The large clock with face all of blue and hours marked in gold, which
adorns the slender, upright spire of the English church, sounded ten;
its grave and harmonious tones spread themselves in long, far-reaching
waves from the Dorf upon the light and fresh morning air. Standing
at the door of the Hôtel Caspar Badruth, Lucio Sabini, who was just
dressed, aristocratically fashionable, with his slender, tall figure,
and calm and peaceful countenance beneath the brim of his soft, dark
grey felt hat, compared the time with his watch. With even and elastic
step, casting a limpid, tranquil glance, now at the bright celestial
blue of the horizon, now at the deep, dense greenery of the pines, now
at the bright green of the dewy meadows, regarding everything with
eyes that were kindly and at times full of tenderness, he descended
the footpath from the Dorf to St. Moritz Bad. Ahead of him a woman's
figure was also going with even step, in a costume of correct cut,
though perhaps a little severe, of a rather purple hue, with a white
hat surrounded by a purple veil. In the features and very fair hair,
proud profile, and pale cheeks he recognised the Comtesse Marcella de
la Ferté Guyon, a young French lady whom he knew slightly, from meeting
her for two or three years at St. Moritz, and who always exercised upon
him the attraction of silent and proud women who surround themselves
with mystery, to conceal a love, a sorrow, a tragedy, or even to hide
their aridness and coldness for all such things which for a long time
have been dead within them.
"Do I disturb you, madam?" he asked, placing himself beside the
Countess, after having greeted her, with the easy yet serious grace
that was particularly his.
"Oh, no!" she replied, with a very slight smile, both courteous and
proud. "I am going to St. Moritz Bad."
"So am I. You are going for a walk like me?"
"Like you, I think not," she murmured, but kindly.
"And why, Signora?"
The Countess was silent for an instant, as if hesitating in her reserve.
"I am going to church," she replied hurriedly, _sotto voce_.
"Ah," exclaimed the other, reproved, "is it a festival to-day?"
"No, it is not a feast day," she murmured, without adding anything
further.
"Are you going to the Catholic church of the Bad?"
"Yes; it is less full of well-known people, of smart people," she
murmured, with lowered eyes.
"I imagine, madam, that you will pray for all sinners?" he asked,
forcing a smile, to enliven the gloomy conversation.
"I try to," she replied vaguely.
"Then through you I am sure to obtain grace from Heaven," he concluded,
with a smile.
The lady glanced at him with her proud, already distant eyes, from
which in the past rivers of tears must have flowed, clouding them for
ever. Lucio bowed, pressed the hand she offered him, and left her,
walking a little more rapidly to get away and leave her in freedom.
"She is a tower of ivory, but so interesting," he thought, as he
lightly resumed his way in the soft air.
For an instant, moved by a keen desire to conquer and penetrate that
solitary, closed soul, he thought of getting Francis Mornand, who was
the fashionable chronicler of the Engadine, to tell him the private
history of the Comtesse Marcella de la Ferté Guyon, to lay siege to
that heart, and with a complete knowledge of its long agony, to obtain
a precious victory there, where no one should again penetrate. That
sudden and strange desire of his of conquest over the prisoner who
believed in her own freedom fascinated him. But a young woman's face
was smiling at him from some distance as she came towards him, and he
halted beside a young girl who was climbing towards the Dorf with rapid
steps, while her mother, a middle-aged woman, followed more slowly. She
was a girl of rare beauty, with large, dark eyes furnished with long,
dark lashes, a lovely mouth curved up a little at the corners, like that
of a Greek statue of Erigone, and a white complexion over which was
suffused a flush of health.
Still, every now and then the eyes became hard, with a scrutinising
glance--the mouth closed with a half-mocking and half-disdainful smile,
and her whole countenance, that resembled a flower of youth and beauty,
seemed a flower laden with poison. Lucio Sabini and Lia Norescu, a
young Roumanian, immediately plunged into a lively, gay, and slightly
sarcastic conversation, while the mother listened silently, with an air
of complacency and indulgence.
"Ah, here is our divine Lia!" Lucio exclaimed, as he held the little
gloved hand in his. "St. Moritz was dead without you."
"The Society For The Embellishment of St. Moritz made me come," she
replied, laughing; "the Kurverein wrote to me, and I couldn't resist."
"And how many suitors? How many flirts?"
"Many, far too many; I can spare some for other girls."
"New and old?"
"Many new and few old; nearly all new."
"Handsome, rich, amusing?"
"Nearly all tiresome."
And a gesture of contempt contracted her mouth, that so much resembled
a flower, and the eyes became wicked.
"And with whom are you flirting, Sabini?"
"I should like to flirt with you; but you have always spurned me."
"Always!"
"Even now?"
"Even now. Why don't you flirt with Madame Lawrence, the beautiful
Lawrence, the divine Lawrence, this year's professional beauty?"
"Thanks! She is too beautiful for me. Like you, she has twelve flirts."
"I have fourteen," replied Lia Norescu promptly, as she flashed her
magnificent eyes. "And Miss Clarke, with her dowry of fifty, one
hundred, or one hundred and fifty millions; why not pay court to her?"
Never in a soft womanly voice, in a voice young and sweet, in a French
pronounced exquisitely, hissed such irony and such bitterness.
"I do not pay court to millionaire girls," replied Lucio Sabini, a
little coldly.
"You court the others, the poor ones," replied Lia vivaciously; "but
you marry neither: you don't want to marry anyone."
"How do you know?"
"Oh, I am always well informed," replied Lia profoundly; "it is
impossible to deceive me."
"Then you are a girl without illusions?"
"I am a monster, Sabini; I have no illusions." And they left each
other, both laughing loudly and falsely at the last word. Ah, he knew
the secret of Lia Norescu, the beautiful Roumanian girl, who spoke and
wrote five languages perfectly, who was of high mettle, and who for
five years had been everywhere cosmopolitan society was to be found, at
Cairo, Nice, Rome, St. Moritz, Ostend, and Biarritz, in search of a
rich husband--very rich, immensely rich--for she had not even a penny
for a dowry. Her father and mother, her brothers and cousins, all urged
on the beautiful girl this marriage of money, and some of them, at an
immense sacrifice, provided the travelling expenses; some gave the
dresses, and some the cloaks and hats. Lia Norescu appeared everywhere,
like a flower laden with an irresistible attraction, followed by the
quiet and indulgent mother who adored her daughter, and everywhere she
had her court of admirers, an ever-changing court. No one held out
more than one or two seasons, all vanished and others appeared. But no
one remained, and the flower within her soul contained an ever greater
poison of disillusion.
"Poor little girl, poor little girl," murmured Sabini to himself,
with sincere sympathy, as he withdrew. He was sorry for that splendid
creature, forced at twenty-two to fight a hard fate without results,
when her beauty had the most imperious right to riches and luxury. And
softly his spirit fell in love with the idea of being able to offer
to the young woman of irresistible beauty the treasures of the earth,
of offering her a rich and powerful friend, or a brother of his, or
himself, perhaps, so that all the deep poison which rendered that
flower venomous might vanish, and Lia Norescu might be a colour, a
perfume, a splendour without cark and fret, without blemish.
By then his steps had absently led him to the meadows that surround the
Catholic church of St. Moritz Bad, and the soft grass bathed by dew,
and brushed by hidden rivulets, exhaled a pungent fragrance. Desirous
of sensations even more intense in their simplicity, he ascended a path
that leads to a wood dominating the lake. Already the path, in that
vivid, bright hour, in which the colour almost of heaven was reflected
on everything, with an air which to breathe was almost to drink the
elixir of life, was being traversed by men and women, in couples and
groups; some walking hurriedly in their desire to immerse themselves
in the shade of the wood, others more slowly, but nearly all silently.
Lucio Sabini's acute eye, on the alert for every fresh face, a lady's
especially, discovered here and there those who, as they traversed the
little path bathed by the sun, which further on penetrates beneath the
trees, as under a soft arch of verdure, carried in their hearts and
glances and actions the soft and exhilarating beginning of a little, or
perhaps a big love affair. Even more acutely he scrutinised the faces
and expressions of those who, tired and oppressed by a love declaration
too long prolonged, at which they had grown accustomed, now refreshed
and rested, were again joining hands up there, as they recognised the
clasp of yore amongst the protecting trees.
He entered the wood alone. A secret, biting nostalgia seized him
because of his solitude on that heavenly morning. More restlessly and
inquisitively his eyes sought those he met, the eyes of women and
girls who, dressed in white--graceful matutinal sprites--came and
went beneath the verdure of the trees, which here and there the sun's
rays rendered bright and yellow. In a corner of the wood, beneath a
lofty pine he discovered a well-known figure. The woman was seated
on a great white boulder, and with lowered eyes was tracing with her
parasol amongst the grass and stones some strange letters of a name
or a word. Approaching softly he recognised a Hungarian lady, who was
staying alone in the same hotel--a Clara Howath, who always appeared at
meal-times carrying a book which she read during the repast. She had
a rather dissipated face, with two vague, sad eyes and a little pale
mouth like a dead rose: she was fashionably dressed, as seemed natural
to her. Lucio drew nearer, and when he was close to the Hungarian lady
he noticed that she was weeping silently.
"Are you in trouble, Madame?" he asked in a low voice, discreetly.
Clara Howath showed no surprise at his approach, or that he should be
talking to her and asking her so much. She raised her tear-stricken
face, and replied naturally:
"Yes, Signor."
"Can I help you?" he insisted in an insinuating voice, slightly moved.
"No, Signor," she replied simply.
As he stood beside her and hid her from those who were passing in the
little path, he looked at her attentively. Her right hand was loaded
with precious stones, the other wore on the ring finger a gold circlet,
a love token.
"Have you lost someone--someone who was dear to you?"
Oh, what desolation there was in the woman's eyes as she raised them to
him, so supplicatingly and so desperately.
"Is he dead?" he asked, disturbed.
"No," she said, "I have lost him, but he is not dead."
The pale mouth was twisted in sorrow, as if she wished to stifle a
great cry, or a sob. Slightly pale, Lucio Sabini said in a low voice:
"I beg your pardon, Signora."
"It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter," she replied, with sad
sweetness, shaking her head.
Lucio Sabini's step became slower as he withdrew into the wood.
Suddenly the shining light of the sun amidst the high branches seemed
colourless to him, and feeble the twittering of the little birds among
the bushes, and languishing the flight of the white butterflies amidst
the fragrant clumps of wild mint and dark wild vanilla. His heart
contracted with sorrow for the strange lady, Clara Howath, whose name
alone he knew, whose deep grief, breathed forth from her soul, made
her no longer recognise either the shame of tears or womanly reserve,
to such an extent as to tell all her misery to a stranger in a public
road, amongst strange people passing and staring. He would have liked
to have been _the other_; he who was not dead but whom the deserted
woman had lost for ever. He would have liked to have been _the other_,
so far-off and forgetful, the traitor who had perjured himself and
forgotten; so that he might return to the wood, where the azure of the
firmament and the blue of the lake peeped amidst the trees, to take
that unhappy woman in his arms and kiss away her tears.
Drawing farther away he was once more Lucio Sabini, and the visions
seen that morning were already settling in his imagination; but still
more feverishly within him became the need of the unknown love, of the
unknown lady whom he had come to seek amongst the mountains, of the
woman whom he should love an hour, a day, a month, and whom he should
never see again, who perhaps might love him for a summer evening or a
summer morning: but an unknown woman of another land and another race.
Up above, in a remote corner of the wood, he halted and sat down on
a tree trunk, which perhaps had been struck down by lightning in an
autumnal storm, or perhaps had been transported from the heights of
Corvatsch by the fury of the torrent in winter. The trunk lay there
amongst the tall grass and rocks, the little violas with yellow eyes,
and tall and slender marguerites. Lucio sat down and drew from his coat
pocket a lady's purse which he had found the day before, towards dusk,
at the Dorf, in a solitary lane close to the tennis-courts. It was a
smallish purse of chain silver, with a broad encircling silver hinge
adorned with three large turquoises; a silver chain kept it suspended
through two rings. For the fourth time Lucio opened the lady's purse,
and again examined its contents, minutely and curiously. First of all
there was a little handkerchief of white cambric, adorned with a fine
embroidery of white flowers, and in the corner was a tiny initial--an
"L." From the cambric a subtle and feverish perfume exhaled: every
time as Lucio placed it to his nostrils he had a sense of delight. He
repeated the gesture, and again he had the same sensation. The purse
also contained, slipped through a gold ring, some charms in silver and
gold: a medal for a good journey with a figure of St. Christopher; a
golden olive, harbinger of peace; a little bluish-green scarab; another
medal with just a name inscribed and nothing else--Lilian; and a small
hand on which were engraved some oriental figures. One by one Lucio
for the fourth time passed these small jewels in review, turning and
returning them between his fingers, seeking to discover something
fresh. Then he set himself to study the last object which that feminine
purse contained.
The last object, the most mysterious and important, was a little
pocket-book of dark blue leather, closed by a slender silver pencil.
Inside, on the first page, was stuck down a four-leaved clover, a
little shamrock that had been sought for and found in the fields, and
after being dried, had been pasted on the first leaf, and underneath it
in fine letters, firm and long, was the name--ever that name--Lilian.
Many of the pages of the pocket-book were covered with lines of
writing, sometimes in ink, sometimes in pencil. They seemed to be
notes thrown there according to the day and the state of the soul.
Without stirring from his ruined tree trunk, the dark bark of which
was peeling, with his feet amidst the deep grass and woodland flowers,
Lucio re-read page for page what the unknown Lilian had written in
the pocket-book. A date in English on a page, a date which went back
two years, to December, and still in English, Portia's exclamation
in _The Merchant of Venice_: "The world is too heavy for my little
body." Further, still in English, a singular phrase: "One must wait in
hope and faith. _Someone_ will come: surely he will come." Then, in
a medley, the name of a French or German woman, with some address in
Paris or Vienna. On another page, another character, still feminine,
had written in English a farewell: "Dear, dearest Lilian, don't forget
me; I won't forget you," with a signature--Ethel. Lucio Sabini read
on with immense attention, examining the phrases, words, and letters,
seeking to divine even more than they said and showed. In French, on
another page, again in the writing of the mysterious one, were two
questions: "Must one live to love? Must one die to love?" And at last
on the penultimate page, in a scrawling writing, like a child that is
striving to write something he does not understand, in almost round
letters, was a verse of Dante's, copied with an orthographical error:
"_Amor che a cor gentil ratto si apprende._"
Each time at these words so vibrant with love's emotion which the
unknown woman's hand had copied letter for letter, which surely she
must have understood or someone have explained to her; at these words
of the poet Lucio Sabini trembled, charmed as he was by brief loves
encompassed by poesy, because of their mystery and their brevity.
Now there came the last page, where in haste the woman had written in
pencil in French: "How high and close to heaven are the mountains! I
should like to return here in winter, to the highest mountain, amidst
the whitest and purest snow...."
There was nothing else. Mechanically Lucio closed the book, replacing
the slender silver pencil. He replaced, too, the little cambric
kerchief, the charms, and the little book in the purse, thereby
stretching the clasp to close it. For some time, as he pursued his
fantasy, he dreamed of her who had lost that purse, and he saw in his
dream the figures of many ladies who surprised him and looked at him,
who smiled and beckoned to him to follow them, and each of them, it
seemed to him, might be the unknown Lilian; now dark and handsome, now
slender as a reed, now with eyes sky-blue and smiling, now with eyes
black and languishing.
Suddenly in the air the Dorf clock, blue with gilded hours, struck
ponderously and harmoniously half-past eleven. The sound spread itself
along the lake and in the woods. Lucio Sabini burst into laughter at
his dream and at himself. Perhaps--in fact surely--she who had lost the
purse so full of poetical matter, and bore the floral name of Lilian,
might be an English old maid, angular, with pince-nez. Lucio laughed at
himself and his dream, which melted in the clear air of that heavenly
morning.