“Good — I think,” answered the young girl, motionless beside him. “But I might be very bad.”
“What is the riddle?” Guido enquired, and now he felt that he was speaking out of his own curiosity, and not as the mouthpiece of some one in a dream. “Do you ask yourself what it all means? I suppose so. We all ask that, and we never get any answer.”
“It is too vague a question. It cannot have a definite answer. No. I ask three questions which I found in a German book of philosophy when I was a little girl. I tried hard to understand what all the rest of the book was about, but I found on one page three questions, printed by themselves. I can see the page now, and the questions were numbered one, two, and three. I have asked them ever since.”
“What were they?”
“They were these: ‘What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope?’”
“There would be everything in the answers,” Guido said, “for they are big questions. I think I have answered them all in the negative in my own life. I know nothing, I do nothing, and I hope nothing.”
Cecilia looked at him again. “I would not be you,” she said gravely. “I can do nothing, perhaps, and I am sure I know nothing worth knowing, but I hope. I have that at least. I hope everything, with all my heart and soul — everything, even things you could not dream of.”
“Help me to dream of them. Perhaps I might.”
“Then dream that faith is knowledge, that charity is action, and that hope is heaven itself,” answered Cecilia.
Her voice was sweet and low, and far away as spirit land, and Guido wondered at the words.
“Where did you hear that?” he asked.
“Ah, where?” she asked, almost sadly, and very longingly. “If I could tell you that, I should know the great secret, the only secret ever yet worth knowing. Where have we heard the voices that come back to us, not in sleeping dreams only, but when we are waking, too, voices that come back softly like evening bells across the sea, with the touch of hands that lay in ours long ago, and faces that we know better than our own! Where was it all, before the memory of it all was here?”
“I have often wondered whether those impressions are memories,” said Guido.
“What else could they be?” Cecilia asked, her tone growing colder at once.
Guido had been happy in listening to her talk, with its suggestion of fantastical extravagance, but he had not known how to answer her, nor how to lead her on. He felt that the spell was broken, because something was lacking in himself. To be a magician one must believe in magic, unless one would be a mere conjurer. Guido at least knew enough not to answer the girl’s last question with a string of so-called scientific theories about atavism and transmitted recollections. If he had taken that ground he would have been surprised to find that Cecilia Palladio was quite as familiar with it as himself.
“I am afraid,” he said, “that I am not fit to talk with you about such things. You start from a point which I can never hope to reach, and instead of coming down to me, you rise higher and higher, almost out of my sight. I am afraid that if our friendship is to be real, it will be a one-sided bond.”
“How do you mean?” asked the young girl, who had listened.
“It will mean much more to me than it ever can to you.”
“No,” Cecilia answered. “I think I shall like you very much.”
“I like you very much already,” said Guido, smiling. “I have an amusing idea.”
“Have you? What is it? Neither of us has been very amusing this evening.”
“Suppose that we take advantage of the Princess’s conspiracy. Shall we?”
“My mother is the other conspirator!” Cecilia laughed.
“Is there any harm in letting people see that we like each other?” Guido asked.
“None in the least. Every one hopes that we may. Besides—” she stopped short.
“What is the other consideration?” Guido enquired.
“If I am perfectly frank — brutally frank — shall you be less my friend?”
“No. Much more.”
“I do not wish to marry at all,” said Cecilia, and again she reminded him of the Sphinx. “But if I ever should change my mind, since you and I have been picked out to make a match, I suppose I might as well marry you as any one else.”
“Oh, quite as well!”
Then Guido laughed, as he rarely did, not loudly, but with all his heart, and Cecilia did not try to check her amusement either.
“I suppose it really is very funny,” she said.
“The only thing necessary is that no one should ever guess that we have made a compact. That would be fatal.”
“No one!” cried the young girl, eagerly. “No one! Not even your friend!”
“Lamberti? No, least of all, Lamberti!”
“Why do you say, least of all?”
“Because you do not like him,” Guido answered, with perfect sincerity.
“Oh! I see. I am not sure, of course, but I am glad you do not mean to tell him. It would make me nervous to think that he might know. I — I am not quite certain why it makes me nervous, but it does.”
“Have no fear. When shall I see you?”
He had noticed that Cecilia’s mother was beginning that little comedy of movements, and glances, and uneasy turnings of the head, by which mothers of marriageable daughters signify their intention of going home. The works of a clock probably act in the same way before striking.
“I will make my mother ask you to dinner. Are you free to-morrow night?”
“Any night.”
“No — I mean really. Are you?”
“Yes, really. Lamberti does not count, for we generally dine together when we have no other engagement.”
The shadow again flitted across Cecilia’s brow, and she said nothing, only nodding quickly. Then she looked across the room at her mother. Young girls are always instantly aware that their mothers are making signs. When Nelson’s commander-in-chief signalled to him at the battle of Copenhagen the order to retire, Nelson put his spy-glass to his blind eye and assured his officers that he could see nothing, went on, and won the fight. Every young girl is totally blind of one eye during periods that vary between ten minutes and three hours.
Cecilia having recovered her sight, and seen her mother, rose with obedient alacrity.
“Good night,” she said to Guido. “I am glad we are friends.”
Their glances met for a moment, and Guido made an imperceptible gesture to put out his hand, but she did not answer it. He thought her refusal a little old-fashioned, since young girls now shake hands in Italy more often than not; but he liked her ways, chiefly because they were hers, and, moreover, he remembered just then that at her age she was supposed to be barely out of the schoolroom or the convent.
CHAPTER VI
“SPIRITUALISM, YOUR HIGHNESS, is the devil, without doubt,” said the learned ecclesiastical archæologist, Don Nicola Francesetti, in an apologetic tone, and looking at his knees. “If there is anything more heretical, it is a belief in a possible migration of souls from one body to another, in a series of lives.”
The Princess Anatolie smiled at the excellent man and exchanged a glance of compassionate intelligence with Monsieur Leroy. She did not care a straw what the Church thought about anything except Protestants and Jews, and she did not believe that Don Nicola cared either. He chanced to be a priest, instead of a professor, and it was of course his duty to protest against heresy when it was thrust under his cogitative observation. Spiritualism was not exactly heresy, therefore he said it was the devil, and no mistake; but as she was sure that he did not believe in the devil, that only proved that he did not believe in spiritualism.
In this she was mistaken, however, as people often are in their judgment of priests. Nicola Francesetti had long ago placed his conscience in safety, so to speak, by telling himself that he was not a theologian, but an archæologist, and that as he could not afford to divide his time and his intelligence between
two subjects, where one was too vast, it was therefore his plain duty to think about all questions of religion as the Church taught him to think. He admitted that if his life could begin again he would perhaps not again enter the priesthood, but he would never have conceded that he could have been anything but a believing Catholic. He had no vocation whatever for saving souls, whereas he possessed the archæological gift in a high degree; and yet, as a clergyman and a good Christian, he was convinced at heart that a man in holy orders had no right to give his whole life and strength to another profession. He had asked the advice of a wise and good man on this point, however, and the theologian had thought that he should continue to live as he was living. Had he a cure? No, he had none. Had he ever evaded a priest’s work? That is, had work been offered to him where a priest was needed, and where he could have done active good, and had he refused because it was distasteful to him? No, never. Was he receiving any stipend for performing a priest’s duties, with the tacit understanding that he was at liberty to pay an impecunious substitute a part of the money for taking his place, so that he himself profited by the transaction? No, certainly not. Don Nicola had a sufficient income of his own to live on. Had he ever made a solemn promise to devote his life to missionary labours among the heathen? No.
“In that case, my dear friend,” concluded the theologian, “you are tormenting yourself with perfectly useless scruples. You are making a mountain of your molehill, and when you have made your mountain you will not be satisfied until you have made another beside it. In the course of time you will, in fact, oppress your innocent conscience with a whole range of mountains; you will be immobilised under the weight, and then you will become hateful to yourself, useless to others, and an object of pity to wise men. Stick to your archæology.”
“Is pure study a good in itself?” asked Don Nicola.
“What is good?” retorted the theologian viciously. “I wish you would define it!”
Don Nicola was silent, for though he could think of a number of synonyms for the conception, he remembered no definition corresponding to any of them. He waited.
“Good and goodness are not the same thing,” observed the theologian; “you might as well say that study and knowledge are the same thing.”
“But study should lead to knowledge.”
“And goodness should lead to good; and, compared with ignorance, knowledge is a form of good. Therefore study is a form of goodness. Consequently, as you have a turn for erudition, the best thing you can do is to go on with your studies.”
“I see,” said Don Nicola.
“I wish I did,” sighed the theologian, when the priest was gone. “How very pleasant it must be, to be an archæologist!”
After that, whenever Don Nicola was troubled with uneasiness about his profession, he soothed himself with his friend’s little syllogism, which was as full of holes as a sieve, as flimsy as a tissue-paper balloon, and as unstable as a pyramid upside down, but nevertheless perfectly satisfactory.
“Of course,” says humanity, “I know nothing about it. But I am perfectly sure.”
And so forth. And moreover, if humanity were not frequently quite sure of things concerning which it knows nothing, the world would soon come to a standstill, and never move again; like the ass in the fable, that died of hunger in its stall between two bundles of hay, unable to decide which to eat first. That also was an instance of stable equilibrium.
Don Nicola avoided all questions of religion in general conversation, and tried to make other people avoid them when he was the only clergyman present, because he did not like to be asked his opinion about them. But when the Princess Anatolie and Monsieur Leroy gravely declared their belief in the communications of departed persons by means of rappings, not to say by touch, and by strains of music, and perfumes, and even, on rare occasions, by actual apparition, then Don Nicola felt that it was his duty to protest, and he accordingly protested with considerable energy. He said that spiritualism was the devil.
“The chief object of the devil’s existence,” observed Monsieur Leroy, “is to bear responsibility.”
The Princess laughed and nodded her approval, as she always did when Monsieur Leroy said anything which she thought clever. Don Nicola was too wise to discuss the matter, if, indeed, it admitted of discussion; for the devil was certainly responsible for a good deal.
“Your definition of spiritualism is so very liberal,” Monsieur Leroy added, with a fine supercilious smile on his red lips.
“It is not mine,” answered Don Nicola, modestly.
“No. I suppose it is the opinion of the Church. At all events, you do not doubt the possibility of communicating with the spirits of dead persons, do you?”
“I have never examined the matter, my dear sir.”
“It seems to me,” said Monsieur Leroy, with airy superiority, “that it is rather rash to attribute to Satan everything which you will not take the trouble to examine.”
“Hush, Doudou!” cried the Princess. “You are very rude!”
“Not at all, not at all, your Highness!” protested Don Nicola, rising. “I should be very much surprised if Monsieur Leroy expressed himself differently.”
Monsieur Leroy had no retort ready, and tried to smile.
“It will give me the greatest pleasure to be your guide to the new excavations in the Forum,” added the priest, as he took his leave.
The Princess and Monsieur Leroy were left alone.
“Shall we?” he asked after a moment’s silence, and waited anxiously for the answer.
“I am afraid They will not come to-night, Doudou,” said the Princess. “You have excited yourself in argument. You know that always has a bad effect.”
“That man irritates me,” answered Monsieur Leroy, peevishly. “Why do you receive him?”
He spoke in the tone of a spoilt child — a spoilt child of forty, or thereabouts.
“I thought you liked him,” replied the Princess, very meekly. “I will give orders that he is not to be received. We will not go to the Forum with him.”
“No, no! How you exaggerate! You always think that I mean a great deal more than I say. I only said that he irritated me.”
“Why should you be irritated for nothing? You know it is bad for you.”
She looked at him with an air of concern, and there was a gentleness in her eyes which few had ever seen in them.
“It does not matter,” answered Monsieur Leroy, crossly.
He had risen, and he brought a very small and light mahogany table from a corner. It was one of those which used to be made during the second Empire in sets of six and of successive sizes, so that each fitted each under the next larger one. He moved awkwardly and yet without noise; there was something very womanish in his figure and gait.
He set the little table before the Princess, very close to her, lit a single candle, which he placed on the floor behind an arm-chair, and turned out the electric light. Then he sat down on the opposite side of the table and spread out his hands upon it, side by side, the right thumb resting on the left. The Princess did the same. They glanced at each other once or twice, hardly distinguishing each other’s features in the gloom. Then they looked steadily down upon the table, and neither stirred for a long time.
“I am sure They will not come,” said the Princess at last, in a very low voice.
“Hush!”
Silence again, for a quarter of an hour. Somewhere in the room a small clock, or a watch, ticked quickly, with a little rhythmical, insisting accent on the fourth beat.
“It moved, then!” whispered the Princess, excitedly.
“Yes. Hush!”
The little table certainly moved, with a queerly soft rocking motion, as if its feet only just touched the carpet and supported no weight. The Princess’s hands felt as if they were floating over tiny rippling waves, and between her shoulders came the almost stinging thrill she loved. She wished that the room were quite dark now, in order that she might feel more. There were tiny beads of p
erspiration on Monsieur Leroy’s forehead, and his hands were moist. The candle behind the arm-chair flickered.
“Are You there?” asked Monsieur Leroy, in a voice unlike his own.
There was no answer. The table moved more uneasily.
“Rap once for ‘yes,’ twice for ‘no,’” said Monsieur Leroy. “Is this the first time you have come to us?”
One rap answered the question, sharp and clear, as if the butt of a pencil had struck the table underneath it and near the middle.
“Are you the spirit of a man?”
Two raps very distinct.
“Then you are a woman. Tell us—”
Several raps came in quick succession, in pairs, as if to repeat the negative energetically. Monsieur Leroy seemed to hesitate what question to ask.
“Perhaps it is a child,” suggested the Princess, in a tremulous tone.
A sharp rap. Yes, it was a child. Was it a little girl? Yes. Had it been dead long? Yes. More than ten years? Yes. More than twenty? Yes. Fifty? No. Forty? Yes.
Monsieur Leroy began to count, pausing after each number.
“Forty-one — forty-two — forty-three — forty-four—”
The sharp rap again. The Princess drew a quick breath.
“How old was it when it died?” she managed to ask.
Monsieur Leroy began to count again, beginning with one. At the word seven, the rap came. The Princess started violently, almost upsetting the table against her companion.
“Adelaide!” She cried in a broken voice.
One rap.
“Oh, my darling, my darling!”
The old woman bent down over the table, and her outspread hands tried frantically to take up the flat surface, and she kissed the polished wood passionately, again and again, not knowing what she did, nor hearing her own incoherent words of mixed joy and agony.
“My child! My little thing — my sweet — speak to me—”
Her whole being was convulsed. Little storms of rappings seemed to answer her. The perspiration trickled down Monsieur Leroy’s temples. He seemed to be making an effort altogether beyond his natural strength.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1021