He was seized by a terrible and frenzied desire to overthrow the idol that still persistently rose up lofty and enigmatic before his imagination, do what he would to abase it. With cynical cruelty, he set himself to insult, to undermine, to mutilate it. The destructive a.n.a.lysis he had already employed upon himself, he now turned upon Elena.
To those dubious problems which, at one time, he had resolutely put away from him, he now sought the answer; of all the suspicions which had formerly presented themselves to him only to disappear without leaving a trace, he now studied the origin, found them justified and obtained their confirmation. But whereas he thought to find relief in this furious work of demolition, he only increased his sufferings, aggravated his malady and deepened his wounds.
What had been the true cause of Elena"s departure two years before?
There were many conflicting rumours at the time, and again when she married Humphrey Heathfield; but the actual truth of the matter was what he heard, quite by chance, among other sc.r.a.ps of society gossip, from Giulio Musellaro one evening as they left the theatre together, nor did Andrea doubt it for a moment. Donna Elena had been obliged to leave Rome for pecuniary reasons, to work some "operation" which should extricate her from the serious embarra.s.sments into which her outrageous extravagance had plunged her. The marriage with Humphrey Heathfield, who was Marquis of Mount Saint Michael and Earl of Broadford, and besides possessing a considerable fortune was related to the highest n.o.bility of Great Britain, had saved her from ruin. Donna Elena had managed matters with the utmost adroitness and succeeded marvellously in steering clear of the threatening peril. It was not to be denied that the interval of her three years of widowhood had been none too chaste a prelude to a second marriage--neither chaste nor prudent--nevertheless, there was also no denying that Elena Muti was a great lady----
"Ah, my boy, a grand creature!" said Musellaro, "as you very well know."
Andrea said nothing.
"But take my advice," his friend went on, throwing away the cigarette which had gone out while he talked, "do not resume your relations with her. It is the same with love as with tobacco--once out, it will not bear relighting. Let us go and get a cup of tea from Donna Giulia Moceto. They tell me one may go to her house after the theatre--it is never too late."
They were close by the Palazzo Borghese.
"You can," answered Andrea, "I am going home to bed. I am rather tired after to-day"s run with the hounds. My regards to Donna Giulia--my blessing go with you!"
Musellaro went up the steps of the palace and Andrea continued on his way past the Borghese fountain towards the Trinita.
It was one of those wonderful January nights, cold and serene, which turn Rome into a city of silver set in a ring of diamonds. The full moon, hanging in mid-sky, shed a triple purity of light, of frost, and of silence.
He walked along in the moonlight like a somnambulist, conscious of nothing but his pain. The last blow had been struck, the idol was shattered, nothing remained standing above the ruins--this was the end!
So it was true--she had never really loved him. She had not scrupled to break with him in order to contract a marriage of convenience. And now she put on the airs of a martyr before him, wrapped herself round with a mantle of conjugal inviolability! A bitter laugh rose to his lips, and then a rush of sullen blind rage against the woman came over him. The memory of his pa.s.sion went for nothing--all the past was one long fraud, one stupendous, hideous lie; and this man, who throughout his whole life had made a practice of dissimulation and duplicity, was now incensed at the deception of another, was as indignant at it as at some unpardonable backsliding, some inexcusable and inexplicable perfidy. He was quite unable to understand how Elena could have committed such a crime; he denied her all possibility of justification, and rejected the hypothesis of some secret and dire necessity having driven her to sudden flight. He could see nothing but the bare brutal fact, its baseness, its vulgarity--above all its vulgarity, gross, manifest, odious, without one extenuating circ.u.mstance. In short, the whole matter reduced itself to this: a pa.s.sion which was apparently sincere, which they had vowed was profound and inextinguishable, had been broken off for a question of money, for material interests, for a commercial transaction.
"Oh, you are ungrateful! What do you know of all that has happened, of all I have suffered!"
Elena"s words recurred to him with everything else she had said, from beginning to end of their interview--her words of fondness, her offer of sisterly affection, all her sentimental phrases. And he remembered, too, the tears that had dimmed her eyes, her changes of countenance, her tremors, her choking voice when she said good-bye, and he laid the roses in her lap. "But why had she ever consented to come? Why play this part, call up all these emotions, arrange this comedy? Why?
By this time he had reached the top of the steps, and found himself in the deserted piazza. Suddenly the beauty of the night filled him with a vague but desperate yearning towards some unknown good. The image of Maria Ferres flashed across his mind; his heart beat fast, he thought of what it would be to hold her hands in his, to lean his head upon her breast, to feel that she was consoling him without words, by her pity alone. This longing for pity, for a refuge, was like the last struggle of a soul that will not be content to perish. He bent his head and entered the house without turning again to look at the night.
Terenzio was waiting up for him and followed him to the bedroom, where there was a fire.
"Will the Signor Conte go to bed at once?" he asked.
"No, Terenzio, bring me some tea," replied his master, sitting down before the fire and stretching out his hands to the blaze.
He was shivering all over with a little nervous tremor.
"The Signor Conte is cold?" asked Terenzio, hastening with affectionate interest to stir up the fire and put on fresh logs.
He was an old servant of the house of Sperelli, having served Andrea"s father for many years, and his devotion for the son reached the pitch of idolatry. No human being seemed to him so handsome, so n.o.ble, so worthy of devotion. He belonged to that ideal race which furnished faithful retainers to the romance writers of old, but differed from the servants of romance in that he spoke little, never offered advice, and concerned himself with no other business than that of carrying out his master"s orders.
"That will do very nicely," said Andrea, trying to repress the convulsive trembling of his limbs and crouching closer over the fire.
The presence of the old man in this hour of misery and distress moved him singularly. It was an emotion somewhat similar to that which, in the presence of some very kind and sympathetic person, affects a man determined upon suicide. Never before had the old man brought back to him so strongly the recollection of his father, the memory of the beloved dead, his grief for the loss of a great and good friend. Never so much as now had he felt the want of that comforting voice, that paternal hand. What would his father say could he see his son thus crushed under the weight of a nameless distress? How would he have sought to relieve him--what would he have done?
His thoughts turned to the dead father with boundless yearning and regret. And he had not the shadow of a suspicion that in the very teachings of that father lay the primary cause of his wretchedness.
Terenzio brought the tea. He then proceeded slowly to arrange the bed with a care and solicitude that were almost womanly, forgetting nothing, as if he wished to ensure to his master refreshing and unbroken slumbers till the morrow.
Andrea watched him with growing emotion. "Go to bed now, Terenzio," he said. "I shall not want anything more."
The old man retired and left him alone before the fire--alone with his heart, alone with his misery. Tortured by his inward agitation, he rose and began to pace the room. He was haunted by a vision of Elena, and each time he came as far as the window and turned, he fancied he saw her and started violently. His nerves were in such an overstrung condition that they only increased the disorder of his imagination. The hallucination grew more distinct. He stood still and covered his face with his hands for a moment to control his excitement, and then returned to his seat by the fire.
This time another image rose before him--that of Elena"s husband.
He knew him better now. That very evening in a box at the theatre, Elena had introduced them to one another, and he had seized that opportunity to examine him attentively in detail with the keenest curiosity, as though he hoped to obtain some revelation, to draw some secret from him.
He could still hear the man"s voice--a voice of very peculiar tone, somewhat harsh and strident, with an interrogative inflection at the end of each sentence. Again he saw those pale, pale eyes under the great prominent forehead, eyes that at times a.s.sumed a hideous, gla.s.sy, dead look, and at others lit up with an indefinable gleam that savoured of madness. Those hands too, he saw--white and smooth and thickly covered with sandy yellow down, and with something obscene in their every movement; their way of raising the opera-gla.s.s, of unfolding a handkerchief, of reclining on the cushion in front of the box or turning over the pages of the libretto--hands instinct with vice.
Oh, horror! he saw those hands touching Elena, profaning her with their odious caresses.
The torture became insupportable. He rose once more, went to the window, opened it, shivered under the biting breeze and shook himself.
The Trinita de" Monti glittered in the deep blue sky, sharply outlined as if sculptured in faintly tinted marble. Rome, spread out beneath him, had a sheen as of crystal, like a city cut in a glacier.
The calm and sparkling cold brought his mind back to the realities of life and enabled him to recognise the true condition of his mind. He closed the window and sat down again. Once more the enigmatical aspect of Elena"s character occupied him, questions crowded in upon him tumultuously, persistently. But he had the strength of mind to co-ordinate them, to attack them one by one, with singular lucidity. The deeper he went in his a.n.a.lysis the more lucid became his mental vision, and he worked out his psychological revenge with cruel relish. At last he felt that he had laid bare a soul, penetrated a mystery. It seemed to him, that thus he made Elena infinitely more his own than in the days of their pa.s.sion.
What, after all, was this woman?--An unbalanced mind in a sensually inclined body. As with all who are greedy of pleasure, the foundation of her moral being was overweening egotism. Her dominant faculty, her intellectual axis, so to speak, was imagination--an imagination nourished upon a wide range of literature, connected with her s.e.x and perpetually stimulated by neurotic excitement. Possessed of a certain degree of intellectual capacity, brought up in all the luxury of a princely Roman house--that papal luxury which is made up of art and history--she had received a thin coating of aesthetic varnish, had acquired a graceful taste, and, having thoroughly grasped the character of her beauty, sought by skilful simulation and a sapient use of her marked histrionic talents to enhance its spirituality by surrounding it with a delusive halo of ideality.
Into the comedy of human life she thus brought some highly perilous elements, and was thereby the occasion of more ruin and disaster than if she had been a _demi-mondaine_ by profession.
Under the glamour of her imagination, every caprice a.s.sumed an appearance of pathos. She was the woman of fulminating pa.s.sions, of suddenly blazing desire. She covered the l.u.s.ts of the flesh with a mantle of ethereal flame, and could transform into a n.o.ble sentiment what was merely a base appet.i.te.
Such was the scathing judgment brought by Andrea against the woman he had once adored. At the root of every action, every expression of Elena"s love he now discovered studied artifice, an admirable natural gift for carrying out a pre-arranged scheme, for playing a dramatic part or organising a striking scene. He did not spare their most memorable episodes--neither the first meeting at the Ateletas" dinner, nor the Cardinal Immenraet"s sale, nor the ball at the French Emba.s.sy, nor the sudden offer of her love in the red room at the Barberini palace, nor their farewells out in the country in the biting March blast. The magic draught which had intoxicated him then now seemed but an insidious poison.
Yet, in spite of it all, certain points perplexed him, as if in penetrating Elena"s soul he had penetrated his own, and in the woman"s perfidy had seen a reflection of his own. There was much affinity between their two natures. Therefore he _understood_, and little by little, his contempt changed to ironical indulgence. He was so thoroughly conversant with his own mode of procedure.
Then with cold lucidity, he mapped out his plan of campaign. He reviewed every detail of the interview that had taken place on New Year"s Eve--more than a week ago--and it pleased him to re-construct the scene, but without the slightest indignation or excitement, only smiling cynically both at Elena and himself. Why had she come?--Simply because this impromptu _tete-a-tete_ with a former lover, in the well-known place, after a lapse of two years, had tempted a spirit always on the look-out for fresh emotions, had inflamed her imagination and her curiosity. She thirsted to see into what new situations, new intrigues the dangerous game would lead her. She was perhaps attracted by the novelty of a platonic affection with a person who had already been the object of her sensual pa.s.sion. As ever, she had thrown herself into the new part with a certain imaginative fervour. Also it was quite possible that, for the moment, she believed what she said, and that this illusory sincerity had furnished her with that deep tenderness of accent, those despairing att.i.tudes, those tears. How well he knew it all! She had a sentimental hallucination as other people have a physical one. She forgot that she was acting a lie, was no longer conscious whether she were living in a world of truth or falsehood, of fiction or reality.
Now this was precisely the moral phenomenon which so constantly took place in himself. Therefore he could not reproach her without injustice.
But the discovery very naturally deprived him of the hope of deriving any pleasure from her other than sensual ones. In any case, mistrust would poison all the sweetness of abandon, all soulful rapture. To deceive a confiding and faithful heart, dominate a soul by artifice, possess it wholly and make it vibrate like an instrument--_habere non haberi_--all this, doubtless, gives intense pleasure; but to deceive, and know that one is being deceived in return, is a stupid and fruitless labour, a tiresome and aimless pursuit.
He must therefore work upon Elena to renounce the sisterly scheme and to return to his arms once more. He must regain possession of this beautiful woman, extract the utmost possible pleasure from her beauty and free himself for ever of this pa.s.sion by reaching the point of satiety. But it was a task demanding prudence and patience. In that first interview, his ardour had availed him nothing. Obviously, she had founded her plan of impeccability on the grand phrase--"Could you endure to share me with another?" The mainspring of the great platonic business was a virtuous horror of divided possession. For the rest, it was just within the bounds of possibility that this horror was not feigned. Most women addicted to the practice of free love, if they do eventually marry, affect, during the early days of their marriage, a savage virtue, and make professions of conjugal fidelity with the most honest determination. Perhaps, therefore, Elena had been affected by this common scruple, in which case, nothing would be more ill-advised than to show his hand too boldly and offend against her new-found virtue. The better plan would be to second her spiritual aspirations, accept her as "the fondest of sisters, the truest of friends," intoxicate her with the ideal, be skilfully platonic and then make her glide imperceptibly from frank sisterly relations to a more pa.s.sionate friendship, and from thence to the complete surrender of her person. In all probability these transitions would occur very rapidly. It all depended upon a wise adjustment of circ.u.mstances----
Thus Andrea Sperelli reasoned, sitting in front of the fire which had glowed upon Elena, laughing among the scattered rose leaves. A boundless la.s.situde weighed upon him, a la.s.situde which did not invite sleep, a sense of weariness, so empty, so disconsolate as to be almost a longing for death; while the fire died out on the hearth and the tea grew cold in the cup.
CHAPTER IV
He waited in vain during the days that followed for the promised note to tell him when he might see Elena again----So she did intend to make another appointment with him; the question was--where? At the Casa Zuccari again? Would she risk such an imprudence a second time? This uncertainty kept him on the rack. He pa.s.sed whole hours in searching for some way of meeting her, of seeing her again. He went several times to the Hotel Quirinal in the hope of being received, but never once did he find her at home. One evening, he saw her again in the theatre with "Mumps," as she called her husband. Though only saying the usual things about the music, the singers, the ladies, he infused a supplicating melancholy into his gaze. She seemed greatly taken up by the arrangement of their house. They were going back to the Palazzo Barberini, her old quarters, but were having them much enlarged, and she was for ever occupied with upholsterers and decorators, giving orders and superintending the placing of the furniture.
"Are you going to stay long in Rome?" asked Andrea.
"Yes," she answered--"Rome will be our winter residence." Then, after a moment"s pause--"You could give us some very good advice about the furniture. Come to the palace one of these days. I am always there from ten to twelve."
He took advantage of a moment when Lord Heathfield was talking to Giulio Musellaro, who had just entered the box, to say to her, looking her full in the eyes.
"To-morrow?"