'I saw--I guessed--I had been at the window for a long time, unable to
tear myself away from the fascination of all that whiteness. I saw the
carriage pass slowly in the snow. I felt that it was you, before I saw
you throw the roses. No words can describe to you the tenderness of my
tears. I wept for you from love and for the roses out of pity. Poor
roses! It seemed to me that they were alive and must suffer and die in
the snow. I seemed to hear them call to me and lament like human
creatures that have been deserted. As soon as your carriage had
disappeared, I leaned out of the window to look at them. I was on the
point of going down into the street to pick them up. But a servant was
still in the hall waiting up for some one. I thought of a thousand plans
but could find none that was practicable. I was in despair--You smile?
Truly, I hardly know what madness had come over me. I watched the
passers-by anxiously, my eyes full of tears. If any one of them had
trodden on the roses, he would have trampled upon my heart. And yet in
all this torment I was happy, happy in your love, in the delicacy of
your passionate homage, in your gentleness, your kindness.--When, at
last I fell asleep, I was sad and happy together; the roses must have
been nearly dead by that time. After an hour or two of sleep, the sound
of spades upon the pavement woke me up. They were shovelling away the
snow just in front of my door. I listened; the noise and the voices
continued till after daylight and filled me with unutterable
sadness!--Poor roses! But they will always live and bloom in my heart.
There are certain memories that can perfume a soul for ever--Do you
love me very much, Andrea?'
She hesitated for a moment, and then--'Do you love only me? Have you
forgotten all the rest? Do all your thoughts belong to me?'
Her breath came fast and she was trembling.
'I suffer--at the thought of your former life,--the past of which I know
nothing--of your memories, of all the marks left upon your soul, of that
in you which I shall never understand never possess. Oh, if I could but
wipe it all out for you! Incessantly, Andrea, I hear your first, your
very first words. I believe I shall hear them at the moment of my
death----'
She panted and trembled, shaken by the force of all-conquering passion.
'Every day I love you more, every day more!'
He intoxicated her with words of honied sweetness; he was more fervent
than herself; he told her of his visions in the night of snow and of his
despairing desire and some plausible story of the roses and a thousand
other lyric fancies. He judged her to be on the point of yielding--he
saw her eyes swim in melting languor, and on her plaintive mouth that
nameless contraction which seems like an instinctive dissimulation of
the physical desire to kiss; he looked at her hands, so delicate and yet
so strong, the hands of an archangel, and saw them trembling like the
strings of an instrument expressing all the anguish of her soul. 'If,
to-day, I could succeed in stealing even the most fleeting kiss from
her,' he thought, 'I should find myself considerably nearer the goal of
my desires.'
But, conscious of her peril, she rose hastily with an apology and,
ringing the bell, ordered tea and sent to ask Miss Dorothy to bring
Delfina to the drawing-room.
'It is better so,' she said, turning to Andrea with the traces of her
agitation still visible in her face; 'forgive me!'
And from that day she avoided receiving him except on Tuesday and
Saturday when she was at home to every one.
Nevertheless, she allowed Andrea to conduct her on long peregrinations
through the Rome of the Emperors and the Rome of the Popes, through the
villas, the museums, the churches, the ruins. Where Elena Muti had
passed, there Maria Ferrès passed also. Often enough, the sights they
visited suggested to the poet the same eloquent effusions which Elena
had once heard. Often enough, some recollection carried him away
suddenly from the present and disturbed him strangely.
'What are you thinking of at this moment?' Donna Maria would ask him,
looking him deep in the eyes with a shade of suspicion.
'Of you--always of you!' he answered. 'I am sometimes seized with
curiosity to look into my own soul to see if there remains one tiny
particle that does not belong to you, one smallest corner still closed
to your light It is an exploration made for you, as you cannot make it
for yourself. I may say with truth, Maria, that I have nothing more to
give you. You have absolute dominion over me. Never, I think, in spirit
has one human being possessed another so entirely. If my lips were to
meet yours my whole life would be absorbed in yours--I believe I should
die of it.'
She had full faith in his words, for his voice lent them the fire of
truth.
One day, they were in the Belvedere of the Villa Medici and were
watching the gold of the sun fade slowly from the sky while the Villa
Borghese, still bare and leafless, sank gently into a violet mist.
Touched with sudden melancholy she said:
'Who knows how many times you have come here to feel yourself beloved?'
'I do not know,' he answered, like a man lost in a dream, 'I do not
remember. What are you saying?'
She was silent. Then she rose to read the inscriptions written on the
pillars of the little temple. They were, for the most part, written by
lovers, by newly-married couples, by solitary dreamers. All expressed
some sentiment of love, grave or gay; they sang the praises of a beauty
or mourned a lost delight; they told of some burning kiss or ecstasy of
languor; they thanked the ancient wooded glades that had sheltered their
love, pointed out some secret nook to the happy visitor of the morrow,
described the lingering charms of a sunset they had watched. All of
them, whether lovers or married, under the fascination of the eternal
feminine had been seized with lyric fervour in this little lonely
Belvedere to which they ascended by a flight of steps carpeted with moss
as thick as velvet. The very walls spoke. An indefinable melancholy
emanated from these unknown voices of vanished lovers, a sadness that
seemed almost sepulchral, as if they had been epitaphs in a chapel.
Suddenly Maria turned to Andrea. 'You have been here too,' she said.
'I do not know,' he answered again, looking at her in the same dreamy
way as before, 'I do not remember. I remember nothing. I love you.'
She read, written in Andrea's hand, an epigram of Goethe's, a distich,
the one beginning--_Sage, wie lebst du?_ Say, how livest thou? _Ich
lebe!_ I live! 'And were it mine to live a hundred, hundred years, my
only wish would be that to-morrow should be as to-day.' Underneath this
there was a date: _Die ultima februarii_ 1885, and a name: _Helena
Amyclæ_.
'Let us go,' she said.
The canopy of branches cast deep shadows over the little moss-carpeted
stairway.
'Will you take my arm?' he asked.
'No, thank you,' she replied.
They went on in silence. The heart of each was heavy.
Presently she said--'You were very happy two years ago.'
And he, persisting in his tone of reverie--'I do not know--I do not
remember.'
In the green twilight, the path was mysterious. The trunks and branches
of the trees were coiled and interlaced like serpents; here and there a
leaf gleamed through the shade like an emerald green eye.
After an interval of silence, she began again--'Who was that Elena?'
'I do not know, I have forgotten. I remember nothing but that I love
you. I love none but you. I think only of you. I live for you alone. I
know nothing, I wish for nothing but your love. Every fetter that binds
me to my former life is broken. Now I am far from the world, utterly
lost in you. I live in your heart and in your soul; I _feel myself_ in
every throb of your pulse; I do not touch you, and yet I am as close to
you as if I held you in my arms, pressed to my lips, to my heart. I love
you and you love me; and that has been for ages and will last for ages,
to all eternity. At your side, thinking of you, living in you, I am
conscious of the infinite--the eternal--I love you and you love me. I
know nothing else--I remember nothing else.'
On all her sadness, all her suspicions, he poured out a flood of warm
fond eloquence. And she listened, standing straight and slender in front
of the balustrade that runs round the wide terrace.
'Is it true? is it true?' she repeated, in a faint voice like the echo
of a moan out of the depth of her soul--'is that true?'
'Yes, it is true--and that alone is true. All the rest is a dream. I
love you and you love me. I am yours as you are mine. I know you to be
so absolutely mine that I ask for no caress; I ask for no proof of your
love. I can wait. My dearest delight is to obey you. I ask for no
caresses, but I can feel them in your voice, in your eyes, your
attitudes, your slightest movement. All that comes to me from you
intoxicates me like a kiss, and when I touch your hand I know not which
is greater, the rapture of my senses or the exaltation of my soul.'
He lightly laid his hand on hers. She trembled, drawn by a wild desire
to throw herself upon his breast to offer him, at last, her lips, her
kiss, herself. It seemed to her--for she believed blindly in Andrea's
words--that by so doing, she would bind him to her finally with an
indissoluble bond. She felt that she was going to swoon, to die. It was
as if the tumults of passion from which she had already suffered swelled
her heart and increased the present storm; as if, into this one moment
of time were gathered all the varying emotions she had experienced since
she first knew this man. The roses of Schifanoja bloomed again among the
shrubs and laurels of the Villa Medici.
'I shall wait, Maria. I shall be true to my promises. I ask nothing of
you. I wait and look forward to the supreme moment. That moment will
come, I know it, for the power of love is invincible. And all your
fears, all your terrors will vanish; and the communion of the body will
seem to you as pure as the communion of the soul; for all flames are
alike in purity.'
He clasped Maria's ungloved hand in his. The gardens seemed deserted.
From the palace of the Accademia came not a sound, not a voice. Clear
through the silence, they heard the lisp of the fountain in the middle
of the esplanade; the avenues stretched away towards the Pincio,
straight and rigid as if enclosed between two walls of bronze, upon
which the gilding of the sunset still lingered; the absolute immobility
of all things suggested the idea of a petrified labyrinth; the reeds
round the basin of the fountain were not less motionless than the
statues.
'I feel,' said Donna Maria, half-closing her eyes, 'as if I were on one
of the terraces at Schifanoja--far, far away from Rome--alone--with you.
When I shut my eyes, I see the sea.'
Born of her love and of the silence, she saw a vision rise up before her
and spread wide under the setting sun. Andrea's gaze was upon her; she
said no more, but she smiled faintly. As she uttered the two
words--'with you'--she closed her eyes, but her mouth seemed suddenly to
grow luminous as if on it were concentrated all the splendour veiled by
her quivering lids and her eyelashes.
'I feel as if none of these things existed outside of my consciousness,
but that you had created them in my soul, for my delight. I am
profoundly affected with this illusion each time I stand before some
spectacle of beauty and you are at my side.'
The words came slowly, with pauses in between, as if her voice were the
halting echo of some other voice imperceptible to the senses, imparting
to her words a singular accent, a tone of mystery, revealing that they
proceeded from the innermost depths of her heart; they were no longer
the ordinary imperfect symbols of thoughts, they were transformed into a
more intense means of expression, transcendant, quivering with life, of
infinitely ampler signification.
'And from her lips, as from a hyacinth full
Of honey-dew, a liquid murmur drops,
Killing the sense with passion, sweet as stops
Of planetary music heard in trance.'
Andrea thought of Shelley's lines. He repeated them to Maria, feeling
the contagion of her emotion, penetrated by the charm of the hour and
the scene.
'Never, in my hours of loftiest spiritual flights, have I attained to
such heights. You lift yourself above my sublimest dream, shine
resplendent above my most radiant thoughts; you illumine me with a ray
that is almost brighter than I can bear.'
She stood up straight and slender against the balustrade, her hands
clasping the stone, her head high, her face more pallid than on the
memorable morning when they walked beneath the flowering trees. Tears
filled her half-closed eyes and glittered upon her lashes, and as she
gazed before her, she saw the sky all rosy-red through the mist of her
tears.
The sky seemed to rain roses as on that evening in October when the sun,
sinking behind the hill at Rovigliano, lit up the deep pools in the
pine-wood. The Villa Medici, eternally green and flowerless, received
upon the tops of its rigid arboreal walls this gentle rain of
innumerable petals showered down from the celestial gardens.
She turned to go down. Andrea followed her. They walked in silence
towards the stairway; they looked at the wood that stretched between the
terrace and the Belvedere. The light seemed to stop short at the
entrance to it, where stood the two guardian statues, unable to pierce
the further gloom; and the trees looked as if they spread their branches
in a different atmosphere, or rather in some dark waters at the bottom
of the sea, like giant marine plants.
She was seized with sudden terror. Hastening towards the steps, she ran
down five or six and then stopped, dazed and panting. Through the
silence, she heard the beating of her heart like the roll of distant
thunder. The Villa Medici was no longer in sight; the stairway was
enclosed between two walls, damp and gray and with grass growing in the
cracks, gloomy as a subterranean dungeon. She saw Andrea lean down
swiftly to kiss her on the lips.
'No, no, Andrea--no!'
He stretched out his hands to draw her to him, to hold her fast.
'No!'
Wildly she seized one of his hands and carried it to her lips; she
kissed it twice--thrice, with frenzied passion. Then she fled down the
steps to the gate like a mad creature.
'Maria! Maria! Stop!'
They stood together before the closed gate, pale, panting, shaken,
trembling from head to foot, gazing at one another with wide distraught
eyes, their ears filled with the throb of their mad pulses, a sense of
choking in their throats. Then suddenly, with one impulse, they were in
each other's arms, heart to heart, lips to lips.
'Enough--you are killing me,' she murmured, leaning, half fainting,
against the gateway, with a gesture of supreme entreaty.
For a moment, they stood facing one another without touching. All the
silence of the Villa seemed to weigh upon them in this narrow spot
enclosed in its high walls like an open tomb. High above them sounded
the hoarse cawing of the rooks gathering on the roofs of the palaces or
crossing the sky. Once more, a strange fear possessed Maria's heart. She
cast a terror-stricken glance up at the top of the walls. Then, with a
visible effort she said quickly:
'We can go now; will you open the gate!'
And, in her uncontrollable haste to get away, her hand met Andrea's on
the latch of the gate.
As she passed between the two granite columns and under the jasmin,
Andrea said--'Look, the jasmin is just going to blossom!'
She did not turn but she smiled--a smile that was infinitely sad because
of the shadow cast upon her heart by the sudden recollection of the name
she had read in the Belvedere. And while she walked through the
mysterious gloom of the avenue, and she felt his kiss flame in her
blood, a ruthless torture graved deep into her heart, that name--oh,
that name!