FATAL AVOWAL
I shall not deny that the overnight's tenderness may have wrought in me
the dangerous ecstasy which was to prove so cruel a requital of it; for
it is of the nature of love to be inflamed by the least hint of a
neighbouring, answering fire. I believe that I could have been for ever
Aurelia's mute, adoring, unasking slave, but for the fact that she had
sighed, and whispered me "Checho," and twice suffered me to kiss her
hands. Fatal benevolence that lifted suddenly the meek! Fatal wealth
bestowed that made the pauper purse-proud! I had passed the night in a
transport of triumphant joy; throughout the day succeeding it I felt my
wings. "Nunc," I could exclaim with Propertius.
"Nunc mihi summa licet sidera contingere plantis." And that exalted
strain, which was my perdition, alas, was hers also!
That which followed was a very hot still night, with thunder in the
Euganean hills; and Aurelia may have been lax or languid, or in my
miserable person some of the summer's fire may have throbbed. It was
late, near nine o'clock; already old Nonna had given three warnings of
the hour, and was only delaying the last while she stirred the
ingredients of the doctor's minestrone over the fire. The knowledge that
she must come in, and I go out, shortly, at any moment, fretted my quick
senses to fever. I looked for ever at Aurelia with a wildly beating
heart; she, on her side, was aware of my agitation, and breathed the
shorter for the knowledge. She sat by the open window mending a pair of
stays; at her side was her work table, upon that her three-wicked lamp.
I leaned over a chair exactly in front of her, watching every slight
tremor or movement, just as a dog watches a morsel which he longs for
but is forbidden to touch. Thrice a dog that I was! I felt like a dog
that night.
We had read little and spoken less; the airless night forbade it; for
the last half hour no words had passed between us but a faint, "Ah, go
now, go now, Checho," from her, and from me my prayer of "Not yet, not
yet--let me stay with you." Aurelia was tired, and now and again put
down her work with a sigh, to gaze out of the window into the soft deeps
of the night, gemmed as it was with fireflies and wavering moths. How
prone is youth to fatuous conceits! I imagined that she suffered with
me; I identified her pains with mine; I thought that she loved me and
had not the heart to bid me begone. That new wicked feeling of triumph,
that new exultation in manly strength, that delirium, that poisonous
frenzy, came flooding over me. Some gesture of hers more than commonly
eloquent may have set me on fire; I may have seen her tremble, I may
have guessed a tear. More insensate folly than mine can be lent by youth
on less security than this. For there sat I quivering with love, and
there before me, unlaced, in loose attire, in all the luxury of
lassitude, breathed and sighed the loveliest of women. I cannot explain
what I dare not extenuate: dowering her with my own madness, I forgot
her honour, my own, the world, and God. I leaned forward towards her,
took her languid hand, and, holding it in my own, said quietly--very
quietly, "I love you--you are my soul."
She laughed gently, then sighed. "You must not say so to me, even if it
is true," she said. I repeated the words, "I love you--you are my soul,"
and she was silent.
I said, after a pause, during which I could hear the furious beating of
my heart, "I am at my prayers, in my church, before my altar. Your eyes
are the candles, your heart is the altar stone. I kneel--" and I did
kneel. Then she grew alarmed, and was for stopping me.
"Checho," she said, "this is foolish, and I must not listen. I beg you
to get up; I know it is late. Please to ask Nonna what's o'clock. I am
serious."
"And I," I said, "am serious. The time is full--the time is now. Oh,
Aurelia," I said urgently, "my saint and my lamp--"
"Hush, hush," she said, and tried to regain her hand. "No, but you must
be quiet. Listen!" But I could not now be stopped.
"Oh," I cried out, "I have been silent too long, and now I must speak.
For six months I have been silent; but now there is death in silence. I
shall die of love, and it will be you that will have killed me." I knelt
again, and again said, "I love you."
"Oh, no, no," she said, but her protest was fainter. I repeated it, and
now she made no protest. God help me, I thought her won. I flung myself
violently near, and in my agitation knocked over my chair. As that fell
backwards, so fell I forwards to her knees. I clasped them closely,
studded kisses on her hands, I raised my face to hers, and saw her the
lovelier for her pale terror. She was speechless.
"Listen to me, Aurelia, youngest of the angels," I began, and just then
old Nonna burst in upon me crying "Ruin!" I sprang to my feet, and
Aurelia away, her work table went down, the lamp with it; we were all
three in darkness.
"Ruin!" said Nonna, "I tell you, ruin! That wretched boy--the padron is
on the stair."
Aurelia shrieked that she was undone; Nonna, who had flown back into the
kitchen, returned with a lamp. I saw my beautiful mistress distraught
and ran forward to comfort her. She shrank from me with horror, as well
she might. "Farewell, lady," I said, "I will go to meet what I deserve."
I took my cloak, hat and sword, and went to the door, but Nonna caught
me by the skirt, and, "Is he mad then?" she cried; and, "What are you
about, Don Francis? Will you meet the padron on the stair and let him up
to see this wreckage? Madonna purissima, what is one to do with a boy of
this sort?"
"Let me go," said I, "to my proper fate. I know very well what I have
done." It may be that I did, and I hope that I did; but very certainly I
did not know what to do next; nor did Aurelia. Sobbing and trembling she
lay upon Nonna's breast, imploring her to save us both. I heard the
professor clear his throat upon the floor below, and knew that I was too
late. Nonna took the command.
She flung open the door of the clothes-press, and, "In with you," says
she to me. "Little fool! a pretty state of things!" She turned to her
mistress, "Mistress, go you down and meet him. Keep him at the door--
hold him in talk--hug, kiss, throttle, what you will or what you can,
while I set this to rights." Aurelia, drying her eyes, flew to the door;
and Nonna then, taking me by the shoulders, fairly stuffed me into the
clothes-press, among Aurelia's gowns, which hung there demurely in bags.
"Keep you quiet in there, foolish, wicked young man," said she, "and
when they've gone to bed maybe I'll let you out. If I do, let me tell
you, it will be because you have done so much folly and wickedness as no
one in his senses could have dared. That shows me that you are mad, and
one must pity, not blame, the afflicted."
All this time she was working like a woolcarder at the disordered room,
but could not refrain her tongue from caustic comments upon my
behaviour. "Wicked, wicked Don Francis! Nay, complete and perfect fool
rather, who, because a lady is kind to you, believes her to be dying for
your love. Your love indeed! What is your precious love worth beside the
doctor's? Have you a position the greatest in the university? Have you
years, gravity, authority, money in the funds? Why, are you breeched
yet? Have you tired of sugar-sticks? What next?" So she went on
grumbling and scolding until the doctor came grunting to the open door
with Aurelia upon his arm.
He was, as usual, out of breath and angry. He was also, I judged,
embarrassed and fretted by the ministrations of Aurelia.
"My curse," I heard him say, "my undying curse upon the man who built
this house. Twice a day am I to scale a mountain? Wife, wife, you
strangle me!"
"Oh, dear friend! Oh, dear friend!" 'Twas the voice of Aurelia. "Are you
come back to your poor girl?"
"Hey," cried he testily, "do I seem to be absent? I wish you would talk
sense. These infernal stairs rob us all of our wits, it seems."
"I am very foolish," said Aurelia, and I heard her trouble in her tones.
"I have been waiting so long--so very long."
"There, my child, there," said he, and kissed her. "Now be pleased to
let me into my house." With a sigh, which I heard, she released him, and
he came stamping into the room. I trembled in my shameful retreat.
The reflections of a young man of sensibility, ear-witness against his
will of the chaste and sanctioned familiarities of a man and wife, must
always be mingled of sweet and bitter; but when to the natural force of
these is added horror of a crime and the shame arising from discovery of
utter delusion, the reader may imagine the stormy sea of torment in
which I laboured. In a word, I was to discover a new Aurelia--Aurelia
the affectionate wife, the careful minister; not the adored mistress of
a feverish boy, the heroine of a Vita Nuova, the Beatrice of a, I fear
me, profane comedy, the beloved of Aminta and the Pastor Fido. I own
that I was dismayed, wounded in my tenderest part, at the discovery.
Aurelia had suddenly become a stranger to my heart. I was nothing, less
than nothing, to her now that she was alone with her husband. Beside the
care of his appetite for food, my labours upon Guicciardini--the toil of
a month of nights--was as the work of an ant in the dust. Beside her
interest in his gossip of the schools, the coffee-house, the street
corner, my exposition of the Sonnets of Petrarca was as the babble of
school children at play in the Pra; beside her attentions to his clumsy
caresses, her tenderness to me hour after hour was but the benevolence
of a kindly woman to a lad left on her hands. Oh, bitter tonic
discovery! How bitter it was I leave my reader to determine. I do not
feel equal to the task of relating all that I overheard; if I could have
stopped my ears, I would have done it. She tempted him, beguiled him to
eat, to praise her, to be at ease, to love her. With that liquid tongue
of hers, which would have melted a flinty core, she talked of his and
her affairs; she was interested in his commentary upon the Pandects, she
was indignant at the jealousy of Dr. This, she made light of the malice
of Professor That. With flying feet from table to kitchen and back, with
dexterous hands at bottle, platter or napkin, she ministered to his
slightest whims. She refused to allow Nonna to wait upon him; she must
do everything for him for this once.
And when, amid his flung ejaculations and bolted mouthfuls, between his
"Non c'e male," his "Buono, buono!" his "Ancora un po'," or "Dammi da
here," he could find time to ask her what this new alacrity of hers
meant on such a hot night of summer, with a touching falter of the voice
I heard her reply, "It is because--it is because--I have not always been
good to you, Porfirio. It is because--of late--this evening--I have much
wished for you to be here. It is because---"
"Cospetto!" I heard the doctor cry, "what is the meaning of this? Come
here, my dear." And then, when she went to him and sat upon his knee, I
heard him murmur his endearments--ah, and I heard her soft and broken
replies! And I knew very well that in her heart she was reproaching
herself for what I alone had done, and by her humble appeal for kindness
was craving his forgiveness for offences for which I could never hope to
be forgiven.
These terrible discoveries, far from making me cease to love Aurelia,
increased incalculably while they changed and purged my love. Pity and
terror, says Aristotle in his Poetics, are the soul's cathartics. Both
of these I felt, and emerged the cleaner. By the tune Aurelia had coaxed
her husband to come to bed, and had gone thither, with a kiss, herself,
I was half way to a great resolve, which, though it resulted in untold
misery of body, was actually, as I verily believe, the means of my
soul's salvation. Without ceasing for a moment to love Aurelia, I now
loved her honestly again. I could see her a wife, I could know her a
loving wife, without one unworthy thought; I could gain glory from what
was her glory, I could be enthusiastic upon those virtues in her which
to a selfish lover would have been the destruction of his hopes. In a
word, I loved her now because she loved another.
There is nothing remarkable in my possession of feelings which no
honourable man should be without; nor can I see that what I was moved to
do, in consequence of having those feelings, was any way out of the
common. If the sweet subservience and careful ministry of Aurelia had
moved her husband's admiration, how much the more must they have moved
mine! And what is more natural to the ardent explorer than to announce
his discoveries? I had learned that I had loved an angelic being; what
wonder that I desired to inform the one person in the world who had a
right to know it, that such was my extreme privilege? Of this I am
content, reader, to be judged by thee. If my enthusiasm was extravagant,
surely it was pardonable. Judge me then as thou wilt, and as thou canst,
for the end of this chapter of my history is cardinal.
But there were these moving considerations also. If Aurelia had tacitly
reproached herself to her husband with what were my crimes, and only
mine--was it not my bounden duty to save her before it were too late?
Must I not avow what, as it seemed, she was on the point of avowing? If
she--pure innocent--believed herself guilty and needing forgiveness--
whereas I and I only was that monster--in a few moments' time, when she
should be with her husband in the innermost shrine of the Temple of
Hymen, I might be sure she would take upon herself the guilt, and alone
receive my punishment. Could I endure the thought of this, miserable
that I was? Could I suffer such a sacrifice and wear the livery of man?
I knew that I could not. "Out, therefore, of thy hiding-place, sinner,"
I bade myself, "and get the vice scourged out of thee."
These were a part of my reflections, this was my plain resolution.
Generous, honourable, they seemed to me then--honourable alike to
Aurelia and to her husband. The doctor had replenished his glass, and
was leaning back in his chair. He had released some of the buttons of
his vest, and they had flown to their repose. He was looking down at the
table, where he twisted the glass about; he was thinking of his wife, of
her sweet humour, innocence and purity--of everything which I so adored
and had dared to tarnish. He was frowning and smiling at once at his
thoughts. I heard him say to himself, "That's a good girl--that's a good
girl of mine"--when I walked out of the cupboard and stood, pale but
composed, before him at the opposite side of the table. Even then, so
absorbed he was in his mellow humours he did not hear me. "Eh, la
Madonna!" he mused--"as good as gold!" He stretched his legs out to the
full and glanced with lazy luxury round about his room. Then he saw me.