“That is bad,” cried Constanza.
Flavia, of a more ruthless and enlightened generation, said, “It’s probably a pose. She wants to attract attention.”
In February came news from Rome that shook Constanza deeply. A letter from papa, she said to Flavia who was breakfasting by her bed. “My word—it’s running to a second sheet. What can it be?”
She read quickly and tears began to flow to her eyes. “Flavia, Flavia, he wants her back. He is asking mama to return to Rome!”
What the prince had to say was this. He had learnt that Anna had been very indiscreet. If the fascists did not arrest her, they would put pressure on her to leave the country for ever. “The man at the head of Province Genoa is a bad man. Nothing can be done with him. She is too old to go into exile again. We are both old. She is my wife. I have been assured that if she lived with us in Rome she would be safe, nobody would touch her.” He offered her the protection of his house and name. “If she will come, she will find a family. Carla and Maria have missed her. She has been gone a long time, it is right for her to come home now. We shall all forgive each other what there may be to forgive. For the rest, the palazzo will be as she left it. We shall accommodate ourselves to one another.”
In a postscript the prince said that he had written to Anna in the same spirit, but touching lightly only on her danger from the fascists. “It is better so. It would only upset her.”
Flavia said, “Giulia?”
“Giulia is old now. She was always a good bit older than papa; she is the eldest of the three of them.”
Constanza took the next fast train to Nice. On the journey thoughts came. Only she had seen how much the prince and Anna had settled in their separate ways. The single man, hardly living at home, who had not noticed that the house had changed. The prince, too, was old now—he had aged quickly, slipped into an old man; it was one of the sadnesses Constanza bore. And Anna, with her energies still untapped, she was not softened, she was not pliable; she was too alive still to glide into this twilight element of forgotten rancours, casual tolerance and resignation. If Constanza wished it, she could not see it.
They met in one of the large hotels on the Promenade des Anglais. In the ornate hall, she heard the principessa give her No. There was no raking-over this time, only a bare negation. Constanza thought her mother wore a strange look on her face that she could not interpret.
A flash of love compelled her to say: “I always knew how you suffered.” Anna’s face hardly flickered; and when Constanza kissed her there was no response.
•
“No soap?” said Flavia.
“Something moved her about papa’s offer.”
“Constanza, you know what I think? Only a doctor could help her—you know the kind I mean?”
Constanza faced this. “That there is something . . . abnormal? I’ve long known that.”
•
Soon there was a promise of spring. The almonds were out, the days were longer, the mornings balmy. They opened all their windows; it was not a time to stay indoors and at noon they often took their food and wine to the watch tower and ate below its sheltering walls. They knew more now about the owner. He excited much speculation in local gossip; stories about him varied but he was always described as a man of parts hampered by a ludicrous probity. They called him le député raté. The most coherent account of him came from Frioulle, their journalist acquaintance.
“Un garçon d’une excellente famille, extremely intelligent, Normalien, Catholic agnostic, and all the rest of it. Honourable judicial career in front of him: but no, he must turn to politics. His people did not like it one bit, but they needn’t have worried. When our man got to the water he refused to drink. He was actually elected—God knows how, as he made the kind of speeches one in ten could understand and declined to promise his supporters as much as a hand-shake—but elected he was. No sooner in, than he resigned. He’d discovered some irregularity in the ballot! He was with the
Socialists to begin with, not with the Radical-Socialistes, nor the Socialistes-Républicains, with Léon Blum’s lot. He left them, they must have been relieved to be rid of him in spite of his brilliance, and formed his own group with two or three other bright lads, professeurs de lycée, one of them a poet. Well, they’re all in by now, one’s at the Quai. You know——” he named him. “But not our man. There was something he couldn’t swallow, some tinge of concession, and he dissolved the group.
“Now he’s alone and writes books. He wants to reform the Chamber, he wants to reform the Bar, he wants to abolish the Prefectural System; and that’s not all. He tells us that the first step towards sane government is the renunciation of war as an instrument of policy. Tout bêtement he wants us to send home l’Armée Française, neither less nor more. Que voulez-vous, mesdames, c’est un homme à principes.”
“Is that what he wants?” said Constanza.
“I can lend you one of his books. He writes extremely well.”
Other people spoke of a private tragedy in the man of principles’ life. He had married early, a girl from another family of grand-bourgeois, as arranged by the parents. His wife developed a nervous disorder and their life was hell. He bore it with great fortitude and patience for a number of years; recently they had separated. The wife was shut up somewhere, they said, but this may have been a St-Jean touch.
One morning Constanza handed Flavia a slim volume. “You ought to read this.”
Flavia gave it a glance. “De l’Administration by Michel Something——? Not what I’d call a catch-penny title.”
“It’s by the man of principles. It’s remarkable. So lucid, so dispassionate—so magnanimous. I wish he were Prime Minister. I wonder if he ever will?”
•
People pressed Constanza to look at a house inland that was to let. They went and found a low, ochre-coloured, seventeenth-century farmhouse, the kind called bastide in that region. It was flanked by cypresses and stood above terraced fields planted with artichokes and vines. Inside the house the floors were red-tiled and the walls were thick. Someone had built on a portico. Constanza liked it very much. “Shall we take it for the summer?” she said. But they told her that the owners insisted on a twelve years’ lease.
3
IT WAS already March and Flavia said that in a week they might begin to bathe, when the envelope addressed by Giorgio came.
It contained a receipt. Constanza stared at it quite stupidly for a moment then she cried, “The ruby—the ruby isn’t lost! I’ll be blowed.”
The receipt bore the address of a Milan firm, gave a brief description of the ring and stated that it might be retrieved for a certain sum.
“The ring is coming back to us. Oh Flavia! And it was Giorgio, Giorgio all the time and we thought it was lost or stolen. What fools we were.”
“We have nice minds,” said Flavia.
“One up for Giorgio. The devil.” Constanza laughed, delighted. “It was his turn to get some of his own back. He’s got even. For once. He may loathe me less now.”
“How did he do it?” said Flavia.
“Yes——?”
“He didn’t pull it off your hand, mummy—you’re not so absent-minded?”
“I was thinking of mama and our row, and I was scared at his turning up like this—I’m always scared stiff at that border. I was afraid the customs louts would think he was bringing me something to smuggle across and come back again.”
“I can see how it was,” Flavia said: “You must have pulled your rings off—like this—and had them on the table in front of you, you sometimes do when you are anxious. You always slip them on again. You don’t notice.”
“Simon did,” said Constanza, “he used to tease me about it.”
“Giorgio must have been pretty quick! I bet he hadn’t driven down from Sestriere to steal your ruby.”
“We’re all quick,” said Constanza with a touch of pride. “He came to borrow money for the car he wanted to build. He was furious whe
n I turned him down. Well, good for Giorgio, I didn’t know he had it in him.”
“Does it mean you have to pay for the ring now, mummy?”
“Oh dear,” said Constanza. “The impudence.”
“It’s a huge sum.”
“Huge. Only mama could help us to lay hands on it.”
“They’re giving you three weeks. How is that?”
“It must be just under six months since Giorgio pawned the ring.” “Is that a pawn-shop?” Flavia said, looking at the receipt. “Gracious no. No pawn-shop would have paid so much. They are very well-known jewellers at Milan. I went there with Lewis as it happened, he had his watch chain polished up.”
“Mightn’t they have arrested Giorgio?”
“I suppose he played it bold,” said his sister. “Told them who he was: family ring, temporary money troubles. These grand firms are used to that kind of thing. Decent of Giorgio not to have sold the ring outright. Well, that might have been bad luck.”
The day was fine and Flavia said they had to celebrate. But when they arrived at the tower, the shutters were open and a car was standing outside, a high, old-fashioned touring car with beautifully polished head-lamps.
“The man of principles must have arrived,” said Flavia.
“That’s the end of our picnics. Those French professorial types are apt to be awfully stuffy.”
Back they turned and ate their tunny-fish and olives on their own windy door-step. “You know what, Constanza?” Flavia said in the middle of it, “If Giorgio hadn’t snatched your ring you would be married now to Lewis.”
•
Again Constanza arranged to meet the principessa at Nice. They sat in the same hotel hall. Anna did not take the news in Constanza’s way.
For a time she said nothing at all. She sat as though she had been turned to alabaster. At last she made a sound.
“So my son is a thief.”
Constanza spoke; pleaded; assembled another picture. She spoke against her mother’s silence and against the presences and movement of a public place. From off, came palm-court music. The tea they had ordered was brought. Constanza knew she was failing.
“What you have always lacked is a sense of proportion, mama.”
Suddenly Anna gathered momentum. “You two are a chip off the same block. . . .” The need to keep her voice down made the words come out in a hiss. “All, all of a piece throughout . . . Everything you touched has come to naught . . . Waste! Nothing but waste. . . .”
Constanza, captive, endured the tirade. Anna was unable to end it.
“. . . You were too selfish, too frivolous even to marry—all your men, one after the other, led on, led on with empty promises. You never thought of them——”
From Anna, this was too much. Blazing, clearly, looking fully at her, Constanza said: “At least I went to bed with them.”
After Anna recovered, she said, “This is not true?”
But Constanza was now riding her own wave.
“Didn’t you know?” she flung out. “You must have known. Oh, mama, be your age.”
Anna was always supreme in showing when she was struck. Now she rose, slowly, swaying like a statue in a dream. Upright and small, she walked down the pilastered aisle and out of the hotel.
•
Constanza sat on for a moment. When she was about to follow her mother, the waiter stopped her with the bill. By the time she had reached the fore-court, the car had just moved off.
She had an impulse to follow by train into Italy. Hesitated; told herself she was losing her sense of proportion as well. She returned to St-Jean-le-Sauveur. Next day she tried to put through a call from the café. This, as they had learnt before, was a frustrating business. When she got some connection, Mena at the other end, never at her best on the telephone, kept shouting one word through: tranquilla. Whether it meant they must keep calm or that the principessa had calmed down, Constanza could not make out.
Four days later in the very early morning they were awakened by a knock at their gate. It was the postmaster, a message had come through from Alassio. Anna was dead.
Constanza dressed, put some things in a bag and was down again. “Are you ready?” she said.
Flavia, with darkened eyes, not looking at her, said: “Have I got to come?”
Constanza did not hear, and Flavia had to repeat the question.
“No. Not if you don’t want to.”
They were standing in the road, when they were approached by a slim, slightly-built man in mechanic’s overalls. He wore a beret. Flavia’s first thought was, they’ve managed to send up a taxi.
He went to Constanza swiftly, kissed her hand and said, “Je crois, madame, que nous sommes un peu voisin—can I be of some use to you?” It was said socially but with great gentleness.
Then Flavia saw his face. It was a very French face of a certain period, such as one might see in a portrait by Clouet: a well-shaped nose, a curved mouth, thick brown hair, deep-set eyes, alight with mind. It was essentially an intelligent face, of noble structure; yet there was also an expression reflecting other things: kindliness, humour, persiflage.
Constanza said, “We have no car, no telephone——”
In a few minutes he had the Delage at their door, ready to catch the express at Toulon. Constanza accepted unseeing; but Flavia had caught on that it must be the man from the tower.
At Alassio, Constanza was met by an English colonel who named himself and said he had been a friend of her mother’s.
They shook hands. The colonel muttered.
“Where is my mother’s maid?”
The colonel said, “She’s been most helpful, you know.” As a matter of fact it was she who had found the principessa before dawn this morning. Very sensibly, she had called him, their nearest neighbour, and he had called the doctor. “The English doctor. We had the Italian fellow in later on. He signed the certificate. The maid’s explained everything—how badly your mother’s been sleeping for some time, her loss of appetite, the sleeping pills on top of her weak heart——”
“Sleeping pills?” said Constanza.
“Veronal, don’t you know? Shocking how much of the stuff you can get out here without prescription. You might call it an overdose, the maid says it was just too much for the principessa’s heart, she had no idea how strong they were. And if you ask me, that’s what it was.”
In the car the colonel said, “I telegraphed the family in Rome. Your mother’s sisters-in-law are arriving tonight with their husbands. I understand the old gentleman himself is not up to the journey.”
“Have you known my mother long?”
“Only a few weeks,” said the colonel, adding some words of appreciation. “And you will of course come and stay with us, my wife is expecting you. We’ve asked the women servants at your mother’s villa to sleep at our place.”
“You are very kind,” Constanza said. “But I shall be with my mother. I expect the others will want to stay, too. You see, we are all Italians.”
She arrived. The two women rushed into each other’s arms. Constanza had been prepared to uphold Mena, instead she found her composed and tearless. The tiny woman was holding herself stiff, like a watch-dog at bay.
When they were alone, Constanza said, “And you found her. Oh, Mena. What were you doing in mama’s room in the middle of the night?”
“I sleep lightly. I get up to look at her. I told so to the colonnello.”
“What made you specially anxious?”
Mena’s face stayed shut. “I always went to see she was all right. I have no-one else to look after.”
“Did mama take sleeping pills?”
“Sometimes.”
“Veronal? You would have known if she took that?”
“I may have known.”
“There was no letter? No word for me?”
“Nothing,” said Mena.
Later in the day Constanza asked, “Where? You would know best.”
“Rome!” Mena said at once. “Sh
e must go to Rome.”
“Yes, that would be what she wanted. My father will do everything that must be done.”
In the evening Carla and Maria and their men arrived. They made much ado and cried a good deal, which Constanza could not, but she was glad they had come, she found that it was right.
They said to her, “Aren’t you going to send for your girl?” No, Constanza said, she did not want her to go for the first time like this. She did not tell them that Flavia was terrified.
In due course they took Anna to Rome. She was buried from the palazzo. There was a last hitch when Mr. Baxter cabled from America that Anna had left instructions with him many years ago. The principessa wished to be buried in the Foreigners’ Cemetery, the cemetery by the pyramid of Cestius.
“It is the most beautiful cemetery in Rome,” the prince said, “and the Americans who go there will see her grave. We must not forget to put Howland, also, on the stone. But Dio—how like Anna!”
Constanza took his hand. “How like mama to want to make the best of all worlds.” For the cemetery where Keats lies, the cemetery at the Pauline Gate by the pyramid of Caius Cestius, is a Protestant cemetery.
“Perhaps it can be arranged,” the prince said. “Perhaps Catholic foreigners go there? She would have known: she knew Rome so well.”
•
When Constanza returned to St-Jean-le-Sauveur she brought Mena with her. Now that the principessa was buried, Mena gave herself to unstinted grief. Flavia was drawn to listen to her lament; it eased her, too, and she minded it less than being alone with her mother.
She suggested their asking Mr. James to come. No, Constanza said, it was a long way for him. Then she said, perhaps yes. “He may like to be with us. He must be very sad.” Mr. James answered that he would come as soon as he could; they arranged for him to have a room at the hotel at Bandol.
Fortunately Constanza was kept busy and away from the house a good deal. Anna’s will was being proved in America, the estate had to be settled; Mr. Baxter, unable to come over just now himself, was dealing with everything through a lawyer attached to the American Consulate at Marseilles. Constanza had to go there frequently for signatures and consultation. Marseilles was some forty miles, with neighbourly courtesy the man from the tower drove her.
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