In the rather gloomy ante-chamber, papered as it was in old green myrtle, and austerely furnished in dark carved wood, the electric light was lit, but shaded by a milky, opaque globe. Francesco, the valet, silent, discreet, correct as usual, helped his master, Lucio Sabini, to take off his coat and freed him of hat, stick, and gloves. Lucio entered with a more than ever tired and bored appearance, with a pale and contracted face. In a quick, colourless voice he asked: "Are there any letters?"
"One; I put it on the small table."
Lucio Sabini experienced a fleeting hesitation before he entered his own apartment, which was a vast room where the shade of dusk was spreading from three broad windows, two of which looked out on the Lungarno Serristori and the third on to a little square, so that the dark red, green, and maroon of the roomy, deep furniture—arm-chairs and sofas in English leather—merged into the single tint of shadow, and mixed with the mahogany, with an occasional gilt fillet, of the large bookcases and big and little tables. Here and there only the whiteness of a china vase, the gleam of a silver figure, the brightness of a statue of Signa's were to be distinguished. But in spite of the gloom which the dying day at the end of February caused in the room, the oblong envelope of the letter shone clearly.
Slowly he advanced amongst the furniture, making for a large arm-chair behind the writing-table, without lifting his eyes from the whiteness of the letter. He threw himself into the chair, overcome, holding the letter before him without touching it—and some minutes passed thus. Suddenly he gave a start, sat up in his chair, put his hand on a switch, and the electric light was lit in three or four large lamps. Without touching it he saw that which he had guessed in the half-light, Lilian Temple's writing and the envelope without a stamp.
"She is here ... she is here——" he stammered, growing very pale, and speaking aloud.
His twitching hands touched the letter, but still without opening it: beneath the envelope he found a long, narrow visiting-card. The card said: "Miss May Ford," and in fine handwriting in pencil: "Will return." He let his head sink on the arm of the chair as he held the card in his fingers, which almost let it fall, and lapsed into thought for some moments in the silence of the room. Mechanically he rang the bell and started on seeing Francesco almost immediately before him on the other side of the desk.
"This letter was brought by hand, wasn't it?" he murmured, looking at the servant as if he saw him not.
"Yes, Excellency. It was left with the visiting-card."
"By whom?"
"By a lady, Excellency."
"A lady ... was she young?"
"No, Excellency."
"Was she alone?"
"Alone, Excellency."
"At what time?"
"At four o'clock."
"And what did you tell her?"
"That your Excellency usually returned about half-past six and nearly always went out about eight to dinner."
"Ah!" exclaimed Lucio Sabini.
With a gesture he dismissed the man. Scarcely was he gone when Lucio rose, a prey to a vain agitation; he went up and down the room as if seeking something he found not, but without really looking for it; he gazed around with dazed eyes, as if to question the farthest corners of the vast room, he stumbled against some piece of furniture without being aware of it, and touched two or three objects without seeing them, replacing them where he had found them. Inevitably he returned to his writing-table, his glance settled on the closed envelope without the stamp, over which spread Lilian Temple's large, flexible handwriting.
"She is here ... she is here——" he exclaimed desperately. Twice he took the letter, turned it over, made as if to open it with a rapid, despairing gesture; the second time he threw it down on the table as if it burnt him. He passed into the adjacent room, his bedroom, and turned on the light. The room seemed rather gay with its bright and fresh-coloured Liberty silk, bright brass bed, fine lace curtains and partières, and the lacquered wood of soft grey. He made for a small desk, opened its largest drawer and drew it forth. It was full of Lilian Temple's letters, written on fine sheets of foreign paper, very voluminous in character, which were crossed horizontally and vertically. Beneath them a large envelope was hidden where surely would be a portrait, or perhaps several portraits, of Lilian Temple; but quite in the front of the drawer there was a large bundle of unopened letters, like the one he had left on his writing-table in the salotto. With a slightly trembling hand he pushed back all the leaves which were issuing in confusion from their opened envelopes and passed them to the back, hiding especially the large wrapper with the photograph, from which he averted his eyes. He separated all the unopened letters, and counted them twice, as if he thought that he was mistaken. There were fourteen. Fourteen letters from Lilian Temple which he had not opened: he looked at the one which seemed the oldest in date, and he seemed to read on the English stamp the date of the 26th of December. In three months Lilian had written him fourteen letters which he had not read, because he had not opened them; and the last ones he had thrown away so rapidly without looking at them that he had not even the stamp or date of departure. For some moments he stood by the open drawer. An agonising uncertainty was to be read on his face: two or three times he made as if to take the closed packet of letters and open one, or some, or all of them; but two or three times he hesitated and repented. At last he shrugged his shoulders roughly, pushed back the drawer and closed it. A dull noise at his shoulder made him turn round:
"Miss Ford is asking from the 'Savoy' if Signor Lucio Sabini has returned, and if he can receive her at once," demanded Francesco.
"Did you reply that I had returned?" asked Lucio, biting his lips a little.
"I replied that your Excellency had returned," said Francesco, "but nothing else."
"Say that I am expecting Miss Ford at once."
Dazed, he passed a hand over his forehead, as if wishing to resume the direction of his tumultuous thoughts: he strove to impress there an energy that should arouse his lost will. But his thoughts and will lost themselves in great tumult and disorder around this idea, these words:
"If she were to come too; if she were to come with her."
Like an automaton he passed again into his room. With a rapid gesture he hid the unopened letter, the fifteenth, the last from Florence. He moved some chairs to occupy his hands; for a moment he leant with his burning forehead against the glass of his bookcase, hiding his face. But the sound of the bell in the anteroom startled him from his abandonment.
He jumped up, composed and tranquil, advanced to the door, and bowed deeply to Miss May Ford, who entered, announced by Francesco. Kissing the grey-gloved hand which the Englishwoman extended to him, he led her to a chair and sat down opposite her, turning his shoulders to the large lamp on the writing-table so as not to show his face. Dressed in grey with a black hat, Miss May Ford showed an imperturbable face, whence had escaped every expression of the amiability of a former time—a tranquil, cold, imperturbable face.
"Welcome to Florence, Miss Ford."
"How do you do, Signor Sabini? Are you quite well?"
"Yes—thanks."
"Have you been keeping well?"
"No," he murmured, "I have been indisposed for some time, for a month."
"Oh, dear," exclaimed Miss Ford, with a conventional intonation of regret. "I hope you are all right now."
"I am all right now, thanks," replied Lucio coldly, perceiving that she did not believe him.
They exchanged a rapid glance. He was the first, with an effort of will, to question her:
"Are you alone, Miss Ford?"
"How alone?" she asked, pretending not to understand.
"Isn't your travelling companion with you?" he asked, with difficulty suppressing his emotion.
"She is not with me," she replied coldly.
"Isn't she in Florence?" he asked again, unable this time to conceal his anxiety.
For a moment Miss Ford hesitated. Then she replied again:
"She is not in Florence."
"Ah," he exclaimed, with a deep sigh, "and where is she?"
Miss Ford scrutinised him with a long glance: then she said:
"Don't you know where Lilian Temple is?"
Beneath that glance, and at those words, he was lost and showed his loss. He stammered:
"I don't know: how could I know?"
"But you ought to know," added Miss Ford, looking at him.
"That is true; perhaps I ought to know," he replied, without understanding what she said.
"In her letters she always told you what she was doing, and where she was going," added the old maid, in a firm, precise tone.
"Yes," he replied, throwing her a desperate glance.
Miss Ford lowered her face behind her black veil and became silent, as if she were gathering together her ideas. Confronted with her, silent and convulsed, Lucio Sabini waited for her words, incapable of saying anything unless he were asked. Then she asked him calmly, with cold courtesy:
"Will you be so good as to answer a few of my questions, Signor Sabini?"
He looked at her; and his eyes, the eyes of a man who had lived, enjoyed, and suffered much, almost besought her to have mercy. She averted hers naturally and asked:
"Do you remember that you left us, Signor Sabini, on the 20th of September? Do you remember that you told Lilian—the last words on the companion-way of the steamer as you were leaving—that you expected her soon, as soon as possible, in Italy?"
What anguish there was in the man's eyes which were fixed pleadingly on the woman, as if to beseech her to spare him that cup; what anguish as he bowed assent.
The Englishwoman continued coldly: "Afterwards she wrote to you very often from England. You replied promptly and often in long letters. Is that so?"
"It is so," he answered, in a weak voice.
"I don't know Lilian's letters or yours. I know that you always wrote that you wished to see her again, that you would come to England or that she should come to Italy. Is that true?"
"It is true," the man consented, weakly.
There was an instant of silence.
"Later," resumed Miss Ford, "you began to reply less frequently, and more curtly. At last you spoke no more of your journey to England nor of Lilian's to Italy."
"I spoke no more of it," he consented, with bowed head.
"Finally you ceased to write to Lilian. It is three months since you have written to her."
"It is three months," he said, like a sorrowful echo.
Miss May Ford made her inquiry with perfect composure and courtesy, without any expression manifesting itself on her face, without any expression passing into her voice. Only she kept her eyes on those of Lucio's, her limpid, proud English eyes, which spoke truth of soul and sought it in the sad, furtive eyes of Lucio Sabini.
"Then," resumed the Englishwoman, "as my young friend had no reply to her letters, and as I was here in Florence, she begged me to come and find you and to ask you for this reply."
"Have you come on purpose?" he asked disconsolately. "Did you make the journey on purpose?"
"Oh, no!" replied Miss Ford at once, punctiliously. "Not on purpose! I am here for my pleasure, and my friend sent me to you for an answer."
"But what answer? Whatever answer can I give Lilian Temple, Miss Ford?" the man cried, in great agitation.
"I don't know. You ought to know, Signor Sabini," she replied boldly. "An answer, I suppose, to her last letter."
"Which last letter? Which?"
"That of to-day: that which I brought you," concluded Miss Ford simply.
He leant forward for a moment in his chair, then fell back suddenly, overcome. And the sad confession escaped almost involuntarily from his lips:
"I haven't read it."
"You haven't read it, Signor Sabini?" asked Miss Ford, with her first, fleeting frown.
"I haven't read it," he again affirmed, with bowed head.
"Oh!" only exclaimed Miss Ford, in a tone of marvel and incredulity.
Lucio rose; with trembling hands he sought in his writing-table, took the closed letter and showed it to the Englishwoman.
"Here it is, untouched. I haven't read it; I haven't opened it."
"Why?" asked May Ford coldly.
"Through fear, through cowardice," exclaimed Lucio Sabini crudely.
Miss Ford was silent, with lowered eyes; her gloved hands grasped the handle of her umbrella. And Lucio, deciding to stretch, with his cruel hands, the wound from which his soul was bleeding, continued:
"Through fear and cowardice I did not open this letter to-day from Lilian Temple, as I have not done for nearly three months—please understand me—I have opened none. You do not believe me? It is not credible? I will fetch her letters."
Convulsively he vanished into the other room and reappeared immediately with the fourteen sealed letters and threw them into Miss Ford's lap.
"There they are. They are all I have received since December: I haven't read them, I tell you, nor opened them. It is abominable, but it is so; it is grotesque, but it is so! I am a man, I am thirty-five, I have seen death, I have challenged death, but I have never dared for three months to open a letter from Lilian. I have no longer had the courage. In fact, the abominable cruelty in not reading what she wrote me, the infamy and grotesqueness of not opening the envelopes, the ignoring of which I believed myself incapable, the cruelty for which I hate and despise myself, I have done through fear and cowardice and through nothing else. Do you understand me?"
Slowly Miss Ford took the letters, one by one, read their addresses, and placed them one on the other in order. Raising her head, she asked, with great, even greater coldness:
"Fear? Cowardice?"
"Yes! Through fear of the suffering caused to myself and others, through not wishing to suffer or know suffering, or see, or measure the sufferings of others."
"Suffering? Sorrow?" again asked the cold voice of the Englishwoman.
"I suffer like one of the damned, Miss Ford," he added gloomily.
"Ah!" she exclaimed, with colourless intonation.
"And Lilian also suffers! Isn't it true that she suffers?"
"Yes, I believe she suffers," exclaimed Miss Ford, glacially.
By now she had made a pile of the fourteen sealed letters, and raising her head she said to Lucio Sabini:
"Must I take back all these letters, then, to my friend, so that she may see and understand, Signor Sabini? Give me the last as well and I will go."
And she made as if to rise and depart with her pile of letters, without further remark.
"Then Lilian is here?" cried Lucio Sabini, drawing near to the English lady, again convulsed. "She is here. Tell me that she is here."
Miss Ford hesitated a moment.
"No, Lilian is not here," she affirmed tranquilly.
"Ah, if only she were here, if only she were here!" he cried, hiding his face in his hands.
"Would you look for her, Signor Sabini? Would you see her? Would you speak with her?"
As one in a dream he looked at the Englishwoman: and at each question his face, contracted by his interior anguish, seemed discomposed.
"No," he replied in a slow, desolate voice. "No, I would not seek her out; I would not see her; I would not speak with her."
"Ah!"
"I must never see Lilian Temple again," he added, opening his arms desolately.
"Never again, Signor Sabini?"
"Never again."
"But why?"
He made a despairing but resolute movement.
"I am not free, Miss Ford."
"You have a wife?" and the Englishwoman's voice seemed slightly ironical.
"No, I haven't a wife; but I am even more tied and bound than if I had one."
"I don't know; I don't understand," she said.
"One sometimes leaves and deserts a wife. A lover is much more difficult. Sometimes it is impossible. It is impossible for me: I am a slave for ever."
He spoke harshly and brutally; but as if he were using such harshness and brutality against himself. In the light dimmed by the shades, it seemed as if a slight blush had spread over Miss Ford's pale face. The glaciality of her voice diminished: it seemed crossed by a subtle current of emotion, where also there was embarrassment, stubbornness, and pain. Miss May's questions were slower and more timid, more hesitating in some words, more broken with short silences, as if she had scarcely resumed the interrogation. Lucio's replies were precise, rough, gloomy, as if directed to a mysterious inquisitor of his soul, as if to his very own conscience.
"Isn't this person, this woman, free?"
"She is another's wife. Together we have betrayed a man's confidence."
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