A strong, fresh wind was coming from the deep, raising the waters of
the Adriatic in long waves of incomparable light green, to hurl them,
as they curved, rolled, and almost curled in greenish white with a
crown of the whitest foam, and fragrant with the sharp smell of the
sea, on the long, straight shore of the Lido. The waves broke one
after the other, almost on top of each other, on the soft, yellow sand
of the beach, which became dark with ever-increasing dark weals, and
stained by the swelling water as the waves gained ground. Here and
there the little mounds of seaweed and marine refuse on the sand were
invaded, covered, and demolished, as they became higher and lower with
the suction of the waves: here and there holes and little ditches full
of water were being formed. The strong, fresh wind whirled round the
fashionable huts that stretched numerously in a line far along the
straight beach, and whirled around the vast bathing establishment of
the Lido, causing the doors of the little cabins to rattle, and the
linen to flutter, which here and there had been exposed to dry: it
whirled round the immense covered terrace of the _café_, causing the
awnings to flap which were still lowered against the sun.
Although it was one of the last days of September and the afternoon was
advancing, the sea was thronged here and there with heads of bathers,
whilst the beach was full of people coming and going to and from the
sea, from the cabins and the little wooden staircases and gangways.
Down below on the shore, by the huts, were children of various ages,
watched over by nurses and governesses, who were entering and leaving
the water, flying with little cries of joy from the tallest waves,
rolling on the sand, and jumping up again in a laughing, delightful
group. Rather nearer, black dots, with brightly coloured coifs, large
straw hats, sailing and swimming on the pale green waves, indicated
men and women who were enjoying one of the last days of summer, who
were enjoying the sea with its clear waters and disturbed waves, with
perfumes so exhilarating, and wind so fresh, and the great beach
and soft shore. From the horizon, on the incomparable green of the
Adriatic, two vessels approached in fraternal movement, following,
catching up, and passing each other, but pursuing the same course. One
had three sails, all yellow, of a yellow-ochre, with certain strange
signs of darker yellow on their background; the other had sails of
red-bronze, with designs of deep red. When they were nearer, one could
see that on the yellow sails were designed a cross, nails, a crown of
thorns, to wit, a reminder of the Passion of Jesus Christ; on the other
was a little Madonna of the Carmine--the _Ave Maria Stella_.
Towards four o'clock the terrace of the _café_, bathed by the sun,
was empty, with its hundred little tables round which the flies
buzzed; some of the awnings were lowered, others were half raised.
Slowly the scene changed. The wind became stronger and fresher from
the depths; the children decided to enter the huts to dress, as they
continued their happy cries; one by one the other bathers re-entered
their cabins. The sea became deserted, only on the shore the number
of persons who were promenading slowly increased, as they tried to
walk on the deep sand where the feet sank. Now and then they halted to
watch the sea, whose waves became higher and whiter with their rounded
crests, as if the better to breathe the grand fresh air, full of
saline aroma. Now other great vessels appeared, more or less in the
offing, with yellow, coppery, and maroon sails, rendered darker by sun
and brine.
The scene changed on the terrace as the sun declined. All the awnings
were raised, some frequenters appeared to sit by the balustrade that
gives on to the beach, to take a place at the little tables along this
balustrade, whence all the vastness and beauty of that admirable Lido
seascape is to be viewed. The little steamers that perform the small
crossing--less than a crossing, a ferry--between Venice and the island
of the Lido half an hour ago had arrived almost empty, but now they
were sending people continually towards the shore, people who left
the motionless waters of the shining, grey lagoon, crossed the island
still green with little trees, still flourishing with growing flowers
and plants, and came to gaze at the free, resonant Adriatic, with its
wonderful green and white waves, with a sigh of relief and a smile of
greeting for the magnificent Italian sea.
Two or three tables were at first occupied; other people arrived.
Then the waiters began to glide from table to table, a little bored,
carrying large trays with the necessaries for tea, pink and yellow
_sorbettes_, drinks piled with little pieces of ice, wherein was fixed
a straw. It was not a large crowd, like that of strangers of all
nations in April, when they are mysteriously attired in voluptuous
flattery of the Venetian spring, not the great, indigenous, Italian
crowd of the month of August, that chatters and laughs at the top of
its voice, the ladies dressed in white, fanning themselves, as they
drink large glasses of iced beer, far too much in the German manner! It
was the crowd of the end of September, a little curious and strange,
mingled with foreigners who had come from Switzerland and the Italian
lakes, mingled with the Italians who had come from the Alps to the
plains at the end of the summer season. The crowd round the tables was
small and not chatty or noisy. To the charming, languid, sweet Venetian
dialect issuing from the beautiful lips of women, here and there was
united a French word, but above all was mingled the rough German
talk--in the majority everywhere, as usual. The wind was now very
fresh, and dull the breaking of the waves down below on the soft sand:
a few promenaders went on the shore, watching the warm tints of the
sunset on the horizon, while large vessels filed past with yellow-ochre
sails, from which the Virgin Mary gave her blessing.
For some time Vittorio Lante remained alone at a small table in a far
corner of the terrace: before him was a tall glass full of a greenish
drink, exhaling a smell of peppermint, but he forgot to sip it. The
keen expression of life, which had distinguished him in the Engadine,
had vanished from the young man's graceful but virile face. He seemed
calm, but without thoughts, and all his features appeared grosser in
that thoughtless calm. His eyes glanced without vivacity, as they
fixed themselves indifferently on the people and things around him; he
was not sad or happy, but indifferent. He smoked a cigarette and lit
another, which remained between his fingers without his bringing it to
his mouth, while a thread of smoke issued from it. Suddenly someone
stopped at his table, bent over him, and called him, as he greeted him
in a low voice. He raised his eyes and was amazed to see Lucio Sabini
standing before him.
"Dear Vittorio, you here!"
"Dear Sabini, welcome!"
They shook hands and looked at each other for a long moment, as if
each wished to read in the other's face the story of the two years in
which they had not seen each other. Certainly Lucio Sabini was the more
deeply changed. His black hair, where up to thirty-five not a single
silver thread had appeared, now was quite streaked with white round
the temples; his face from being thin had become fleshless; his black
eyes that had been so proud seemed extinguished; the shoulders of the
tall, slender figure were a little bent, and all his physiognomy had an
expression of weariness, of failing strength, of vanished energy.
"Are you alone, Vittorio?"
"I am here alone, Sabini."
"Disengaged?"
"Yes."
"Then I will sit a little with you."
He sat down opposite him, and became silent, as he watched the sea.
"Won't you take something, dear friend?" asked Vittorio, with careful
courtesy.
"If I must, I will take some sort of coloured water," murmured Lucio
Sabini, and his long, brown, very thin hand brushed his black moustache
in a familiar gesture. Again they looked at each other intensely. Lucio
seemed to make an effort to begin an ordinary conversation.
"Have you been long in Venice, Vittorio?"
"No, just a week. We have come from Vallombrosa, where we stayed till
September was advanced."
"Is Vallombrosa amusing?"
"No; boring."
"Your wife, Donna Livia, likes it?"
"Exactly. She likes forests with their large trees. She lived there
from morning till evening."
"Is Donna Livia here?"
"I left her for tea with some friends in Venice, and came here to pass
an hour alone."
"Is she willing to leave you alone?"
"She lets me. She knows I like my freedom ... to do nothing with it. So
she herself lets me go free, to please me."
They spoke in a low voice, bending a little over the table, looking
distractedly, now at the beverages from which they had not sipped a
drop, now a little to their right at the shore and the sea; but their
glances seemed to be aware of nothing. Suddenly Lucio Sabini, fixing
his worn-out eyes on those of Vittorio, questioned him more brightly,
with his dull voice from which all _timbre_ seemed extinguished.
"Are you happy, Vittorio?"
"I am not happy, but I am not unhappy," he replied, turning his head
away, as if to hide the sudden expression of his face.
"Are you contented with that?"
"I have no choice of anything else," replied Vittorio, with a wan smile.
"And is Donna Livia happy?"
"She asks nothing else of life than to have me. She has me."
"Then all is well, Vittorio?"
"Yes, for Livia."
"And for you?"
"Oh, for me nothing can go well or ill, Sabini."
This he said with such an accent of indifference, of detachment, that
it amounted more to sadness. After a slight hesitation Lucio resumed:
"Vittorio, you were ardently in love with that American girl."
"Ardently is the word," agreed Vittorio Lante, in a rather louder voice.
"How did you let her escape you?"
"I gave her up."
"Although you loved her?"
"Yes, although I adored her, I gave her up."
"But why?"
"So as not to be dishonoured, Lucio. Had I married her I should have
been dishonoured."
"Because of her money."
"Exactly; because of her superfluity of money, her immense amount of
money; because of my immense poverty."
A soft veil passed before Vittorio's eyes. The other looked at him, and
said:
"It hurts you, then, to talk of this?"
"Yes, now and then it hurts me; but the pain is always less, and always
at greater intervals, Sabini. I am almost cured."
"Did you suffer much?"
"Very much, as if I should die of it. However, I am not dead; it seems
one doesn't die of that."
"Do you think so?" asked Lucio, waving a hand.
"I don't know," he murmured; "I had my mother, whom I ought not to make
more unhappy; perhaps I was unworthy to conceive a lofty sorrow. Who
knows? I haven't been given either a great soul or great will. It is
not my fault if I am not dead, if I am almost healed."
This time a sense of irony against himself and his own mediocrity
escaped from his indifference.
"Poor Vittorio!" said Lucio, pressing his hand across the table, "tell
me everything. You can tell me everything, I can understand."
"Oh, mine isn't such an interesting story!" exclaimed Vittorio, with a
pale smile of irony; "if you like, it is rather a stupid story. I was
such a fool in the Engadine! I went there to find a girl, neither too
beautiful nor too ugly, and not very rich, who could drag my mother
and myself out of our difficulties; I went with a definite programme,
a vulgar but definite programme, unromantic but definite, that of a
dowry-hunter. Instead of looking for a mediocre girl, with a dowry of
six or seven hundred thousand lire, like a child, like an idiot, I make
straight for Mabel Clarke, who has fifty millions. I put forward my
candidature as a flirt to good purpose, and conquered all rivals. Fool,
thrice a fool that I was! Instead of keeping my presence of mind, and
all my wits, I fall in love with her because she is beautiful, fresh,
young, new, and of another race; because we were free, and left free,
as is the American custom, as you know quite well, so that at last the
girl of fifty millions falls in love with me."
"She did love you, then?"
"Yes, she loved me in her way," answered Vittorio, shortly.
"She suffered through you."
"She suffered less intensely, but longer, perhaps. Even in this she
beat me, Lucio! What a common story, is it not? How could I have
thought that the world and my destiny would have permitted me to marry
Mabel Clarke with her fifty millions, to be the son-in-law of John
Clarke, who, at his death, would have left other two hundred millions?
I? I? And why? Who was I, more than another, of my country or another,
of my set or another, who was I to reach to such power? I was neither
a true pleasure-seeker, nor properly vicious, nor a cynic. Seriously,
I was nothing but a--calculator. I was nothing serious, my friend. If
I had been in earnest as a calculator I should not have fallen in love
with Mabel Clarke. What a mistake, or rather, what a _gaucherie_!"
"You can't forget her, Vittorio," whispered Lucio, looking at him with
tender eyes.
"You are wrong. I forget her more and more. Besides, have I not married
Livia?"
"Why did you make that marriage?"
"_Que faire?_" he exclaimed, shrugging his shoulders. "I was so sad,
so broken in bone and soul, as if I had fallen from a precipice, and
had been dragged out half living. I was so bored. And poor little
Livia was languishing in silence waiting for me. And did not my
mother look at me with beseeching eyes every time I went to Terni? I
married through sadness, fastidiousness, weakness, to make an end of
everything, and, as you see, in spite of all my ardent love for Mabel
Clarke I did not know how to be faithful to her for more than a year.
The American girl had foreseen it--Mabel Clarke was stronger, wiser,
more direct than I, and much better too. She humbled me in sending a
rich gift to Livia on her wedding, and she invited us to America. Ah,
how strange these women are!"
"She invited you to America? She writes to you?"
"Often, long letters. From the very first she wanted me to go to
America to gain money with John Clarke, and she did not believe she
would offend me by asking me."
They were both silent for a moment, absorbed and concentrated. Around
them people began to leave the tables, as the shadows of dusk were
falling from the sky on sea and beach and the flowered island; but they
were unaware of it.
"Besides, dear Sabini," resumed Vittorio, with a degree of greater
sarcasm, "I am less poor than I was formerly. Then I spent too much
to find the heiress with the great fortune, to live grandly, and to
travel. When I announced that I was marrying Livia, Uncle Costrucci,
an old clerical, was moved, and let us have, for our natural lifetime,
a beautiful suite of apartments in old Rome, in via Botheghe Oscure.
Mamma has come to live with us, and her cousin, Farnese, made her a
present of a carriage. Ours is a marriage which has been made by public
subscription! We have our house and our carriage. Livia is so charming
in her discreet _toilettes_, discreet in every fashion. I haven't
to strive as I thought, I have not even been forced to work as I
supposed. There is nothing of the heroic in me--a mediocre destiny, and
a mediocre life!"
"Ah, Vittorio, you still suffer," said Lucio, in a deeply moved voice.
"In my _amour-propre_, I confess. Think, Lucio, how I have been
treated--surrounded, knocked on the head like a lamb under calumnies,
defamations and vituperations, in every land where international
society gathers--and how I have been unable to cuff a single one of
my adversaries. Think how rivers of ink have been poured out in the
papers of two worlds to defame me, and how I have been unable to spit
in the face of a single one of those journalists; think how I have been
unable to defend myself or offer a fight, solely because I loved Mabel
and Mabel loved me. And afterwards, Lucio, what an incurable offence
to my _amour-propre_, this breaking off the marriage, which sanctions
the calumnies, this breaking off ... and how everyone laughed at me
afterwards, and if they do not laugh at Livia and me now it is because
we are a quiet, modest _ménage_ that lives in the shade--we are an
insignificant couple now."
"Another man, Vittorio, would never have consented to breaking off the
marriage."
"Another! I consented because I loved Mabel; I loved her like a
child, like a Don Quixote, with such fire and devotion as to become a
hero--and I so mediocre! Through love I renounced my every good, but
of my own free will. Ah, if I had not loved her! If I had been a cold
and interested man, even under the impulse of an amorous caprice; if
I had kept my clearness of mind, even in flirting to extremes, how
different everything would have been. If I had not loved her I could
have fled with her ten times from the Engadine, and she would have
been compromised and the marriage would have been inevitable. If I had
not loved her I would not so ingenuously have allowed her to set out
alone for America; if I had not loved her I would have provoked a duel
at every defamation and reduced my defamers to silence. At the first
injurious article of the American newspapers I would have gone over
there to make them show cause in the law courts; if I had not loved
her I should have been able to force her to keep her engagements, and
I should have obtained her by force, her and her fortune; but I should
have obtained her. I loved her, and I destroyed my happiness and my
life."
With dreamy eyes, full of incurable sadness, he gazed at the Adriatic
which was becoming intensely green, like an emerald, in the twilight.
He added:
"Lucio, love has been my mistake; I committed suicide because of it.
But what is more laughable and grotesque, I survive my suicide."
In spite of his cold delirium, as he turned to Lucio he perceived that
he had become pale, as if he were about to die; he saw that Lucio's
thin brown hand was pressing his cigarette-case convulsively. Vittorio
composed himself, turned towards his friend, and touching his hand
lightly, said:
"How I beg your pardon! I must have bored you so much with this tale of
my woes."
Lucio Sabini bowed a denial with a vague and sad gesture of his hand,
without replying; he bowed his denial with a vague smile that vanished
immediately.
"Do not think that I tell everyone how it still torments me in the
depths of my soul; no one knows anything of it; none must know. But you
went up with me to the Engadine on a summer evening, do you remember?
You were a witness of my joy up there."
"And also you, Vittorio, were my witness up there," murmured Lucio,
grimly and gloomily.
Vittorio trembled and leant over the table to Lucio.
"Ah, that too is a sad story," he murmured.
"Sad do you call it, only sad?" exclaimed the other, with a great
vibration of sorrow in his voice. Confused and disturbed, Vittorio in
his turn stammered:
"I knew--I read."
"What did you know? What did you read?" asked Lucio Sabini in a strong,
vibrant voice.
"In the papers ... a few lines ... I read of Miss Lilian Temple's
accident," added Vittorio in a low voice.
"You mean to say Miss Lilian Temple's death, my friend," exclaimed
Lucio, with a strange accent; "she is dead, my friend."
"I did not wish to pronounce the word death, my friend," Vittorio
replied quietly.
Now they were alone on the terrace, on which the evening was
descending. Everyone had left to take the little steamer back to Venice
from the other side of the Lido. The terrace was quite deserted, and
all the Lido shore, whose yellow sand remained bright beneath the
evening shadows; and deserted the ample Adriatic, now of the deepest
green in the evening gloom.
"She was twenty," said a weak, feeble voice, which Vittorio hardly
recognised as Lucio's.
"It is very early to die."
"I ought to have died, I who am thirty-seven, and have lived double
that time, I who am tired, old, and finished with everything. It was
just that I should die, not she, who was twenty," said the weak voice.
"But how did the accident happen?" asked Vittorio.
"What accident?"
"The Alpine catastrophe in which the poor little girl perished."
Ah, what a horrible smile of torture contracted Lucio's livid lips!
"There was no accident, there was no Alpine catastrophe. Miss Lilian
Temple killed herself."
"Killed herself?" cried Vittorio, stupefied.
"She killed herself."
"Are you sure of it?"
"As of my life and death. She killed herself."
"Ah, how cruel! how atrocious!" broke in Vittorio.
"And she was only twenty," replied the feeble voice again, like a
lament.
A heavy, lugubrious silence fell upon the twain, in that solitary
corner of the great deserted terrace before the Adriatic.
"Would you like to read her last words, Vittorio?" asked Lucio.
The other started and nodded. Lucio drew out from an inner pocket his
pocket-book, took from it a long white envelope, and drew delicately
from it a picture post card. The two friends bent forward together
over that piece of paper to distinguish its design and read the words
thereon. On one side the post card had the address written in slender,
tall calligraphy and firm handwriting, "_à Don Lucio Sabini, Lung' Arno
Serristori, Firenze_." The postage-stamp was of the 24th of April of
the previous year, and came from the Hospice of the Bernina. On the
other side was a great panorama of glaciers, of lofty, terrible peaks,
and printed beneath the German words, "_Gruss vom Diavolezza_." The
same slender, upright characters had written, in a corner of the card,
beneath the great strip of white of the glacier in English, "For ever,
my love.--Lilian." Both raised their heads and looked at each other.
"She died the next day, the 25th of April," said Lucio, holding the
card in his hands and gazing at it, as if he saw it for the first
time. "These are her last words. She wrote them in the Hospice of
the Bernina, and posted them in the letter-box of the façade of the
Hospice. Next morning she left very early for La Diavolezza; at four
o'clock in the afternoon she was dead, having fallen headlong from a
lofty crevasse of the Isola Persa."
He spoke slowly, with a precise accent, that rendered even more
sorrowful the expression of his words.
"Would you like to see where she died, Vittorio?" he resumed. "Look
carefully."
Again, with tragic curiosity in the evening half-light, the two men
leant over that funereal document.
"Look carefully. This is La Diavolezza, a mountain which is climbed
without great difficulty, and where is unfolded an immense panorama of
glaciers and peaks. I have been there and described it to her. Look
carefully; she reached as far as here, and rested only an hour in this
Alpine hut. She wanted to proceed at once to the glacier here, where it
is marked, the Perso Glacier, this great black moraine that cuts the
glacier in two, which is called the Isola Persa--it is written beneath.
Look closely; you will not discover the crevasse where she fell, where
_she wished to fall_, but it is here--where she wished to fall and to
die."
"But how do you know?"
"She cut the rope which fastened her to her guide with a knife."
"Who told you that?"
"The guide told me: I saw the little torn piece of cut rope. I went
over all Lilian Temple's last journey," said Lucio gloomily.
Suddenly he threw himself with arms and head on the table, holding to
his mouth the post card whereon were written Lilian Temple's last words
murmuring with tearless sighs that rent his breast:
"Oh, my love, my love ... at twenty."
Silent, astonished, Vittorio waited till the moment of weak anguish
passed. Then he leant towards the man, whose sighs became less, and
said to him:
"Lucio, pull yourself together. Let us go away." The electric lamps,
which had been suddenly lit, illuminated the terrace; the waiters
arrived with linen, glass, and silver to set the tables for dinner,
since foreigners and Venetians, on warm evenings, came to dine there in
the open air before the sea, where one of the usual orchestras played.
There was a coming and going of these waiters, and a rattling of glass
and china. In dull, equal, monotonous voice, the Adriatic broke against
the shores of the Lido. The wind had fallen.
"Let us go away," repeated Vittorio.
With a rapid movement Lucio started up: his eyes were red, although he
had shed no tears, his face seemed feverish. Both approached the exit,
crossed the theatre hall and the vestibule, and found themselves at the
door. They went out into the island before the large central avenue,
where the tramway runs amongst the trees, gardens, and villas. They had
not uttered a single word. When once again they were in the open air
before the little square where the tramway stops Lucio said shortly:
"Shall we walk across the island, Vittorio? We shall always find a
steamer on the other side to take us back to Venice."
"Let us walk."
They walked in silence along the little garden in course of
construction, by villas hardly finished, beneath the young trees,
amidst the white electric lamps and the shadows formed between the
lamps. Suddenly Lucio Sabini stopped. He leant over the fence of a
garden covered with rambler roses and said in a desperate voice:
"Vittorio, I killed Lilian Temple."
"Don't say that, don't say that."
"I committed the crime, Vittorio. I killed her. It is as if I had taken
her by the hand, led her up there to the Isola Persa, and pointing
to the precipice had said to her--'_Throw yourself down_.' Thus am I
guilty."
"Your reasonable grief blinds you, Lucio."
"No, no," he answered in his desperate voice, "I am not blind, I am
not mad. Time has passed over my sorrow: it has become vast and deep
like a great, black lake which I have in the depths of my soul. I am
neither mad nor blind. I exist, I live, I perform coldly and surely
all the acts of life. Nevertheless, I committed a crime, in thrusting
Lilian Temple to her death with my very own hands."
"But you are not an assassin, you are not a cruel man," protested
Vittorio vehemently. "You could not have done it."
"That is true: I am not an assassin, I am not a cruel man, but every
unconscious word of mine, every unconscious act of mine, was a mortal
thrust whereby this creature of beauty and purity, whereby this gentle
creature should go to her death."
His sharp, despairing voice broke in tenderness. They began to walk
again, side by side.
"You loved her then, Lucio?" asked Vittorio affectionately.
"Yes, I loved her very much; but with a sudden and violent love
which made me forget my slavery, my galley, and the rough chain that
oppresses me. I loved her, but I ought to have been silent and not
have lost my peace and made her lose her peace. Here began my sad sin,
Vittorio."
"Did she know nothing about you? Did you tell her nothing?"
"Nothing: she knew nothing; she wished to know nothing. Thus she gave
me her heart and her life. I ought to have spoken; I ought to have told
her everything. I was so madly in love. I was silent and in my silence
deceived her. Ah, what a sin! What a terrible sin was that!"
"Did no one warn her?"
"No one. Her soul was mine without a doubt or a thought, with immense
certainty."
"But didn't you in all this understand the danger into which you were
both running?"
"I didn't understand," replied Lucio Sabini, tragically. "I didn't
understand Lilian Temple's love till after her death."
"You knew that she loved you?"
"Yes, but how many others have loved me for a fortnight or a month,
afterwards to forget me!"
"Did she not tell you how much she loved you?"
"She told me a little, but I did not understand."
"But did she not show you?"
"She showed me a little, but I didn't understand. My eyes did not know
how to read her soul or guess the riddle of her heart."
"But why? Why?"
"Because she was of another country, of another race; because she was
another soul different from all the other souls I have known; because I
had another heart. Lilian was unknown to me, and I let her die."
Slowly they reached the end of the long avenue that divides the little
island and reached the shore of the lagoon, where no majestic hotels
and sumptuous villas arise, but old Venetian houses of fishermen,
sailors, and gondoliers. Already in the nocturnal gloom lights were
to be seen flickering on the turbid waters. Once again Lucio stopped,
as if speaking to himself; Vittorio stopped beside him, patiently,
affectionately, pitifully.
"Oh, these Englishwomen, these Englishwomen," he said, passing his
hand over his forehead. "Even if they are very young, even if they
are twenty, as my poor love, as my poor Lilian, they have an interior
life of singular intensity, whilst an absolute calm reigns in their
faces and actions. They hide sentiments within their souls with a
force, power, and ardour which would stupefy and frighten us if we
could see within them for an instant. They have an absolute power
over themselves and their expressions, a surprising domination over
every manifestation. These Englishwomen--Lilian, Lilian mine! They
say what they mean, not a word more, they express what they wish to
express, no more; they know how to control themselves in the most
impetuous moments of life, they know how to encloister themselves when
everyone else would expand, and they find their greatest pride in their
spiritual isolation, apart from whatever surrounds them, whatever is
happening, far-away, closed in their interior life, in their kingdom,
in their temple. Their heart is their temple. How often my dear Lilian
was silent beside me, and I did not understand how full of things was
her silence: how often she would have liked to fall into my arms, but
restrained herself and merely smiled: how often she would have liked to
cry and not a tear fell from her beautiful eyes; how often I found her
cold, indifferent, apart from me, and never perhaps had she been more
mine than in that moment. So I understood not how she loved me, because
she was of another race, strong, firm, thoughtful, taciturn, faithful;
because Lilian had another soul and all her soul escaped me."
They had now passed on to the pier, beneath its wooden roof, to take
the steamer which should bring them back to Venice. But no steamer was
leaving at that moment, although far-off two large red lights were to
be seen approaching rapidly towards the shores of the Lido. The two
friends sat down on a wooden bench, in a badly lit corner, and resumed
their conversation _sotto voce_, for other travellers were there,
waiting with them for the steamer.
"These Englishwomen," resumed Lucio, speaking as if in a sad dream. "On
a day in February there comes to my home, in Florence, Lilian's best
friend, her most affectionate guardian, Miss May Ford, she who always
accompanied her at St. Moritz: you remember her? And the good old
maid stands there, quiet, imperturbable, while she asks an explanation
of such a serious matter, that is, why I have deserted Lilian Temple;
and she asks me with such simplicity and indifference, almost as if
it were a matter of the least importance, and my pain and sorrowful
embarrassment caused her wonder. She does not defend Lilian, nor
Lilian's love, but is at once content with my reasons. Not that only!
When I ask her to use her good influence to make Lilian forget me, she
at once promises to do so. If I suggest that she should tell Lilian
that I love her, but that I ought not, that I shall always love her,
but still I ought to fly from her, Miss Ford declares that she will not
give this message because it would make her worse; and finally when
I, to show her what an invincible and mortal reason prevents me from
loving Lilian, tell her of my adultery, that is of my sad servitude,
when I suggest to her that a lady could kill herself if I desert her
for Lilian; coldly, without protesting, she agrees to bear this embassy
of death. Do you understand, Vittorio? Miss May is tenderly fond of
Lilian, knows, perhaps, that Lilian loves me deeply, knows, perhaps,
that Lilian will not forget me, that she will never console herself for
my desertion, yet through reserve, correctness, moderation, through
that proud habit of sentimental modesty, that habit of proud and noble
silence which these Englishwomen have, so as not to humiliate me or
herself, so as not to humiliate her friend, to conceal from herself,
from me, and all whatever there was exalting and agonising in our drama
of love, this Englishwoman says nothing to me and to Lilian; only a
few--very few--words, the least number of words possible, a single
phrase, the one necessary, which she had asked from me to take back to
her, and she takes back this single phrase--and it was an embassy of
death!"
"And did not Miss Ford even know Lilian's heart and of her love?"
murmured Vittorio sadly; "did they confide little or nothing to each
other, through respect and modesty?"
"Not even Miss Ford understood. One day in April Lilian disappeared
from her home in London. She left not a letter or a note for her
father; she did not write to Miss Ford, who at that moment was in
Somersetshire--nothing, she disappeared. After ten days, in which
Lilian's father placed an advertisement every day in the _Times_ in
search of her, to get her to return, the news of her death arrived."
"Probably not even her family understood that it was a question of
suicide."
"Yes," murmured Lucio Sabini in a thin voice, "they caused it to be
said that it was an accident: perhaps they believed it was an accident."
There was a short silence.
"In my post card, Vittorio, you read but two words, which could be a
sorrowful farewell, a sad and tender remembrance. She covered with
modesty and silence her passion and her death."
The little steamer was already at the pier, the gangway had been thrown
across, fifteen or twenty passengers crossed it and passed into the
boat. They scattered here and there on benches along the steamer's
sides, which set off again immediately. Lucio and Vittorio went and sat
in the front of the boat, at the prow, receiving in their faces the
fresh evening breeze, no longer the strong wind of the day which for
so many hours had blown from the Adriatic on the shores of the Lido,
but the little wind of the lagoon which scarcely ruffled the blackish
waters, a breeze that blew from the Canal of the Giudecca and rendered
more charming the Venetian evening. With even movement the little
steamer threaded its way, cleaving the almost motionless waters; making
for the brown, fragrant mass, in the evening light, of the Venetian
gardens. Below a bright clear light was spreading itself over the
city and waters. Towards San Marco and the Grand Canal the light was
completely white, while other lights from palaces, houses, steamers,
and gondolas waved and scintillated everywhere, far and near, throwing
soft streaks of light and flying gleams over the waters. Silent and
tired the two friends remained seated, almost as if they were unaware
of the movement, so regular was the going of the little boat; and
they were unaware of sounds, as everything around them was peace and
shadow. Venice flashed with light that brightened the shadows of the
lagoon, the houses, and the sky, and she seemed surrounded by a starry
aureole; but they did not even look at the majestic spectacle, as if
in the desolation of their souls neither beauty nor poesy of things
could attract them. The steamer bent to the right to the stopping-place
at the gardens: a louder and duller noise spoke of their arrival, the
gangway was thrown across to the pier; a few embarked for Venice, but
no one got off. The steamer drew farther away noisily, and resumed its
course in the middle of the lagoon.
"Now I am going to find my accomplice," said Lucio in a dry voice.
"Accomplice?"
"Exactly. Beatrice Herz strangely helped me to kill Lilian," added
Lucio, with a sneer in the gloom.
"Is she here in Venice?"
"Of course! How could my accomplice be elsewhere? Where I go, she goes;
where she goes, I follow. We are inseparable, dearest Victor. Oh, it is
touching!"
And a stridulous laugh of irony escaped him.
"Did she know all?" asked Vittorio in a low voice.
"From the first moment," resumed Lucio in a voice become dry and hard.
"When I separated myself from Lilian, enamoured as I was, wildly in
love, in fact, I had a mad hope, I believed in a generous madness, and
told Beatrice Herz everything. Was she not at bottom a woman of heart?
Had she not suffered atrociously for love? Had she not a very tender
attachment for me? I believed in the superiority of her mind and her
magnanimity; I asked for an heroic deed. I had loved and served her for
ten years; I had given her my youth, and consumed my most beautiful
hours and strength for her; I asked her to dismiss me as a good,
loving, and true servant, who had accomplished his cycle of servitude,
and at last wished to be free. Humbly and ardently I begged her, with
tears in my eyes, turning to her as to a sacred image, to perform the
miracle, to give me liberty, to allow me yet to live some years of good
and happiness--the few that remained to me for love."
"Well?" asked Vittorio, with sad curiosity.
"I believed Beatrice Herz to be a heroine, capable of a great proof
of altruism; I believed her capable of a sentimental miracle. On the
contrary, she is a mean little woman, a wretched, egotistical creature,
a puppet without thought or heart, in whom my love and my illusion had
placed something of the sublime. She is nothing. She refused precisely;
she was as arid as pumice-stone; she had not a moment's pity or a
single trace of emotion. She sees nothing but herself and her social
interests. Instead of giving me my freedom she abandoned herself to
such scenes of jealousy, now ferocious, now trivial, from which I
escaped each time worn-out and nauseated."
"Had you never the strength to break with her?"
"I hadn't the strength," added Lucio sharply. "Of recent years she
has threatened to kill herself when I spoke of leaving her. I always
believed her. When it was a question of Lilian her threats became even
more violent; twice I had to snatch from her hands a little revolver.
But it was really nothing, Vittorio! It wasn't true! I was deceived
in the first place, and was deceived afterwards. Beatrice Herz never
meant to kill herself for me. I have lived ten years with this woman,
and she has succeeded in deceiving me. She is not the sort of woman to
kill herself. Even in this I have been disillusioned about her. She is
a paltry little woman, nothing else."
"Still she loved you; she confronted dangers for you; she compromised
herself and lost her name for you."
"Yes, yes, yes! But adultery with all its waste and lies, adultery
with all its corruptions, this adultery prolonged to the boredom and
disgust of both, only for womanly vanity, the great vanity of not being
deserted, has conquered all her pride."
"You reproach her with her sin!"
"I reproach myself as well as her. I reproach myself as well as her for
having sent Lilian Temple to her death."
"Beatrice did not know."
"Beatrice did not deserve to," exclaimed Lucio, again becoming exalted.
"She deserved no sacrifice, neither mine nor Lilian's--I keep telling
her that."
"You tell her that!"
"Always. Our life is a hell," added Lucio gloomily.
"But doesn't Beatrice try with sweetness...."
"Sweetness? Don't you know that she is jealous of my poor Lilian, of my
poor dead one? Don't you know that she still makes scenes of jealousy?"
"Oh!"
"It is so. When I read in the papers the dread news, when I read
Lilian's poor, sweet, last words from up there, and understood that
she had killed herself, like one possessed I set off by night for the
Engadine. Ah, Vittorio, Vittorio, that second journey to ascend there
from Chiavenna, what atrocious anxiety all that journey which I made
alone, to the Maloja, to St. Moritz, to the Bernina, in a time of
perfect solitude, with the snow hardly melted, with St. Moritz still
shut up as if dead. The roads were still difficult, as everywhere I
followed step for step the tracks of my poor little one who had gone
up there, who had lovingly and piously visited all the places where we
had been together--step for step after Lilian's tracks until one night
I slept in the house of the guide who had seen her die; the man's eyes
were full of tears as he told me of her death. Well, when I, full of
horror and sorrow, pierced by remorse, unconsoled and unconsolable,
came away, whatever do you think Beatrice Herz did? She came to meet
me in the Engadine, to snatch me back. She said so--just to snatch me
back. I found her in the inn at Chiavenna, whence she was hurrying to
ascend to the Engadine. I found her there, and instead of weeping with
me, instead of asking pardon of God, she acted a scene of jealousy, and
insulted the dead and me."
"Oh, how horrible!"
"Horrible! For that matter I told her a great and simple truth, which
made her rave, and always makes her rave; so I repeat it to her."
"What was that?"
"That she had loved me ten years, and did not know how to die for me,
and that Lilian Temple had loved me one month and had died for me."
"She must suffer atrociously from all this?"
"Atrociously. I hate Beatrice Herz, and she hates me."
"Yet you remain together?"
"Always. All our lives. Only death, longed-for death, will free us,"
said Lucio with a sigh.
They gradually drew near to the pier of San Marco; the lagoon was full
of gondolas, white and red lights caught the steamer and showed up
faces.
"Listen, Vittorio," said Lucio, placing a hand tenderly on his friend's
arm, "your love adventure has caused you to suffer much; but to-morrow
you will be healed, because you have no remorse, because you have
accomplished a lofty duty of honour in destroying your happiness; but
you have no remorse. Create none, Vittorio. When at last the beautiful,
dazzling figure of Mabel Clarke has vanished from your spirit, love
your wife, who is good and sweet, who has been humble and patient, who
is fond of you, and attends your good. Love her, not another woman;
love her, and never the woman of another. Vittorio, don't be lost as I
am lost; don't throw to the monster adultery--your flesh, and senses,
and heart. Don't create for yourself remorses which will render your
life a place of torment as it is for me."
They reached the Riva degli Schiavoni, the waters were astir with
gondolas, and the _Riva_ with people, and full of light and bustle.
They went ashore together. They stood silently for a few moments
before separating, while around them life was humming, though pale and
exhausted they were unaware of it.
"Do you remember Chassellas?" asked Lucio, with singular sweetness.
"Yes, I remember it. I went there with Mabel," replied the other, with
repressed emotion.
"Do you know the little Engadine cemetery near there?"
"I know it, we gathered flowers there one day, Mabel and I."
"Lilian is buried there; not far from poor Massimo Granata. I too shall
sleep there one day; the soonest possible, Vittorio."
Vittorio, pale and exhausted, looked at him.
"I long to die," said Lucio Sabini.
They said nothing more, but separated.
THE END
PRINTED BY
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD.
PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND
* * * * *
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
The Table of Contents was added by the Transcriber.
The book cover was modified by the Transcriber and has been added to
the public domain.
A number of words in this book have both hyphenated and non-hyphenated
variants. For the words with both variants present the one more used
has been kept.
Obvious punctuation and other printing errors have been corrected.