The next day, according to their agreement at the concert, Andrea found
Donna Maria in the Piazza di Spagna with Delfina, looking at the antique
jewellery in a shop window. At the first sound of his voice she turned,
and a bright flush stained the pallor of her cheek. Together they then
examined the eighteenth-century jewels, the paste buckles and hair
ornaments, the enamelled watches, the gold and ivory tortoise-shell
snuff-boxes, all these pretty trifles of a by-gone day which afforded an
impression of harmonious richness under the clear morning sun.
Everywhere about them, the flower-sellers were offering yellow and white
jonquils, double violets, and long branches of flowering almond. There
was a breath of Spring in the air. The column of the Immaculate
Conception rose lightly into the sunshine, like a flower stem with the
_Rosa mystica_ on its summit; the Barcaccia glistened in a shower of
diamonds, the stairway of the Trinità opened its arms gaily towards the
church of Charles VIII., the two towers of which stood out boldly
against the blue cloud-flecked sky.
'How exquisite!' exclaimed Donna Maria. 'No wonder you are so deeply
enamoured of Rome!'
'Oh, you don't know it yet,' Andrea replied, 'I wish I might be your
guide'--she smiled--'and undertake a pilgrimage of sentiment with you
this spring.'
She smiled again, and her whole person assumed a less grave and
chastened air. Her dress, this morning, had a quiet elegance about it,
but revealed the refined taste of an expert in style and in the delicate
combinations of colour. Her jacket, of a shade of gray inclining to
green, was of cloth trimmed round the edge with beaver and opening over
a vest of the same fur, the blending of the two tones--indefinable gray
and tawny gold--forming a harmony that was a delight to the eye.
'What did you do yesterday evening?' she asked.
'I left the concert-hall a few minutes after you and went home; and I
stayed there because I seemed to feel your spirit near me. I thought
much. Did you not _feel_ my thought?'
'No, I cannot say I did. I passed a very cheerless evening. I do not
know why. I felt so dreadfully alone!'
The Contessa di Lucoli passed in her dog-cart, driving a big roan.
Giulia Moceto, accompanied by Musellaro, passed on foot, and then Donna
Isotta Cellesi.
Andrea bowed to each. Donna Maria asked him the names of the ladies.
That of Giulia Moceto was not new to her. She recalled the day on which
she heard Francesca mention it while looking at Perugino's Archangel
Michael, when they were turning over Andrea's drawings at Schifanoja.
She followed her curiously with her eyes, seized with a sudden vague
fear. Everything connecting Andrea with his former life was distasteful
to her. She wished that that life, of which she knew next to nothing,
could be entirely wiped out of the memory of this man who had flung
himself into it with such avidity and dragged himself out with so much
weariness, so many losses, so many wounds--'To live solely in you and
for you, with no to-morrow and no yesterday--without other bond or
preference--far from the world----' Were not those his words to her?
What a dream!
Matters of very different import were troubling Andrea. It was fast
approaching the Princess of Ferentino's lunch hour.
'Where are you bound for?' he asked of his companion.
'Wishing to make the most of the sunshine, Delfina and I had tea and
sandwiches at Nazzari's and thought of going up to the Pincio and
visiting the Villa Medici. If you would care to come with us----'
He had a moment of painful hesitation. The Pincio, the Villa Medici, on
a February afternoon--with her! But he could not well get out of the
lunch; besides, he was desperately anxious to meet Elena again after
yesterday's episode, for though he had gone to the Angelieris', she did
not put in an appearance.
He therefore answered with an inconsolable air--'How wretchedly
unfortunate! I am obliged to be at a lunch in a quarter of an hour. I
accepted the invitation a week ago, but if I had known, I would have
found some way of getting out of it--What a nuisance!'
'Oh, then you must go without losing a moment--you will be late.'
He looked at his watch.
'I can walk a little further with you.'
'Mamma, do let us go up the steps,' begged Delfina. 'I went up yesterday
with Miss Dorothy. You should see it!'
They turned back and crossed the square. A child followed them
persistently, offering a great branch of flowering almond, which Andrea
bought and presented to Delfina. Blonde ladies issued from the hotels
armed with red Bædekers; clumsy hackney coaches with two horses jogged
past with a glint of brass on their oldfashioned harness; the
flower-sellers thrust their overflowing baskets in front of the
strangers, vociferating at the pitch of their voices.
'Will you promise me,' Andrea said to Donna Maria, as they began to
ascend the steps--'will you promise me not to go to the Villa Medici
without me? Give it up for to-day--please do.'
For a moment she seemed preoccupied by sad thoughts, then she answered:
'Very well, I will give it up.'
'Thanks!'
Before them the great stairway rose triumphantly, its sun-warmed steps
giving out a gentle heat, the stone itself having the polished gleam of
old silver like that of the fountains at Schifanoja. Delfina ran on in
front with her almond-branch and, caught by the breeze of her movement,
some of its faint pink petals fluttered away like butterflies.
A poignant regret pierced the young man's heart. He pictured to himself
the delights of a sentimental walk through the quiet glades of the Villa
Medici in the early hours of the sunny afternoon.
'With whom do you lunch?' asked Donna Maria, after an interval of
silence.
'With the old Princess Alberoni,' he replied.
He lied to her once more, for some instinct warned him that the name
Ferentino might arouse some suspicion in Donna Maria's mind.
'Good-bye, then,' she said, and held out her hand.
'No--I will come up to the Piazza. My carriage is waiting for me there.
Look--that is where I live,' and he pointed to the Palazzo Zuccari, all
flooded with sunshine.
Donna Maria's eyes lingered upon it.
'Now there you have seen it, will you come there sometimes--in spirit?'
'In spirit always.'
'And shall I not see you before Saturday evening?'
'I hardly think so.'
They parted--she turning with Delfina into the avenue, Andrea jumping
into his brougham and driving off down the Via Gregoriana.
He arrived at the Ferentinos' a few minutes late. He made his apologies.
Elena was already there with her husband.
Lunch was served in a dining room gay with tapestries representing
scenes after the manner of Peter Loar. In the midst of these beautiful
seventeenth-century grotesques, a brisk fire of wit and sarcasm soon
began to flash and scintillate. The three ladies were in high spirits
and prompt at repartee. Barbare la Viti laughed her sonorous masculine
laugh, throwing back her handsome boyish head and making free play with
her sparkling black eyes. Elena was in a more than usually brilliant
vein, and impressed Andrea as being so far removed from him, so
unfamiliar, so unconcerned, that he almost doubted whether yesterday's
scene had not been all a dream. Ludovico Barbarisi and the Prince of
Ferentino aided and abetted the ladies; Lord Heathfield entertained his
'young friend' by boring him to extinction with questions as to the
coming sales and giving him minute details of a very rare edition of the
_Metamorphoses_ of Apuleius--Roma, 1469--in folio, which he had acquired
a day or two ago for fifteen hundred and twenty lire. He broke off every
now and then to watch Barbarella, and then that gleam of dementia would
flash into his eyes, and his repulsive hands trembled strangely.
Andrea's irritation, disgust, and boredom at last reached such a pitch
that he was unable to conceal his feelings.
'You seem out of spirits, Ugenta,' said the princess.
'Well, a little, perhaps--Miching Mallecho is ill.'
Barbarisi at once overwhelmed him with importunate questions about the
horse's ailments; and then Lord Heathfield recommenced the story of the
_Metamorphoses_ from the beginning.
The Princess turned to her cousin. 'What do you think, Ludovico,' she
said with a laugh, 'yesterday, at the concert, we surprised him in a
flirtation with an Incognita!'
'So we did,' added Elena.
'An Incognita?' exclaimed Ludovico.
'Yes, but perhaps you can give us further information. She is the wife
of the new Minister for Guatemala.'
'Aha--I know.'
'Well?'
'For the moment, I only know the Minister. I see him playing at the Club
every night.'
'Tell me, Ugenta, has she been received at court yet?'
'I really do not know, Princess,' Andrea returned with some impatience.
The whole business had become simply intolerable to him. Elena's gaiety
jarred horribly on him, and her husband's presence was more odious than
ever. But if he was out of temper, it was more with himself than with
the rest of the company. At the root of his irritation lay a dim longing
after the pleasure he had so lately rejected. Hurt and offended by
Elena's indifference, his heart turned with poignant regret to the other
woman, and he pictured her wandering pensive and alone through the
silent avenues, more beautiful, more noble than ever before.
The Princess rose and led the way into an adjoining room. Barbarella ran
to the piano, which was entirely enveloped in an immense antique
caparison of red velvet embroidered with dull gold, and began to sing
Bizet's Tarantelle dedicated to Christine Nilsson. Elena and Eva leaned
over her to read the music, while Ludovico stood behind them smoking a
cigarette. The Prince had disappeared.
But Lord Heathfield kept firm hold of Andrea. He had drawn him into a
window and was discoursing to him on certain little Urbanese '_coppette
amatorie_' which he had picked up at the Cavaliere Davila's sale, and
the rasping voice with its aggravating interrogative inflections, the
gestures with which he indicated the dimensions of the cups, and his
glance--now dull and fishy, now keen as steel under the great prominent
brow--in short, the whole man was so unendurably obnoxious to Andrea
that he clenched his teeth convulsively like a patient under the
surgeon's knife.
His one absorbing thought was how to get away. His plan was to rush to
the Pincio in the hope of finding Donna Maria and taking her, after all,
to the Villa Medici. It was about two o'clock. He looked out of the
window at the glorious sunshine; he turned back into the room, and saw
the group of pretty women at the piano, bathed in the red glow struck
out of the velvet cover by a strong golden ray. With this red glow the
smoke of the cigarette mingled lightly as the talking and laughter
mingled with the chords Barbarella Viti struck haphazard on the keys.
Ludovico whispered a word or two in his cousin's ear, which the Princess
forthwith communicated to her friends, for there was a renewed burst of
laughter, ringing and deep, like a string of pearls dropping into a
silver bowl. Then Barbarella took up Bizet's air again in a low voice--
'Tra, la la--Le papillon s'est envolé--Tra, la la----'
Andrea was anxiously on the watch for a favourable moment at which to
interrupt Lord Heathfield's harangue and make his escape. But the
collector had entered upon a series of rounded periods, each intimately
connected with the other, without one break, without one pause for
breath. A single stop would have saved the persecuted listener, but it
never came, and the victim's torments grew more unbearable every minute.
'Oui! Le papillon s'est envolé--Oui! Ah! ah! ah! ah!'
Andrea looked at his watch.
'Two o'clock already! Excuse me, Marquis, but I must go.'
He left the window and went over to the ladies.
'Will you excuse me, Princess, I have a consultation at two with the
veterinary surgeons at my stables?'
He took leave in a great hurry. Elena gave him the tips of her fingers,
Barbarella presented him with _fondant_, saying--'Give it to poor
Mallecho with my love.'
Ludovico offered to accompany him.
'No, no--stay where you are.'
He bowed and left--flew down the stairs like lightning and jumped into
his carriage, shouting to the coachman--
'To the Pincio--quick!'
He was filled with a frenzied longing to reach Maria Ferrès' side, to
enjoy the delights which he had refused before. The rapid pace of his
horses was not quick enough for him. He looked out anxiously for the
Trinità de' Monti, the avenue--the gates.
The carriage flashed through the gates. He ordered the coachman to
moderate his pace and to drive through each of the avenues. His heart
gave a bound every time the figure of a woman appeared in the distance
through the trees. He got out and, on foot, explored the paths forbidden
to vehicles. He searched every nook and corner--in vain.
The Villa Borghese being open to the public, the Pincio lay deserted and
silent under the languid smile of the February sun. Few carriages or
foot-passengers disturbed the peaceful solitude of the place. The
grayish-white trees, tinged here and there with violet, spread their
leafless branches against a diaphanous sky, and the air was full of
delicate spider-webs which the breeze shook and tore asunder. The pines
and cypresses--all the evergreen trees--took on something of this
colourless pallor, seemed to fade and melt into the all-prevailing
monotone.
Surely something of Donna Maria's sadness still lingered in the
atmosphere. Andrea stood for several minutes leaning against the
railings of the Villa Medici, crushed beneath a load of melancholy too
heavy to be borne.