“How do you mean—you were never really a girl?” I questioned stupidly.
You will guess what I felt—her eyes suddenly filled with tears.
I was stammering out some apology, but she stopped me. “No, no. It isn’t your fault. I’m not crying. It’s all right. I meant I was never a girl, because I was married at eighteen. That is all. And I’ve had to be dull and middle-aged ever since,” she added, smiling again. “You dull and middle-aged!” I scoffed at the notion. But her tears, and then her word about her marriage, had touched me poignantly. She had never mentioned, she had never remotely alluded to her marriage, before, in all our intercourse. Certainly, I knew, from things Miss Belmont had said, that it had not been a happy marriage. The Con-tessa’s word about it now, brief as it was, slight as it was, moved me like a cry of pain. I felt a great anguish, a great anger, to think that circumstances had been cruel to her in the past; a great yearning in some way to be of comfort to her.
“Oh,” I cried out—tactlessly, if you will; but my emotion was dominant; I could not stop to reflect—“oh, why—why didn’t I know you in those days? Why wasn’t I here—to—to help you—to defend you—to—to make it easier for you?”
We were in the carriage by this time, rolling swiftly back towards Rome. She did not speak. I did not look at her. But I felt her hand laid gently upon mine, her little light gloved hand; and then her hand pressed mine, a long soft pressure that said vastly more than speech; and then her hand rested there, lightly, lightly, and we were both silent, till we reached the Porta del Popolo.
When I had left her, I was conscious of a curious elation, a curious exaltation. It was almost as if my confidante had made me her confidant. A new honour had been conferred upon me, a new trust and responsibility. “Oh, I will devote my life to her,” I vowed fervently, in my soul. “I will devote my life to making her happy, to compensating her in some measure for what she has suffered in the past. When shall I see her again?” I was consumed with eagerness, with impatience, to see her again.
I saw her, as a matter of fact, no later than the next day. I called on her in the afternoon. I went to her, meditating heroics. I would lay my life at her feet, I would ask her to let me be her knight, her servant. I looked forward to rather a fine moment. But it takes two to make a melodrama. She met me in a mood that sealed the heroics in my bosom; a teasing, elusive mood, her eyes, her voice, all mockery, all mischief. “Tiens, c’est mon petit-fils,” she cried, on my arrival. “Bonjour, Toto. How nice of you to come and see your granny.” There were days when she was like this, when she would never drop her joke about being my grandmother, and perpetually called me “Toto,” and talked to me as if I were approaching seven. “Now, sit down on the floor before the fire,” she said, “and gwandmamma will tell you a stor-wy.” A sprite danced in her eyes. Her drawling enunciation of the last word was irresistible. I laughed, despite myself; and thoughts of high rhetoric had summarily to be dismissed.
When I look back upon my life as it was in those days, I protest I am filled with a sort of envy. A boy of twenty-something, his pockets comfortably supplied with money; free from morning to night, from night to morning, to do as his fancy prompted; with numberless pleasant acquaintances; and in the most beautiful country, the most interesting city, of two hemispheres—in Italy, in Rome: yes, indeed, as I look back at him, I am filled with envy.
But then, when I think of her.... I think of her, and she becomes visible before me, visible in all her exquisite grace and fineness, her exquisite femininity. I see her intimate little room, its gay blue and white, its pretty furniture, its hundred pretty personal trifles, tokens of her habitation; I breathe the air of it, the faint, soft perfume that was always on its air; I see her fan, her open book, her handkerchief forgotten on a table. I see her, in the room. I see her delicate white face, witty, alert, sensitive; I see her laughing eyes, her hair, the sumptuous masses of her hair. I see her hands, I touch them, slender, fragile, but warm, but firm and responsive. I see the delicious toilet she is wearing, I hear the brisk frou-frou of it. I hear her voice. I see her at her piano, I see her as she plays, the bend of her head, the motion of her body. I see her as she glances up at me, whimsically smiling, asking me something, telling me something. I gaze long at her, hungrily. And then, remembering that there was a time when I could see her like this in very reality as often as I would—oh, I can only cry out to myself of those days, “You lucky heathen, you lucky, lucky heathen! How little you realised, how little you merited, your extraordinary fortune!”