In the rather gloomy ante-chamber, papered as it was in old green
myrtle, and austerely furnished in dark carved wood, the electric light
was lit, but shaded by a milky, opaque globe. Francesco, the valet,
silent, discreet, correct as usual, helped his master, Lucio Sabini,
to take off his coat and freed him of hat, stick, and gloves. Lucio
entered with a more than ever tired and bored appearance, with a pale
and contracted face. In a quick, colourless voice he asked:
"Are there any letters?"
"One; I put it on the small table."
Lucio Sabini experienced a fleeting hesitation before he entered his
own apartment, which was a vast room where the shade of dusk was
spreading from three broad windows, two of which looked out on the
Lungarno Serristori and the third on to a little square, so that the
dark red, green, and maroon of the roomy, deep furniture--arm-chairs
and sofas in English leather--merged into the single tint of shadow,
and mixed with the mahogany, with an occasional gilt fillet, of the
large bookcases and big and little tables. Here and there only the
whiteness of a china vase, the gleam of a silver figure, the brightness
of a statue of Signa's were to be distinguished. But in spite of the
gloom which the dying day at the end of February caused in the room,
the oblong envelope of the letter shone clearly.
Slowly he advanced amongst the furniture, making for a large arm-chair
behind the writing-table, without lifting his eyes from the whiteness
of the letter. He threw himself into the chair, overcome, holding
the letter before him without touching it--and some minutes passed
thus. Suddenly he gave a start, sat up in his chair, put his hand on a
switch, and the electric light was lit in three or four large lamps.
Without touching it he saw that which he had guessed in the half-light,
Lilian Temple's writing and the envelope without a stamp.
"She is here ... she is here----" he stammered, growing very pale, and
speaking aloud.
His twitching hands touched the letter, but still without opening it:
beneath the envelope he found a long, narrow visiting-card. The card
said: "_Miss May Ford_," and in fine handwriting in pencil: "Will
return." He let his head sink on the arm of the chair as he held the
card in his fingers, which almost let it fall, and lapsed into thought
for some moments in the silence of the room. Mechanically he rang the
bell and started on seeing Francesco almost immediately before him on
the other side of the desk.
"This letter was brought by hand, wasn't it?" he murmured, looking at
the servant as if he saw him not.
"Yes, Excellency. It was left with the visiting-card."
"By whom?"
"By a lady, Excellency."
"A lady ... was she young?"
"No, Excellency."
"Was she alone?"
"Alone, Excellency."
"At what time?"
"At four o'clock."
"And what did you tell her?"
"That your Excellency usually returned about half-past six and nearly
always went out about eight to dinner."
"Ah!" exclaimed Lucio Sabini.
With a gesture he dismissed the man. Scarcely was he gone when Lucio
rose, a prey to a vain agitation; he went up and down the room as if
seeking something he found not, but without really looking for it; he
gazed around with dazed eyes, as if to question the farthest corners
of the vast room, he stumbled against some piece of furniture without
being aware of it, and touched two or three objects without seeing
them, replacing them where he had found them. Inevitably he returned
to his writing-table, his glance settled on the closed envelope
without the stamp, over which spread Lilian Temple's large, flexible
handwriting.
"She is here ... she is here----" he exclaimed desperately. Twice he
took the letter, turned it over, made as if to open it with a rapid,
despairing gesture; the second time he threw it down on the table as
if it burnt him. He passed into the adjacent room, his bedroom, and
turned on the light. The room seemed rather gay with its bright and
fresh-coloured Liberty silk, bright brass bed, fine lace curtains
and _partières_, and the lacquered wood of soft grey. He made for a
small desk, opened its largest drawer and drew it forth. It was full
of Lilian Temple's letters, written on fine sheets of foreign paper,
very voluminous in character, which were crossed horizontally and
vertically. Beneath them a large envelope was hidden where surely
would be a portrait, or perhaps several portraits, of Lilian Temple;
but quite in the front of the drawer there was a large bundle of
unopened letters, like the one he had left on his writing-table in
the _salotto_. With a slightly trembling hand he pushed back all the
leaves which were issuing in confusion from their opened envelopes
and passed them to the back, hiding especially the large wrapper with
the photograph, from which he averted his eyes. He separated all the
unopened letters, and counted them twice, as if he thought that he was
mistaken. There were fourteen. Fourteen letters from Lilian Temple
which he had not opened: he looked at the one which seemed the oldest
in date, and he seemed to read on the English stamp the date of the
26th of December. In three months Lilian had written him fourteen
letters which he had not read, because he had not opened them; and the
last ones he had thrown away so rapidly without looking at them that
he had not even the stamp or date of departure. For some moments he
stood by the open drawer. An agonising uncertainty was to be read on
his face: two or three times he made as if to take the closed packet of
letters and open one, or some, or all of them; but two or three times
he hesitated and repented. At last he shrugged his shoulders roughly,
pushed back the drawer and closed it. A dull noise at his shoulder made
him turn round:
"Miss Ford is asking from the 'Savoy' if Signor Lucio Sabini has
returned, and if he can receive her at once," demanded Francesco.
"Did you reply that I had returned?" asked Lucio, biting his lips a
little.
"I replied that your Excellency had returned," said Francesco, "but
nothing else."
"Say that I am expecting Miss Ford at once."
Dazed, he passed a hand over his forehead, as if wishing to resume the
direction of his tumultuous thoughts: he strove to impress there an
energy that should arouse his lost will. But his thoughts and will lost
themselves in great tumult and disorder around this idea, these words:
"If _she_ were to come too; if _she_ were to come with her."
Like an automaton he passed again into his room. With a rapid gesture
he hid the unopened letter, the fifteenth, the last from Florence.
He moved some chairs to occupy his hands; for a moment he leant with
his burning forehead against the glass of his bookcase, hiding his
face. But the sound of the bell in the anteroom startled him from his
abandonment.
He jumped up, composed and tranquil, advanced to the door, and bowed
deeply to Miss May Ford, who entered, announced by Francesco. Kissing
the grey-gloved hand which the Englishwoman extended to him, he led
her to a chair and sat down opposite her, turning his shoulders to the
large lamp on the writing-table so as not to show his face. Dressed
in grey with a black hat, Miss May Ford showed an imperturbable face,
whence had escaped every expression of the amiability of a former
time--a tranquil, cold, imperturbable face.
"Welcome to Florence, Miss Ford."
"How do you do, Signor Sabini? Are you quite well?"
"Yes--thanks."
"Have you been keeping well?"
"No," he murmured, "I have been indisposed for some time, for a month."
"Oh, dear," exclaimed Miss Ford, with a conventional intonation of
regret. "I hope you are all right now."
"I am all right now, thanks," replied Lucio coldly, perceiving that she
did not believe him.
They exchanged a rapid glance. He was the first, with an effort of
will, to question her:
"Are you alone, Miss Ford?"
"How alone?" she asked, pretending not to understand.
"Isn't your travelling companion with you?" he asked, with difficulty
suppressing his emotion.
"She is not with me," she replied coldly.
"Isn't she in Florence?" he asked again, unable this time to conceal
his anxiety.
For a moment Miss Ford hesitated. Then she replied again:
"She is not in Florence."
"Ah," he exclaimed, with a deep sigh, "and where is she?"
Miss Ford scrutinised him with a long glance: then she said:
"Don't _you_ know where Lilian Temple is?"
Beneath that glance, and at those words, he was lost and showed his
loss. He stammered:
"I don't know: how could I know?"
"But you ought to know," added Miss Ford, looking at him.
"That is true; perhaps I ought to know," he replied, without
understanding what she said.
"In her letters she always told you what she was doing, and where she
was going," added the old maid, in a firm, precise tone.
"Yes," he replied, throwing her a desperate glance.
Miss Ford lowered her face behind her black veil and became silent, as
if she were gathering together her ideas. Confronted with her, silent
and convulsed, Lucio Sabini waited for her words, incapable of saying
anything unless he were asked. Then she asked him calmly, with cold
courtesy:
"Will you be so good as to answer a few of my questions, Signor Sabini?"
He looked at her; and his eyes, the eyes of a man who had lived,
enjoyed, and suffered much, almost besought her to have mercy. She
averted hers naturally and asked:
"Do you remember that you left us, Signor Sabini, on the 20th of
September? Do you remember that you told Lilian--the last words on the
companion-way of the steamer as you were leaving--that you expected her
soon, as soon as possible, in Italy?"
What anguish there was in the man's eyes which were fixed pleadingly on
the woman, as if to beseech her to spare him that cup; what anguish as
he bowed assent.
The Englishwoman continued coldly: "Afterwards she wrote to you very
often from England. You replied promptly and often in long letters. Is
that so?"
"It is so," he answered, in a weak voice.
"I don't know Lilian's letters or yours. I know that you always wrote
that you wished to see her again, that you would come to England or
that she should come to Italy. Is that true?"
"It is true," the man consented, weakly.
There was an instant of silence.
"Later," resumed Miss Ford, "you began to reply less frequently, and
more curtly. At last you spoke no more of your journey to England nor
of Lilian's to Italy."
"I spoke no more of it," he consented, with bowed head.
"Finally you ceased to write to Lilian. It is three months since you
have written to her."
"It is three months," he said, like a sorrowful echo.
Miss May Ford made her inquiry with perfect composure and courtesy,
without any expression manifesting itself on her face, without any
expression passing into her voice. Only she kept her eyes on those of
Lucio's, her limpid, proud English eyes, which spoke truth of soul and
sought it in the sad, furtive eyes of Lucio Sabini.
"Then," resumed the Englishwoman, "as my young friend had no reply to
her letters, and as I was here in Florence, she begged me to come and
find you and to ask you for this reply."
"Have you come on purpose?" he asked disconsolately. "Did you make the
journey on purpose?"
"Oh, no!" replied Miss Ford at once, punctiliously. "Not on purpose! I
am here for my pleasure, and my friend sent me to you for an answer."
"But what answer? Whatever answer can I give Lilian Temple, Miss Ford?"
the man cried, in great agitation.
"I don't know. You ought to know, Signor Sabini," she replied boldly.
"An answer, I suppose, to her last letter."
"Which last letter? Which?"
"That of to-day: that which I brought you," concluded Miss Ford simply.
He leant forward for a moment in his chair, then fell back suddenly,
overcome. And the sad confession escaped almost involuntarily from his
lips:
"I haven't read it."
"You haven't read it, Signor Sabini?" asked Miss Ford, with her first,
fleeting frown.
"I haven't read it," he again affirmed, with bowed head.
"Oh!" only exclaimed Miss Ford, in a tone of marvel and incredulity.
Lucio rose; with trembling hands he sought in his writing-table, took
the closed letter and showed it to the Englishwoman.
"Here it is, untouched. I haven't read it; I haven't opened it."
"Why?" asked May Ford coldly.
"Through fear, through cowardice," exclaimed Lucio Sabini crudely.
Miss Ford was silent, with lowered eyes; her gloved hands grasped the
handle of her umbrella. And Lucio, deciding to stretch, with his cruel
hands, the wound from which his soul was bleeding, continued:
"Through fear and cowardice I did not open this letter to-day from
Lilian Temple, as I have not done for nearly three months--please
understand me--I have opened none. You do not believe me? It is not
credible? I will fetch her letters."
Convulsively he vanished into the other room and reappeared immediately
with the fourteen sealed letters and threw them into Miss Ford's lap.
"There they are. They are all I have received since December: I haven't
read them, I tell you, nor opened them. It is abominable, but it is so;
it is grotesque, but it is so! I am a man, I am thirty-five, I have
seen death, I have challenged death, but I have never dared for three
months to open a letter from Lilian. I have no longer had the courage.
In fact, the abominable cruelty in not reading what she wrote me, the
infamy and grotesqueness of not opening the envelopes, the ignoring of
which I believed myself incapable, the cruelty for which I hate and
despise myself, I have done through fear and cowardice and through
nothing else. Do you understand me?"
Slowly Miss Ford took the letters, one by one, read their addresses,
and placed them one on the other in order. Raising her head, she asked,
with great, even greater coldness:
"Fear? Cowardice?"
"Yes! Through fear of the suffering caused to myself and others,
through not wishing to suffer or know suffering, or see, or measure the
sufferings of others."
"Suffering? Sorrow?" again asked the cold voice of the Englishwoman.
"I suffer like one of the damned, Miss Ford," he added gloomily.
"Ah!" she exclaimed, with colourless intonation.
"And Lilian also suffers! Isn't it true that she suffers?"
"Yes, I believe she suffers," exclaimed Miss Ford, glacially.
By now she had made a pile of the fourteen sealed letters, and raising
her head she said to Lucio Sabini:
"Must I take back all these letters, then, to my friend, so that she
may see and understand, Signor Sabini? Give me the last as well and I
will go."
And she made as if to rise and depart with her pile of letters, without
further remark.
"Then Lilian is here?" cried Lucio Sabini, drawing near to the English
lady, again convulsed. "She is here. Tell me that she is here."
Miss Ford hesitated a moment.
"No, Lilian is not here," she affirmed tranquilly.
"Ah, if only she were here, if only she were here!" he cried, hiding
his face in his hands.
"Would you look for her, Signor Sabini? Would you see her? Would you
speak with her?"
As one in a dream he looked at the Englishwoman: and at each question
his face, contracted by his interior anguish, seemed discomposed.
"No," he replied in a slow, desolate voice. "No, I would not seek her
out; I would not see her; I would not speak with her."
"Ah!"
"I must never see Lilian Temple again," he added, opening his arms
desolately.
"Never again, Signor Sabini?"
"Never again."
"But why?"
He made a despairing but resolute movement.
"I am not free, Miss Ford."
"You have a wife?" and the Englishwoman's voice seemed slightly
ironical.
"No, I haven't a wife; but I am even more tied and bound than if I had
one."
"I don't know; I don't understand," she said.
"One sometimes leaves and deserts a wife. A lover is much more
difficult. Sometimes it is impossible. It is impossible for me: I am a
slave for ever."
He spoke harshly and brutally; but as if he were using such harshness
and brutality against himself. In the light dimmed by the shades, it
seemed as if a slight blush had spread over Miss Ford's pale face.
The glaciality of her voice diminished: it seemed crossed by a subtle
current of emotion, where also there was embarrassment, stubbornness,
and pain. Miss May's questions were slower and more timid, more
hesitating in some words, more broken with short silences, as if she
had scarcely resumed the interrogation. Lucio's replies were precise,
rough, gloomy, as if directed to a mysterious inquisitor of his soul,
as if to his very own conscience.
"Isn't this person, this woman, free?"
"She is another's wife. Together we have betrayed a man's confidence."
"Do you adore this woman?"
"I adored her ten years ago. Now I adore her no more; but I am hers for
ever."
"Then you love her very much?"
"I loved her with an ardent love. Now I no longer love her; but I am
her slave."
"Does she love you?"
"She did adore and love me; but now no longer. Though without me she
could not live."
"Are you sure?"
"I am sure. Beatrice Herz would prefer death to being deserted."
"But why?" exclaimed the Englishwoman, moved at last.
"Because we committed the sin of adultery."
"Oh!" she exclaimed, blushing furiously, and with a gesture that asked
to be told no more.
"Ah, I beg your pardon, Miss Ford," exclaimed Lucio with a new
exaltation, "I beg your pardon, if I offend your chastity and
scandalise your modesty. But since you are here, Miss Ford, and since
I shall not see you again, or again have before me a good, upright
soul like yours, and since you will never again see the wretch before
you, let me tell you, in the bitterest, most terrible words, all my
horrible misery! Miss May, God is right, religion is right; one must
not commit adultery. He who commits this fascinating sin pollutes
his life indelibly, destroys his happiness, sows ashes in his heart,
and gathers the fruits of the Dead Sea and poison. One must not
commit adultery. Ten years ago Beatrice Herz was so beautiful: I was
so passionate! The intoxication that joined us and exalted was so
incomparable! Ah, don't draw back, I beg of you; listen to me to the
end. I don't wish to exalt error, but blame it; I wish not to raise
up sin, but vilify it; I do not wish to tell to myself, now too late,
what an abomination was that fraud, what a shame that betrayal; I only
wish to cry out to others, unconscious, trusting blindly in themselves,
what a death in love, what a death in life is adultery. We loved each
other for a year, Beatrice and I; but for this year we threw away our
youth, our happiness, our liberty. A year of sin, Signorina, is a year
of servitude, of misery, of shame. Ah, I have never so much cursed and
execrated my sin as when Lilian Temple appeared to me."
May Ford trembled, and started: her attention seemed more intense.
"Lilian! Lilian!" he exclaimed, rising, as if in a vision, as if
holding out his arms to a phantom; "a creature of twenty, of rare
beauty, all delicacy and grace; a loyal heart, proud and sweet, like
a precious treasure opened for me; a loving, pure soul, a flower
of freshness and virginity. Purity and candour, love and ardour
together--Lilian! Lilian! To me this creature came full of every
fascination; to me she came with her eyes that in their blueness opened
to me the way of heaven, with her lips that smiled at me and called
me, with hands that were stretched out to me laden with every gift,
her beautiful hands that wished to give me everything, even the very
hands themselves; to walk with her for ever, step by step, until death.
Lilian! Lilian! You who came to me to be mine, you who were given to
me by God, you who were mine--Lilian.... And I believed that I could
deserve you, that I could have you; Lilian, whom I gathered that you
might be my bride, my companion, my good--so I believed."
Like a child, Lucio Sabini threw himself on a sofa, his head buried in
his arms, as he wept and sighed.
Miss May Ford rose and went to him, but without bending or touching
him, she said anxiously:
"Why are you crying?"
He jumped up and raised his head, showing a face convulsed with grief
and furrowed by tears.
"I weep because I have been deceived, because I am profoundly
disillusioned; because I deceived an innocent girl, because I lied
to myself, in suddenly believing myself free to love and be loved;
because I erred, believing that there was still time to live, to live
again--while it was too late."
"Too late?"
"Yes. Sin has devastated me; sin has reduced me to slavery. I am not
worthy of freedom, of love--of Lilian."
"And what must _dear_ Lilian do?" And at the adjective Miss Ford's
voice trembled for an instant.
"She must forget me. She must! Tell her that I am too old for her at
twenty; that I am as arid as pumice-stone; that I have neither youth,
nor health, nor strength, nor joy to offer her beauty, her fascination,
and her goodness; that I am no longer capable of love, or enthusiasm,
or fidelity, or devotion. Tell her all that! She must forget me--she
must. I am a ruined, devastated, dead being; nothing could arouse
me. Tell her that! Let her forget me; let her forget the man who is
undeserving of her, who has never deserved her; let her forget the
being who has scorched his existence at every flame; let her forget the
man who has neither faith, nor courage, nor hope--let her forget me.
Tell her who I am and what I am. Tell her even worse things, that she
may forget me."
"She will not believe me," replied Miss Ford slowly. "Thus she did not
know you in the Engadine."
"The man of the Engadine was a phantom," again cried Lucio excitedly.
"He was a phantom, another myself, Miss May; another--he of ten years
ago--of once upon a time, a phantom that felt itself born again,
living again, having form and substance, blood and nerves, being full
of immense hope and certainty. In that wondrous land, and beside a
wondrous creature, in the presence of an indescribable beauty of things
and the perfect beauty of a girl, amidst the flatteries of light, and
air, and flowers, of the fragrance, glances, and smiles of a dear
lady, that phantom had to become a man again, had to be the man of
formerly, strong in sentiment, strong in desire, strong in the new
reason for his life. He had to be; he had to be! Who would not have
cancelled ten years of sin and slavery in an hour, in a minute, up
there amidst everything lofty and pure, white and proud, beside a soul
so pure and ardent as Lilian's? Who would not have been another being?
Who would not have honestly believed he was another being? She knew a
phantom--tell her that! He has vanished, with every false, fleeting
form of life, with all his hopes and desires. The wretched phantom
vanished in a moment."
"When?"
"On the pier at Ostend, while your boat, as it cleaved the mist, bore
you back to England."
Exhausted, frightened, he fell back on the sofa, and scarcely breathed.
Standing silently and thoughtfully, Miss May Ford seemed to be waiting
for the last words. He raised his head. The tears were dried on his
flushed cheeks.
"Tell her to forget me," he resumed in a hard voice, "to fall in love
with someone as young as she is, with an honest young Englishman, sane
of spirit as she is; with a young Englishman, loving and pure as she
is. Let her fall in love with this Englishman, and marry him."
"I do not know if she can do that, Signor Sabini."
"Do you believe that she will not succeed in forgetting me?" he asked,
again in anguish.
"I do not know," she replied, shaking her head. "I do not know all the
depths of her heart."
"Do you think she loves me very much? That she loves me too much?" he
asked with emotion, taking her hands.
"I am ignorant as to how much she loves you. She has not told me. We
don't discuss these things in England," added Miss Ford quickly.
"Six weeks together," he murmured thoughtfully, "only six weeks, and a
girl of twenty. It is impossible for her to be too much in love with
me."
"Let us hope so, if only we may hope so," replied Miss Ford.
"I hope so, I believe it; it must be so. Lilian must be loved by
another; she must be happy with another, and forget her shadow of love
in the Engadine, her phantom of the Engadine."
The colloquy was ended. The last words came from the lips of the quiet,
good Englishwoman.
"Won't you now content my friend, Signor Sabini? Won't you give me a
reply to her letter? To the letter I brought you to-day?"
Uncertainly and anxiously he took the letter which remained abandoned
on the writing-table. With a rapid movement he tore open the envelope.
It contained the following few words in English:
"My love; tell me if you ever loved me, if you still love me. I shall
always love you.-- LILIAN."
Lucio read aloud the few simple, frank words, the tender question, the
deep promise. And all the amorous life of the Engadine reappeared to
him, in all its most intimate and invincible attraction. His whole soul
reeled, his heart broke.
"Tell her how much I loved her, Miss May; tell her how much I still
love her; that far-away and all the time I shall always be hers. Tell
her that; it is the truth. I have never deceived her. That is the
answer, the only answer."
Thus he besought May Ford, with anxious eyes and trembling lips, in a
cry that arose from the innermost depths of his heart, that the cry
might reach even to Lilian.
"I can't tell her that," replied Miss Ford gravely, "I will not tell
her that."
"But why not; if it be the truth? Why not?"
"If I tell her, Signor Sabini, she can never forget you, she will never
cease to love you. She must never know that you love her."
"Indeed, indeed!" he replied sadly, "and how could she ever understand,
she who is innocent, simple, and pure, that I can love her and yet fly
from her; that I can love her and remain with Beatrice Herz? That is my
inexorable condemnation--Lilian can never understand."
"Signor Sabini, tell me the only thing necessary for her to forget;
something short and convincing that can turn Lilian."
Miss Ford sighed, as if she had talked too much and expressed too much.
"One thing only, then," said Lucio Sabini firmly. "You shall tell her
simply that a woman has been mine for ten years, that she has loved me
very much, and keeps me as if it were her life itself, and that if I
left her she would die. I remain with her so that she may not die."
"Must I say that she would die?"
"You must say that. If Lucio Sabini were to desert Beatrice Herz she
would kill herself."
"She would kill herself; very good."
Bowing composedly to Lucio, Miss May Ford turned her back and left with
calm steps.
* * * * *
On the following day Lucio Sabini hovered round the precincts of the
Savoy Hotel like a child, turning his back if he saw a carriage leaving
or arriving, disappearing into a shop if he saw the omnibus full of
travellers leaving, vanishing into an adjacent street whenever he saw
a lady or two ladies leaving or entering. He did not see Miss May Ford
either leave or enter at any time, and he dared not enter the vestibule
of the hotel to ask if she had left, or were leaving soon. He ended by
withdrawing, and almost flying from the neighbourhood of the hotel,
where his soul indicated to him the presence of Lilian Temple. In the
tepid, odoriferous hour of sunset, he went to the Cascine, drove, as
every day, to the Viale Michelangelo, and at every carriage he met, in
which from afar he seemed to perceive two ladies, he trembled, jumped
up, and was about to tell his coachman to turn round. Those who greeted
him in that sunset were not recognised by him; she for whom he had
sacrificed Lilian Temple waited for him in vain towards half-past six,
for the very short daily visit which he paid her to take the orders for
the evening. At nine in the evening he was beneath the portico of the
Florence railway station, hidden behind the farthest of the columns
which support it, watching the arrival of the travellers' carriages
and hotel omnibuses for the departure of the express to Bologna and
Milan in connection with the Gothard train for France. It still wanted
three-quarters of an hour; every five minutes he drew out his watch
nervously. His eyes watched, in the obscurity, the corner of Santa
Maria Novella, whence the carriages and omnibuses reach the station; at
some moments his impatience had no bounds. However, he kept himself
closely hidden behind the pillar with the collar of his overcoat
raised, as if he were cold, and with the rim of his black hat lowered
over his eyes; only his eyes lived ardently within him, through his
scorched soul, which waited, invoked, and knew that Lilian was about to
appear. Twice Miss Ford had denied Lilian's presence in Florence, but,
like all Englishwomen who know not how to tell a lie, she had hesitated
for a moment before pronouncing the lie. All Lucio's mind palpitated
with the anxiety of waiting behind the pillar, because he was now sure
that Lilian Temple would appear from one moment to another. Suddenly
he felt himself wrapped in a double impetus of joy and sorrow, because
Lilian Temple with Miss Ford had descended at fifty paces distance from
him, from the omnibus of the Savoy Hotel. Seeing her, recognising and
watching her, he heard a voice within him, speaking in his ear, as if
a living being were speaking beside him, so much so that, frightened,
he turned round as he heard the words, to seek whomsoever could have
uttered them:
"Lilian loves you; you love her. Take her in your arms, and fly with
her."
Step for step Lilian followed her friend and guardian, May Ford, who
was seeing to the details of departure, while they exchanged neither
a word nor a nod. From his hiding-place behind the pillar, Lucio saw
Lilian's slender, fine figure outlined in her black travelling-dress,
that he knew so well, the travelling-dress she had worn when they left
the Engadine together for Berne and Basle. From his hiding-place he saw
Lilian's blond head beneath her black hat with the white feather; but,
owing to the distance, and the thick white veil she wore, as on that
other journey when they left the Engadine, he could hardly make out
her face. But neither in her hands nor at her waist was she carrying
flowers as then: her hands weakly held a little travelling valise and
a slender umbrella. But she had no flowers. Seeing this, Lucio heard,
like a whisper in his ears, the voice again telling him:
"She is leaving; go with her."
The two English ladies now entered the long, narrow vestibule of the
station, covered with glass, and disappeared from Lucio's eyes. He
withdrew from the pillar, and began to follow them from a distance, as
side by side, and without speaking, they went through the vestibule.
From the distance it seemed to Lucio that now and then Lilian bowed
her head on her breast; but he could not observe very well, owing to
the crowd that came between them. Miss Ford bought a book and a paper
from the bookstall; she was lost for a few moments as she chose them,
while Lilian waited at a little distance, her face almost invisible
behind her white veil, as she leaned with both her hands on the handle
of her umbrella, as if she were tired. The ladies withdrew towards the
first-class waiting-room; Lucio followed them, keeping his distance.
They did not sit down, and he kept behind the glass door, as he peeped
inside. Lilian Temple's deep silence, even if she liked silence, even
if the two companions were gladly silent, overwhelmed him, as being the
sign of something mysterious that kept her closed within herself, since
she was now incapable of telling anything of what she felt to anyone.
The two ladies noticing the opening of the doors for departure, went
out on to the platform, and proceeded to the train, which was to take
them to Milan, and thence to Chiasso, France, and England. When Lucio
Sabini saw that the train was about to start, and that the two ladies
were looking for their places from carriage to carriage, quietly and
with determination, to leave and vanish from him; when he understood
that in a few minutes the dear young face would disappear in the shadow
of the night, without her having seen him again, without his farewell;
when he understood that she was going from him, spurned, refused,
almost driven away by him, he trembled with sorrow, and almost with
fear, for once again someone seemed to be speaking in his ear, but with
an even more intense and mysterious voice:
"Don't let her leave alone; go with her."
Constrained by this sorrow, by the fear which the interior voice was
inflicting on him, he hurried his steps, and almost ran to reach the
two ladies. But a flow of people crossed his path; trucks full of
luggage intervened. When he succeeded in surmounting the obstacles
the two English ladies were already in their carriage. He halted at
a little distance, where they could not see him, and observed that
Lilian Temple was already seated behind the window. She was silent. She
did not look at the bustle of the station, she gazed at nothing, she
sought and expected no one. At last, beneath the great electric light,
Lucio almost distinguished her face beneath the white veil. It was a
composed face, with drooping eyes, but tearless, and perhaps without
any expression of sadness; a closed mouth, without smiles, but firm and
calm in its lines. A great chill froze Lucio's heart, and rooted him to
the spot, as he thought:
"She does not suffer; she is resigned and tranquil."
He remained motionless as the doors were banged to and closed
violently, while the orders for departure were transmitted briskly, and
the locomotive whistled. Without stirring, he watched the train move,
the carriage draw away where Lilian Temple sat, and the beloved face
disappear behind the white veil. Then, in the suddenly empty station,
when he was left alone, an immense bitterness invaded him, and bitterly
he thought:
"She will forget me."
That other true voice of his conscience was silent and overcome.