“If I have stayed too long,” she said, facing him, “it was because I came here at some risk to confess my fault, and hoped for your forgiveness. I shall always hope for it, as long as we both live, but I shall not ask for it again. I had thought that you would accept my devoted friendship instead of what I cannot give you and never gave you, though I believed that I did. But you will not take what I offer. We had better part on that rather than risk being enemies. You have already said one thing which you will regret and which I shall always remember. Good-bye.”
She held out her hand frankly, and he took it and kept it a moment, while their eyes met, and he spoke more gently.
“I said too much. I am sorry. I shall forgive you when I do not love you any more. Good-bye.”
He let her hand fall and looked away.
“Thank you,” she said.
She left his side and went towards the door, her head a little bent. As she laid her hand upon the handle, and looked back at Guido once again, it turned in her fingers and was drawn quickly away from them. She started and turned her head to see who was there.
Lamberti stood before her, and immediately pushed her back into the room and shut the door, visibly disturbed.
“This way!” he said quickly, in an undertone.
He led her swiftly to another door, which he opened for her and closed as soon as she had passed.
“Wait for me there!” he said, as she went in.
“What is the matter?” asked Guido rather faintly, when he realised what his friend had done.
“Her mother is in the hall,” Lamberti said. “Do not be startled, she knows nothing. She insists on seeing for herself how you are. She says her daughter begged her to come.”
“Tell her I am too ill to see her, please, and thank her very much. It is all over, Lamberti, we have parted.”
A dark flush rose in Lamberti’s face.
“You must see the Countess,” he said hurriedly. “I am sorry, but unless she comes here, her daughter cannot get out without being seen. We cannot leave her in your room. I will not do it, for your man may wake up and go there. There is no time to be lost either!”
“Bring the Countess in,” said Guido, with an effort, and moving uneasily on his couch.
He felt that nothing was spared him. In the few seconds that elapsed, he tried to decide what he should say to the Countess, and how he could account for knowing that Cecilia had now definitely broken off the engagement. Before he had come to any conclusion the Countess was ushered in, rosy and smiling, but a little timid at finding herself in a young bachelor’s quarters.
Meanwhile, Cecilia was in Guido’s bedroom. An older woman might have suspected some ignoble treachery, but her perfect innocence protected her from all fear. Lamberti would not have brought her there in such a hurry unless there had been some absolute necessity for getting her out of sight at once. Undoubtedly some visitor had come who could not be turned away. Perhaps it was the doctor. Moreover, she was too much disturbed by what had taken place to pay much attention to what was, after all, a detail.
She looked about her and saw that there was another door by which Lamberti would presently enter to let her out. There was the great bed with the coverlet of old arras displaying the royal arms, and beside it stood a small table of mahogany inlaid with brass. It had tall and slender legs that ended below in little brass lions’ paws, and it had a single drawer.
Without hesitation she went and opened it. Lamberti had been right. There was the revolver, a silver-mounted weapon with an ivory handle, much more for ornament than use, but quite effective enough for the purpose to which Guido might put it. Beside it lay a little pile of notes in their envelopes, and she involuntarily recognised her own handwriting. He had kept all she had written to him within his reach while he had been ill, and the thought pained her. The revolver was a very light one, made with only five chambers. She took it and examined it when she had shut the drawer again, and she saw that it was fully loaded. Old Fortiguerra had taught her to use firearms a little, and she knew how to load and unload them. She slipped the cartridges out quickly and tied them together in her handkerchief, and then dropped them into her parasol and the revolver after them.
She went to the tall mirror in the door of the wardrobe and began to arrange her veil, expecting Lamberti every moment. She had hardly finished when he entered and beckoned to her. She caught up her parasol by the middle so as to hold its contents safely, and in a few seconds she was outside the front door of the apartment. Lamberti drew a breath of relief.
“Take those!” she said quickly, producing the pistol and the cartridges. “He must not have them.”
Lamberti took the weapon and put it into his pocket, and held the parasol, while she untied the handkerchief and gave him the contents. Both began to go downstairs.
“I had better tell you who came,” Lamberti said, as they went. “You will be surprised. It was your mother.”
“My mother!” Cecilia stopped short on the step she had reached. “I did not think she meant to come!”
She went on, and Lamberti kept by her side.
“You can seem surprised when she tells you,” he said. “You have definitely broken your engagement, then? Guido had time to tell me so.”
“Yes, I could not lie to him. It was very hard, but I am glad it is all over, though he is very angry now.”
They reached the last landing before the court without meeting any one, and she paused again. He wondered what expression was on her face while she spoke, for he could scarcely see the outline of her features through the veil.
“Thank you again,” she said. “We may not meet for a long time, for my mother and I shall go away at once, and I suppose we shall not come back next winter.” She spoke rather bitterly now. “My reputation is damaged, I fancy, because I have refused to marry a man I do not love!”
“I will take care of your reputation,” Lamberti answered, as if he were saying the most natural thing in the world.
“It is hardly your place to do that,” Cecilia answered, much surprised.
“It may not be my right,” Lamberti said, “as people consider those things. But it is my place, as Guido’s friend and yours, as the only man alive who is devoted to you both.”
“I am more grateful than I can tell you. But please let people say what they like of me, and do not take my defence. You, of all the men I know, must not.”
“Why not I, of all men? I, of all men, will.”
She was standing with her back to the wall on the landing, and he was facing her now. His face looked a little more set and determined than usual, and he was rather pale, and he stood sturdily still before her. She could see his face through her veil, though he could hardly distinguish hers. He felt for a moment as if he were talking to a sort of lay figure that represented her and could not answer him.
“I, of all men, will take care that no one says a word against you,” he said, as she was silent.
“But why? Why you?”
“You have definitely given up all idea of marrying Guido? Absolutely? For ever? You are sure, in your own conscience, that he has no sort of claim on you left, and that he knows it?”
“Yes, yes! But—”
“Then,” he said, not heeding her, “as you and I may not meet again for a long time, and as it cannot do you the least harm to know it, and as you will have no right to feel that I shall be lacking in respect to you, if I say it, I am going to give myself the satisfaction of telling you something I have taken great pains to hide since we first met.”
“What is it?” asked Cecilia, nervously.
“It is a very simple matter, and one that will not interest you much.”
He paused one moment, and fixed his eyes on the brown veil, where he knew that hers were.
“I love you.”
Cecilia started violently, and put out one hand against the wall behind her.
“Do not be frightened, Contessina,” he said gently. “Many men will say that to
you before you are old. But none of them will mean it more truly than I. Shall we go? Your mother may not stay long with Guido.”
He moved, expecting her to go on, but she leaned against the wall where she stood, and she stared at his face through her veil. For an instant she thought she was going to faint, for her heart stopped beating and the blood left her head. She did not know whether it was happiness, or surprise, or fear that paralysed her, when his simple words revealed the vastness of the mistake in which she had lived, and the immensity of joy she had missed by so little. She pressed her hand flat against the wall beside her, sure that if she moved it she must fall.
“Have I offended you, Signorina?” Lamberti asked, and the low tones shook a little.
She could not speak yet, but his voice seemed to steady her, and her heart beat again. As if she were making a great effort her hand slowly left the wall, and she stretched it out towards him, silently asking for his. He did not understand, but he took it and held it quietly, coming a little nearer to her.
“You have forgiven me,” he said. “Thank you. You are kind. Good-bye.”
But then her fingers closed on his with almost frantic pressure.
“No, no!” she cried. “Not yet! One moment more!”
Still he did not understand, but he felt the blood rising and singing in his heart like the tide when it is almost high. A strange expectation filled him, as of a great change in his whole being that must come in the most fearful pain, or else in a happiness almost unbearable, something swelling, bursting, overwhelming, and enormous beyond imagination.
She did not know that she was drawing him nearer to her, she would have blushed scarlet at the thought; he did not know that his feet moved, that he was quite close to her, that she was clutching his hand and pressing it upon her own heart. They did not see what they were doing. They were standing together by a marble pillar in the Vestals’ House. They were out in the firmament beyond worlds, not seeing, not hearing, not touching, but knowing and one in knowledge.
The veil touched his cheek and lightly pressed against it. It was the Vestal’s veil. He had felt it in dreams, between his face and hers. Then the world broke into visible light, and he heard her whisper in his ear.
“That was my secret. You know it now.”
A distant footfall echoed from far up the stone staircase. Once more as she heard it she pressed his hand to her heart with all her might, and he, with his left round her neck, drew her veiled face against his and held it there an instant in simple pressure, not trying to kiss her.
Then those two separated and went down the remaining steps in silence, side by side, and very demurely, as if nothing had happened. The Countess’s brougham was in the courtyard, and the porter, just going into his lodge under the archway, touched his big-visored cap to Lamberti and glanced at Cecilia carelessly as they went out. Petersen was sitting in an open cab in the blazing sun, under a large white parasol lined with green cotton, and her mistress was seated beside her before she had time to rise. Cecilia had quickly turned up her veil over the brim of her hat as soon as she had passed the porter’s lodge, for he knew her face and she did not wish him to see her go out with Lamberti.
“Thank you,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone as Lamberti stood hat in hand in the sun by the step of the cab. “Palazzo Massimo,” she called out to the coach-man.
She nodded to Lamberti indifferently, and the cab drove quickly away to the right, rattling over the white paving-stones of the Piazza Farnese in the direction of San Carlo a Catinari.
“Did you see your mother?” Petersen asked. “She stopped the carriage and called me when she saw me, and she said she was going to ask after Signor d’Este. I said you had gone up to the embassy.”
“No,” Cecilia answered, “I did not see her. We shall be at home before she is.”
She did not speak again on the way. Petersen was too near-sighted and unsuspicious to see that she surreptitiously loosened the brown veil from her hat, got it down beside her on the other side, and rolled it up into a ball with one hand. Somehow, when she reached her own door, it was inside the parasol, just where the revolver had been half an hour earlier.
Lamberti put on his straw hat and glanced indifferently at the departing cab as he turned away, quite sure that Cecilia would not look round. He went back into the palace, feeling for a cigar in his outer breast pocket. His hands felt numb with cold under the scorching sun, and he knew that he was taking pains to look indifferent and to move as if nothing extraordinary had happened to him; for in a few minutes he would be face to face with Guido d’Este and the Countess Fortiguerra. He lit his cigar under the archway, and blew a cloud of smoke before him as he turned into the staircase; but on the first landing he stopped, just where he had stood with Cecilia. He paused, his cigar between his teeth, his legs a little apart as if he were on deck in a sea-way, and his hands behind him. He looked curiously at the wall where she had leaned against it, and he smoked vigorously. At last he took out a small pocket knife and with the point of the blade scratched a little cross on the hard surface, looked at it, touched it again and was satisfied, returned the knife to his pocket, and went quietly upstairs. Most seafaring men do absurdly sentimental things sometimes. Lamberti’s expression had neither softened nor changed while he was scratching the mark, and when he went on his way he looked precisely as he did when he was going up the steps of the Ministry to attend a meeting of the Commission. He had good nerves, as he had told the specialist whom he had consulted in the spring.
But he would have given much not to meet Guido for a day or two, though he did not in the least mind meeting the Countess. Cecilia could keep a secret as well as he himself, almost too well, and there was not the slightest danger that her mother should guess the truth from the behaviour of either of them, even when together. Nor would Guido guess it for that matter; that was not what Lamberti was thinking of just then.
He felt that chance, or fate, had made him the instrument of a sort of betrayal for which he was not responsible, and as he had never been in such a position in his life, even by accident, it was almost as bad at first as if he had intentionally taken Cecilia from his friend. He had always been instinctively sure that she would love him some day, but when he had at last spoken he had really not had the least idea that she already loved him. He had acted on an impulse as soon as he was quite sure that she would never marry Guido; perhaps, if he could have analysed his feelings, as Guido could have done, he would have found that he really meant to shock her a little, or frighten her by the point-blank statement that he loved her, in the hope of widening the distance which he supposed to exist between them, and thereby making it much more improbable that she should ever care for him.
Even now he did not see how he could ever marry her and remain Guido’s friend. He was far too sensible to tell Guido the truth and appeal to his generosity, for the best man living is not inclined to be generous when he has just been jilted, least of all to the man to whom he owes his discomfiture. In the course of time Guido might grow more indifferent. That was the most that could be hoped. Nevertheless, from the instant in which Lamberti had realised the truth, coming back to his senses out of a whirlwind of delight, he had known that he meant to have the woman he loved for himself, since she loved him already, and that he would count nothing that chanced to stand in his way, neither his friend, nor his career, nor his own family, nor neck nor life, either, if any such improbable risk should present itself. He was very glad that he had waited till he was quite sure that she was free, for he knew very well that if the moment had come too soon he should have felt the same reckless desire to win her, though he would have exiled himself to a desert island in the Pacific Ocean rather than yield to it.
And more than that. He, who had a rough and strong belief in God, in an ever living soul within him, and in everlasting happiness and suffering hereafter, he, who called suicide the most dastardly and execrable crime against self that it lies in the power of a believing man to com
mit, would have shot himself without hesitation rather than steal the love of his only friend’s wedded wife, content to give his body to instant destruction, and his soul to eternal hell — if that were the only way not to be a traitor. God might forgive him or not; salvation or damnation would matter little compared with escaping such a monstrous evil.
He did not think these things. They were instinctive with him and sure as fate, like all the impulses of violent temperaments; just as certain as that if a man should give him the lie he would have struck him in the face before he had realised that he had even raised his hand. Guido d’Este, as brave in a different way, but hating any violent action, would never strike a man at all if he could possibly help it, though he would probably not miss him at the first shot the next morning.
A quarter of an hour had not elapsed since Lamberti had left the Countess and Guido together when he let himself in again with his latch-key. He went at once to the bedroom, walking slowly and scrutinising the floor as he went along. He had heard of tragedies brought about by a hairpin, a glove, or a pocket handkerchief, dropped or forgotten in places where they ought not to be. He looked everywhere in the passage and in Guido’s room, but Cecilia had not dropped anything. Then he examined his beard in the glass, with an absurd exaggeration of caution. Her loose brown veil had touched his cheek, a single silk thread of it clinging to his beard might tell a tale. He was a man who had more than once lived among savages and knew how slight a trace might lead to a broad trail. Then he got a chair and set it against the side of the tall wardrobe. Standing on it he got hold of the cornice with his hands, drew himself up till he could see over it, remained suspended by one hand and, with the other, laid the revolver and the cartridges on the top. Guido would never find them there.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1040