Cecilia knelt in the church of Santa Croce, near one of the ancient
pillars. At a little distance behind her, Petersen sat in a chair
reading a queer little German book that told her the stories of the
principal Roman churches with the legends of the saints to which they
are dedicated. A thin, smooth-shaven lay brother in black and white
frock was slowly sweeping the choir behind the high altar. There was no
one else in the church.
Cecilia was kneeling on the marble floor, resting her folded hands upon
the back of a rough chair, and there was no sound in the dim building,
but the regular, soft brushing of the monk's broom. The girl's face was
still and pale, her eyes were half closed, and her lips did not move;
she did not hear the broom.
That was the first time she had ever tried to spend an hour in
meditation in a church, for her religion had never seemed very real to
her. It was compounded of habit and the natural respect of a girl for
what her mother practises and has taught her to practise, and it had
continued to hold a place in her life because she had quietly exempted
it from her own criticism; perhaps, too, because her reading had not
really tended to disturb it, since by nature she was strongly inclined
to believe in something much higher than the visible world.
The Countess Fortiguerra believed with the simplicity of a child. Her
first husband, freethinker, Garibaldian, Mazzinian, had at first tried
to laugh her out of all belief, and had said that he would baptize her
in the name of reason, as Garibaldi is said to have once baptized a
new-born infant. But to his surprise his jests had not the slightest
effect on the rather foolish, very pretty, perfectly frank young woman
with whom he had fallen in love in his older years, and who, in all
other matters, thought him a great man. She laughed at his atheism much
more good-naturedly than he at her beliefs, and she went to church
regularly in spite of anything he could say; so that at last he shrugged
his shoulders and said in his heart that all women were half-witted
creatures, where priests were concerned, but that fortunately the
weakness did not detract from their charm. On her side, she prayed for
his conversion every day, with clock-like regularity, but without the
slightest result.
Fortiguerra had been a man of remarkable gifts, extremely tolerant of
other people's opinions. He never laughed at any sort of belief, though
his wife never succeeded in finding out what he really thought about
spiritual matters. He evidently believed in something, so she did not
pray for his conversion, but interceded steadily for his enlightenment.
Before he died he made no objection to seeing a priest, but his wife
never knew whether he consented because it would have given her pain if
he had refused, or whether he really desired spiritual comfort in his
last moments. He was always most considerate of others and especially of
her; but he was very reticent. So she mourned him and prayed that
everything might be well with both her departed husbands, though she
doubted whether they were in the same place. She supposed that
Fortiguerra had sometimes discussed religion with his step-daughter, but
he always seemed to take it for granted that the latter should do what
her mother desired of her.
It could hardly be expected that the girl should be what is called very
devout, and as Petersen turned over the pages of her little book she
wondered what had happened that Cecilia should kneel motionless on the
marble pavement for more than half an hour in a church to which they had
never come before, and on a week-day which was not a saint's day either.
It was something like despair that had brought her to Santa Croce, and
she had chosen the place because she could think of no other in which
she could be quite sure of being alone, and out of the way of all
acquaintances. She wanted something which her books could not give her,
and which she could not find in herself; she wanted peace and good
advice, and she felt that she was dealt with unjustly.
Indeed, it was of little profit that she should have forced herself to
give up what was dearest to her, unreal though it might be, since she
was to be haunted by Lamberti's face and voice whenever she fell asleep.
It was more like a possession of the evil one now than anything else.
She would have used his own words to describe it, if she had dared to
speak of it to any one, but that seemed impossible. She had thought of
going to some confessor who did not know her by sight, to tell him the
whole story, but her common sense assured her that she had done no
wrong. It was advice she needed, and perhaps it was protection too, but
it was certainly not forgiveness, so far as she knew.
Lamberti pursued her, in her imagination, and she lived in terror of
him. If she had been already married to Guido, she would have told her
husband everything, and he would have helped her. By a revulsion that
was not unnatural, it began to seem much easier to marry him now, and
she turned to him in her thoughts, asking him to shield her from a man
she feared. Guido loved her, and she was at least a devoted friend to
him; there was no one but him to help her.
As she knelt by the pillar she went over the past weeks of her life in a
concentrated self-examination of which she would never have believed
herself capable.
"I am a grown woman," she said to herself, "and I have a right to think
what grown women think. I know perfectly well which thoughts are good
and which are bad, just as I know right from wrong in other ways. It was
wrong to put myself into that dream state, because I wanted him to come
to me. Yes, I confess it, I wanted him to come and kiss me that once, in
the vision every night. It would not have been wrong if I had not said
that I would marry Guido, but that made the difference. Therefore I gave
it up. I will not do anything wrong with my eyes open. I will not. I
would not, if I did not believe in God, because the thing would be wrong
just the same. Religion makes it more wrong, that is all. If I were not
engaged to Guido, and if I loved the other instead, then I should have a
right to wish and dream that the other kissed me."
She thought some time about this point, and there was something that
disturbed her, in spite of her reasoning.
"It would have been unmaidenly," she decided, at last. "I should be
ashamed to tell my mother that I had done it. But it would not have been
wrong, distinctly not. It would be wrong and abominable to think of two
men in that way.
"That is what is happening now, against my will. I go to sleep saying my
prayers, and yet he comes to me in my dreams, and looks at me, and I
cannot help letting him kiss me, and it is only afterwards that I feel
how revolting it was. And in the daytime I am engaged to Guido, and I
cannot help knowing that when we are married he will want to kiss me
like that. It was different before, since I was able to give up seeing
the marble court and being the Vestal, and did give it up. This is
another thing, and it is bad, but it is not a wrong thing I am doing.
Therefore it is something outside of my soul that is trying to do me
harm, and may succeed in the end. It is a power of evil. How can I fight
against it, since it comes when I am asleep and have no will? What ought
I to do?
"I am afraid to meet Signor Lamberti now, much more afraid than I was a
week ago, before this other trouble began. But when I am dreaming, I am
not afraid of him. I do what he makes me do without any resistance, and
I am glad to do it. I want to be his slave, then. He makes me sit down
and listen to him, and I believe all he says. We always sit on that
bench near the fountain in my villa. He tells me that he loves me much
better than Guido does, and that he is much better able to protect me
than Guido. He says that his heart is breaking because he loves me and
is Guido's friend, and he looks thin and worn, just as he does in real
life. When I dream of him, I do not mind the glittering in his eyes, but
when I meet him it frightens me. Of course, it is quite impossible that
he should know how I dream of him now. Yet, I am sure he knew all about
the other vision. He said very little, but I am sure of it, though I
cannot explain it. This is much worse than the other. But if I go back
to the other, I shall be doing wrong, because I shall be consenting; and
now I am not doing wrong, because it happens against my will, and I go
to sleep praying that it may never happen again, and I am in earnest.
God help me! I know that when I sit beside him on the bench I love him!
And yet he is the only man in all the world whom I wish never to meet
again. God help me!"
Her head sank upon her folded hands at last, and her eyes were closely
shut. She threw her whole soul into the appeal to heaven for help and
strength, till she believed that it must come to her at once in some
real shape, with inspired wisdom and the comfort of the Holy Spirit. She
had never before in her life prayed as she was praying now, with heart
and soul and mind, though not with any form of words.
Then came a moment in which she thought of nothing and waited. She knew
it well, that blank between one state and the other, that total
suspension of all her faculties just before she began to see an unreal
world, that breathless stillness of anticipation before the supreme
moment of change. She was quite powerless now, for her waking will was
already asleep.
The instant was over, and the vision had come, but it was not what she
had always seen before. It was something strangely familiar, yet
beautiful and high and clear. Her consciousness was in the midst of a
world of light, at peace; and then, all round her, a brightness stole
upwards as out of a clear and soft horizon, more radiant than the light
itself that was already in the air. And as when evening creeps up to the
sky the stars begin to shine faintly, more guessed at than really seen,
so she began to see heavenly beings, growing more and more distinct, and
she was lifted up among them, and all her heart cried out in joy and
praise. And suddenly the cross shone out in a rosy radiance brighter
than all, and from head to foot and from arm to arm of it the light
flowed and flashed, and joined and passed and parted, in the holy sign.
From itself came forth a melody, in which she was rapt and swept upwards
as though she were herself a wave of the glorious sound. But of the
words, three only came to her, and they were these: Arise and
conquer![1]
[1: A free translation of some passages in the fourteenth canto
of Dante's _Paradiso_.]
Then all was still and calm again, and she was kneeling at her chair,
the sight still in her inward eyes, the words still ringing in her
heart, but herself awake again.
She knew the vision now that it was past; for often, reading the
matchless verses of the "Paradise," she had intensely longed to see as
the dead poet must have seen before he could write as he wrote. It did
not seem strange that her hope should have been fulfilled at last in the
church of the Holy Cross. Her lips formed the words, and she spoke them,
consciously in her own voice, sweet and low:
"Arise and conquer!"
It was what she had prayed for--the peace, the strength, the knowledge;
it was all in that little sentence. She rose to her feet, and stood
still a moment, and her face was calm and radiant, like the faces of the
heavenly beings she had looked upon. There was a world before her of
which she had not dreamt before, better than that ancient one that had
vanished and in which she had been a Vestal Virgin, more real than that
mysterious one in which she had floated between two existences, and
whence the miserable longing for an earthly body had brought her back to
be Cecilia Palladio, and to fight again her battle for freedom and
immortality.
It mattered little that her prayer should have been answered by the
imagined sight of something described by another, and long familiar to
her in his lofty verse. The prayer was answered, and she had strength to
go on, and she should find wisdom and light to choose the right path.
Henceforth, when she was weak and weary, and filled with loathing of
what she dreaded most, she could shut her eyes as she had done just now,
and pray, and wait, and the transcendent glory of paradise would rise
within her, and give her strength to live, and drive away that power of
evil that hurt her, and made night frightful, and day but a long waiting
for the night.
She came out into the summer glare with the patient Petersen, and
breathed the summer heat as if she were drawing in new life with every
breath; and they drove home, down the long and lonely road that leads to
the new quarter, between dust-whitened trees, and then down into the
city and through the cooler streets, till at last the cab stopped before
the columns of the Palazzo Massimo.
Celia ran up the stairs, as if her light feet did not need to touch them
to carry her upwards, while Petersen solemnly panted after her, and she
went to her own room.
She had a vague desire to change everything in it, to get rid of all the
objects that reminded her of the miserable nights, and the sad hours of
day, which she had spent there; she wanted to move the bed to the other
end of the room, the writing table to the other window, the long glass
to a different place, to hang the walls with another colour, and to
banish the two tall candlesticks for ever. It would be like beginning
her life over again.