Hardly was Elena out of the saddle, than she held out her hand to Andrea without meeting his eyes. She seemed in a great hurry to be gone.
"Well?" said Andrea as he helped her into the carriage.
"To-morrow--not this evening--I cannot----"
CHAPTER VII
The Campagna stretched away before them under an ideal light, as a landscape seen in dreams, where the objects seem visible at a great distance by virtue of some inward irradiation which magnifies their outlines.
The closed carriage rolled along smoothly at a brisk trot; the walls of ancient patrician villas, grayish-white and dim, slid past the windows with a continuous and gentle motion. Great iron gateways came in view from time to time, through which you caught a glimpse of an avenue of lofty beech trees, or some verdant cloister inhabited by antique statues, or a long green arcade pierced here and there by a laughing ray of pale sunshine.
Wrapped in her ample furs, her veil drawn down, her hands encased in thick chamois leather gloves, Elena sat and mutely watched the pa.s.sing landscape. Andrea breathed with delight the subtle perfume of heliotrope exhaled by the costly fur, while he felt Elena"s arm warm against his own. They felt themselves far from the haunts of men--alone--although from time to time the black carriage of a priest would flit past them, or a drover on horseback, or a herd of cattle.
Just before they reached the bridge she said--"Let us get out here."
Here in the open country the light was translucent and cold as the waters of a spring, and when the trees waved in the wind their undulation seemed to communicate itself to all the surrounding objects.
She clung close to his arm, stumbling a little on the uneven ground. "I am going away this evening," she said,--"this is the last time----"
There was a moment"s silence; then in plaintive tones, and with frequent pauses in between, she began to speak of the necessity of her departure, the necessity of their rupture. The wind wrenched the words from her lips, but she continued in spite of it, till Andrea interrupted her by seizing her hand.
"Don"t!" he cried--"be quiet."
They walked on struggling against the fierce gusts of wind.
"Don"t go--don"t leave me! I want you--want you always."
He had managed to unfasten her glove and laid hold of her bare wrist with a caressing insistent clasp that was full of tormenting desire.
She threw him one of those glances that intoxicate like wine. They were quite near the bridge now, all rosy under the setting sun. The river looked motionless and steely throughout its sinuous length. Reeds swayed and shivered on the banks, and some stakes, fixed in the clay of the river-bed to fasten nets, shook with the motion of the water.
He then endeavoured to move her by reminiscences. He recalled those first days--the ball at the Farnese palace, a certain hunting party out in the Campagna, their early morning meetings in the Piazza di Spagna in front of the jewellers" windows, or in the quiet and aristocratic Via Sistina when she came out of the Barberini palace followed by the flower girls offering her baskets of roses.
"Do you remember--do you remember?"
"Yes."
"And that evening--quite at the beginning, when I brought in such a ma.s.s of flowers.--You were alone--beside the window--reading. You remember?"
"Yes--yes."
"I came in. You scarcely turned your head and you spoke quite harshly to me--what was the matter?--I do not know. I laid the flowers upon the tables and waited. You spoke of trivial things at first, with indifference--without interest. I thought to myself bitterly--"She is tired of me already--she does not love me." But the scent of the flowers was very strong--the room was full of it. I can see you now--how you suddenly seized the whole ma.s.s in your two hands and buried your face in it, drinking in the perfume. When you lifted it again all the blood seemed to have left your face, and your eyes were swimming in a kind of ecstasy----"
"Go on--go on!" said Elena feverishly, as she leaned over the parapet fascinated by the rushing waters below.
"Afterwards, you remember on the sofa--I smothered you in flowers--your face, your bosom, your shoulders, and you raised yourself out of them every moment to offer me your lips, your throat, your half closed lids.
And between your skin and my lips I felt the rose leaves soft and cool.
I kissed your throat and a shiver ran through you, and you put out your hands to keep me away.--Oh, then--your head was sunk in the cushions, your breast hidden under the roses, your arms bare to the elbow--nothing in this world could be so dear and sweet as the little tremor of your white hands upon my temples--do you remember?"
"Yes--go on."
He went on with ever-increasing fervour. Carried away by his own eloquence, he was hardly conscious of what he said. Elena, her back turned to the light, leaned nearer and nearer to him. Under them the river flowed cold and silent; long slender rushes, like strands of hair, bent with every gust and trailed on the surface of the water.
He had ceased to speak, but they were gazing into one another"s eyes and their ears were filled with a low continuous murmur which seemed to carry away part of their life"s being--as if something sonorous had escaped from their very brains and were spreading away in waves of sound till it filled the whole air about them.
Elena rose from her stooping posture. "Let us go on," she said. "I am so thirsty--where can we get some water?" They crossed the bridge to a little inn on the other side, in front of which some carters were unharnessing their horses with much lively invective. The setting sun lit up the group of men and beasts vividly.
The people at the inn showed not the faintest sign of surprise at the entry of the two strangers. Two or three men shivering with ague, morose and jaundiced, were crouching round a square brazier. A red-haired bullock-driver was snoring in a corner, his empty pipe still between his teeth. A pair of haggard, ill-conditioned young vagabonds were playing at cards, fixing one another in the pauses with a look of tigerish eagerness. The woman of the inn, corpulent to obesity, carried in her arms a child which she rocked heavily to and fro.
While Elena drank the water out of a rude earthenware mug, the woman, with wails and plaints, drew her attention to the wretched infant.
"Look, signora mia--look at it!"
The poor little creature was wasted to a skeleton, its lips purple and broken out, the inside of its mouth coated with a white eruption. It looked as if life had abandoned the miserable little body, leaving but a little substance for fungoid growths to flourish in.
"Feel, dear lady,--its hands are icy cold. It cannot eat, it cannot drink--it does not sleep any more----"
The mother broke into loud sobs. The ague-stricken men looked on with eyes full of utter prostration, while the sound of the weeping only drew an impatient movement from the two youths.
"Come away--come away!" said Andrea, taking Elena by the arm and dragging her away, after throwing a piece of money on the table.
They returned over the bridge. The river was lighted up by the flames of the dying day, and in the distance the water looked smooth and glistening as if great spots of oil or bitumen were floating on it. The Campagna, stretching away like an ocean of ruins, was of a uniform violet tint. Nearer the town the sky flushed a deep crimson.
"Poor little thing!" murmured Elena in a tone of heartfelt compa.s.sion, and pressing closer to Andrea.
The wind had risen to a gale. A flock of crows swept across the burning heavens, very high up, croaking hoa.r.s.ely.
A sudden pa.s.sionate exaltation suddenly filled the souls of the two at sight of this vast solitude. Something tragic and heroic seemed to enter into their love and the hill-tops of their pa.s.sion to catch the blaze of the stormy sunset. Elena stood still.
"I can go no further," she gasped.
The carriage was still at some distance, standing motionless where they had left it.
"A little further, Elena, just a step or two! Shall I carry you?"
Then, seized with a sort of frenzy, he burst out again--Why was she going away? Why did she want to break with him? Surely their destinies were indissolubly knit together now? He could not live without her--without her eyes, her voice, the constant thought of her. He was saturated through and through with love of her--his whole blood was on fire as with some deadly poison. Why was she running away from him?--He would hold her fast--would suffocate her on his heart first----No--it could not, must not be--never!
Elena listened, with bent head to meet the blast, but she did not answer. Presently she raised her hand and beckoned to the coachman. The horses pawed and pranced as they started.
"Stop at the Porta Pia," she called to the man, and entered the carriage with her lover. Then she turned and with a sudden gesture yielded herself to his desire, and he kissed her greedily--her lips, her brow, her hair, her eyes--rapidly, without giving himself time to breathe.
"Elena! Elena!"
A vivid gleam of crimson light reflected from the red brick houses penetrated the carriage. The ringing trot of several horses came nearer along the road.