In the days that followed, the double pursuit continued with the same
tortures, or worse, and with the same odious mendacity. By a phenomenon
which is of frequent occurrence in the moral degradation of men of keen
intellect, he now had a terrible lucidity of conscience, a lucidity
without interruptions, without a moment of dimness or eclipse. He knew
what he was doing and criticised what he had done. With him self-scorn
went hand in hand with feebleness of will.
But his variable humour, his incertitude, his unaccountable silences and
equally unaccountable effusions, in short, all the peculiarities of
manner which such a condition of mind inevitably brings along with it,
only increased and excited the passionate commiseration of Donna Maria.
She saw him suffer, and it filled her with grief and tenderness. 'By
slow degrees I shall cure him,' she thought. But slowly and surely,
without being aware of it, she was losing her strength of purpose and
was bending to the sick man's will.
The downward slope was gentle.
In the drawing-room of the Countess Starnina, an indefinable thrill ran
through her when she felt Andrea's gaze upon her bare shoulders and
arms. It was the first time he had seen her in evening dress. Her face
and her hands were all he knew. This evening he saw how exquisite was
the shape of her neck and shoulders and of her arms too, although they
were a little thin.
She was dressed in ivory-white brocade trimmed with sable. A narrow band
of fur edged the low bodice and imparted an indescribable delicacy to
the tints of the skin. The line of the shoulders, from the neck to the
top of the arms, had that gracious slope which is such a sure mark of
physical aristocracy and so rare nowadays. In her magnificent hair,
arranged in the manner affected by Verocchio for his busts, there was
not one jewel, not one flower.
At two or three propitious moments, Andrea murmured words of passionate
admiration in her ear.
'This is the first time we have met in society,' he said to her. 'Give
me a glove as a souvenir.'
'No.'
'Why not, Maria?'
'No, no. Be quiet.'
'Oh, those hands of yours! Do you remember when I copied them at
Schifanoja? I feel as if I had a right to them; as if you ought to grant
them to me; of your whole person they are the part that is most
intimately connected with your soul, the most spiritualised, almost, one
might say, the purest--Oh, hands of kindness--hands of pardon. How
dearly I should love to possess at least a semblance of their form, some
token to which their delicate perfume still clings. You will give me a
glove before you leave?'
She did not answer. The conversation dropped. A short time afterwards,
on being asked to play, she consented, and drawing off her gloves laid
them on the music-stand in front of her. Her fingers, tapering and
glittering with rings, looked very white as she drew off their delicate
covering. On the ring finger of her left hand blazed a great opal.
She played the two Sonata-Fantasias of Beethoven (Op. 27). The one,
dedicated to Giulietta Guicciardi, expressed a hopeless renunciation,
told of an awakening after a dream that had lasted too long. The other,
from the first bars of the _Andante_, described by its full smooth
rhythm the calm that comes after the storm; then, passing through the
disquietude of the second movement, opened out into an _Adagio_ of
luminous serenity, and ended in an _Allegro Vivace_ in which there was a
rising note of courage, almost of fervour.
Though surrounded by an attentive audience, Andrea felt that she was
playing for him alone. From time to time, his eyes wandering from the
fingers of the pianist to the long gloves hanging from the music stand,
which still retained the form of those hands, still preserved an
inexpressible charm in the small opening at the wrist where, but a short
time ago, a tiny morsel of her soft flesh had been visible.
Maria rose amidst a round of applause. She left the piano, but she did
not take away her gloves. Andrea was tempted to steal them.--Had she not
perhaps left them for him?--But he only wanted one. As a connoisseur in
amatory matters has said, a pair of gloves is a totally different thing
from a single one.
Led back to the piano by the insistence of the Countess Starnina, Maria
removed her gloves from the desk and placed them in a corner of the
keyboard, in the shadow. She then played Rameau's Gavotte--_the Gavotte
of the Yellow Ladies_--the never-to-be-forgotten dance of Indifference
and Love.
Andrea regarded her fixedly with a little trepidation. When she rose,
she took up one of her gloves. The other she left in the shadowy corner
of the piano--for him.
Three days afterwards, when astonished Rome had awakened to find itself
under a covering of snow, Andrea received a note to the following
effect--
'_Tuesday, 2 p. m._--To-night, between eleven and twelve o'clock, you
will wait for me in a carriage in front of the Palazzo Barberini,
outside the gates. If by midnight I am not there, you can go away
again.--_A stranger_.'
The tone of the note was mysterious and romantic. Was it in remembrance
of the 25th of March two years ago? Lady Heathfield seemed particularly
fond of the use of carriages in her love affairs. Had she the intention
of taking up the adventure at the point where it broke off? And why--_A
stranger_? Andrea could not repress a smile. He had just come back from
a visit to Maria--a very pleasing visit--and his heart inclined, for the
moment, more to the Siennese than to the other. His ear still retained
the sound of her sweet and gentle words as they stood together at the
window and watched the snow falling soft as peach or apple blossom on
the trees of the Villa Aldobrandini, already touched with the
presentiment of the coming Spring. However, before going out to dinner,
he gave very particular orders to Stephen.
Eleven o'clock found him in front of the palace, devoured by impatience
and curiosity. The novelty of the situation, the spectacle of the snowy
night, the mystery and uncertainty of it all, inflamed his imagination
and transported him beyond the realities of life.
Over Rome, on that memorable February night, there shone a full moon of
fabulous size and unheard of splendour. In that immense radiance, the
surrounding objects seemed to exist only as in a dream, impalpable,
meteoric, and visible at a great distance by virtue of some fantastic
irradiation of their own. The snow covered the railings of the gateway,
concealing the iron and transforming it into a piece of open-work, more
frail and airy than filigree; while the white-robed Colossi supported it
as oaks support a spider's web. The garden looked like a motionless
forest of enormous and mis-shapen lilies all of ice; a garden under some
lunar enchantment, a lifeless paradise of Selene. Mute, solemn and
massive the Palazzo Barberini reared its great bulk into the sky, its
most salient points standing out dazzlingly white and casting a pale
blue shadow as transparent as light.
He waited, leaning forward on the watch; and under the fascination of
that marvellous spectacle, he felt the spirits that wait on love awake
in him, that the lyric summits of his sentiment began to gleam and
glitter like the frozen shafts of the gateway under the moon. But he
could not make up his mind which of the two women he would prefer as the
centre of this fantastic scenery: Elena Heathfield robed in imperial
purple, or Maria Ferrès robed in ermine. And as he lingered pleasurably
over this uncertainty of choice, he ended by mingling and confounding
his two anxieties--the real one for Elena and the imaginary one for
Maria.
A clock near by struck in the silence with a clear vibrating sound, and
each stroke seemed to break something crystalline in the air. The clock
of the Trinità de' Monti responded to the call, and after that the clock
of the Quirinal--then others faintly out of the distance. It was a
quarter past eleven.
Andrea strained his eyes towards the portico. Would she dare to traverse
the garden on foot? He pictured the figure of Elena in the midst of all
this dazzling whiteness, then, in an instant, that of Donna Maria
appeared to him, obliterating the other, triumphant over the whiteness,
_Candida super nivem_. This night of moonlight and snow then was under
the dominance of Maria Ferrès as under some invincible actual influence.
The image of the pure creature grew symbolically out of the sovereign
purity of the surrounding aspect of things. The symbol re-acted forcibly
on the spirit of the poet.
While still watching to see if the other one would come, he gave himself
up to a vision suggested by the scene before him.
It was a poetic, almost a mystic dream. He was waiting for Donna
Maria--she had chosen this night of supernatural purity on which to
sacrifice her own purity to her lover's desire. All the white things
about her, cognisant of the great sacrifice about to be accomplished,
were waiting to cry _Ave_ and _Amen_ at the passage of their sister. The
silence was alive.
And behold, she comes! _Incedit per lilia et super nivem._ She comes,
robed in ermine; her tresses bound about with a fillet; her steps
lighter than a shadow; the moon and the snow are less pale than
she--_Ave_!
A shadow, azure as the light that tints the sapphire, accompanies her.
The great mis-shapen lilies bend not as she passes; the frost has
congealed them, has made them like the asphodels that illumine the paths
of Hades. And yet, like those of the Christian paradise, they have a
voice and say with one accord--_Amen_.
So be it--the Beloved glides on to the sacrifice. Already she nears the
watcher sitting mute and icy, but whose eyes are burning and eloquent.
And on her hands, the dear hands that close his wounds and open the
doors of dreams, he presses his kiss.--So be it.
Then on her lips, the dear lips that know no word of falseness, he lays
his kiss. Released from the fillet, her hair spreads like a glorious
flood in which all the shadows of the night put to flight by the moon
and the snow seem to have taken refuge. _Comis suis obumbrabit tibi, et
sub comis peccavit. Amen._
And still the other did not come! Through the silence, through the
poetry, the hours of men sounded again from the towers and belfries of
Rome. A carriage or two rolled noiselessly past the Four Fountains
towards the Piazza or crawled slowly up towards Santa Maria Maggiore;
and each street-lamp shone yellow as a topaz in the light. It seemed as
if the night, reaching its highest point, had grown more luminously
radiant. The filigree of the gateway twinkled and flashed as if its
silver embroideries were studded with jewels. In the palace, great
circles of dazzling light shone on the windows like diamond florins.
'What if she does not come?' thought Andrea to himself.
The flood of lyric fervour that had passed over his soul at Maria's name
had submerged the anxiety of his vigil, had appeased his desire and
calmed his impatience. For a moment, the thought that she would not come
only made him smile. But the next, the anguish of uncertainty began
again worse than ever, and he was tortured by the vision of the joys
that might have been his, here in the warm carriage where the roses
breathed so sweet an atmosphere. Besides which, his sufferings were
further increased, as on New Year's Eve, by a sharp touch of wounded
vanity; it annoyed him particularly that his delicate preparations for a
love scene should thus be wasted and useless.
In the carriage, the cold was tempered by the pleasant warmth diffused
by a metal foot-warmer, full of hot water. A bunch of white roses,
snowy, moonlike, lay on the bracket in front of the seat. A white
bear-skin covered his knees. Everything pointed to an intentional
arrangement of a sort of _Symphonie en blanc-majeur_.
The clocks struck for the third time. It was a quarter to twelve. The
vigil had lasted too long--Andrea was growing tired and cross. In
Elena's apartments, in the left wing of the palace, there was no light
but that which came from outside. Was she coming? And if so, in what
manner? Secretly? Under what pretext? Lord Heathfield was certainly in
Rome--how would she explain her nocturnal absence? Once more the soul of
the former lover was torn with curiosity; once more jealousy gnawed at
his heart and carnal passion inflamed him. He thought of Musellaro's
derisive suggestion about the husband, and he determined to have Elena
again at all costs, both for pleasure and for revenge. Oh, if only she
would come!
A carriage drove through the gates and into the garden. He leaned
forward to look at it. He recognised Elena's horses and caught a glimpse
inside of the figure of a woman. The carriage disappeared into the
portico. He remained perplexed. She had been out then? She had returned
alone? He fixed a scrutinising gaze upon the portico. The carriage came
out, passed through the garden and drove away towards the Via Rasella;
it was empty.
It wanted but two or three minutes to midnight and she had not come!
It struck the hour. A bitter pang smote the heart of the deluded
watcher. She was not coming.
Unable to see any cause for her having missed the appointment he turned
upon her in sudden anger; he even had a suspicion that she might have
wished to inflict a humiliation, a punishment upon him, or else that she
had merely indulged in a whim in order to inflame his desire afresh. The
next moment he called to the coachman--
'Piazza del Quirinale.'
He yielded to the attraction of Maria Ferrès; he abandoned himself once
more to the vaguely tender sentiment which, ever since his visit in the
afternoon, had left, as it were, a perfume in his soul and suggested to
him thoughts and images of poetic beauty. The recent disappointment,
proving, as he considered, Elena's malice and indifference, urged him
more strongly than ever towards the love and goodness of the other. His
regret for the loss of so beautiful a night increased, under the
influence of the vision he had dreamed just now. And, truth to tell, it
was one of the most enchanting nights Rome had ever known; one of those
spectacles that oppress the human soul with deep sadness, because they
transcend all power of admiration, all possibility of human expression.
The Piazza del Quirinale, magnified by the all-pervading whiteness, lay
spread out solitary and dazzling, like an Olympian acropolis above the
silent city. The edifices surrounding it reared their stately
proportions into the deep sky; Bernini's great portal to the royal
palace surmounted by the loggia offered an optical delusion by seeming
to detach itself from the building and stand out all alone in all its
unwieldy magnificence, like some mausoleum sculptured out of a meteoric
block of stone. The rich architraves to the Palazzo della Consulta were
curiously transformed by the accumulated masses of snow. Sublime amidst
the uniform whiteness, the colossal statues seemed to dominate all
things. The grouping of the Dioscuri and the horses looked bolder and
larger in that light; the broad backs of the steeds glittered under
jewelled trappings, there was a sparkle as of diamonds on the shoulders
and the uplifted arm of each demi-god.
An august solemnity flowed from the monument. Rome lay plunged in a
death-like silence, motionless, empty--a city under a spell. The houses,
the churches, the spires and turrets, all the confusion and
intermingling of Christian and Pagan architecture, resolved itself into
one unbroken forest between the heights of the Janiculum and the Monte
Mario, drowned in a silvery vapour, far off, infinitely immaterial,
reminding one a little of a lunar landscape, calling up visions of some
half extinct planet peopled by shades. The dome of St. Peter's, shining
with a peculiar metallic lustre in the blue atmosphere looked gigantic
and so close that one might have thought to touch it. And the two
youthful Heroes, sons of the Swan, radiant with beauty in the vast
expanse of whiteness as in the apotheosis of their origin, seemed to be
the immortal Genii of Rome guarding the slumbers of the sacred city.
The carriage stopped in front of the palace and remained there for a
long time. The poet was once more absorbed in his impossible dream. And
Maria Ferrès was quite near, was perhaps watching and dreaming also,
perhaps she too felt the grandeur of the night weighing upon her heart
and crushing it in vain.
Slowly the carriage passed her closed door, while the windows reflected
the full moon gazing at the hanging gardens of the Villa Aldobrandini
where the trees looked like aërial miracles. And as he passed, the poet
threw the bunch of roses on to the snow before Donna Maria's door in
token of homage.