On the pavement, I felt a strange sensation of bewilderment. It seemed
to me as if I had left behind me a fragment of an artificial, false,
factitious life. What I had done, what I had said, what I had felt, and
the albino's face, his voice, his gestures, all seemed unreal, took on
the appearance of a dream, the character of an impression, received, not
from contact with the reality, but from a book recently read. I entered
the cab again and returned home. The vague sensation faded away. I
began to calmly reflect. I assured myself that all was real,
indisputable. Spontaneously visions of the sick man formed before me,
copied on those furnished me by my recollections of poor Spinelli. And
I was seized by new curiosity. "Suppose I go to Naples to see him?" I
pictured to myself the pitiful spectacle of that intellectual man,
degraded by disease, stammering like an idiot. I no longer felt any
joy; all the exaltation of my hate had fallen; a profound sadness
overwhelmed me. In fact, the ruin of this man had no influence on my
own position, did not repair my own ruin. There was nothing changed,
neither in me, nor in my actual situation, nor in my previsions of the
future.
And I thought of the title of the book announced by Filippo Arborio:
_Turris Eburnea_. Doubts pressed in a crowd in my mind. Did that
dedication refer to an accidental encounter? Or rather, on the
contrary, had the writer had the intention of creating a literary type
after the image of Juliana Hermil, of relating his recent and personal
adventure? The torturing problem presented itself anew. What had been
the progressive incidents of this adventure, from the beginning to its
close?
And I thought I could hear the words uttered by Juliana that
unforgettable night: "I love you, I have always loved you, I have always
been yours; I expiate by this hell one moment's weakness, you
understand? _One moment's weakness_. It is the truth. Do you not feel
that it is the truth?"
Alas! how often we believe we feel the truth in a voice that lies.
Nothing can guard us from being thus duped. But if what I had felt in
Juliana's voice was the pure truth, then, had she really been taken
during a physical languor, in my very house? Had she submitted with a
sort of unconsciousness? And, on awakening, had she felt only horror
and disgust at the irreparable act, and had she banished that man, had
she never seen him again?
This supposition, in fact, was in nowise contradicted by appearances;
and appearances even supported the supposition that, for a long time,
the rupture between Juliana and him was complete and definite.
"In my own house!" I repeated. And, in this house, silent as a tomb, in
these deserted and close rooms, I was followed by the obsession of the
vision.
*XXV.*
What should I do? Stay longer in Rome until madness seized my brain, in
the midst of this furnace, during the heat of the dog-days? Go to the
seaside, to the mountains, seek oblivion in society, at the fashionable
summer resorts? Reawaken in myself the old-time voluptuousness, go in
quest of another Teresa Raffo, any sort of frivolity?
Two or three times I dwelt on the remembrance of the _Biondissima_,
although she had entirely passed from my heart, and even, for a long
time, from my memory. "Where could she be? Is she still with Eugenio
Egano? What would be my sensations on seeing her again?" It was only
vain curiosity. I perceived that my sole, profound, unconquerable
desire was to go back there, to my house of sorrow, to my torture.
I took the necessary measures with the greatest care. I paid a visit to
Dr. Vebesti, and wired to the Badiola that I was on the way home.
Impatience devoured me; acute anxiety urged me on, as if I were to
encounter new and extraordinary things. The journey appeared
interminable. Stretched on the cushions, oppressed by the heat,
suffocated by the dust that penetrated through the interstices of the
railway carriage, I thought of the approaching events, I considered the
future possibilities, I essayed to read the great darkness. The
_father_ was mortally tainted. What could be expected of the son?
*XXVI.*
There was nothing new at the Badiola. My absence had been very short.
They celebrated my return. Juliana's first look expressed infinite
gratitude.
"You have done well to return so quickly," said my mother with a smile.
"Juliana could not get any rest. Now, we hope you will not leave us
again. Apropos, did you think of that lace? No? What a memory you
have!"
As soon as I was alone with Juliana, she said:
"I did not dare hope you would return so quickly. How grateful I am!"
In her attitude, in her voice, there were timidity, humility,
tenderness. Never had I been so struck by the contrast between her face
and the rest of her person. On that face there was, continually visible
to me, a special expression of sorrow that expressed the constant revolt
of this woman against the shame that had fallen upon her. That
expression never left her under any circumstance; it could be visibly
seen through the diversity of other fugitive expressions which, no
matter how strong, could not efface it; it was fixed and adherent, and
it moved me to pity, and took from me my anger.
"What did you do while I was away?" I asked her.
"Waited for you. And you?"
"Nothing. I wanted to return."
"To see me?" she asked, timid and humble.
"Yes, for your sake."
She half-closed her eyes, and the light of a smile trembled on her face.
I felt that I had never been loved as at that instant.
After a pause, she said, regarding me with humid eyes:
"Thank you."
The tone, the sentiment expressed, recalled to me another "_thank you_,"
that she had said at another time, the morning of her convalescence, the
morning of my first crime.
*XXVII.*
Thus I recommenced at the Badiola my invariably sad life, unrelieved by
any notable incident, the hours dragging along on the sun-dial, and the
feeling of desolation aggravated by the heavy monotony of the chirp of
the crickets in the elms. _Hora est benefaciendi!_
And, in my mind, there alternated the usual effervescences, the usual
inertias, sarcasms, the usual vain aspirations, contradictory crises,
abundance and dryness. And, more than once, reflecting on that gray,
neutral, ordinary fluid, and omnipotent thing called life, I thought:
"Who knows? Man is, above all, an animal who adapts himself. There is
neither turpitude nor pain to which, in the end, he does not accustom
himself. Perhaps in the long run I shall also become used to it. Who
knows?"
I sterilized myself by dint of irony. "Who knows if Filippo Arborio's
son will not be, so to say, _my very picture_. Then the arrangement
would only be easier." I thought of the cynical laugh that had been
provoked in me one day when, in the presence of a married couple, I had
heard them refer to a baby who, I knew for a certainty, was the fruit of
adultery, as, "It's just like his father!" And in reality the
resemblance was striking, from the influence of that mysterious law
known to physiologists' as "_heredity by influence_." Often a woman
married a second time, brings into the world, some years after the death
of her first husband, sons who have every feature of the dead husband,
and who do not resemble at all their real father.
"It is possible, therefore, that Raymond resemble me, and appear to be a
veritable Hermil," I thought. "It might happen that I am warmly
congratulated upon having so vigorously impressed upon the heir the seal
of my race! And suppose my mother's and brother's expectations are not
fulfilled? Suppose Juliana gives birth to a third daughter?"
That probability calmed me. It seemed to me I should feel less
repulsion for a new daughter, and that, perhaps, I might even succeed in
tolerating her. With time she would leave my house, take another name,
enter another family.
Meantime, the nearer the term approached, the more my irritation
increased. I was weary of constantly debating with myself in the same
fruitless agitation, amidst the same fears and perplexities. I should
have liked events to be precipitated, a catastrophe of some sort to
occur. No matter what catastrophe was preferable to this agony.
One day my brother asked Juliana:
"How long will it be yet?"
She answered:
"Another month."
We were in September. Summer was drawing to a close. We were
approaching the autumnal equinox, the most charming period of the year,
the season that bears in itself a sort of aerial intoxication emanating
from the ripe grapes. The enchantment gradually penetrated me, soothed
my soul, at times inspired in me a desire for furious tendernesses or
delicate expansions. Maria and Natalia passed long hours with me, alone
with me, either in my apartment or out in the surrounding country. I
had never loved them before with a love so deep, so anxious. From their
eyes, softly impregnated with scarcely conscious thoughts, there at
times descended on my soul a ray of peace.
*XXVIII.*
One day I was seeking Juliana throughout the Badiola. It was in the
early afternoon. As I found her neither in her room nor anywhere else,
I entered my mother's room. The doors were open; neither sound nor voice
was heard; the light curtains waved at the windows; through the open
bay-windows were glimpses of the verdure of the elms. Between the
brightly colored walls all breathed of peace and repose.
I advanced cautiously toward the sanctuary. I walked softly, in order
not to disturb my mother, in case she were dozing. I parted the
curtains, and, without crossing the threshold, I leaned forward and
looked in. I heard, in fact, the breathing of a person sleeping; I saw
my mother, who was sleeping in an arm-chair in a corner of the window; I
saw Juliana's hair above the back of another arm-chair. I entered.
They were seated facing each other, and between them was a low table
bearing a basket full of miniature bonnets. My mother still held between
her fingers one of these caps in which glittered a needle. Slumber had
overtaken her during the activity of her work. She was sleeping, her
chin on her bosom; perhaps she was dreaming. The needle was only
half-full of white cotton; but, in her dream, perhaps she was sewing
with a more precious thread.
Juliana was sleeping also; but her head had fallen back on the chair,
and her arms were stretched out on the supports. In the gentleness of
her slumber her features were relaxed; but her mouth retained a line of
distress, a shadow of affliction; half closed, it permitted a glimpse of
her bloodless gums; but at the beginning of the nose, between the
eyebrows, there was a small furrow, deepened by great sorrow. And her
forehead was moist; a drop of perspiration slowly rolled down her
temple. And her hands, whiter than the muslin from under which they
extended, seemed, by their position alone, to indicate an immense
lassitude. What struck me most was less her moral expression than the
appearance of her person. I meditated without considering this
expression, and even Juliana herself had no part in my thoughts; and,
anew, I felt only the little creature living beside me, as if, at that
moment, no other creature existed around me. And, again, this was not
an illusory sensation, but a real and profound one. Fear ran through
every fibre of my being.
I averted my eyes; and I again saw between her fingers the bonnet in
which glittered the needle, I again saw all those light laces in the
basket, all those rose-colored and blue ribbons that trembled at the
breath of the breeze. My heart was so strongly oppressed that I thought
I should faint. What tendernesses the hands of my mother, lost in her
dream, revealed, those hands placed on the pretty, white thing destined
to cover the head of the child who was not my own!
I remained there several minutes. This place was the true sanctuary of
the house, the Holy of Holies. On one wall hung my father's portrait,
whom Federico greatly resembled; on another that of Constance, who
resembled Maria a little. The two faces, living in that superior
existence in which the recollections of those who have loved them have
placed them, had magnetic eyes, eyes that seemed to see everywhere.
Other relics of the two dead loved ones sanctified this retreat. In one
corner, on a pedestal, closed in between plates of glass and covered
with black crape, there was the death mask moulded on the corpse of the
man whom my mother had loved with a passion stronger than death. And
yet this room had nothing lugubrious about it. There reigned in it a
sovereign peace, that, from thence, seemed to propagate through the
entire house, as life propagates from the heart, by a rhythmic
expansion.
*XXIX.*
I recall the walk I made to the Lilacs, with Maria, Natalia, and Miss
Edith, on a rather misty morning. And the recollection of it is also
rather misty, veiled, indistinct like that of a long dream, torturing
yet sweet.
The garden no longer had its myriad of bluish grapes nor its exquisite
forest of flowers, nor its triple perfume, harmonious as music, nor its
gayety, nor the continuous cries of its swallows. It was enlivened only
by the voices and gambols of the two innocent girls. Already many of
the swallows had departed, and the rest were about to go. We had arrived
in time to see the last flock.
All the nests were abandoned, deserted, lifeless. Many were broken, and
on the clayey debris trembled poor little feathers. The last flock,
gathered on the roof, in the gutters, were still waiting for a few
dispersed companions. The emigrants stood on a row on the edge of the
eaves-board, some presenting the beak and others the back, so that the
little forked tails and the white breasts alternated. And while waiting,
they filled the silent air with their calls. And, from minute to minute,
by twos, by threes, the laggards arrived. The hour of departure was at
hand. The calls ceased. The fading sunlight fell on the closed house,
on the empty nests. Nothing could be sadder than those poor little dead
feathers which, here and there, fluttered, held prisoners in the clay.
As if raised up by a sudden gust of wind, by a storm the flock rose up
with a great fluttering of wings, ascended into the air like a
water-spout, remained for a moment directly above the house; then,
without hesitation, as if they had before them a clearly traced path,
they took their way in a compact mass, flew off, melted away in the sky,
and finally disappeared.
Maria and Natalia, mounted on a bench, stood up on tiptoe to watch the
fugitives as long as possible, and, stretching out their arms, they
cried:
"Good-by, good-by, good-by, little swallows!"
Of all the rest I retain only an indistinct recollection, like that of a
dream.
Maria wished to enter the house. I opened the door myself. It was
here, on these three steps, that Juliana had followed me, furtively,
light as a shadow, and had embraced me, and had whispered: "Go in, go
in!" In the vestibule, the nest still hung among the grotesques of the
ceiling. "Now I am yours, altogether, entirely!" she had murmured,
without releasing my neck; and by a sinuous movement she had thrown
herself on my breast and had met my mouth. The vestibule was
silent--the staircases were silent; silence reigned throughout the
house. It was here that I had heard the low and distant hum, like that
retained by certain shells in the depths of their folds. But now, the
silence resembled that of a tomb. And this place was the sepulchre of
my happiness.
Maria and Natalia prattled on without cease, did not stop asking me
questions, showed themselves curious about everything, went and opened
the drawers of the dressing-table, the closets. Miss Edith followed
them, watchful.
"Look, see what I have found," cried Maria, running toward me.
At the bottom of a drawer she had found a bouquet of lavender and a
glove. It was one of Juliana's gloves, spotted with black at the
finger-tips; on the inside, near the hem, it bore the following still
visible inscription: "_The Mulberries, January 27, 1880. Souvenir_!"
Like a flash, my memory represented clearly to me the episode of the
mulberries, one of the happiest episodes of our first felicity, a
fragment of the idyll.
"Is it one of mamma's gloves?" asked Maria. "Give it to me, give it to
me. I want to take it to her myself."
Of all the rest I have but an indistinct recollection, like a dream.
Calisto, the old care-taker, came to speak to me. He told me a thousand
things, and I understood almost nothing of what he said. Several times
he repeated the wish:
"A boy, a fine boy, and may God bless him! A fine boy!"
When we were outside, Calisto closed the doors.
"And those nests, those happy nests?" he said, shaking his handsome
white head.
"They must not be touched, Calisto."
Every nest was deserted, empty, lifeless. Their last habitants had left
them. A languorous kiss from the setting sun touched the closed house,
the solitary nests, and there could be nothing sadder than those poor
little dead feathers that, here and there, trembled, prisoners in the
clay.
*XXX.*
The term approached. The first half of October had passed. Doctor
Vebesti had been notified.
My anxiety increased hourly, became intolerable. I was frequently
assailed by attacks of madness similar to that which had seized me on
the banks of the Assoro. I fled far from the Badiola, remained long
hours on horseback, I compelled Orlando to jump hedges and trenches, I
forced him into perilous paths at a gallop. Then the poor animal and I
returned, streaming, tired, but always safely.
Doctor Vebesti arrived. Everybody at the Badiola breathed a sigh of
relief. Confidence and hope reappeared. Juliana alone was unnerved, and
more than once I detected in her eyes the passage of a sinister thought,
the sombre light of a fixed idea, the horror of a lugubrious
presentiment.
The pains of childbirth began; they lasted an entire day, with a few
periods of suspension, at times stronger, sometimes weaker, at times
bearable, and sometimes agonizing. She remained standing, leaning on a
table, her back against a closet, clenching her teeth so as not to cry
out; or else she sat in an arm-chair and remained in it, almost
motionless, her face buried in her hands, uttering at times a suppressed
groan; or else she ceaselessly changed her place, going from one corner
to another, stopping here and there to convulsively twist between her
fingers the first object at hand. The sight of her suffering tortured
me. I could not stand it. I left the room, went out for a few minutes;
then I returned, almost in spite of myself, as if drawn by a magnetic
attraction; and I forced myself to watch her suffering, without power to
speak one comforting word to her.
"Tullio, Tullio! What a horrible thing! Oh! what a horrible thing. I
have never suffered so much, never, never!"
Night fell. My mother, Miss Edith, and the doctor had gone down to the
dining-room. Juliana and I were alone. The lamps had not yet been
brought in. October's purplish twilight entered the room; from time to
time the wind shook the windows.
"Help me, Tullio, help me!" she cried, in the bewilderment of the spasm,
her arms stretched toward me, looking at me with dilated eyes, whose
whites were of an extraordinary whiteness in the darkness that made her
face livid.
"Tell me, tell me, what can I do to help you?" I stammered, distracted,
not knowing what to do, caressing the hair on her temples with a gesture
in which I would have liked to impart a supernatural power. "Tell me,
tell me, what shall I do?"
She stopped complaining; she looked at me, listened to me, as if
forgetful of her pain, as if seized by surprise, stupefied, no doubt, by
the sound of my voice, by the expression of my bewilderment and anguish,
by the trembling of my fingers on her hair, by the distressed tenderness
of that inefficacious gesture.
"You love me, don't you?" she said, without ceasing to look at me, as if
not to lose the slightest sign of my emotion. "You forgive everything?"
And, becoming exalted again, she cried:
"You must love me! You must love me very much now, because to-morrow I
shall not be here, because I shall die to-night; to-night, perhaps, I
shall be dead. And you would be sorry for not having loved me, for not
having pardoned me. Oh! yes, you would be sorry."
She seemed so sure of dying that a sudden terror froze me.
"You must love me! Perhaps you do not believe what I told you one
night; perhaps you do not believe me yet; but you will surely believe me
when I am gone. Then the light will enter your soul, then you will
understand the truth; and you will repent not having loved me enough,
not having forgiven me."
Sobs choked her utterance.
"Do you know why I'm sorry to die? Because I die without your knowing
how much I have loved you, how much I loved you _after_, especially--
Oh! what a punishment! Do I deserve such an end?"
She hid her face in her hands. But immediately uncovered it, and, very
pale, looked at me. An idea still more terrible seemed to have crushed
her.
"Suppose I died," she stammered; "and while dying _gave life_----"
"Hush!"
"You understand----"
"Be silent, Juliana!"
I was more affected than she. Terror had overwhelmed me, and left me
without even the power to emit a single word of consolation, to combat
these imaginations of death with a single vivifying word. I, too, was
sure of the atrocious end. In the violet darkness my eyes met
Juliana's; and on that poor drawn face I thought I noticed symptoms of
the death agony, symptoms of a dissolution that had already begun and
that was inevitable. She could not repress a sort of shriek that
resembled nothing human, and she clutched my arm convulsively.
"Help me, Tullio, help me!"
She clasped me hard, very hard, yet not hard enough. I should have
liked to feel her nails penetrate my flesh, from a furious desire for
physical torture that would put me in touch with her torture. Her
forehead pressed against my shoulder, she continued to moan. Its note
was that which renders the voice unrecognizable in the excess of
corporeal suffering, the note that brings suffering man to the level of
the suffering beast--the instinctive lamentation of all flesh in pain,
whether animal or human.
From time to time she recovered her speech sufficiently to repeat:
"Help me!"
And she imparted to me the violent shocks of her great pain. A flood of
hate mounted from the deepest roots of my being, rose even to my hands
in a homicidal impulse. That impulse came before its time; but the
vision of the crime already consummated lit up my inner consciousness
like a flash. "You shall not live!"
"Ah! Tullio, Tullio! Suffocate me! Kill me! I cannot stand it, I
cannot stand it, you hear; no, I cannot stand it, I do not want to
suffer any longer."
She cried savagely, looking around her wildly as if seeking something or
someone from whom she could obtain the aid I was powerless to render
her.
"Calm yourself, Juliana; calm yourself. Perhaps the time has come! Be
brave! Take this chair. Be brave, my dear soul! A little more
patience! See, I am near you. Do not be afraid."
I ran to the bell. "The doctor! the doctor! Tell him to come
immediately."
Juliana ceased her lamentations. All at once she seemed to cease
suffering, or at least to be unconscious of her condition, in the
abstraction of other thoughts. It was evident that she was meditating
something. I scarcely had time to remark this instantaneous change.
"Listen, Tullio. Suppose I become delirious...."
"What do you mean?"
"Suppose later, when fever sets in, I become delirious; suppose I die
raving----"
"Well?"
Her voice had such accents of terror, her reticences were so sad, that I
began to tremble like a leaf, seized by a sort of panic, still without
understanding what she meant.
"Well?"
"They will be all there; they will be around me.... You understand? You
understand? One word would be enough. One never knows what one says
when delirious. You should..."
At that moment my mother, the doctor, and the midwife arrived.
"Ah! doctor," sighed Juliana, "I thought I was dying."
"Nonsense!" said the doctor in a reassuring voice. "There is no danger.
Everything will be all right."
And he looked at me.
"Your husband," he went on, smiling, "looks worse than you do."
And he showed me the door, saying:
"Go! You can be of no assistance here."
I glanced at my mother's eyes. She seemed restless, anxious,
compassionate.
"Yes, Tullio," she said. "It will be better for you to go. Federico is
downstairs waiting for you."
I looked at Juliana. Without concerning herself with the others
present, she fixed on me her large eyes, which were animated with an
extraordinary brilliancy. They expressed all the passion of a
despairing soul.
"I will not leave the adjoining room," I declared resolutely, without
removing my gaze from Juliana.
As I turned to go out I noticed the midwife disposing the pillows on the
bed of pain, on the bed of misery, and I shuddered as if from a breath
of death.
*XXXI.*
It was between four and five o'clock in the morning. The pains had
lasted until then, with a few intermissions of relief. I was lying on
the lounge in the adjoining room, and about three o'clock sleep had
overcome me unexpectedly. Cristina awoke me; she told me that Juliana
wished to see me.
My eyes still heavy from sleep, I started to my feet.
"Was I asleep? What has happened?"
"Do not be alarmed, signor. Nothing has happened. The pains are easier.
Come and see her."