The Lonely Way-Intermezzo-Countess Mizzie Part 76

That's more than you can be sure of, Cecilia. Things might happen that would weigh more heavily on you than you can imagine at this moment.

CECILIA

I shall always have the strength to throw off things according to my will before I come to you. And if that strength should ever fail me, I shall come to the door and no farther.

AMADEUS

Oh, no, you mustn't! That would not be in keeping with our agreement.

It is just when life grows heavy that I'll be here to help you bear it.

CECILIA

Who knows whether you will always be ready to do so?

AMADEUS

Always--on my oath! No matter what befall you, whether it be sad or wretched, you can always find refuge and sympathy with me. But with all my heart I wish you may be spared most of those things.

CECILIA

That I be spared...? No, Amadeus, a wish like that I can't accept.

Hitherto--I have lived so little hitherto. And I am longing for it. I long for all that's sad and sweet in life, for all that's beautiful and all that's pitiful. I long for storms, for perils--for worse than that, perhaps.

AMADEUS

No, Cecilia, that's nothing but imagination!

CECILIA

Oh, no!

AMADEUS

Certainly, Cecilia. You don't know very much as yet, and you imagine many things simpler and cleaner than they are. But there are things you couldn't stand, and others of which you are not capable.--I know you, Cecilia.

CECILIA

You know me?--You know only what I have been to you--what I have been as your beloved and your wife. And as you used to mean the whole world to me--as all my longing, all my tenderness, was bounded by you--we could never guess in those days what might prove my destiny when the real world was thrown open to me.--Even to-day, Amadeus, I am no longer the same as before.... Or perhaps I have always been the same as I am now, but didn't know it merely. And something has fallen away, that used to cover me up in the past.... Yes, that's it: for now I can feel all those desires that used to pa.s.s me by as if deflected by a cuira.s.s of insensibility.... Now I can feel how they touch my body and my soul, filling me with qualms and pa.s.sions. The earth seems full of adventure.

The sky seems radiant with flames. And it is as if I could see myself stand waiting with wide-open arms.

AMADEUS (_as if calling to somebody in flight_)

Cecilia!

CECILIA

What is the matter?

AMADEUS

Nothing.... The words you speak cannot estrange me after all that I have learned already. But there is a new ring in your voice that I have never heard until to-day. Nor have I ever seen that light in your eyes until to-day.

CECILIA

That's what you imagine, Amadeus. If that were really the case, then I should feel the same in regard to you. But I can see no difference in you at all. And I can't imagine how you possibly could come to seem different. To other women you may appear a mischiefmaker--or a silly youth--which has probably happened many times: but to me you will always remain the same as ever. And I have a feeling that, in the last instance, nothing can ever happen to the Amadeus I am thinking of.

AMADEUS

If I could only feel the same--in regard to you! But such a.s.surance is not mine. The recklessness and greed with which you make your way into an unknown world are filling me with outright fear on your behalf. The idea that there are people who know as little of you as you of them at this moment, and to whom you are going to belong...

CECILIA

I shall belong to n.o.body ... now, that I am free ...

AMADEUS

... who are part of your destiny already, as you of theirs ... it seems to me uncanny. And you are no more the Cecilia I used to love--no! You resemble closely one who was very dear to me, and yet you are not at all the same as she. No, you are not the woman that was my wife for years. I could feel it the moment you entered the place.... The connection between the young girl who sank into my arms one evening seven years ago and the woman who has just returned from abroad to dwell for a brief while in this house seems quite mysterious. For seven years I have been living with another woman--with a quiet, kindly woman--with a sort of angel perhaps, who has now disappeared. She who came to-day has a voice that I have never heard, a look that I am foreign to, a beauty that is strange to me--a beauty not surpa.s.sing what the other had, except in being more cruel possibly--and yet a beauty that should confer much greater happiness, I think.

CECILIA

Don't look at me like that!... Don't talk to me like that!... That's not the way to talk to a friend! Don't forget I am no more the one I used to be. When you talk to me like that, Amadeus, it is as if here, too, I should be fanned by those cajoling breaths that nowadays so often touch me like caresses--breaths that make life seem incredibly light, and that make you feel ready for so much that formerly would have appeared incomprehensible.

AMADEUS

If you could guess, Cecilia, how your words hurt me and excite me at the same time!

CECILIA (_brusquely_)

You must not talk like that, Amadeus. I don't want it. Be sensible, for my sake as well as your own. Good-night.

AMADEUS

Are you going, Cecilia?

CECILIA

Yes. And bear in mind that we are friends and want to remain such.

AMADEUS

Bear in mind that we have always wanted to be _honest_. And it is not honest--either for you or me--to say that we stand face to face as friends in this moment.... Cecilia--the _one_ thing I can feel at this moment is that you are beautiful ... beautiful as you have never been before!

CECILIA

Amadeus, Amadeus, are you forgetting all that has happened?

AMADEUS

I could forget it--and so could you.