I STAND AT A CROSS-ROAD
I did not go immediately to the Villa San Giorgio; it was necessary that
I should be clear why I was to go there at all. How did I stand with
regard to Donna Aurelia--did I love her still, or was I cured of my
wound? If I loved her, to go to her now were to play the criminal; if I
did not, it might be to play the fool.
Because--if I did not love her, why was I going? That is easily
answered. I was going because I suspected that all was not well with
her. Why was Donna Giulia in retirement? Why was the villa at the
disposition of the learned judge? Why was Sir John Macartney so guarded
in his admissions, and why so desirous that I should not see Count
Giraldi? Apart from my private grievance against that person, which,
after all, was only based on surmise and the convictions of Virginia, I
could see no possible reason why I should not meet him, but one. That
was, that he was fallen a victim to Aurelia's charms. And to a certain
extent I felt that I should be responsible for that misfortune, for if I
had never loved her she had never been in Florence; and if she had never
been in Florence, she had never seen this accomplished, scoffing,
cynical Tuscan.
I was not ashamed to confess that I still thought Aurelia the most
beautiful woman in the world, the most heavenly in conversation as in
person the most superb. All the old glamour was upon me still. I knew
that I should be a child at her knees the moment I set eyes upon her
again; I knew that I should be imparadised, longing after impossible
goodness, filled with impossible joys. But I knew also that I did not
desire her. She was sacred, she was so little of the earth that as well
might one hope to wed a seraph, all compact of fire, as she. I set by
her, in my mind's eye, that passionate Virginia--that faithful,
clinging, serving mate of what I knew were my happiest days. Ah, my
sweet, lovely, loving wife! Virginia's long kisses, Virginia's close
arms, her beating bosom, her fury of love, the meekness, obedience,
steadfastness into which it could all be changed at a mere lift of my
brows--ah, nuptial love, wedded bliss, the joys of home and the hearth,
English joys! Virginia meant all this and more to me. I swore to myself
that without her I could not live, that to deserve her I would renounce
the world, my patrimony, my country, and that not even a changed
Aurelia--changed from Seraph to calling Siren--could keep me from her
side.
But Aurelia--Aurelia Gualandi, that delicate flower of Siena, that
youngest of the angels, that fount of poesy--what of her? What had she
to say to such a certainty as this of mine? In my mind's eye I saw them
stand together, she and Virginia, those two beautiful girls, Virginia a
head the taller, proudly erect, with arms folded over her chest, and her
dark brows forming a bar across her forehead. I saw her in white bodice
and green petticoat, her arms and neck bare, her feet in old slippers,
her black hair loosely coiled and stuck with a silver pin. I saw her
hold herself aloof and dubious, proud and coldly chaste. "Call me and I
come," she seemed to say to me between her shut lips, "Call me and I
follow you over the world like a dog at your heels. Send me into infamy
and I go; expect me to woo you there and I will die sooner. Yours, if
you will have me; nobody's, anybody's, if you will not!" In my fancy I
could hear her very words, see her steady eyes, her pure and moving
lips.
And Aurelia--how did she stand there? I saw her too in my mind's eye;
dazzlingly, provokingly, like a creature of pure light, with thrown-back
head and parted lips, with jewels about her neck, as I had seen her in
the theatre at Siena; and jewels also in her hair. Like a queen of
beauty at a love-court, conscious of her power, loving it, proving it;
she smiled, she shook her cloudy tresses, she demanded my worship as of
right. "If I choose I shall call thee," she seemed to say, "and thee--
and thee--and thee again, to stand behind my chair, to kneel at my feet,
to be my slave. And wilt thou deny me, Francis--or thou--or thou?"
Her soft eyes, how they peered and sparkled! Her soft lips, how they
faltered between laugh and pout! "If I need him I can have him here," I
heard her say. "I have but to thrill his name--to call Checho--Checho--
and he comes. Is it not so, Checho? Is it not so?"
Call you me, Virginia; call you me in turn, my girl! What said she now
but, "Povera Virginia, che fara? Don Francesco non ti ama piu. Ebbene--
pazienza!" Virginia shrugged her proud shoulders and turned her grey
eyes away. Virginia refused to plead, and was too proud to command.
So stood I, In my fancy, irresolute between these two, their
battleground, the prize, it would seem, of one who now refused to fight
for it, and of one already sure of victory. But this was very odd about
the affair, that the stiffer Virginia grew, as I saw her there, the more
indurate, the more ruggedly of the soil, declining battle, the more
Aurelia shrank in my eyes, the less confident her call to me, the more
frail her hold of my heart. Virginia stood apart like a rock and turned
away her eyes from me. "Thou shalt seek me out of thine own will,
Francis, for I will never come to thee again of mine!" But Aurelia's
halo had slipped; her wings drooped lifeless, her glitter was dimmed.
Her appeal was now urgent; her arms called me as well as her voice; but
I seemed to shrink from them, as if there were danger in her.
This very singular hallucination of mine decided me to go, for now I was
curious. The strife, in which I had had so little to do, had been most
vivid, the parties to it so real, that there were moments when I caught
myself speaking aloud to one of my phantoms. That one was always
Virginia; therefore I dared to go, knowing full well that she would now
go with me.
And it was so. At six o'clock of an evening I went out of doors and
turned my face towards the east. It was a mild evening as that on which
I had seen Virginia for the first time in the wood, her faggot on her
head. I seemed to see her now going bravely before me. So clearly did
she show, I quickened my steps to overtake her; and again my heart beat,
and again I thought of the nymphs and all the soft riot of the woodland
scents and sounds. Strange! how the slim figure of the peasant-girl
possessed me. I thought of her as I entered the grove of cypresses which
led to the villa, and if my heart was in high trouble as I asked for
Donna Aurelia, it was the surmise that I should again see Virginia
fluttering among the trees that set my blood a-tingling.
But she left me there, as I waited in the saloon open to the shadowed
garden; and I knew not whether I felt her the more certainly for her
absence than for her former persistent company.