Part 6

He gave his directions with a light air, but as he turned from the door a shadow settled upon his kindly old face.

In his breast-pocket lay folded the letter his colleague, Paula's former doctor, had written him. The consciousness of what was said in it gave rise in his heart to a tender, grateful thought of his own children--grown-up daughters, fair and healthy, happily established in life.

Paula had hoped to go for a drive that day, but a light rain fell, and she could only watch the turbid stream outside through the glistening window-pane. She sat with her forehead leaning against it, her book in her lap. Now and then she opened this and let her eyes wander over the lines, without trying to understand, just for a pleasure she found in its being Italian too.

She had prevailed upon Veronika to go out for a walk, so that she might amuse her with an account of what there was to see.

Towards evening the clouds broke. She saw the red reflection of the sunset on the river. Tempted, she opened the balcony door; a smell of damp stone came gratefully to her nostrils. She slipped out and leaned over the cool balusters, and looked up and down the empty gleaming street. The hills were as if washed with wine; the air was sparkling. She heard a footstep; she hoped it might be Veronika's. She looked. But it was not a woman. She recognized the young man who had been on the stairs when she arrived. He did not look up. She leaned over to see him disappear in the _portone_ below. Then, swiftly, she came in-doors and stopped in the middle of the floor. She listened intently. In a few moments she thought to hear, faintly, faintly, footsteps in the room above. She clasped her hands silently, saying to herself with unaccountable excitement: "I knew it already. I knew it well."

Late in the night again she heard music. She had been listening for it a long time. Night to her was often tediously long. Often she spent many hours staring at the square of paler darkness, star-bestrewn, the window made. At a certain pitch of nervousness, soon reached when the city had become quiet and the stillness of the bedroom was full of mysterious sounds, she always thought of a dear sister she had lost, rehearsing old sad scenes vivid in her brain as if they had been lived through but yesterday. Her own physical discomfort increased as she thought of that other girl's long-drawn-out suffering. It seemed to her that already she could not breathe; her body was damp with sweat of fear. "It is all useless!" she groaned, tossing wretchedly. "I too--I too am going that way!" Then she prayed diligently, and looked out up at the stars with a return of tranquillity, hoping steadfastly in a beautiful world beyond them.

But on the night in question she lay patiently and happily watchful. And late in the night again she heard music. No very definite melody was played; it was as if skilful hands were dreamily straying over the keys, unravelling a little tangled skein of musical impression, thinking aloud. The tune wandered and flitted like a butterfly over a summer garden. Paula's thought climbed upward and entered the musician's chamber. She saw him clearly, leaning back, looking upward, swaying slightly. She took joy in the symmetry of his dark Italian face. She pictured him intensely, and held her breath gazing. Then she tried to build up his surroundings; she adorned his room poetically.

Satisfied at last, her imagination folded its wings and dropped back into its nest. She merely listened, and let herself be comforted; accepted passively what dreams the music imposed. It was as if she and another were walking in a moonless starry night along a quiet village road; and the dewy flowers in the stilly little gardens skirting the way were giving forth perfume in the warm dark. Then it was as if another and she were in a boat with drooping sail, becalmed, drifting slowly. The moon was behind a great cloud wonderfully silvered on the ravelled edges; the sea at the horizon was a streak of pure light. The other had laid her on velvet cushions and covered her with a cloak, was playing and singing softly to her. They hoped the wind would not rise. Drifting--drifting. And she slept.

In the gayest mood next day she showed the doctor a little package of letters to different persons in the city, but said that she was not ready yet to let these distinguished ones know of her arrival; she must first attend to various important things. He derived from her words that she wished to make her establishment more elegant, and became gruff and severe when she asked him to procure for her the address of the most fashionable mantua--maker. She almost cried when he forbade the expense of any precious energy on worldly vanities, but was half consoled by his promise soon to make her well enough to employ a master in the art of playing the guitar.

He prescribed a daily drive in the sunniest hour. Paula came back from her first excursion with flushed cheeks. Veronika grumbled: "I will tell the doctor, and he will forbid your going out at all. It is not to kneel in damp churches will help you. You might as well take up your abode in the cellar."

"Don't scold me," said Paula, gently. "I had to thank God."

Towards sunset she seated herself on the balcony wrapped in fleecy white, and looked down the street towards the Jeweller's Bridge. She saw Prospero come. But he did not look up. That night again she heard him play.

Many times she sat on the balcony and saw Prospero coming. Sometimes he looked up, but oftener he passed into the house unaware of a Countess gazing after him from above.

Some nights he did not play; those were restless, disappointed nights for her.

Once or twice she met him on the stairs as she was going to her carriage; he glanced at her with an unimpressed eye, then looked elsewhere, standing against the wall, hat in hand.

Occasionally she saw him in the street, but he seemed never to see her. A vague heartache grew out of those occasions.

The Italian spring deepened in warmth and color; the air had a fragrance, some days, as of lilacs; other days, more penetrating, as of hyacinths. The little hills in the midst of which Florence lies took on dewy morning hues of the opal, changing evening tints of the dark dove's neck. The pure noon light made the statues in the King's Garden, where Paula walked sometimes, look dazzlingly white against the sombre walls of clipped laurel. The open country now was full of blossoming fruit trees; Paula often begged Veronika to alight from the carriage and gather for her the flowers she saw shining in the grass--primroses and violets, tulips, narcissi, fleurs-de-lis. She brought home immense nosegays, which she spent long minutes breathing; this perfume of Italy went to her brain.

At sunset once a red flower lay by chance on the rail of the balcony, just where a movement of her arm would brush it off; it would drop in the street. A bold thought crossed her mind. But that evening Prospero did not come at the usual hour. She sat outside, trembling slightly as the dusk closed around her and the dew fell; then Veronika, with shrill cries of surprise and blame, came to fetch her in. She felt guilty and ashamed, and did not protest. She spent the evening on the divan, with her face to the wall, crying softly with a vast invincible melancholy, a sense of forlornness and failure, giving no explanation of her humor.

She was kept in-doors for many days after that. Only she insisted upon being folded in a fur and seated on the balcony at a certain hour every afternoon. The beggar-woman stationed at the street corner with a basket on her knees got used to seeing the sick _forestiera_ appear, who always threw her a bit of silver, and gave her a faint little smile.

Veronika suffered from Paula's silence and depression. She went about with two deep lines constantly between her updrawn brows. Her heart misgave her; her inability to communicate with the doctor and those around her became a gnawing despair. She formed a habit, which never left her after, of talking audibly to herself. She gave up the effort to hold cheerful conversation with Paula, and simply tried to preserve in her presence an unconcerned attitude. She secretly yearned to be at home. She felt an unappeasable animosity towards this Italy, that had seemed to do her Paula so much good, only to make her worse. She began to hate everything Italian.

Paula herself sat by the window watching the hills opposite with an absent face. Now and then she rose to take a few desultory steps about the large room, touching the things, passing her hand over the flowers, making the guitar-strings give forth a murmur as she brushed them; she went back to her chair and closed her eyes, tired out.

Once a friend was walking at Prospero's side. They were talking. As they approached, the friend looked up, and evidently asked a question of Prospero, who looked up too: she thought his lips framed her name. Her heart leaped; she drew back, faint, and felt foolish at feeling such pleasure. She waited more eagerly than usual that night to hear him; it seemed the music must have a special message for her. Silence--utter, atrocious. The night seemed unending.

The doctor wondered next day what spring had broken within her. She showed so little interest in anything; she was fretful as he had never seen her before. He scarcely knew how to conduct himself to avoid irritating her. At a loss, he picked up the little tome of _Vita Nova_, that always lay on the table at her side, and inquired of her progress in it.

"Oh, put it away!" she said, tears springing to her eyes. "Put it away! I cannot suffer it. That title exasperates me; it works upon my nerves. Doctor, doctor, I shall never be well again!" and she poured forth a long complaint.

He feigned to make light of her fears; he comforted her. Casting about in his mind for things to say that should divert, interest her in her gray mood, he found this, which brought the sudden color to her face:

"Did you not once ask me who lived in the apartment above? I know now. I will not take the credit of having applied myself to discover just on that hint of curiosity from you; I confess hearing it by chance. Your neighbor is the young _maestro_ Prospero C----, celebrated in his way. He has written an opera, to be produced for the first time precisely to-night. Those who know promise great things for it--"

She had leaned forward, listening thirstily. The doctor could congratulate himself.

When Veronika went to the door with him, he turned upon her suddenly, and asked, almost violently: "Why did you wait so long? Why did you not bring her to this climate before?"

She looked at him in a puzzled way, and in her turn said something he could not understand.

He appeared for a moment as if he meant to shake her, but shrugged his shoulders and brusquely left.

Some who were present at the first night of "Parisina" remember well how when the curtain dropped on the first act and they looked about to discover whom they should salute, their attention was arrested by the strange apparition in one of the second-tier boxes. There, in a crimson velvet chair, sat very upright an unknown lady in a gown such as no one nowadays wears--a gown of cloth of gold, that might have figured at a court ball perhaps a century earlier. An ermine-lined mantle half covered her arms and neck, dainty thin and white as wax, and half extinguished the gleam of her heavy jewels. A wreath of roses was twined in her pale hair, that might have made one laugh in its _démodé_ pretentiousness but that one divined the lady to be a foreigner from some Northern country, where perhaps it is still customary to adorn the hair with a garland. She held her fan like a sceptre, her fingers stiffly closed on the pearl sticks. A mass of roses lay in her lap. She turned a colorless face upon the stage; her eyes were wide and glassy, and fixed as a somnambulist's.

On the opposite side of the box, less clearly defined against the darkness, sat an elderly, soberly clad lady, whose face expressed a degree of uneasiness, misery, and fear almost pitiful--if not comical--to behold. She made no pretence of interest in the stage or the gleaming galleries, but watched her golden-haired companion with an unswerving, frightened eye.

No one knew who these were, though many took pains to discover.

Through the second act the lady in gold listened breathlessly, as if life itself were suspended. It seemed to her that the soul left her body, and went floating up, up, on the strains of the music. She was praying, praying with all her strength, for the success of this work, that the people might feel just as she felt how it was beautiful!

When a crash of applause came and a call for the composer, it seemed but an answer to her prayer. She rose to her feet, radiant.

Prospero C---- came to the foot-lights below, looking a slight thing, the acclaimed great man, in his close black evening dress, and bowed his thanks. Then, as the applause continued, he lingered a moment, and let his eye pass along the friendly faces in the boxes, a grateful emotion expressed in his smile.

The lady in gold leaned over the velvet parapet, breathing short, tremulously smiling, her flowers in her hands. His eye passed her unrecognizing. She wanted to shout: "It is I, Paula! Nothing could keep me away!" The clamor subsided. Panting, she leaned back in the shade.

The third act ended in triumph. Again the composer was called. Paula laughed and cried at the same time, clapping her little hands like mad, forgetting herself.

Then, when it was all over and she sat in the dark carriage rolling homeward, she felt a chill seizing upon her very heart; she began to shiver. But her physical condition scarcely interested her; a sense of the sad things of life weighed heavily upon her: the vanity of earthly hopes, the evanescence of happy things, the inequality in the measure of pain and pleasure to God's children, the fugitiveness of illusions, the foolishness of dreams. She thought of the beggar sitting at the corner in sun and rain through years: she felt disgust for a world where such things could be. She said, "It is a good thing to have done with it. It is a deliverance. I will not give it one regret; no, not one." She felt suddenly that she did not love Italy: it had betrayed her. "It is you, you who are to blame," she said, full of helpless resentment, shaking a pale small hand vaguely from the window out at the balmy moonlit world; "you, soft air! you, flower smell! you, velvety firmament with the many-colored stars! I was a simple soul: my common life was enough for me; you sowed in my unguarded heart all the seeds of vain dreams, and fostered them. And they bear no fruit; they wither on their shallow roots--they are weeds!--But I will not curse you, for God made you lovely."

She closed her eyes; her thoughts turned to remote Schattenort; she wished she were there again, in the dull, quiet, big, cold, familiar country house where she had been born and bred. A mist of bitter longing rose in her eyes. The moon was shining clamorously, obtrusively; it cast a green light, a light almost warm, on the pale pavement. She hated its fervent beauty. "Would God I were home!" she sighed.

Veronika, mistaking her meaning, said, "You are almost there."

Paula suffered Veronika and her maid to put her to bed. She seemed not to notice them. She was thinking--far away. Out of habit she listened a moment for the piano above. But all was silent. "He is happy," she said to herself; "he has gone with his friends. Or perhaps he is up there living it all over again." And her imagination, touched anew with the old obstinate insanity, took the road up to his never-seen chamber, bent over him, and rejoiced with him. "Oh, if I could--" she said; "if I could! But he will never know how a dying noble lady used to listen to his playing in the dead of night, and loved him, and left him her blessing--"

Veronika had no sleep that night. Before day the doctor was summoned. He remained several hours. At going he drew Veronika aside, and by signs succeeded at last in procuring from her the package of letters the Countess had once shown him. He looked at the superscriptions, and took from among them one "To the Abbé S----."

That evening he brought with him a white-haired old man in priestly garb, whom Veronika was relieved to hear address her in her native tongue.

Presently, with muffled footsteps and a frightened, solemn mien, she led him into the Countess's bedroom, dimly lighted by shaded candles, and left them long alone together.

Prospero, returning home that night, opened the window wide and stood a moment looking out at the stars, at peace with life, every desire for the moment hushed, satisfied. Then he lighted the candles on the piano, and the faint yellow illumination brought out a hint of color in the objects around. It showed an ordinary, rather bare room; he lived in it very little. The littering music and the piano formed its chief adornment.

He sat down, but for a moment did not touch the keys. He removed the flower from his coat and smelt it, thinking of Rosina, who had given it him at the theatre door--Rosina with the broad velvet-faced hat, the tight silk dress, the diamonds in her ears, and the small basket of flowers on her arm. She was pretty--oh, pretty! Having thought how pretty she was, he wisely tossed away her faded favor, determining to remain cold and prudent. He shook back his hair, as if thereby to free his mind of her, spread his hands over the ivory keys, and began, as he loved to do before sleeping, to let his fancies and emotions make themselves sound.

He played long, losing himself, finding a melodious vesture for his half-formed dream. The night was very quiet; it came to be very late without his perceiving it. Suddenly he felt a cool air on his forehead--he looked up, and paused in his playing, his hands motionless above the keys, his lips open. He felt that he ought to speak, but his voice failed to answer his will. He was asking himself in the dim background of his consciousness how the Countess Paula von Schattenort had entered his dwelling so noiselessly, and what she might be seeking there. More clearly he was wondering at her face, strangely still and white, vaguely woe-begone, astonished, pathetic. He recognized her, yet she seemed to him altered from the one he sometimes saw on the balcony and met on the stairs--that object without interest, a woman not pretty. Perhaps it was the wonderful hair that, shining along her cheeks like a pale gilded mist, transfigured her. The firm fine braids that heretofore he had seen always wound in austere simplicity about her head were undone; the narrowly waved hair floated to her knees; her face peered wistfully between two shimmering bands of it. She was clothed in a white garment bordered with dark fur; a heavy rosary hung about her neck.

She looked at him a long moment with fixed eyes, an expression of plaintive disillusion, and said nothing.

He tried to ask in what manner he might serve her, but his tongue was numb.

She turned and looked all about the room, very slowly, as a person seeking something. Then she looked again at him, silently, with that same face of disappointment; and her hands, that had been tightly shut on the golden crucifix appended to her rosary, opened and slipped softly to her sides. She turned to the door. He rose from his seat, and without taking his eyes from her, fumbled to lift the candle from its socket, to light her way; he was awkward in his amazement. He saw her pass the threshold. In a second he followed her. She was not in the next room. He passed through the two rooms that separated him from the door leading to the common stairway. He came to the door; it was as he had left it, secured for the night. Seized with dismay, in spite of the thought that she must have lingered behind in the shady embrasure of a window, he undid the chain and bolt and came out on the landing and looked, expecting inconsistently to see a white figure vanishing down the steps. He saw nothing but a faint light cast upon the wall at the turn of the stairs. He stood hesitating.

In a moment he heard below a sound of weeping; he went down with a trembling of the knees. On the landing of the _piano nobile_ was the landlady. She had set her little brass lamp on the last step, and was crying. The door to the Countess's apartment was wide open, and the draught from there made the tiny flame flicker and smoke.

"What is it?" said Prospero, in a husky whisper.

"She is dead, the poor lady!" sobbed the _padrona_.

He felt his hair softly rising.

DORASTUS

She had large violet eyes, of a melancholy effect, and fine honey-colored hair, flowing smoothly over her ears. She looked excessively meek and always a little apprehensive, as if accustomed to reproaches, yet never quite hardened to them. One easily supposed her to be an orphan.

She lived with an aunt, her mother's half-sister, considerably older and less pleasing than her mother in that charming woman's brief day. Her cousins were all older than she; the girls were so perfect in every respect that intimacy between her and them was out of the question; the son, a big, blunt young man, was mostly away, and, when at home, too much taken up with other interests to be more than just aware of the violet eyes. So, life was very dull for Emmeline--"Emmie" she was familiarly called.

She went often of an evening to her mother's grave, and, sitting beside it, reflected how it was in keeping with the general sadness of things that there should be no prospect of any change for her in all the years of her life, no change from the present weary round of aunt and cousins, of sterile duties and insipid pleasures.

And there, by her mother's grave, came the very change she was sighing for. She sat on the sward, musingly watching the square tower of the church grow gray against the delicate, flushed sky, when she became aware of a stranger going from stone to stone in the fading light, examining the inscriptions. At first she was afraid. While she debated whether to hide or flee, the stranger approached, and in a foreign voice and accent asked some common question about the place. She could not answer readily for a foolish shame mixed with terror. She got to her feet, blushing, then turning pale. It could be none other than the astonishing fiddler who had played the night before in the hall at Colthorpe, and who could, they said, make your hair rise on end by the power of weird, unearthly music, or your eyes dissolve with tenderness--as he chose. She stared without speech into his dark, peculiar face. And he, seeing that she was discomfited, instead of apologizing and withdrawing, undertook, in a tone as persuasive as his violin's, to set her at ease. And when a few days later he disappeared from that part of the world, the violet eyes disappeared too.

Aunt Lucretia in time received a letter, asking her forgiveness and announcing Emmie's marriage.