitted to it as a cure. However, try the simpler plan first, and
come and see me in a day or two. You seem to hesitate. Perhaps you have
some reason for not wishing to make the nearer acquaintance of the lady.
That is your affair, but one more interview of a few minutes will not
make much difference, as your health is at stake. You are under a mental
strain altogether out of proportion with the cause that produces it, and
the longer you allow it to last the stronger the reaction will be, when
it comes."
"I have no good reason for not knowing her better," Lamberti said after
a moment's thought, for he was convinced against his previous
determination. "I will take your advice, and then I will come and see
you again."
He took his leave and went out into the bright morning air. It was a
relief to feel that he had been brought to a determination at last, and
he knew that it was a sensible one, from any ordinary point of view, and
that his one great objection to acting upon it had no logical value.
But the objection subsisted, though he had made up his mind to override
it. It was out of the question that he could really be in love with
Cecilia Palladio, who was probably quite unlike what she seemed to be in
his dreams. He had fallen in love with a fancy, a shadow, an unreal
image that haunted him as soon as he closed his eyes; but when he was
wide awake and busy with life the girl was nothing to him but a mere
acquaintance. His pulse would not beat as fast when he met her that very
afternoon as it had done just now, in the doctor's study, when he had
been thinking of the vision.
Besides, what Guido had said was quite true. He could not possibly
continue not to know Guido's future wife; and as there was no danger of
his falling in love with her when his eyes were open, he really could
not see why he should be so anxious to avoid her. So the matter was
settled. He took a long walk, far out of Porta San Giovanni, and turned
to the right by the road that leads through the fields to the tomb of
Cecilia Metella.
As he passed the great round monument, swinging along steadily, its name
naturally came to his mind, and it occurred to him for the first time
that Cecilia had been a noble name among the old Romans, that it had
come down unchanged, and that there had doubtless been more than one
Vestal Virgin who had borne it. The Vestal in his dream was certainly
called Cecilia. He was in the humour, now, to smile at what he called
his own folly, and as he strode along he almost laughed aloud. Before
the sun should set, the whole matter would be definitely at rest, and he
would be wondering how he could ever have been foolish enough to attach
any importance to it. He followed the Appian Way back to the city, with
a light heart.