Part 3

"We can manage, then," continued Hippolyte. "It is now half-past two. Now, from this moment, I declare that I will assume the management of this journey. You will simply permit yourself to be conducted. Come, my little George. Keep close to me, and take good care that you don't lose yourself."

She spoke to him as to a baby, in jest. They both felt full of gayety.

"Where is Segni? Where is Paliano?"

No village could be seen in the neighborhood. The low hills spread their uncertain verdure beneath a gray sky. Near the road, a single little tree, knotted and gnarled, swayed in the humid atmosphere.

As it still poured, the two wanderers sought shelter at the station, in a small room, with a chimney-piece without a fire. On a wall hung an old map in tatters, its surface a network of black lines. On another wall hung a square of pasteboard advertising an elixir. Opposite to the chimney, which had not even the memory of a fire, a couch, covered with a waxed cloth, was losing its species of stuffing by a thousand wounds.

"Look!" cried Hippolyte, who was reading the _Baedeker_. "At Segni there is the Gaetanino Hostelry."

This designation made them laugh.

"Suppose we smoke a cigarette?" said George. "It is three o'clock. It was at this time that I entered the church, two years ago."

And, once more, the memory of the great day occupied his mind. During several minutes they smoked without speaking, listening to the rain, which had increased in force. Through the drenched window-panes they saw the frail little tree, twisting and bending under the squall.

"My love is of older date than yours," said George. "It was born before that day."

She protested.

He, fascinated by the profound charm of the days irrevocably passed, continued tenderly: "I can see you again as you passed the first time. What an ineffaceable impression! It was towards evening, when the lights begin to be lit, when waves of azure fall on the streets.

"I was alone before the windows of Alinari. I was looking at the figures, but distinguished them with difficulty. It was an indefinable sensation--some lassitude, much sadness, with I know not what vague desire for ideality. That evening I had an ardent thirst for poetry, elevation, refined and spiritual things. Was it a presentiment?"

He made a long pause; but Hippolyte said nothing, waiting for him to continue, engrossed in the exquisite pleasure of listening to him among the light smoke of the cigarettes, which seemed to envelop the veiled memories in still another veil.

"It was in February. I was paying a visit to Orvieto at that very time. I even believe that if I was then at Alinari's, it was to ask him for a photograph of the reliquary. And you passed! Since then, on two or three other occasions--two or three, not more--I have seen you as pale, that singular pallor. You cannot imagine, Hippolyte, how pale you were. Never have I seen its equal. I thought: 'How can that woman keep up? She cannot have a single drop of blood in her veins.' It was a supernatural pallor, which in the flood of azure falling from the sky to the pavement gave you the appearance of a creature without a body. I paid no attention to the man who accompanied you; I did not wish to follow you; I did not receive even as much as a look from you. I recall another detail. You stopped a few steps farther on, because a lamp-lighter blocked the pavement. Ah! I still see in the air the scintillation of the small flame at the summit of the staff; I see the sudden lighting of the gas which bathed you in light."

Hippolyte smiled, but somewhat sadly, with that sadness which oppresses the heart of women when they regard their portraits taken in former days.

"Yes, I was pale," she said. "I had only quitted my bed a few weeks before, after a three months' illness. I had been at death's door."

A gust of rain dashed against the window-panes. The little tree could be seen bending and twisting under the wind in an almost circular movement, as if some hand were attempting to uproot it. For several minutes they both watched the fury of the elements, which, in the bleakness, nakedness, and inert torpor of the surrounding country, took on a strange appearance of conscious life. Hippolyte felt almost compassion. The imaginary suffering of the tree placed them face to face with their own sufferings. They mentally considered the great solitude which lay all around the station, a miserable hut before which passed from time to time a train-load of divers travellers, each of whom carried in his own bosom a different inquietude. Sad images rapidly succeeded one another in their thoughts, suggested by the same things they had seen an hour before with joyous eyes. And when the images faded away, when their consciences, ceasing to be impressed, returned to themselves again, they both found, at the bottom of their being, a unique and inexpressible anguish--a regret for days irrevocably lost.

Their love had behind it a long _past_. It dragged behind it, through the years, an immense and obscure net, full of dead things.

"What's the matter?" asked Hippolyte, her voice slightly changed.

"What's the matter with you?" asked George, looking fixedly at her.

Neither replied to the question. They remained silent, and renewed their gaze through the windows. The heavens seemed to smile tearfully. A faint glimmer lit up a hillock, bathed it in a fugitive golden glow, died away. Other sun-rays tried to pierce the moisture-laden cloud-banks, then disappeared.

"Hippolyte Sanzio!" said George, pronouncing the name slowly, as if to enjoy its charm. "How my heart beat when I finally learned that was your name! How many things have I seen and felt in that name! It was the name of one of my sisters, who is dead. That beautiful name was familiar to me. With profound emotion, I immediately thought, 'Oh! if my lips could only resume their dear custom.' That day, from morning until night, the recollections of my dead sister mingled exquisitely with my secret dream. I did not go in search of you; I forbade myself such pursuit; I would never be importunate; yet, at heart, I had an inexplicable confidence. I was sure that, sooner or later, you would know me and love me. What delicious sensations were mine! I lived outside of the reality; my soul fed only on music and exalting books. One day it happened that I saw you at a concert given by Gian Sgambati; but I saw you only just as you were about to leave the hall. You gave me a glance. Another time, again, you looked at me--maybe you remember? It was when we met at the entrance to the Via del Babuino, opposite the Piale Library."

"Yes, I remember."

"You had a little girl with you."

"Yes; Cecilia--one of my nieces."

"I stopped on the sidewalk--so as to allow you to pass. I noticed that we were both of the same height. You were less pale than usual. A momentary feeling of pride flashed through me."

"You had guessed correctly," said Hippolyte.

"You remember? It was towards the end of March. I waited with growing confidence. I lived from day to day absorbed in thoughts of the great passion which I felt approaching. As I had seen you twice with a small bouquet of violets, I filled all my house with violets. Oh! that beginning of spring I shall never forget! And the morning slumbers, so light, so transparent! And those slow, dreamy awakenings, in which, while my eyes were becoming used to the light, my mind still delayed before resuming the sentiment of reality! I recall that certain childish artifices sufficed to throw me into a species of illusionary intoxication. I remember, one day, at a concert, while listening to a Beethoven sonata, in which a frequent and periodic return of a sublime and passionate phrase recurred, I exalted myself almost to a state of madness by the interior repetition of a poetical phrase in which your name occurred."

Hippolyte smiled; but, hearing him speak with an evident preference for all the first manifestations of his love, at the bottom of her heart she felt displeased. Did those days seem sweeter to him than the present--were those distant recollections his dearest recollections?

George went on: "All the disdain which I have for a commonplace existence would never have sufficed to inspire me with the dream of an asylum as fantastic and mysterious as the abandoned oratory of the Via Belsiana. Do you recall it? The door at the head of the steps, opening on the street, was shut, and had been for years perhaps. One passed through a side alley which reeked of wine, and in which there was the red sign of a cabaret, with a large cork. Do you remember it? The entrance was at the rear, and one had to pass through a sacristy scarcely large enough to hold a priest and sacristan. It was the entrance to the sanctuary of Wisdom. What curious-looking old men, and women, on all sides, in the worm-eaten stalls! Where had Alexander Memmi been, to procure his audience? Doubtless you did not know, dear one, that you personified Beauty in this council of the music-mad. Mr. Martlet, you see, is one of the most confirmed Buddhists of our epoch; and his wife has written a book on the _Philosophy of Music_. The lady seated near you was Margherita Traube Boll, a celebrated doctor who is carrying on her defunct husband's investigations into the visual functions. The necromancer, in the long greenish cloak, who entered on tiptoe, was a Jew--a German physician, Dr. Fleichl, a superb pianist, a fanatic on Bach. The priest seated beneath the cross was Count Castracane, an immortal botanist. Another botanist, a bacteriologist, a microscopist, named Cuboni, was sitting in front of him. And there was also Jacopo Moleschott, that unforgettable old man, frank, enormous; also Blaserna, the collaborator of Helmholtz in the theory of sound; and Mr. Davys, a philosophical painter, a Preraphaelite plunged into Brahmanism. The others, less numerous, were all superior people, rare minds given to the highest speculations of modern science, cold investigators of life and passionate adorers of dreams."

He interrupted himself in order to conjure up the picture, and then went on:

"These savants listened to the music with religious enthusiasm; one assumed an inspired attitude; others made unconscious gestures, in imitation of the chapel-master; others, in low tones, joined in chant with the choir. The choir, of men and women, occupied the rostrum, the painted wood of which still showed traces of gilding. In front the young girls formed a group, with their partitions kept on a level with their faces. Below, on the roughly made stands of the violinists, burned candles, spots of gold on a dark blue background. Here and there their small flames were reflected by the varnished body of an instrument, put a luminous point on the tip of a bow. Alexander Memmi, somewhat stiff, bald, with a short black beard and gold spectacles, kept time with severe and sober gestures. At the close of every piece a murmur arose in the chapel, and laughs, badly suppressed, descended from the gallery, amidst the rustling of music-pages being turned. When the sky brightened, the candle-flames grew pale; and a cross very high up, which had figured in former years in solemn processions, a cross all ornamented with golden olives and foliage, seemed as if detached from the wall, in a burst of light. The white and bald heads of the auditors shone on the oaken backs. Then all at once, by a new change in the sky, the shadow again began to creep among these things, like a light mist. A scarcely perceptible wave of some subtle odor--incense or benzoin?--invaded the nave.

"On the single altar, in glass vases, two bouquets of violets, somewhat faded, exhaled the breath of spring; and this double-fading perfume was like the poesy of dreams which the music evoked in the souls of the old men, while close by, in quite different souls, there developed another dream: like an aurora on melting snows."

It pleased him to reconstruct this scene, to render it poetical--to warm it again with lyric breath.

"Is it not preposterous, unbelievable?" he cried. "At Rome, in the city of intellectual inertia, a master of music, a Buddhist who has published two volumes of essays on the philosophy of Schopenhauer, indulges in the luxury of having a mass by Sebastian Bach executed for his own pleasure, in a mysterious chapel before an audience of great music-mad savants, whose daughters sing in the chorus. Is it not a page from Hoffmann? On an afternoon of a somewhat gray but warm spring--these old philosophers quit their laboratories, where they have obstinately striven to wrest from life one of its secrets; and they assemble in a hidden oratory in order to satisfy, almost to intoxication, the passion that has drawn together their hearts, to leave their earthly bodies, and live ideally in dreams. And, in the midst of this old men's gathering, an exquisite musical idyll unfolds between the cousin of the Buddhist and the friend of the Buddhist, ideally speaking. And when the mass is finished, the Buddhist, suspecting nothing, presents the future lover to the divine Hippolyte Sanzio."

He began to laugh, and then arose. "I have made, it seems to me, a commemoration according to rule."

For an instant Hippolyte remained somewhat absorbed, then she said: "Do you remember, it was on a Saturday, the eve of Palm Sunday?"

She also arose, approached George, and kissed his cheek.

"Shall we go now? It is no longer raining."

They went out and strolled along the wet pavement, which reflected the subdued sunlight. The cold air made them shiver. Roundabout, the undulating hills were covered with verdure and furrowed with luminous streaks; here an there large pools of water reflected the pale image of a sky whose deep azure spread out between the flaky clouds. The little tree, dripping with rain, was illumined at intervals.

"That little tree will remain as one of our remembrances," said Hippolyte, stopping to look at it. "It is so lonely, so lonely."

The bell announced the approach of the train, it was a quarter past four. A railway employee offered to get their tickets. "When shall we arrive at Albano?" George asked.

"About seven o'clock."

"It will be night," said Hippolyte.

As she felt rather cold, she took George's arm; and she was pleased to think that they would arrive at a strange hotel this chilly evening, and that they would dine alone before a bright fire.

George perceived that she trembled, and asked: "Do you wish to go in again?"

"No," she replied. "You see, the sun's coming out. I shall warm up."

An indefinable desire for intimacy had seized her. She pressed closely to him, became suddenly caressing, and her voice, look, contact, gestures--and all her being--were full of seduction. She wished to shed over the loved one the most feminine of her charms; she wished to intoxicate him, to dazzle him with a display of present happiness capable of eclipsing the reflection of bygone happiness. She wished to appear to him more amiable, more adorable, more desirable than ever before. A fear assailed her--an atrocious fear--that he might regret the woman of long ago, sigh for the vanished delights, believe that then only had he attained the height of intoxication. "His recollections," she thought, "have filled my soul with so much melancholy! I have restrained my tears with difficulty. And he too, perhaps, is sad at heart. How heavily the past hangs over our love! Perhaps he is tired of me? Perhaps he is unaware of this weariness, and does not avow it to himself, willing to live under the illusion? But he is perhaps incapable now of finding any happiness in me. If I am still dear to him, it is perhaps only because he recognizes in me an object for his dear sorrows. Alas! I too, when with him, taste true happiness only at rare intervals; I suffer too, and yet I love him, and I love my suffering, and my only desire is to please him, and I cannot imagine life without this love. Why then are we so sad, since we love one another?"

She leaned heavily on her lover's arm, gazing at him with eyes to which the shadow of her thoughts imparted an expression of profound tenderness.

"Two years ago, about the same hour, we left the chapel together; and he spoke to me of things in no way connected with love, in a voice which moved my heart, which touched my soul as if with a caress of the lips; and this ideal caress I enjoyed like a long kiss. I trembled, I trembled incessantly, because I felt an unknown feeling born in me. Oh! it was a divine hour! We have reached our second anniversary to-day, and we still love one another. Just now he spoke; and if his voice affected me differently than it used to do, it still moves me to the bottom of my soul. We have before us a delightful evening. Why regret the days that are gone? Our liberty, our present intimacy, are they not worth the incertitude and hesitations of that time? Even our memories, so numerous, do they not add a new charm to our love? I love him--I give myself up to him entirely; in the presence of his desire I no longer know modesty. In two years he has transformed me; he has made of me another woman; he has given me new senses, a new soul, a new intelligence. I am creation. He can intoxicate himself through me as he would through one of his own thoughts. I belong entirely to him, now and forever."

Then, passionately pressing her form against his, she asked, "Are you not happy?"

The tone in which she spoke moved him; and, as if suddenly enveloped by a warm breath, he experienced a thrill of real happiness.

"Yes, I am happy," he answered.

And when the locomotive whistle was heard, their hearts had the same palpitation.

At last they were alone in their compartment. She closed all the windows, waited until the train was again in motion; they fell into each other's arms, kissed each other, and repeated all the caressing names which their tenderness of the last two years had used.

Then they sat still, side by side, a vague smile on their lips and in their eyes, and with the sensation that, little by little, the rapid coursing of their blood was abating. Through the windows they watched the monotonous country as it rushed by and disappeared into the violet-colored fog.

"Rest your head on my knees, and lie down," said Hippolyte.

He laid his head on her knee. She said: "The wind has disarranged your mustache." With her finger-tips she raised several of the light hairs which had fallen on his mouth. He kissed her finger-tips. She passed her hand through his hair. She said: "You, too, have very long eyelashes."

To admire his lashes, she closed his eyes. Then she caressed his brow and temples; she made him kiss once more each one of her fingers, one after the other, her head bent over George. And from beneath, George saw her mouth open with infinite slowness, saw unfold the snowy whiteness of her teeth. She closed her mouth, then again slowly opened it, with an almost insensible movement--like a flower with two petals; and a pearly whiteness shone from within. This delightful sport threw them into a state of languor; they forgot everything--they were happy. The monotonous motion of the train soothed them. In low tones they exchanged terms of adoration.

"This is our first journey together," she said, smiling. "It is the first time we are alone in a train."

She took delight in repeating that this was a new experience for them.

George, who had already felt the spur of desire, became more animated. He raised himself up, he kissed her on the neck, just on the Twins; he whispered something in her ear. An inexpressible light lit up Hippolyte's eyes, but she answered with vivacity: "No, no, we must be good until this evening. We must wait."

Once more she saw a vision of the silent hotel, of the furnished chamber, of the large bed hidden beneath a white mosquito curtain.

"At this season of the year," she said, in order to distract her lover's attention, "there will scarcely be anyone at Albano. How nice it will be, all alone in an empty hotel. We shall be taken for a young couple."

She wrapped herself in her mantle with a thrill, and leaned against George's shoulder.

"It is cold to-day, isn't it? When we arrive we'll light a big fire, and we'll take a cup of tea."

For them it was an acute pleasure to imagine the approaching intoxication. They spoke in low tones, communicating the ardor of their blood, exchanging burning promises. But, as they talked of future voluptuousness, their present desire grew, became irresistible. They lapsed into silence, they united their lips; they heard nothing more but the tumultuous beating of their arteries.

* * * * *

Afterwards, it seemed to them both as if a veil had been torn from before their eyes, that an internal mist was being dissipated--that the enchantment was broken. The fire in the imaginary chamber went out; the bed seemed icy, and the silence of the empty hotel became heavy. Hippolyte leaned her head against the back of the seat, watching the vast, monotonous country disappearing in the darkness.

At her side, George had again fallen beneath the empire of his perfidious thoughts. A horrible vision tortured him, against which it was impossible for him to contend, because he saw it with the eyes of his soul, those eyes, pupil-less, that no force of will can shut.

"Of what are you thinking?" asked Hippolyte, uneasy.

"Of you."

He thought of her, of her wedding-trip--of the ways in which the newly married generally act. "Without the least doubt, she found herself alone with her husband just as she is now with me. And it is perhaps this remembrance which causes her sadness." He thought also of the rapid adventures between two stations, of the sudden disquietude caused by a look--of the seizures of sensuality during the suffocating length of an afternoon during the dog-days. "What horror! What horror!" He started violently, a particular kind of start that Hippolyte knew too well to be a sure symptom of the malady which afflicted her lover. She took his hand in hers and asked:

"Are you in pain?"

He nodded, looking at her with an unhappy smile. But she had not the courage to push her questioning further, because she feared a bitter and heart-breaking answer. She preferred to remain silent; but she kissed him on his forehead--a long kiss, as usual, in the hope of unloosening the tangle of cruel reflections.

"Here we are at Cecchina!" she cried with relief, as she heard the whistle announcing their arrival. "Quick--quick, love, we must get down."

In order to amuse him, she affected gayety. She lowered the window and looked out.

"The evening is cold, but beautiful. Make haste, love. This is our anniversary. We must be happy."

The sound of her strong and tender voice drove away his gloominess. On alighting in the fresh air, he felt himself restored to serenity.

A sky, limpid as a diamond, curved like a vault over the country drenched with water. In the transparent atmosphere there still flitted beams of crepuscular light. The stars came out one by one, as if shaken on the staffs of invisible lamp-bearers.