Lord Heathfield opened the great book-case containing his private
collection, and turning to Sperelli--
'You should design the clasps for this volume,' he said; 'it is in
quarto and dated from Lampsacus, 1734. The engravings seem to me
extremely fine. What do you think?'
He handed Andrea the rare volume, which was illustrated with erotic
vignettes.
'Here is a very notable figure,' he continued, pointing to one of the
vignettes--'something that was quite new to me. None of my erotic
authors mention it.'
He talked incessantly, discussing each detail and following the lines of
the drawing with a flabby white finger, covered with hairs on the first
joint and ending in a polished, pointed nail, a little livid like the
nail of an ape. His voice grated hideously on Sperelli's ear.
'This Dutch edition of Petronius is magnificent. And here is the
_Erotopoegnion_ printed in Paris, 1798. Do you know the poem
attributed to John Wilkes, _An Essay on Women_? This is an edition of
1763.'
The collection was very complete. It comprised all the most infamous,
the most refinedly sensual works that the human mind has produced in the
course of centuries to serve as a commentary to the ancient hymn in
honour of the god of Lampsacus, _Salve! Sancte pater._
The collector took the books down from their shelves and showed them in
turn to his 'young friend,' never pausing in his discourse. His hands
grew caressing as he touched each volume bound in priceless leather or
material. A subtle smile played continually round his lips, and a gleam
as of madness flashed from time to time into his eyes.
'I also possess a first edition of the Epigrams of Martial--the Venice
one, printed by Windelin of Speyer, in folio. This is it. The clasps are
by a master hand.'
Sperelli listened and looked in a sort of stupor that changed by degrees
into horror and distress. His eyes were continually drawn to a portrait
of Elena hanging on the wall against the red damask background.
'That is Elena's portrait by Frederick Leighton. But now, look at this!
The frontispiece, the headings, the initial letters, the marginal
ornaments combine all that is most perfect in the matter of erotic
iconography. Look at the clasps!'
The binding was exquisite. Shark-skin, wrinkled and rough as that which
surrounds the hilts of Japanese sabres covered the sides and back; the
clasps and bosses, of richly silvered bronze, were chased with
consummate elegance, and were worthy to rank with the best work of the
sixteenth century.
'The artist, Francis Redgrave, died in a lunatic asylum. He was a young
genius of great promise. I have all his studies. I will show them to
you.'
The collector warmed to his subject. He went away to fetch the portfolio
from the next room. His gait was somewhat jerky and uncertain, like that
of a man who already carries in his system the germ of paralysis, the
first touch of spinal disease; his body remained rigid without following
the movement of his limbs, like the body of an automaton.
Andrea Sperelli followed him with his eyes till he crossed the threshold
of the room. The moment he was alone, unspeakable anguish rent his soul.
This room, hung with dark-red damask, exactly like the one in which
Elena had received him two years ago, seemed to him tragic and sinister.
These were, perhaps, the very same hangings that had heard Elena say to
him that day, 'I love you.' The book-case was open, and he could see the
rows of obscene books, the bizarre bindings stamped with symbolic
decorations. On the wall hung the portrait of Lady Heathfield side by
side with a copy of Sir Joshua Reynolds's Nelly O'Brien. And the two
women looked out of the canvas with the same, self-same piercing
intensity, the same glow of passion, the same flame of sensual desire,
the same marvellous eloquence; each had a mouth that was ambiguous,
enigmatical, sibylline, the mouth of the insatiable absorber of souls;
and each had a brow of marble whiteness, immaculately, radiantly pure.
'Poor Redgrave!' said Lord Heathfield, returning with the portfolio of
drawings. 'There was a genius for you. There never was an erotic
imagination to equal his. Look! look! What style! What profound
knowledge of the potentialities of the human figure for expression.'
He left Andrea's side for a moment in order to close the door. Then he
returned to the table in the window and began turning over the
collection under Sperelli's eyes, talking without a pause, pointing out
with that ape-like finger the peculiar characteristics of each figure.
He spoke in his own language, beginning each sentence with an
interrogative intonation and ending with a monotonous irritating drop of
the voice. Certain words lacerated Andrea's ear like the sound of filing
iron or the shriek of a steel knife over a pane of glass.
And the drawings passed in review before him, appalling pictures which
revealed the terrible fever that had taken hold upon the artist's hand,
and the terrible madness that possessed his brain.
'Now here,' said Lord Heathfield, 'is the work which inspired these
masterpieces. A priceless book--rarest of the rare! You are not
acquainted with Daniel Maclisius?'
He handed Andrea the treatise: _De verberatione amatoria_. He had warmed
more and more to his subject. His bald temples were flushed, and the
veins stood out on his great forehead; every minute his mouth twitched a
little convulsively and his hands, those detestable hands, were
perpetually on the move, while his arms retailed their paralytic
immobility. The unclean beast in him appeared in all its brazen
ugliness and ferocity.
'Mumps! Mumps! are you alone?'
It was Elena's voice. She knocked softly at one of the doors.
'Mumps!'
Andrea started violently; the blood rushed to his head and drew a veil
of mist before his eyes, and there was a roar in his ears as if he were
going to be seized with vertigo. In the midst of the fever of excitement
into which he had been thrown by these books, these pictures, the
maddening discourses of his host, a furious instinct rose out of the
blind depths of his being, the same brutal impetus which he had already
experienced on the race-course after his victory over Rutolo amid the
acrid exhalations of his steaming horse. The phantasm of a crime of love
tempted and beckoned to him: to kill this man, take the woman by force,
wreak his brutal will upon her, and then kill himself. But it passed
rapidly as it had come.
'No, I am not alone,' answered the husband, without opening the door.
'In a few minutes I shall have the pleasure of bringing Count Sperelli
to you--he is here with me.'
He replaced the book in the book-case, closed the portfolio and carried
it back into the next room.
Andrea would have given all he possessed not to have to undergo the
ordeal that awaited him, and yet it attracted him strangely. Once more,
he raised his eyes to the crimson wall and the dark frame out of which
Elena's pallid face looked forth, that face with the haunting eyes and
the sibylline mouth. A penetrating and continuous fascination emanated
from that imperious image. That strange pallor dominated tragically the
whole crimson gloom of the apartment. And once again he felt that his
miserable passion was incurable.
'Will you come into the drawing-room?' asked the husband, reappearing in
the doorway perfectly calm and composed. 'Then, you will design those
clasps for me?'
'I will try,' answered Andrea.
He was quite unable to control his inward agitation. Elena looked at him
with a provocative smile.
'What were you doing in there?' she asked him, still smiling in the same
manner.
'Your husband was showing me some unique curiosities.'
'Ah!'
There was a sardonic sneer upon her lips, a manifest mocking scorn in
her voice. She settled herself on a wide divan covered with a Bokhara
carpet of faded amaranthine hues on which languished great cushions
embroidered with spreading palms of dull gold. Here she leaned back in
an easy, graceful attitude, and gazed at Andrea from under her drooping
eyelids, while she spoke of trivial society matters in a voice that
insinuated its tones into the young man's heart, and crept through his
blood like an invisible fire.
Two or three times, he surprised a look which Lord Heathfield fixed upon
his wife--a look that seemed surcharged with all the infamies he had
stirred up just now. Again that criminal thought sped through his mind.
He trembled in every fibre of his being. He started to his feet, livid
and convulsed.
'Going already?' exclaimed Lord Heathfield. 'Why, what is the matter?'
and he smiled a singular smile at his 'young friend.' He knew well the
effect of his books.
Sperelli bowed. Elena gave him her hand without rising. Her husband
accompanied him to the door, where he repeated in a low voice--'You
won't forget those clasps?'
As Andrea stood in the portico, he saw a carriage coming up the drive. A
man with a great golden beard nodded to him from the window. It was
Galeazzo Secinaro.
In a flash, the recollection of the May Bazaar came back to him, and the
episode of Galeazzo offering Elena a sum of money if she would dry her
beautiful hands, all wet with champagne, on his beard. He hurried
through the garden and out into the street. He had a dull confused sense
as of some deafening noise going on inside his head.
It was an afternoon at the end of April, warm and moist.
The sun appeared and disappeared again among the fleecy slow-sailing
clouds. The languor of the sirocco lay over Rome.
On the pavement in front of him in the Via Sistina, he perceived a lady
walking slowly in the direction of the Trinità. He recognised her as
Donna Maria Ferrès. He looked at his watch; it was on the stroke of
five; only a minute or two before the accustomed hour of meeting. Maria
was assuredly on her way to the Palazzo Zuccari.
He hastened forward to join her. When he reached her side, he called her
by name.
She started violently. 'What? You here? I was just going up to you. It
is five o'clock.'
'It wants a minute or two yet to the hour. I was hurrying on to receive
you. Forgive me.'
'But you seem quite upset and very pale. Where were you coming from?'
She frowned slightly, regarding him fixedly through her veil.
'From my stables,' Andrea replied, meeting her look unblushingly as
though he had not a drop of blood left to send to his face. 'A horse
that I thought a great deal of has been hurt in the knee--the fault of
the jockey--and now it will not be able to run in the Derby on Sunday.
It has annoyed and upset me very much. Please forgive me, I over-stayed
the time without noticing it. But it is still a few minutes to five.'
'It does not matter. Good-bye. I am going back.'
They had reached the Piazza del Trinità. She stopped and held out her
hand. A furrow still lingered between her brows. With all her great
sweetness of temper, she occasionally had moments of angry impatience
and petulancy that seemed to transform her into another creature.
'No, Maria--come, be kind! I am going up now to wait for you. Go on as
far as the gates of the Pincio and then come back. Will you?'
The clock of the Trinità de' Monti begun to strike.
'You hear that?' he added.
She hesitated for a moment.
'Very well, I will come.'
'Thank you so much! I love you.'
'And I love you.'
They parted.
Donna Maria went on across the piazza and into the avenue. Over her
head, the languid breath of the sirocco sent a broken murmur through the
green trees. Subtle waves of perfume rose and fell upon the warm, damp
breeze. The clouds seemed lower; the swallows skimmed close to the
ground; and in the languorous heaviness of the air there was something
that melted the passionate heart of the Siennese.
Ever since she had yielded to Andrea's persuasions, her heart had been
filled with a happiness that was deeply fraught with fear. All her
Christian blood was on fire with the hitherto undreamed-of raptures of
her passion, and froze with terror at her sin. Her passion was
all-conquering, supreme, immense, so despotic that for hours sometimes
it obliterated all thought of her child. She went so far as to forget,
to neglect Delfina! And afterwards, she would have a sudden access of
remorse, of repentance, of tenderness, in which she covered the
astonished little girl's face with tears and kisses, sobbing in horrible
despair as over a corpse.
Her whole being quickened at this flame, grew keener, more acute,
acquired a marvellous sensibility, a sort of clairvoyance, a faculty of
divination which caused her endless torture. Hardly a deception of
Andrea's but seemed to send a shadow across her spirit; she felt an
indefinite sense of disquietude which sometimes condensed itself into a
suspicion. And this suspicion would gnaw at her heart, embittering
kisses and caresses, till it was dissipated by the transports and ardent
passion of her incomprehensible lover.
She was jealous. Jealousy was her implacable tormentor; not jealousy of
the present but of the past. With the cruelty that jealous people
exercise against themselves, she would have wished to read the secrets
of Andrea's memory, to find the traces left there by former mistresses,
to know--to know--. The question that most often rose to her lips if
Andrea seemed moody and silent was, 'What are you thinking about?' And
yet, at the very moment of asking the question, a shadow would cross her
eyes and her spirit, an inevitable rush of sadness would rise out of her
heart.
To-day again, when he turned up so unexpectedly in the street, had she
not had an instinctive movement of suspicion? With a flash of lucidity,
the idea had leapt into her mind that Andrea was coming from the Palazzo
Barberini, from Lady Heathfield.
She knew that Andrea had been this woman's lover; she knew that her name
was Elena; she knew also that she was the Elena of the inscription--'Ich
lebe!' Goethe's distich rang painfully in her heart. That lyric cry gave
her the measure of Andrea's love for this most beautiful woman. He must
have loved her boundlessly!
Walking slowly under the trees, she recalled Elena's appearance in the
concert-hall and the ill-disguised uneasiness of the old lover. She
remembered her own terrible agitation one evening at the Austrian
Embassy when the Countess Starnina said to her, seeing Elena pass
by--'What do you think of Lady Heathfield? She was, and is still, I
fancy, a great flame of our friend Sperelli's.'
'Is still, I fancy.' What tortures in a single sentence! She followed
her rival persistently with her eyes through the throng, and more than
once her gaze met that of the other, sending a nameless shiver through
her. Later on in the evening, when they were introduced to one another
by the Baroness Bockhorst, in the middle of the crowd, they merely
exchanged an inclination of the head. And that perfunctory salutation
had been repeated on the rare occasions on which Maria Ferrès had joined
in any social function.
Why should these doubts and suspicions, beaten down and stifled under
the flood of her passion, rise up again now with so much vehemence? Why
had she not the strength to repress them or put them away from her
altogether? The least touch brought them up to the surface as lively as
ever.
Her distress and unhappiness increased with every moment. Her heart was
not satisfied; the dream that had risen up within her on that mystical
morning under the flowering trees in sight of the sea, had not come
true. All that was purest and fairest in that love had remained down
there in the sequestered glades in the symbolical forest that bloomed
and bore fruit perpetually in contemplation of the Infinite.
She stood and leaned against the parapet that looks towards San
Sebastianello. The ancient oaks, their foliage so dark as almost to seem
black, spread a sombre artificial roof over the fountain. There were
great rents in their trunks filled up with bricks and mortar like the
breaches in a wall. Oh, the young arbutus-trees all radiant and
breathing in the light! The fountain, dripping from the higher into the
lower basin, moaned at intervals, like a heart that fills with anguish
and then overflows in a torrent of tears; oh, the melody of the Hundred
Fountains in the laurel avenue! The city lay as dead, as if buried under
the ashes of an invisible volcano, silent and funereal as a city ravaged
by the plague, enormous, shapeless, dominated by the cupola that rose
out of its bosom like a cloud. Oh, the sea, the tranquil sea!
Her uneasiness increased. An obscure menace emanated from these things.
She was seized with the feeling of terror she had already experienced on
so many occasions. Across her pious spirit there flashed once more the
thought of punishment.
Nevertheless, the recollection that her lover awaited her, thrilled her
to the heart's core; at the thought of his kisses, his caresses, his mad
endearments, her blood was on fire and her soul grew faint. The thrill
of passion triumphed over the fear of God. She turned her steps towards
her lover's house with all the palpitating emotion of her first
rendezvous.
'At last!' cried Andrea, gathering her into his arms, and drinking the
breath from her panting lips.
He took one of her hands and held it against his breast.
'Feel my heart. If you had stayed away a minute longer, it would have
broken.'
But instead of her hand, she laid her cheek upon it. He kissed the white
nape of her neck.
'Do you hear it beat?'
'Yes, and it speaks to me.'
'What does it tell you?'
'That you do not love me.'
'What does it tell you?' repeated the young man, biting her neck softly
and preventing her from raising her head.
She laughed.
'That you love me.'
She removed her cloak, her hat and her gloves, and then went to smell
the bouquets of white lilac that filled the high Florentine vases like
those of the _tondo_ in the Borghese Gallery. Her step on the carpet was
extraordinarily light, and nothing could exceed her grace of attitude as
she buried her face in the delicate tassels of bloom.
She bit off the end of a spray, and holding it between her lips--
'Take it,' she said.
They exchanged a long, long kiss in among the perfume.
He drew her closer and said with a tremor in his voice, 'Come.'
'No, Andrea--no; let us stay here. I will make the tea for you.'
She took her lover's hand and twined her fingers into his. 'I don't know
what is the matter with me. My heart is so full of love that I could
almost cry.'
The words trembled on her lips; her eyes were full of tears.
'Oh, if only I need not leave you, if I could stay here always!'
Her heart was so full that it lent an indefinable sadness to her words.
'When I think that you can never know the whole extent of my love! That
I can never know yours! Do you love me? Tell me, say it a hundred, a
thousand times--always--you love me?'
'As if you did not know!'
'No, I do not know.'
She uttered the words in so low a tone that Andrea hardly caught them.
'Maria!'
She silently laid her head on Andrea's breast, waiting for him to speak,
as if listening to his heart.
He regarded that hapless head, weighed down by the burden of a sad
foreboding; he felt the light pressure of that noble, mournful brow upon
his breast, which was hardened by falsehood, encased in duplicity as in
a cuirass of steel. He was stirred by genuine emotion; a sense of human
pity for this most human suffering gripped him by the throat. And yet
this agitation of soul resolved itself into lying words and lent a
quiver of seeming sincerity to his voice.
'You do not know!--Your voice was so low that it died away upon your
lips; at the bottom of your heart something protested against your
words; all, all the memories of our love rose up and protested against
them. Oh! _you do not know_ that I love you!--'
She remained leaning against him, listening, trembling, recognising or
fancying that she recognised in his moving voice the accents of true
passion, the accents that intoxicated her and that she supposed were
inimitable. And he went on speaking, almost in her ear, in the silence
of the room, with his hot breath on her cheek and with pauses that were
almost sweeter than words. '--To have one sole thought, continually,
every hour, every moment--not to be able to conceive of any happiness
but the transcendent one that beams upon me from your mere presence--to
live throughout the day in the anticipation--impatient, restless,
fierce--of the moment when I shall see you again, and, after you have
gone to caress and cherish your image in my heart,----to believe in you
alone, to swear by you alone, in you alone to put my faith, my strength,
my pride, my whole world, all that I dream and all that I hope----'
She lifted her face all bathed in tears. He ceased to speak, and with
his lips arrested the course of the warm drops that flowed over her
cheeks. She wept and smiled, caressing his hair with trembling hands,
shaken with irrepressible sobs.
'My heart, my dearest heart!'
He made her sit down and knelt before her without ceasing to kiss her
lids. Suddenly he started. He had felt her long lashes tremble on his
lips like the flutter of an airy wing. Time was, when Elena had
laughingly given him that caress twenty times in succession. Maria had
learned it from him, and at that caress he had often managed to conjure
up the image of _the other_.
His start made Maria smile; and as a tear still lingered on her
lashes--'This one too,' she said.
He kissed it away, and she laughed softly without a thought of
suspicion.
Her tears had ceased, and, reassured, she turned almost gay and full of
charming graces.
'I am going to make the tea now,' she said.
'No, stay where you are.' The image of Elena had suddenly interposed
between them.
'No, let me get up,' begged Maria, disengaging herself from his
constraining arms. 'I want you to taste my tea. The aroma will penetrate
to your very soul.'
She was alluding to some costly tea she had received from Calcutta which
she had given to Andrea the day before.
She rose and went over to the arm-chair with the dragons in which the
melting shades of the _rosa di gruogo_ of the ancient dalmatic continued
to languish exquisitely. The little cups of fine Castel-Durante Majolica
still glittered on the tea-table.
While preparing the tea, she said a thousand charming things, she let
all the goodness and tenderness of her fond heart bloom out with entire
freedom; she took an ingenuous delight in this dear and secret intimacy,
the hushed calm of the room with all its accessories of refined luxury.
Behind her, as behind the Virgin in Botticelli's _tondo_, rose the tall
vases crowned with sprays of white lilac, and her archangelic hands
moved about among the little mythological pictures of Luzio Dolci and
the hexameters of Ovid beneath them.
'What are you thinking about?' she asked Andrea, who was sitting on the
floor beside her, leaning his head against the arm of her chair.
'I am listening to you. Go on!'
'I have nothing more to say.'
'Yes, you have. Tell me a thousand, thousand things----'
'What sort of things?'
'The things that you alone know how to say.'
He wanted Maria's voice to lull the anguish caused him by _the other_;
to animate for him the image of _the other_.
'Do you smell that?' she exclaimed, as she poured the boiling water on
to the aromatic leaves.
A delicious fragrance diffused itself through the air with the steam.
'How I love that!' she cried.
Andrea shivered. Were not those the very words--and spoken in her very
tone--that Elena had used on the evening she offered him her love? He
fixed his eyes on Maria's mouth.
'Say that again.'
'What?'
'What you just said.'
'Why?'
'The words sound so sweet when you pronounce them--you cannot understand
it, of course. Say them again.'
She smiled, divining nothing, and a little troubled, even a little shy,
under her lover's strange gaze.
'Well then--I love that!'
'And me?'
'What?'
'And me?----you----'
She looked down puzzled at her lover writhing at her feet, his face
haggard and drawn, waiting for the words he was trying to draw out of
her.
'And me?----'
'Ah! you----I love you----'
'That is it! That is it!--Say it again--again----'
She did so, quite unsuspecting. He felt a spasm of inexpressible
pleasure.
'Why do you shut your eyes?' she asked, not because of any suspicion in
her mind, but to lead him on to explain his emotion.
'So that I may die.'
He laid his head on her knee and remained for some minutes in that
attitude, silent and abstracted. She gently stroked his hair, his
brow--that brow behind which his infamous imagination was working.
Shadows began to fill the room, and the fragrance of the flowers and the
aromatic beverage mingled in the air; the outlines of the surrounding
objects melted into one vague form, harmonious, dim, unsubstantial.
Presently she said: 'Get up, dearest, I must go. It is getting late.'
'Stay a little longer with me,' he entreated.
He drew her over to the divan where the gold on the cushions still
gleamed through the shadows. There he suddenly clasped her head between
his hands and covered her face with fierce hot kisses. He let himself
imagine it was the other face he held, and he thought of it as sullied
by the lips of her husband; and instead of disgust, was filled with
still more savage desire of it. All the turbid sensations he had
experienced in the presence of this man now rose to the surface of his
consciousness, and with his kisses these vile things swept over the
cheeks, the brow, the hair, the throat, the lips of Maria.
'Let me go--let me go,' she cried, struggling out of his arms.
She ran across to the tea-table to light the candles.
'You must be good,' she said, panting a little still, and with an air of
fond reproof.
He did not move from the divan, but looked at her in silence.
She went over to the side of the mantelpiece, where, on the wall, hung
the little old mirror. She put on her hat and veil before its dim
surface, that looked so like a pool of dull and stagnant water.
'I am so loath to leave you this evening!' she murmured, oppressed by
the melancholy of the twilight hour. 'This evening more than ever
before.'
The violet gleam of the sunset struggled with the light of the candles.
The lilac in the crystal vases looked waxen white. The cushion in the
arm-chair retained the impress of the form that had leaned against it.
The clock of the Trinità began to strike.
'Heavens! how late! Help me to put on my cloak,' exclaimed the poor
creature, turning to Andrea.
He only clasped her once more in his arms, kissing her furiously,
blindly, madly, with a devouring passion, stifling on her lips his own
insane desire to cry aloud the name of Elena.
At last she managed to gasp in an expiring voice--
'You are drawing my life out of me.' But his passionate vehemence seemed
to make her happy.
'My love, my soul, all, all mine!' she said.
And again, blissfully--'I can feel your heart beating--so fast, so
fast.'
At last, with a sigh, 'I must go now.'
Andrea was as lividly pale and convulsed as if he had just committed a
murder.
'What ails you?' she asked with tender solicitude.
He tried to smile. 'I never felt so profound an emotion,' he answered.
'I thought I should have died.'
He took the bouquet of flowers from one of the vases and handed it to
her and went with her towards the door, almost hurrying her departure,
for this woman's every look and gesture and word was a fresh
sword-thrust in his heart.
'Good-bye, dear heart!' said the hapless creature to him with
unspeakable tenderness. 'Think of me.'