Guido d'Este was already in the drawing-room with the Countess when
Cecilia entered, but she knew by their faces and voices that they had
not been talking of her, and was glad of it; for sometimes, when she was
quite sure that they had, she felt a little embarrassment at first, and
found Guido a trifle absent-minded for some time afterwards.
She took his hand, and perhaps she held it a second longer than usual,
and she looked into his eyes as she spoke to her mother. Yesterday she
would have very likely looked at her mother while speaking to him.
"I hope I am not late," she said, "Have I kept you waiting?"
"It was worth while, if you did," Guido said, looking at her with
undisguised admiration.
"It really is a success, is it not?" Cecilia asked, turning to her
mother now, for approval.
Then she turned slowly round, raised herself on tiptoe a moment, came
back to her original position, and smiled happily. Guido waited for the
Countess to speak.
"Yes--yes," the latter answered critically, but almost satisfied. "When
one has a figure like yours, my dear, one should always have things
quite perfect. A woman who has a good figure and is really well dressed,
hardly ever needs a pin. Let me see. Does it not draw under the right
arm, just the slightest bit? Put your arm down, child, let it hang
naturally! So. No, I was mistaken, there is nothing. You really ought to
keep your arm in the right position, darling. It makes so much
difference! You are not going to play tennis, or ride a bicycle in that
costume. No, of course not! Well, then--you understand. Do be careful!"
Cecilia looked at Guido and smiled again, and her lips parted just
enough to show her two front teeth a little, and then, still parted,
grew grave, which gave her an expression Guido had never seen. For a
moment there was something between a question and an appeal in her face.
"It is very becoming," he said gravely. "It is a pleasure to see
anything so faultless."
"I am glad you really like it," she answered. "I always want you to like
my things."
Everything happened exactly as she had expected and wished, and the
Countess, when she had sipped her cup of coffee after luncheon, went to
the writing table in the boudoir, and though the door was open into the
great drawing-room, she was out of sight, and out of hearing too.
Cecilia did not sit down again at once, but moved slowly about, went to
one of the windows and looked down at the white street through the slats
of the closed blinds, turned and met Guido's eyes, for he was watching
her, and at last stood still not far from him, but a little further from
the open door of the boudoir than he was. At the end of the room a short
sofa was placed across the corner; before it stood a low table on which
lay a few large books, of the sort that are supposed to amuse people who
are waiting for the lady of the house, or who are stranded alone in the
evening when every one else is talking. They are always books of the
type described as magnificent and not dear; if they were really
valuable, they would not be left there.
"How you watch me!" Cecilia smiled, as if she did not object to being
watched. "Come and sit down," she added, without waiting for an answer.
She established herself in one corner of the short sofa behind the
table, Guido took his place in the other, and there would not have been
room for a third person between them. The two had never sat together in
that particular place, and there was a small sensation of novelty about
it which was delightful to them both. There was not the least
calculation of such a thing in Cecilia's choice of the sofa, but only
the unerring instinct of woman which outwits man's deepest schemes at
every turn in life.
"Yes," Guido said, "I was watching you. I often do, for it is good to
look at you. Why should one not get as much aesthetic pleasure as
possible out of life?"
The speech was far from brilliant, for Guido was beginning to feel the
spell, and was not thinking so much of what he was saying as of what he
longed to say. Most clever men are dull enough to suppose that they bore
women when they suddenly lose their cleverness and say rather foolish
things with an air of conviction, instead of very witty things with a
studied look of indifference. The hundred and fifty generations of men,
more or less, that separate us moderns from the days of Eden, never
found out that those are the very moments at which a woman first feels
her power, and that it is much less dangerous to bore her just then than
before or afterwards. It is a rare delight to her to feel that her mere
look can turn careless wit to earnest foolishness. For nothing is ever
more in earnest than real folly, except real love.
"You always say nice things," Cecilia answered, and Guido was pleasantly
surprised, for he had been quite sure that the silly compliment was
hardly worth answering.
"And you are always kind," he said gratefully. "Always the same," he
added after a moment, with a little accent of regret.
"Am I? You say it as if you wished I might sometimes change. Is that
what you mean?"
She looked down at her hands, that lay in her lap motionless and white,
one upon the other, on the delicate dove-coloured stuff of her frock;
and her voice was rather low.
"No," Guido answered. "That is not what I mean."
"Then I do not understand," she said, neither moving nor looking up.
Guido said nothing. He leaned forwards, his elbows on his knees, and
stared down at the Persian rug that lay before the sofa on the smooth
matting. It was warm and still in the great room.
"Try and make me understand."
Still he was silent. Without changing his position he glanced at the
open door of the boudoir. The Countess was invisible and inaudible.
Guido could hear the young girl's soft and regular breathing, and he
felt the pulse in his own throat. He knew that he must say something,
and yet the only thing he could think of to say was that he loved her.
"Try and make me understand," she repeated. "I think you could."
He started and changed his position a little. He had been accustomed so
long to the belief that if he spoke out frankly the thread of his
intercourse with her would be broken, that he made a strong effort to
get back to the ordinary tone of their conversation.
"Do you never say absurd things that have no meaning?" he asked, and
tried to laugh.
"It was not what you said," Cecilia answered quietly. "It was the way
you said it, as if you rather regretted saying that I am always the
same. I should be sorry if you thought that an absurd speech."
"You know that I do not!" cried Guido, with a little indignation. "We
understand each other so well, as a rule, but there is something you
will never understand, I am afraid."
"That is just what I wish you would explain," replied the young girl,
unmoved.
"Are you in earnest?" Guido asked, suddenly turning his face to her.
"Of course. We are such good friends that it is a pity there should ever
be the least little bit of misunderstanding between us."
"You talk about it very philosophically!"
"About what?" She had felt that she must make him lose patience, and she
succeeded.
"After all, I am a man," he said rather hoarsely. "Do you suppose it is
possible for me to see you day after day, to talk with you day after
day, to be alone with you day after day, as I am, to hear your voice, to
touch your hand--and to be satisfied with friendship?"
"How should I know?" Cecilia asked thoughtfully. "I have never known any
one as well as I know you. I never liked anyone else well enough," she
added after an instant.
A very faint colour rose in her cheeks, for she was afraid that she had
been too forward.
"Yes. I am sure of that," he said. "But you never feel that mere liking
is turning into something stronger, and that friendship is changing into
love. You never will!"
She said nothing, but looked at him steadily while he looked away from
her, absorbed in his own thought and expecting no answer. When at last
he felt her eyes on him, he turned quickly with a start of surprise,
catching his breath, and speaking incoherently.
"You do not mean to tell me--you are not----"
Again her lips parted and she smiled at his wonder.
"Why not?" she asked, at last.
"You love me? You?" He could not believe his ears.
"Why not?" she asked again, but so low that he could hardly hear the
words.
He turned half round, as he sat, and covered her crossed hands with his,
and for a while neither spoke. He was supremely happy; she was convinced
that she ought to be, and that she therefore believed that she was, and
that her happiness was consequently real.
But when she heard his voice, she knew, in spite of all, that she did
not feel what he felt, even in the smallest degree, and there was a
doubt which she had not anticipated, and which she at once faced in her
heart with every argument she could use. She must have done right, it
was absolutely necessary that what she had done should be right, now
that it was too late to undo it. The mere suggestion that it might turn
out to be a mistake was awful. It would all be her fault if she had
deceived him, though ever so unwittingly.
His hands shook a little as they lay on hers. Then they took one of hers
and held it, drawing it slowly away from the other.
"Do you really love me?" Guido asked, still wondering, and not quite
convinced.
"Yes," she answered faintly, and not trying to withdraw her hand.
She had been really happy before she had first answered him. A minute
had not passed, and her martyrdom had begun, the martyrdom by the doubt
which made that one "yes" possibly a lie. Guido raised her hand to his
lips, and she felt that they were cold. Then he began to speak, and she
heard his voice far off and as if it came to her through a dense mist.
"I have loved you almost since we first met," he said, "but I was sure
from the beginning that you would never feel anything but friendship for
me."
A voice that was neither his nor hers, cried out in her heart:
"Nor ever can!"
She almost believed that he could hear the words. She would have given
all she had to have the strength to speak them, to disappoint him
bravely, to tell him that she had meant to do right, but had done wrong.
But she could not. He did not pause as he spoke, and his soft, deep
voice poured into her ear unceasingly the pent-up thoughts of love that
had been gathering in his heart for weeks. She knew that he was looking
in her face for some response, and now and then, as her head lay back
against the sofa cushion, she turned her eyes to his and smiled, and
twice she felt that her fingers pressed his hand a little.
It was not out of mere weakness that she did not interrupt him, for she
was not weak, nor cowardly. She had been so sure that she loved him,
until he had made her say so, that even now, whenever she could think at
all, she went back to her reasoning, and could all but persuade herself
again. It was when she was obliged to speak that her lips almost refused
the word.
For she was very fond of him. It would have been pleasant to sit there,
and even to press his hand affectionately, and to listen to his words,
if only they had been words of friendship and not of love, and spoken in
another tone--in his voice of every day. But she had waked in him
something she could not understand, and to which nothing in herself
responded, nothing thrilled, nothing consented; and the inner voice in
her heart cried out perpetually, warning her against something unknown.
He was eloquent now, and spoke without doubt or fear, as men do when
they have been told at last that they are loved; and her occasional
glance and the pressure of her hand were all he wanted in return. He
said everything for her, which he wished to hear her say, and it seemed
to him that she spoke the words by his lips. They would be happy
together always, happy beyond volumes of words to say, beyond thought to
think, beyond imagination to imagine. Quick plans for the future, near
and far, flashed into words that were pictures, and the pictures showed
him a visible earthly paradise, in which they two should live always, in
which he should always be speaking as he was speaking now, and she
listening, as she now listened.
He forgot the time, and forgot to glance at the open door of the
boudoir, but at last Cecilia started, and drew back her hand from his,
and blushed as she raised her head from the back of the sofa. Her mother
was standing in the doorway watching, and hearing, an expression of rapt
delight on her face, not daring to move forwards or backwards, lest she
should interrupt the scene.
Cecilia started, and Guido, following the direction of her eyes, saw the
Countess, and felt that small touch of disappointment which a man feels
when the woman he is addressing in passionate language is less
absent-minded than he is. He rose to his feet instantly, and went
forwards, as the Countess came towards him.
"My dear lady," he said, "Cecilia has consented to be my wife."
Cecilia did not afterwards remember precisely what happened next, for
the room swam with her as she left her seat, and she steadied herself
against a chair, and saw nothing for a moment; but presently she found
herself in her mother's arms, which pressed her very hard, and her
mother was kissing her again and again, and was saying incoherent
things, and was on the point of crying. Guido stood a few steps away,
apparently seeing nothing, but looking the picture of happiness, and
very busy with his cigarette case, of which he seemed to think the
fastening must be out of order, for he opened it and shut it again
several times and tried it in every way.
Then Cecilia was quite aware of outward things again, and she kissed her
mother once or twice.
"Let me go, mother dear," she whispered desperately. "I want to be
alone--do let me go!"
She slipped away, pale and trembling, and had disappeared almost before
Guido was aware that she was going towards the door. She heard her
mother's voice just as she reached the threshold.
"We will announce it this evening," the Countess said to Guido.
Cecilia sped through the long suite of rooms that led to her own. She
met no one, not even Petersen, for the servants were all at dinner. She
locked the door, stood still a moment, and then went to the tall glass
between the windows, and looked at herself as if trying to read the
truth in the reflection of her eyes. It seemed to her that her beauty
was suddenly gone from her, and that she was utterly changed. She saw a
pale, drawn face, eyes that looked weak and frightened, lips that
trembled, a figure that had lost all its elasticity and half its grace.
She did not throw herself upon her bed and burst into tears. Old
Fortiguerra had taught her that it was not really more natural for a
woman to cry than it is for a man; and she had overcome even the very
slight tendency she had ever had towards such outward weakness. But like
other people who train themselves to keep down emotion, she suffered
much more than if she had given way to what she felt. She turned from
the reflection of herself with a sort of dumb horror, and sat down in
the place where she had come to her great decision less than two hours
ago.
The room looked very differently now; the air was not the same, the June
sunshine was still beating on the blinds, but it was cruel now, and
pitiless, as all light is that shines on grief.
She tried to collect her thoughts, and asked herself whether it was a
crime that she had committed against her will, and many other such
questions that had no answer. Little by little reason began to assert
itself again, as emotion subsided.