“That was like you,” he said quietly.
“You understand, now,” Lamberti continued. “You and I met her on the same day at your aunt’s, and when I saw her, I felt as if I had always known her and loved her. No one can explain such things. Then by a strange coincidence we dreamt the same dream, on the same night.”
“Was it she whom you met in the Forum, and who ran away from you?” asked Guido, in astonishment.
“Yes. That is the reason why we always avoided each other, and why I would not go to their house till you almost forced me to. We had never spoken alone together till the garden party. It was then that we found out that our dreams were alike, and after that I kept away from her more than ever, but I dreamt of her every night.”
“So that was your secret, that afternoon!”
“Yes. We had dreamt of each other and we had met in the Forum in the place we had dreamt of, and she ran away without speaking to me. That was the whole secret. She was afraid of me, and I loved her, and was beginning to know it. I thought there was something wrong with my head and went to see a doctor. He talked to me about telepathy, but seemed inclined to consider that it might possibly be a mere train of coincidences. I think I have told you everything.”
For a long time they sat side by side in silence, each thinking his own thoughts.
“Is there anything you do not understand?” Lamberti asked at last.
“No,” Guido answered thoughtfully. “I understand it all. It was rather a shock at first, but I am glad you have told me. Perhaps I do not quite understand why she wishes to see me.”
“We both wish to be sure that you bear us no ill-will. I am sure she does, and I know that I do.”
There was a pause again.
“Do you think I am that kind of friend?” Guido asked, with a little sadness. “After what you have done, too?”
“I am afraid my mere existence has broken up your life, after all,” Lamberti answered.
“You must not think that. Please do not, my friend. There is only one thing that could hurt me now that it is all over.”
“What is that?”
“I am not afraid that it will happen. You are not the kind of man to break her heart.”
“No,” Lamberti answered very quietly. “I am not.”
“It was only a dream for me, after all,” Guido said, after a little while. “You have the reality. She used to talk of three great questions, and I remember them now as if I heard her asking them: ‘What can I know? What is it my duty to do? What may I hope?’ Those were the three.”
“And the answers?”
“Nothing, nothing, nothing. Those are my answers. Unless—”
He stopped.
“Unless — what?” Lamberti asked.
Guido smiled a little.
“Unless there is really something beyond it all, something essentially true, something absolute by nature.”
Lamberti had never known his friend to admit such a possibility even under a condition.
“At all events,” Guido added, “our friendship is true and absolute. Shall we go home? I feel a little tired.”
Lamberti helped him to the carriage and drew the light cover over his knees before getting in himself. Then they drove down towards the city, by the long and beautiful drive, past the Acqua Paola and San Pietro in Montorio.
“You must go and see her this evening,” Guido said gently, as they came near the Palazzo Farnese. “Will you tell her something from me? Tell her, please, that it would be a little hard for me to talk with her now, but that she must not think I am not glad that she is going to marry my best friend.”
“Thank you. I will say that.” Lamberti’s voice was less steady than Guido’s.
“And tell her that I will write to her from the Tyrol.”
“Yes.”
It was over. The two men knew that their faithful friendship was unshaken still, and that they should meet on the morrow and trust each other more than ever. But on this evening it was better that each should go his own way, the one to his solitude and his thoughts, the other to the happiest hour of his life.
CHAPTER XXVIII
ON THE FOLLOWING afternoon Lamberti waited for Cecilia at the Villa Madama, and she came not long after him, with Petersen. He had been to the Palazzo Massimo in the evening, and a glance and a sign had explained to her that all was well. Then they had sat together awhile, talking in a low tone, while the Countess read the newspaper. When Lamberti had given Guido’s brave message, they had looked earnestly at each other, and had agreed to tell her mother the truth at once, and to meet on the morrow at the villa, which was Cecilia’s own house, after all. For they felt that they must be really alone together, to say the only words that really mattered.
The head gardener had admitted Lamberti to the close garden, by the outer steps, but had not let him into the house, as he had received no orders. When Cecilia came, he accompanied her with the keys and opened wide the doors of the great hall. Cecilia and Lamberti did not look at each other while they waited, and when the man was gone away Cecilia told Petersen to sit down in the court of honour on the other side of the little palace. Petersen went meekly away and left the two to themselves.
They walked very slowly along the path towards the fountain, and past it, to the parapet at the other end, where they had talked long ago. But as they passed the bench, they glanced at it quietly, and saw that it was still in its place. Cecilia had not been at the villa since the afternoon before Guido fell ill, and Lamberti had never come there since the garden party in May.
They stood still before the low wall and looked across the shoulder of the hill. Saving commonplace words at meeting, they had not spoken yet. Cecilia broke the silence at last, looking straight before her, her lids low, her face quiet, almost as if she were in a dream.
“Have we done all that we could do, all that we ought to do for him?” she asked. “Are you sure?”
“We can do nothing more,” Lamberti answered gravely.
“Tell me again what he said. I want the very words.”
“He said, ‘Tell her that it would be a little hard for me to talk with her now, but that she must not think I am not glad that she is going to marry my best friend.’ He said those words, and he said he would write to you from the Tyrol. He leaves to-morrow night.”
“He has been very generous,” Cecilia said softly.
“Yes. He will be your best friend, as he is mine.”
She knew that it was true.
“We have done what we can,” Lamberti continued presently. “He has given all he has, and we have given him what we could. The rest is ours.”
He took her hand and drew her gently, turning back towards the fountain.
“It was like this in the dream,” she said, scarcely breathing the words as she walked beside him.
They stood still before the falling water, quite alone and out of sight of every one, in the softening light, and suddenly the girl’s heart beat hard, and the man’s face grew pale, and they were facing each other, hands in hands, look in look, thought in thought, soul in soul; and they remembered that day when each had learned the other’s secret in the shadowy staircase of the palace, and each dreamt again of a meeting long ago in the House of the Vestals; but only the girl knew what she had felt of mingled joy and regret when she had sat alone at night weeping on the steps of the Temple.
There was no veil between them now, as their eyes drew them closer together by slow and delicious degrees. It was the first time, though every instant was full of memories, all ending where this was to begin. Their lips had never met, yet the thrill of life meeting life and the blinding delight of each in the other were long familiar, as from ages, while fresh and untasted still as the bloom on a flower at dawn.
Then, when they had kissed once, they sat down in the old place, wondering what words would come, and whether they should ever need words at all after that. And somehow, Cecilia thought of her three questions, and they all were answered a
s youth answers them, in one way and with one word; and the answer seemed so full of meaning, and of faith and hope and charity, that the questions need never be asked again, nor any others like them, to the end of her life; nor did she believe that she could ever trouble her brain again about Thus spake Zarathushthra, and the Man who had killed God, and the overcoming of Pity, and the Eternal Return, and all those terrible and wonderful things that live in Nietzsche’s mazy web, waiting to torment and devour the poor human moth that tries to fly upward.
But as for Kant’s Categorical Imperative, in order to act in such a manner that the reasons for her actions might be considered a universal law, it was only necessary to realise how very much she loved the man she had chosen, and how very much he loved her; for how indeed could it then be possible not to live so as to deserve to be happy?
She had thought of these things during the night and had fallen asleep very happy in realising the perfect simplicity of all science, philosophy, and transcendental reasoning, and vaguely wondering why every one could not solve the problems of the universe as she had.
“Is it all quite true?” she asked now, with a little fluttering wonder. “Shall I wake and hear the door shutting, and be alone, and frightened as I used to be?”
Lamberti smiled.
“I should have waked already,” he said, “when we were standing there by the fountain. I always did when I dreamt of you.”
“So did I. Do you think we really met in our dreams?” She blushed faintly.
“Do you know that you have not told me once to-day that you care for me, ever so little?” he asked.
“I have told you much more than that, a thousand times over, in a thousand ways.”
“I wonder whether we really met!”
The Heart of Rome
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
The first edition
CHAPTER I
THE BARONESS VOLTERRA drove to the Palazzo Conti in the heart of Rome at nine o’clock in the morning, to be sure of finding Donna Clementina at home. She had tried twice to telephone, on the previous afternoon, but the central office had answered that “the communication was interrupted.” She was very anxious to see Clementina at once, in order to get her support for a new and complicated charity. She only wanted the name, and expected nothing else, for the Conti had very little ready money, though they still lived as if they were rich. This did not matter to their friends, but was a source of constant anxiety to their creditors, and to the good Pompeo Sassi, the steward of the ruined estate. He alone knew what the Conti owed, for none of them knew much about it themselves, though he had done his best to make the state of things clear to them.
The big porter of the palace was sweeping the pavement of the great entrance, as the cab drove in. He wore his working clothes of grey linen with silver buttons bearing the ancient arms of his masters, and his third best gold-laced cap. There was nothing surprising in this, at such an early hour, and as he was a grave man with a long grey beard that made him look very important, the lady who drove up in the open cab did not notice that he was even more solemn than usual. When she appeared, he gave one more glance at the spot he had been sweeping, and then grounded his broom like a musket, folded his hands on the end of the broomstick and looked at her as if he wondered what on earth had brought her to the palace at that moment, and wished that she would take herself off again as soon as possible.
He did not even lift his cap to her, yet there was nothing rude in his manner. He behaved like a man upon whom some one intrudes when he is in great trouble.
The Baroness was rather more exigent in requiring respect from servants than most princesses of the Holy Roman Empire, for her position in the aristocratic scale was not very well defined.
She was not pleased, and spoke with excessive coldness when she asked if Donna Clementina was at home. The porter stood motionless beside the cab, leaning on his broom. After a pause he said in a rather strange voice that Donna Clementina was certainly in, but that he could not tell whether she were awake or not.
“Please find out,” answered the Baroness, with impatience. “I am waiting,” she added with an indescribable accent of annoyance and surprise, as if she had never been kept waiting before, in all the fifty years of her more or less fashionable life.
There were speaking-tubes in the porter’s lodge, communicating with each floor of the great Conti palace, but the porter did not move.
“I cannot go upstairs and leave the door,” he said.
“You can speak to the servant through the tube, I suppose!”
The porter slowly shook his massive head, and his long grey beard wagged from side to side.
“There are no servants upstairs,” he said. “There is only the family.”
“No servants? Are you crazy?”
“Oh, no!” answered the man meditatively. “I do not think I am mad. The servants all went away last night after dinner, with their belongings. There were only sixteen left, men and women, for I counted them.”
“Do you mean to say—” The Baroness stopped in the middle of her question, staring in amazement.
The porter now nodded, as solemnly as he had before shaken his head.
“Yes. This is the end of the house of Conti.”
Then he looked at her as if he wished to be questioned, for he knew that she was not really a great lady, and guessed that in spite of her magnificent superiority and coldness she was not above talking to a servant about her friends.
“But they must have somebody,” she said. “They must eat, I suppose! Somebody must cook for them. They cannot starve!”
“Who knows? Who knows? Perhaps they will starve.”
The porter evidently took a gloomy view of the case.
“But why did the servants go away in a body?” asked the Baroness, descending from her social perch by the inviting ladder of curiosity.
“They never were paid. None of us ever got our wages. For some time the family has paid nobody. The day before yesterday, the telephone company sent a man to take away the instrument. Then the electric light was cut off. When that happens, it is all over.”
The man had heard of the phenomenon from a colleague.
“And there is nobody? They have nobody at all?”
The Baroness had always been rich, and was really trying to guess what would happen to people who had no servants.
“There is my wife,” said the porter. “But she is old,” he added apologetically, “and the palace is big. Can she sweep out three hundred rooms, cook for two families of masters and dress the Princess’s hair? She cannot do it.”
This was stated with gloomy gravity. The Baroness also shook her head in sympathy.
“There were sixteen servants in the house yesterday,” continued the porter. “I remember when there were thirty, in the times of the old Prince.”
“There would be still, if the family had been wise,” said the Baroness severely. “Is your wife upstairs?”
“Who knows where she is?” enquired the porter by way of answer, and with the air of a man who fears that he may never see his wife again. “There are three hundred rooms. Who knows where she is?”
The Baroness was a practical woman by nature and by force of circumstances; she made up her mind to go upstairs and see for herself how matters stood. The name of Donna Clem
entina might not just now carry much weight beside those of the patronesses of a complicated charitable organization; in fact the poor lady must be in a position to need charity herself rather than to dispense it to others. But the Baroness had a deep-rooted prejudice in favour of the old aristocracy, and guessed that it would afterwards be counted to her for righteousness if she could be the first to offer boundless sympathy and limited help to the distressed family.
It would be thought distinctly smart, for instance, if she should take the Princess, or even one of the unmarried daughters, to her own house for a few days, as a refuge from the sordid atmosphere of debt and ruin, and beyond the reach of vulgar creditors, one of whom, by the way, she knew to be her own excellent husband. The Princess was probably not aware of that fact, for she had always lived in sublime ignorance of everything connected with money, even since her husband’s death; and when good Pompeo Sassi tried to explain things, telling her that she was quite ruined, she never listened to what he said. If the family had debts, why did he not borrow money and pay them? That was what he was paid for doing, after all. It was true that he had not been paid for a year or two, but that was a wretched detail. Economy? Had not the Princess given up her second maid, as an extravagance? What more did the man expect?
The Baroness knew all this and reflected upon what she knew, as she deliberately got out of her cab at the foot of the grand staircase.
“I will go upstairs myself,” she said.
“Padrona,” observed the porter, standing aside with his broom.
He explained in a single word that she was at liberty to go upstairs if she chose, that it was not of the least use to go, and that he would not be responsible for any disappointment if she were afterwards not pleased. There is no language in the world which can say more in one word than the Italian, or less in ten thousand, according to the humour of the speaker.
The Baroness took no notice as she went up the stairs. She was not very tall, and was growing slowly and surely stout, but she carried her rather large head high and had cultivated importance, as a fine art, with some success. She moved steadily, with a muffled sound as of voluminous invisible silk bellows that opened and shut at each step; her outer dress was sombre, but fashionable, and she wore a long gold chain of curious and fine workmanship to carry her hand-glass, for she was near-sighted. Her thick hair was iron-grey, her small round eyes were vaguely dark with greenish lights, her complexion was like weak coffee and milk, sallow, but smooth, even and healthy. She was a strong woman of fifty years, well used to the world and its ways; acquisitive, inquisitive and socially progressive; not knowing how to wish back anything from the past, so long as there was anything in the future to wish for; a good wife for an ambitious man.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1044