Chapter IX: Part III: I (3)

At last they found it; shallower, narrower, slower than at its source, as if dying out under the trees. They stood by its edge, bending over it; Lucia leant down to gaze at its grey bed where green weeds waved mysteriously. A green light was reflected on her face. She cast her anemones into the water, watching them disappear and following them with her eyes; then she threw down others, interested and preoccupied in their destruction. When there were no more of her own, she took back those she had given to Andrea; he tried to oppose her.

“No, no; away with it all, all,” said Lucia, harshly.

And she threw them away in bunches, closing her eyes. When her hands were empty, she made a gesture as if to let herself go after them.

“What are you doing?” he said, seizing her wrists. “Let us sit here, will you?”

“Not here. Let us find a secret place, that no one knows of; a beautiful green place that the sun cannot reach, where we cannot see the sky; I am afraid of all those things.”

They began the search again eagerly, climbing steep ascents and descending little precipices; he supporting her by passing an arm round her waist. They crossed broad meadows, where the damp grass wetted Lucia’s little shoes; holding each other by the hand, almost in each other’s arms, with eyes averted, subdued by the innocent intoxication of verdant Nature. They came to a tiny stream; Andrea took Lucia in his arms and placed her on the other side; when he put her down his light pressure made her utter a cry.

“Have I hurt you?” he asked in contrition.

“No.”

They had to stoop to pass under low-hanging boughs that knitted into each other like those of a virgin forest. A hare rushed by at full speed, to Lucia’s great surprise.

“Ah!” cried Andrea, biting his forefinger, “if I had but a gun.”

“Wicked, cruel, how can you long for the death of an innocent animal?”

“Oh! it is rapture; you cannot understand the wild excitement of a man on the track of a hare. It is a combat of animal cunning; the man does not always get the best of it. But when he does hit his prey, and the animal falls in the death struggle, and the hot blood rushes out in floods....”

“It is horrible, horrible!”

“Why?” said the other, ingenuously.

“You have no heart, you have no feeling!”

“You are jesting?”

“_Che!_ I am in earnest. Do not say these cruel, blood-thirsty things to me. You can only realise hate, torture, revenge. You know nothing of love.”

“But I neither hate nor love the hare. I kill it for the pleasure of the thing.”

“Pleasure! a great word; that which you sacrifice everything to; it is brutality.”

“I cannot argue with you,” he said, humbly. “You always conquer me by saying things that pain me.”

“I wish you were good and tender-hearted,” murmured Lucia, vaguely. “You men have bursts of violent but short-lived passion; but women have constant, enduring tenderness.”

“That is why love is so beautiful,” he cried, triumphantly.

To save her from being scratched by a straggling briar, Andrea drew her towards him, murmuring close to her ear: “Love ... love.”

She permitted him to do so at first, and tolerated his breath on her cheeks, but all at once freed herself in alarm, with eyes apparently fixed on a terrible vision.

“I want to go away, away from here,” stamping her feet nervously, gasping from terror.

“Let us go,” he said, bowing his head, subjugated, incapable of having any other will than Lucia’s. He tried to find a way out, and went as far as the turning, where he disappeared amid the trees. Then he returned to Lucia, whom the thought of going away had already calmed.

“Over there,” he said, “is the little lake I told you of, and the way out besides. We can get there by a short cut.”

They wended their way in silence, he playing with the parasol, as if he meant to break it, while he tried to subdue his anger. They found themselves, by means of a descent so steep that it seemed as if it must lead underground, at the spot for which they had been seeking, but which they now no longer cared for.

It was a tiny, round lake; its clear water was of a transparent tint--deep-set in the wooded hills of the English Garden, which screened it from sight and made it difficult of approach; invisible, except to those who stood on its margin. This margin was planted with pale-leaved acacias, and tall, lean, dull-green poplars. Bending into its waters from the shore, a desolate, nymph-like weeping willow laved its pale-green hair. The ground was covered with short, close turf, studded here and there with bunches of shamrock. Flowerless, velvet-leaved aquatic plants floated on the surface of its still waters. In one spot, close to the shore, a Ninfea had risen from its depths to display the large white blossom that lures the male flowers, its lovers, to break from their roots and die. The landscape was steeped in a grey light, so soft that it appeared to fall through an awning; a mere reflection of the sun, toned down and attenuated. No sound, complete forgetfulness; the cool, unknown, ideal spot where none came nor went. A hint of far-off, pale, blue distance, high up among the trees.... She stood in speechless contemplation on the shore.

“What is the name of this lake?” she asked, without turning to Andrea.

“_Bagno di Venere._”

“Why?”

“Look there.”

Behind the weeping willow there rose out of the waters of the lake a marble statue of the goddess. She was white and of life-size; her head, like that of every other Venus, was too small and had the beauty of this imperfection. Her hair was partly bound to her nape, partly hanging on her neck. The water came up to her waist, hiding the lower part of her body; under the surface, reeds and other aquatic plants formed a pedestal for the white bust. The full-throated Venus leant forward to gaze placidly into the water, her still bosom inflated with delight, as if she had no cause of complaint against it, or the plants held her bound in their enchantments. When Lucia turned from the apparition to Andrea, her expression had undergone a change. Thought was on her brow, in her eyes, on her lips.

“And what is there over there, Andrea?”

“Come and see.”

It was something hidden in the trees. They went round the lake to it and found the ruin of a mock portico, with eight or ten columns, falling into utter decay, and a hole made in the roof through which the weeds grew in abundance. The cracked walls, after the antique, were peeling; the ivy was devouring the mock ruin in good earnest; some of its stones had fallen. Under the damp shelter of the portico there was a musty smell that made one shudder, like the air of a vault.

“And this, Andrea?”

“The ruin of a portico.”

“There must have been a temple?”

“Yes; the temple of Venus.”

“Venus, who at night descends from her altar to bathe in the lake,” she said, dreamily. “One night, jealous Dian enchanted her and bound her in the waters. Never more did Venus return to the temple; the temple, reft of the goddess, fell, and was no more. All that is left of it is the portico; that will also fall. For all eternity, through the moon’s spell, Venus is a prisoner amid the waters that gnaw her feet and the reeds that pierce her sides. One fatal day the rotten pedestal will give way, and fallen Venus will lie drowned at the bottom of the lake.”

She was silent.

“Speak on, speak,” whispered Andrea, taking her hand in his; “your voice is music, and you say strange, harmonious things.”

She left her gloved hand in his, but did not add another word, keeping her eyes fixed on the hole in the roof which let in the light. His fingers strayed idly to her wrist, and thence to where the glove joined the sleeve of her dress.

“Have you a pencil?” she said.

Andrea took a gold pencil-case off his watch-chain and gave it to her. She sought the darkest corner of the portico, and thereon traced the outline of a heart. Inside she wrote:

A VENERE DEA
LUCIA,

and gave Andrea back the pencil. He stooped to read her inscription, and thus wrote his own name:

A VENERE DEA
LUCIA

ANDREA.

“Fate, fate,” she cried, escaping from Andrea’s outstretched arms.

She had seated herself on the ground, with her little feet almost in the water, so that the white lace of her petticoats peeped out from under the skirt of her dress. Her parasol lay on the ground, at some distance. She picked up little pellets of earth with her black-gloved hands and threw them into the lake, watching them dissolve in the water, and the concentric circles that widened around them like wrinkles. Beside her sat Andrea, noting the curves of her white throat, and the movements of the arm and fingers that played with the soil. He had cast aside his hat to let the cool, moist air play on his heated brow. Although she did not turn towards him, she appeared to feel the influence of that passionate gaze, for every now and then she swayed towards him as if to fall into his arms. He hardly dared to move, under the spell of a new and exquisite emotion, inspired by a woman as fragile as she was seductive. When she was tired of throwing grassy pellets into the water, she let her hand lie on the turf. Andrea took the hand and began gently to unbutton her glove, looking sideways at her, fearful of angering her. But no, Lucia closed her eyes as if she were going to sleep. When he had got one glove off, he thrilled with triumph; then, reaching out a little further, he as gently took off the other. He threw them on the grass, near to his hat and the parasol. When he as gently stroked her arm through the transparent sleeve, Lucia drew it away, but without smile or anger; she was looking at the Venus Anadyomene, through the green screen of the willow. Then she slowly unfastened the black lace scarf that fastened her bonnet under the chin and cast the ends behind her: she drew out the hammer-headed pins and stuck them in the turf, as if it were a pincushion, and, taking off her bonnet, sent it to join the gloves and parasol. Then she rose, bent over the water, and smiling took up some in the hollow of her hand and bathed her temples with it, her lips aflame, and her hair dripping. He lost his head, and, rising to his full height, clasped her in his arms and kissed her wildly on eyes, throat, and wrists.... She struggled in his embrace, but uttered no cry; her eyes were dilated, and her lips tightly drawn; with hair dishevelled, she screened her face.

“Leave me, leave me.”

“No, love.... my love....”

“Leave me, I implore you.”

“Oh! my beautiful love, love of my life.”

“Andrea, for the love I bear you, let me go.”

He instantly loosed his hold on her. The lace round her neck was torn, and there were red marks on her throat and wrists; her breath came short and quick, yet she looked at him with the triumphant pride of a queen. Andrea, with nerves and senses calmed after the outburst, smiled in humble rapture. They resumed their places on the turf, she reclining, with one arm under her head, to keep it off the ground, looking up at the sky; he crosswise, so that his head scarcely reached her knee. Lucia still gazing at the sky, stroked his hair with a gesture that was almost maternal, while he rubbed his head against the hand that toyed with his curls, like a cat who is being petted. Then under the stillness of the great trees, a voice rang out, cool and clear:

“Andrea, what we are doing is infamous.”

“Why, my sainted love?”

“If you do not realise our infamy, I cannot explain it to you. Remember two innocent beings who love us, who will suffer through us--Alberto and Caterina.”

“They will never know.”

“Maybe, but the infamy and the treachery will be ours. We are not meant to love each other.”

“Why, if I love you? You are my heart, my sweetness, my perfume....”

“Hold your peace. This love is a sin, Andrea.”

“I know nothing about it. I love you, you are fond of me; you have said so.”

“I adore you,” she said, coldly. “I feel that this love is driving me mad; but it must cease. It is a sin before God, a crime in the eyes of man, a felony in the sight of the law.”

“What care I for God, or man, or law? I love you....”

“We are guilty sinners. Every tribunal, human and divine, condemns us....”

“What matter...? I love you!”

“We are full of deceit, bad faith, and iniquity.”

“Love, cast these nightmares aside. Give me a kiss; no one sees us.”

“No, it is a sacrilege. I belong to another man; you to another woman.”

“Then what have we come here for?” he whined like a child. “Why did you give me your scarf last night? Why did you make me love you? What am I to do now? Must I die? I cannot live without you, without kissing you. I cannot live if you are not mine. You are beautiful, and I love you; it is not my fault.”

“It is fate,” she concluded, funereally crossing both hands under her head, and closing her eyes as if awaiting death.

“Lucia,” broke in Andrea, in the tones of a melancholy child.

“Well?”

“Do you love me?”

“Yes.”

“Say it: 'I love you.’”

“I love you,” she repeated, monotonously.

“And how much do you love me, dear love?”

“I cannot measure it.”

“Tell me, about how much,” he persisted, childishly.

“Let me think,” she said, crossly.

“What are you thinking of? Lucia _bella_, Lucia _mia_, tell me what you are thinking of?”

“Of you, rash boy,” said Lucia, starting suddenly into an upright posture, and taking his head between her hands to look him straight in the eyes.... “Of you, unthinking creature, who are about to commit a terrible act, with nothing but love in your heart: neither fear nor remorse....”

“Why remorse? I love you, I want but you, naught besides.”

“Bravo! how straight to the goal! You will have your way. Do you know what you leave behind you? Do you gauge all that you lose or what the future holds in store for you?”

“No, neither do I care; I only care to know that you love me....”

“Be a man, Andrea. Love is so serious a thing, passion is so terrible. Beware; there is great danger for you, in loving, in being loved, by me.”

“I know it; that is what tempts me.”

“I am not speaking for myself. I am an unhappy, suffering being, a defenceless prey to human passion. I love you, and I yield to this my love, even if it is to cost me my life. It is for you that I speak. I am a fatal woman: I shall bring misfortune upon you.”

“So be it. I love you.”

“This love is madness, Andrea.”

“So be it. I will have it so.”

“You are binding yourself for life, Andrea.”

“Oh! Lucia; tell me that you love me.”

She moved towards the shore, and spread her arms as if in invocation:

“Oh! distant sky, oh! passing clouds, oh! trees that crowd together to mirror yourselves in the lake, bear witness that I have told him the truth. Oh! sorrowing willow, oh! still waters, oh! reeds and lilies, you have heard my words. Oh! Mother, Venus, Goddess, I have read the future for him. Thou Nature, who liest not, bear witness that I have not lied. ’Tis he will have it so.”

“How divine you are, joy of my life!”

She turned, and throwing her arms round his neck, gave him kiss for kiss. Then, as if everything were irrevocably settled, she calmly picked up her things.

“It is fate,” she added. Then the tall, haughty, queen-like figure moved slowly down the path, followed by her love-lorn vassal.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Literal translation:--“Following an august example ... I give it from myself to others.... The pilgrim, the peasant ... The citizen may have it.... Come, quench your thirst ... Here is fresh water for you.”