Cecilia Part 3

They walked down the street and found a cab, scarcely speaking again until they parted at Guido's door.

He lived alone in a quiet apartment of the Palazzo Farnese, overlooking the Via Giulia and the river beyond. The afternoon sun was still streaming through the open windows of his sitting room, and the warm breeze came with it.

"There are two notes, sir," said his servant, who had followed him. "The one from the Princess is urgent. The man wished to wait for you, but I sent him away."

"That was right," said Guido, taking the letters from the salver. "Get my things ready. I have visits to make."

The man went out and shut the door. He was a Venetian, and had been in the navy, where he had served Lamberti during the affair in China.

Lamberti had recommended him to his friend.

Guido remained standing while he opened the note. The first was an engraved invitation to a garden party from a lady he scarcely knew. It was the first he had ever received from her, and he was not aware that she ever asked people to her house. The second was from his aunt, begging him to come to tea that afternoon as he had promised, for a very particular reason, and asking him to let her know beforehand if anything made it impossible. It began with "Dearest Guido" and was signed "Your devoted aunt, Anatolie." She was evidently very anxious that he should come, for he was generally her "dear nephew," and she was his "affectionate aunt."

The handwriting was fine and hard to read, though it was regular. Some of the letters were quite unlike those of most people, and many of them were what experts call "blind."

Guido d'Este read the note through twice, with an expression of dislike, and then tore it up. He threw the invitation upon some others that lay in a chiselled copper dish on his writing table, lit a cigarette, and looked out of the window. His aunt's note was too affectionate and too anxious to bode well, and he was tempted to write that he could not go.

It would be pleasant to end the afternoon with a book and a cup of tea, and then to dine alone and dream away the evening in soothing silence.

But he had promised to go; and, moreover, nothing was of any real importance at all, nothing whatsoever, from the moment of beginning life to the instant of leaving it. He therefore dressed and went out again.

CHAPTER II

Lamberto Lamberti never wasted time, whether he was at sea, doing his daily duty as an officer, or ash.o.r.e in Africa, fighting savages, or on leave, amusing himself in Rome, or Paris, or London. Time was life, and life was far too good to be squandered in dawdling. In ten minutes after he had reached his room he was ready to go out again. As he took his hat and gloves, his eye fell on a note which he had not seen when he had come in.

He opened it carelessly and found the same formal invitation which Guido had received at the same time. The Countess Fortiguerra requested the pleasure of his company at the Villa Palladio between four and six, and the date was just a fortnight ahead.

Lamberti was a Roman, and though he had only seen the Countess three or four times in his life, he remembered very well that she had been twice married, and that her first husband had been a certain Count Palladio, whose name was vaguely connected in Lamberti's mind with South American railways, the Suez Ca.n.a.l, and a machine gun that had been tried in the Italian navy; but it was not a Roman name, and he could not remember any villa that was called by it. Palladio--it recalled something else, besides a great architect--something connected with Pallas--but Lamberti was no great scholar. Guido would know. Guido knew everything about literature, ancient and modern--or at least Lamberti thought so.

He had kept his cab while he dressed, and in a few minutes the little horse had toiled up the long hill that leads to Porta Pinciana, and Lamberti got out at the gate of one of those beautiful villas of which there are still a few within the walls of Rome. It belonged to a foreigner of infinite taste, whose love of roses was proverbial. A legend says that some of them were watered with the most carefully prepared beef tea from the princely kitchen. The rich man had gone back to his own country, and the Princess Anatolie had taken the villa and meant to spend the rest of her life there. She was only seventy years old, and had made up her mind to live to be a hundred, so that it was worth while to make permanent arrangements for her comfort.

Lamberti might have driven through the gate and up to the house, but he was not sure whether the Princess liked to see such plebeian vehicles as cabs in her grounds. He had a strong suspicion that, in spite of her royal blood, she had the soul of a sn.o.b, and thought much more about appearances than he did; and as for Monsieur Leroy, he was one of the most complete specimens of the sn.o.b species in the world. Therefore Lamberti, who now had reasons for wis.h.i.+ng to propitiate the dwellers in the villa, left his cab outside and walked up the steep drive to the house.

He did not look particularly well in a frock coat and high hat. He was too muscular, his hair was too red, his neck was too sunburnt, and he was more accustomed to wearing a uniform or the rough clothes in which fighting is usually done. The footman looked at him and did not recognise him.

"Her Highness is not at home," said the man, coolly.

A private carriage was waiting at a little distance from the porch, and the footman who belonged to it was lounging in the vestibule within.

"Be good enough to ask whether her Highness will see me," said Lamberti.

The fellow looked at him again, and evidently made up his mind that it would be safer to obey a red-haired gentleman who had such a very unusual look in his eyes and spoke so quietly, for he disappeared without making any further objection.

When Lamberti entered the drawing-room, he was aware that the Princess was established in a high arm-chair near a tea-table, that Monsieur Leroy was coming towards him, and that an elderly lady in a hat was seated near the Princess in an att.i.tude which may be described as one of respectful importance. He was aware of the presence of these three persons in the room, but he only saw the fourth, a young girl, standing beside the table with a cup in her hand, and just turning her face towards him with a look that was like a surprised recognition after not having seen him for a very long time. He started perceptibly as his eyes met hers, and he almost uttered an exclamation of astonishment.

He was checked by feeling Monsieur Leroy's toad-like hand in his.

"Her Highness is very glad to see you," said an oily voice in French, but with a thick and rolling p.r.o.nunciation that was South American unless it was Roumanian.

For once Lamberti did not notice the sensual, pink and white face, the hanging lips, the colourless brown hair, the insolent eyes, the effeminate figure and dress of the little man he detested, and whose mere touch was disgusting to him. By a strong effort he went directly up to the Princess without looking again at the young girl whose presence had affected him so oddly.

Princess Anatolie was gracious enough to give him her hand to kiss; he bent over it, and his lips touched a few of the cold precious stones in the rings that loaded her fingers. She had not changed in the year that had pa.s.sed since he had seen her, except that her eyes looked smaller than ever and nearer together. Her hair might or might not be her own, for it was carefully crimped and arranged upon her forehead; it was not certain that her excellent teeth were false; there was about her an air of youth and vitality that was really surprising, and yet it was impossible not to feel that she might be altogether a marvellous sham, on the verge of dissolution.

"This is most charming!" she said, in a voice that was not cracked, but rang false. "I expect my nephew, Guido, at any moment. He is your great friend, is he not? Yes, I never forget anything. This is my nephew Guido's great friend," she continued volubly, and turning to the elderly lady on her right, "Prince Lamberti."

"Don Lamberto Lamberti," said Monsieur Leroy in a low voice, correcting her. But even this was not quite right.

"I have the good fortune to know the Countess Fortiguerra," said Lamberti, bowing, as he suddenly recognised her, but very much surprised that she should be there. "I have just received a very kind invitation from you," he added, as she gave him her hand.

"I hope you will come," she said quietly. "I knew your mother very well.

We were at the school of the Sacred Heart together."

Lamberti bent his head a little, in acknowledgment of the claim upon him possessed by one of his mother's school friends.

"I shall do my best to come," he answered.

He felt that the young girl was watching him, and he ventured to look at her, with a little movement, as if he wished to be introduced. Again he felt the absolute certainty of having met her before, somewhere, very long ago--so long ago that she could not have been born then, and he must have been a small boy. Therefore what he felt was absurd.

"Cecilia," said the Countess, speaking to the girl, "this is Signor Lamberto Lamberti." "My daughter," she explained, as he bowed, "Cecilia Palladio."

"Most charming!" cried the Princess, "the son and the daughter of two old friends."

"Touching," echoed Monsieur Leroy. "Such a picture! There is true sentiment in it."

Lamberti did not hear, but Cecilia Palladio did, and a straight shadow, fine as a hair line, appeared for an instant, perpendicular between her brows, while she looked directly at the man before her. A moment later Lamberti was seated between her and her mother, and Monsieur Leroy had resumed the position he had left to welcome the newcomer, sitting on a very low cus.h.i.+oned stool almost at the Princess's feet.

In formal circ.u.mstances, a man who has been long in the army or navy can usually trust himself not to show astonishment or emotion, and after the first slight start of surprise, which only Monsieur Leroy had seen, Lamberti had behaved as if nothing out of the common way had happened to him. But he had felt as if he were in a dream, while healthily sure that he was awake; and now that he was more at ease, he began to examine the cause of his inward disturbance.

It was not only out of the question to suppose that he had ever before now met Cecilia Palladio, but he was quite certain that he had never seen any one who was at all like her.

If extinct types of men could be revived now and then, of those which the world once thought admirable and tried to copy, it would be interesting to see how many persons of taste would acknowledge any beauty in them. Cecilia Palladio had been eighteen years old early in the winter, and in the usual course of things would have made her appearance in society during the carnival season. The garden party for which her mother had now sent out invitations was to take the place of the dance which should have been given in January. Afterwards, when it was over, and everybody had seen her, some people said that she was perfectly beautiful, others declared that she was a freak of nature and would soon be hideous, but, meanwhile, was an interesting study; one young gentleman, addicted to art, said that her face belonged to the type seen in the Elgin marbles; a Sicilian lady said that her head was even more archaic than that, and resembled a fragment from the temples of Selinunte, preserved in the museum at Palermo; and the Russian amba.s.sador, who was of unknown age, said that she was the perfect Psyche of Naples, brought to life, and that he wished he were Eros.

In southern Europe what is called the Greek type of beauty is often seen, and does not surprise any one. Many people think it cold and uninteresting. It was a small something in the arch of the brows, it was a very slight upward turn of the point of the nose, it was the small irregularity of the broader and less curving upper lip that gave to Cecilia Palladio's face the force and character that are so utterly wanting in the faces of the best Greek statues. The Greeks, by the time they had gained the perfect knowledge of the human body that produced the Hermes of Olympia, had made a conventional mask of the human face, and rarely ever tried to give it a little of the daring originality that stands out in the features of many a crudely archaic statue. The artist who made the Psyche attempted something of the kind, for the right side of the face differs from the left, as it generally does in living people. The right eyebrow is higher and more curved than the left one, which lends some archness to the expression, but its effect is destroyed by the tiresome perfection of the simpering mouth.

Cecilia Palladio was not like a Greek statue, but she looked as if she had come alive from an age in which the individual ranked above the many as a model, and in which nothing accidentally unfit for life could survive and nothing degenerate had begun to be. With the same general proportion, there was less symmetry in her face than in those of modern beauties, and there was more light, more feeling, more understanding.

She was very fair, but her eyes were not blue; it would have been hard to define their colour, and sometimes there seemed to be golden lights in them. While she was standing, Lamberti had seen that she was almost as tall as himself, and therefore taller than most women; and she was slender, and moved like a very perfectly proportioned young wild animal, continuously, but without haste, till each motion was completed in rest.

Most men and women really move in a succession of very short movements, entirely interrupted at more or less perceptible intervals. If our sight were perfect we should see that people walk, for instance, by a series of jerks so rapid as to be like the vibrations of a humming-bird's wings. Perhaps this is due to the unconscious exercise of the human will in every voluntary motion, for a man who moves in his sleep seems to move continuously like an animal, till he has changed his position and rests again.

Lamberti made none of these reflections, and did not a.n.a.lyse the face he could not help watching whenever the chance of conversation allowed him to look at Cecilia without seeming to stare at her. He only tried to discover why her face was so familiar to him.

"We have been in Paris all winter," said her mother, in answer to some question of his.

"They have been in Paris all winter!" cried the Princess. "Think what that means! The cold, the rain, the solitude! What in the world did you do with yourselves?"

"Cecilia wished to continue her studies," answered the Countess Fortiguerra.