"Don"t let me see the light of another day--kill me!" she moaned.
Then, catching sight of his discomposed face, "You are suffering?" she exclaimed. "You too--you think we shall never meet again?"
He had almost insuperable difficulty in speaking, in answering her. His tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, the words failed him. He had an instinctive desire to hide his face from those observant eyes, to avoid her questions at all cost. He was neither capable of consoling her nor of practising fresh deceptions.
"Hush!" he whispered in a choking, almost irrecognisable voice.
Crouching at her feet, he laid his head in her lap and remained like that for a long time without speaking, while she laid her tender hands upon his temples and felt the wild, irregular beating of his arteries.
She realised that he was suffering fiercely, and in his pain forgot all thought of her own, grieving now only for his grief--only for him.
Presently he rose, and clasped her with such mad vehemence to him that she was frightened.
"What has come to you! What is it?" she cried, trying to look in his eyes, to discover the reason of his sudden frenzy. But he only buried his face deeper in her bosom, her neck, her hair--anywhere out of sight.
All at once, she struggled free of his embrace, her whole form convulsed with horror, her face ghastly and distraught as if she had at that moment torn herself from the arms of Death.
That name! That name!--She had heard that name!
A deep and awful silence fell upon her soul, and in it there suddenly opened one of those great gulfs into which the whole universe seems to be hurled at the touch of one thought. She heard nothing more. Andrea might writhe and supplicate and despair as he would--in vain.
She heard nothing. Some instinct directed her actions. She found her things and put them on.
Andrea lay upon the floor, sobbing, frenzied, mad.
He was conscious that she was preparing to leave the room.
"Maria! Maria!
He listened.
"Maria!"
He only heard the sound of the door closing behind her--she was gone.
CHAPTER X
At ten o"clock in the morning of June 20th the sale began of the furniture and hangings belonging to His Excellency the Minister Plenipotentiary for Guatemala.
It was a burning hot morning. Summer blazed already over Rome. Up and down the Via Nationale ran the tram-cars, drawn by horses with funny white caps over their heads to protect them against the sun. Long lines of heavily-laden carts enc.u.mbered the road, while the blare of trumpets mingled with the cracking of whips and the hoa.r.s.e cries of the carters.
Andrea could not make up his mind to cross the threshold of that house, but wandered about the street a long time, weighed down by a horrible sense of la.s.situde, a la.s.situde so overwhelming and desperate as to be almost a physical longing for death.
At last, seeing a porter come out of the house with a piece of furniture on his shoulder, he decided to go in. He ran rapidly up the stairs. From the landing already he could hear the voice of the auctioneer.
The sale was going on in the largest room of the suite--the one in which the Buddha had stood. The buyers were gathered round the auctioneer"s table. They were, for the most part, shopkeepers, second-hand furniture dealers and the lower cla.s.ses generally. There being little compet.i.tion in summer when town was empty, the dealers rushed in, sure of obtaining costly articles for next to nothing. A vile odour permeated the hot air exhaled by the crowd of dirty and perspiring people.
Andrea felt stifled. He wandered into the other rooms, where nothing had been left but the wall hangings, the curtains, and the portieres, the other things having been collected in the sale room. Although he was walking on a thick carpet, he heard his footsteps as distinctly as if the boards had been bare.
He found himself presently in a semicircular room. The walls were deep red, with here and there a sparkle of gold, giving the impression of a temple or a tomb, a sad and mysterious sanctuary fit for praying in, or for dying. The crude, hard light blazing in through the open windows seemed like a violation.
He returned to the auction room. Again he breathed the nauseating atmosphere. He turned round, and in a corner of the room perceived the Princess of Ferentino and Barbarella Viti. He bowed and went over to them.
"Well, Ugenta, what have you bought?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing? Why, I should have thought you would buy everything."
"Indeed, why?"
"Oh, it was just an idea of mine--a romantic idea."
The princess laughed and Barbarella joined in.
"We are going. It is impossible to stay any longer in this perfume.
Good-bye, Ugenta--console yourself!"
Andrea went to the auctioneer"s table. The man recognised him.
"Does the Signor Conte wish for anything in particular?"
"I will see," Andrea answered.
The sale proceeded rapidly. He looked about him at the low faces of the dealers, felt their elbows pushing him, their feet touching his, their horrid breath upon him. Nausea gripped his throat.
"Going--going--gone!"
The stroke of the hammer rang like a knell through his heart and set his temples throbbing painfully.
He bought the Buddha, a great carved cabinet, some china, some pieces of drapery. Presently he heard the sound of voices, and laughter, and the rustle of feminine skirts. He turned round to see Galeazzo Secinaro entering, accompanied by Lady Heathfield and followed by the Countess Lucoli, Gino Bomminaco and Giovanella Daddi. They were all laughing and talking noisily.
He did his best to conceal himself from them in the crowd that besieged the auctioneer"s table. He shuddered at the thought of being discovered.
Their voices and laughter reached him over the heads of the perspiring people through the suffocating heat. Fortunately the gay party very soon afterwards took themselves off.
He forced himself a pa.s.sage through the closely packed bodies, repressing his disgust as well as he could, and making the most tremendous efforts to ward off the faintness that threatened to overcome him. There was a bitter and sickening taste in his mouth. He felt that from the contact of all these unclean people he was carrying away with him the germs of obscure and irremediable diseases. Physical torture mingled with his moral anguish.
When he got down into the street in the full blaze of noon-day, he had a touch of giddiness. With an unsteady step, he set off in search of a cab. He found one in the Piazza del Quirinale and drove straight home.
Towards evening, however, a wild desire came over him to revisit those dismantled rooms. He went upstairs and entered, on the pretext of asking if the furniture he had bought had been sent away yet.
A man answered him: the things had just gone, the Signor Conte must have pa.s.sed them on his way here.
Hardly anything remained in the rooms. The crimson splendour of the setting sun gleamed through the curtainless windows and mingled with the noises of the street. Some men were taking down the hangings from the walls, disclosing a paper with great vulgar flowers, torn here and there and hanging in strips. Others were engaged in taking up and rolling the carpets, raising a cloud of dust that glittered in the sunlight. One of them sang sc.r.a.ps of a lewd song. Dust and tobacco-smoke mingled and rose to the ceiling.