by Ann Bridge
The Marchese Francesco fluttered over the mass of books, peering through thick-lensed spectacles, and took up a small grey paper-covered magazine, on which was printed:
THE BOTANICAL MAGAZINE
or
FLOWER-GARDEN DISPLAYED
—the cover further informed the curious that this was No. 45 (Price ONE SHILLING) To be continued MONTHLY, that it was “A WORK Intended for the Use of such LADIES, GENTLEMEN, AND GARDENERS as wish to become scientifically acquainted with the plants they cultivate”; and that it was printed in London at 10, Throgmorton Street, for W. Curtis in the year 1792. The Marchese opened it at the place where a slip of paper protruded from the pages, and showed a very delicate and precise reproduction of the flower on the table. “Hyacinthus Comosus” he said triumphantly. “I am sure it is that.”
“Giacinta! My glass!” the old lady said. The grey haired maid, an elderly woman with a sour faithful face, hurried into the room and handed a lorgnette with a long tortoiseshell handle to her mistress—the old Marchesa raised it to her eyes and examined the illustration. “It resembles it,” she said. “And where and how does it grow?”
The Marchese Francesco shook his head regretfully, and tapped the page. “It is all in English,” he said. “I cannot read it. I must get Giulio to come over and tell me what it says.”
The Marchesa laughed her tiny thin laugh again. “Figlio caro, you need not do that any more—Marietta’s Anglaise comes today; she can translate it for you.”
The Marchese Francesco’s face brightened. “I had forgotten,” he said. “Excellent! She will be able to translate the whole series to me.”
But the old Marchesa was now examining her son’s own drawing through her lorgnette. “What do you think of it?” he asked, rather wistfully.
“Molto bene! But why do you spend the whole morning making a drawing, when you have such a good one here already?”—she touched the grey magazine.
“But Mama, you know that I am making my own collection of sketches,” the Marchese protested. His mother always tormented him in this way, and after nearly seventy years of it he was still always caught, always hurt; always reassured when, as now, she laughed at him.
“But yes—I know! Francesco, it is charming. Finish it! Giacinta! Take my glass!” And resuming her stick, the old lady, very slowly and carefully, moved back across the room and out towards the terrace.
The Marchese Francesco di Vill’ Alta was the eldest of his Mother’s fourteen children. He was a tall thin man, with hair already snow-white, and more of a stoop than his mother. He had spent his life as Italian noblemen were rather apt to spend their lives, half in society in Rome, half in giving a vague attention to his very considerable property in Gardone. At one time he had ornamented the diplomatic service, and an appointment in a Northern capital had brought him into contact with his wife, the daughter of a Danish financier and an American mother. Actually, now, the Marchese remembered with more emotion his period of duty in Constantinople, when an expedition into Anatolia had introduced him to Eremurus robustus growing in its native habitat. That he would never forget, whatever else grew dim: the great single stalk, springing four or five feet from the dry stony soil, out of its cushion of loose leek-like leaves, the wonderful head of pink flowers, more than a foot long, poised like a blossoming candelabra above the arid landscape. How he had dug, and how vainly, with his knife, seeking to release that prodigious circle of roots, wide as a cart-wheel, embedded so impossibly in the sparse rocky soil, under the blazing sun and the pale glittering sky. It had been no good, but he had made a sketch; and that first moment of awe-struck vision was one of his imperishable possessions.
Francesco di Vill’ Alta might really have been quite a good botanist, but for his weak eyes. These, even with the strongest lenses, prevented him from ever being much good at discovering for himself the smaller and rarer plants; he was obliged to rely on others for that. But people who found a plant which aroused their curiosity either sent it to him, as his brother Pipo had sent the purple grape-hyacinth from Brioni, or took him to see it grow. For a second-hand botanist, as one might say, his knowledge was considerable; and whatever he found he drew—delicate, slightly mannered drawings, accurately and carefully coloured; he had albumsful of them. People really meant so much less to him than his flowers, which he worshipped with the singular passion of a man who has been, on the whole, a failure with human beings. He was not incapable of affection, or even of devotion—it was just that life had gradually taught him that his affection and his devotion were somehow not much good; did not bring in, as it were, the dividend which he vaguely realised that other people got on theirs. Now, when his mother had left the room, he drew his chair up again to the deal table, adjusted his spectacles, dipped a fine brush into the jug of stained water, and went on with his exquisite colouring of the tasselled grape-hyacinth, an expression of supreme and blissful contentment on his gentle intelligent face.
The old Marchesa, meanwhile, went out onto the terrace. Very old people only really see what immediately concerns them—so the old Marchesa never noticed, as she passed across the terrace, how the shape of the triple ilex cut like a great dark-green balloon into the clear pale tones of the view away to the North-East; what she did notice, immediately, was whether her chair had been placed exactly right or not, and whether the rugs and footstool were properly arranged. She also noticed Suzy’s empty hammock—a brightly-striped gaudy affair with hanging fringes, slung under the tree—with amused disapproval; she thought lounging in hammocks both feeble and slightly undignified. All the same, she made Roberto shift her chair a few inches, so that she could see the hammock without turning her head—she liked being able to look at her daughter-in-law. A decorative creature, Suzy! When she was finally settled, with all her little litter of possessions arranged on the parapet beside her, sipping her egg-nog, the old Marchesa first thought that the egg-nog was very good this morning—she rolled it on her tongue appreciatively; then that it was a fine morning, pleasantly warm—wrapped in her fleecy rugs, her feet and knees were not in the least chilly. Presently she would read—this new book of German memoirs was very scandalous and amusing. Through one of the low windows of the grey house the white head of the Marchese Francesco was visible, blurred a little by the bright glass with its reflection of the sky, bent in absorption over his painting; from the eastern wing, which projected slightly onto the terrace, came the sound of a violin being played with considerable skill. That, the Marchesa knew, was Paolo, her fourth son, practising his Bach. Paolo di Vill’ Alta was a bachelor, and having nothing in particular to do and nowhere in particular to live, settled down in a small apartment of his own at Vill’ Alta every summer, making a third establishment under the shallow roof of ridged tiles, with its deep eaves; there he played Bach and studied old manuscript music all day long, occasionally—and very irregularly—occurring for meals at the family table.
Hearing Paolo’s music now, the old Marchesa’s thoughts, the light straying thoughts of old age, were led to him. Paolo, poor boy! His life was not much good—playing the violin and making his little jokes! No career, no children. But there was more impatience than tenderness in her expression as she sat there listening to the Bach, her little cap of exquisitely fine Valenciennes lace on her snowy head, above her strong old features. Trivial occupations for a man! she thought, playing the violin, or painting flowers. The old Marchesa privately thought both these sons of hers poor sticks, unworthy scions of the family whose name they bore. The Vill’ Altas ought to be soldiers, galantuomini—it must be the unlucky infusion of the Castellone blood which made them in this generation so scientific, so absorbed in abstractions. The Castellones had always been mad on science— in the 15th century one of them was excommunicated and imprisoned for his scientific writings, which were publicly burnt—whereas the Vill’ Altas enjoyed a perpetual dispensation from fasting on Fridays, dating from the 10th century, because the Vill’ Alta of that day, by some military exploit, had
got the then Pope out of a hole. That was the sort of men Vill’ Altas should be—and, a servant at that moment coming out and placing some more cushions in the striped hammock for the Marchesa Suzy, the old lady began to think about her daughter-in-law.
It was really small wonder, she thought, that Suzy should—well, should interest herself! She glanced again at the blurred white shape of Francesco’s head through the window —no, he was no man for Suzy! It was not only that he was thirty-five years older than she—at no age would he have been the man for Suzy. He hadn’t enough vitality. Suzy was all vitality—it was what one enjoyed about her. The old lady was actually waiting, in a little pleasant stir of anticipation, for the younger woman to come, to warm her with her swiftness of life, merely by lying near her in the hammock. Her relations with her daughter-in-law were curious. She had thought the marriage a foolish one from the start—foreign marriages were always more difficult, and though Suzy was half American, she wasn’t even particularly rich. And there was this great discrepancy of age. He would have done far better to marry the Asquini girl when he was thirty, as she had wished him to do. But he had got engaged while he was in Scandinavia, and there it was! When Suzy began to interest herself elsewhere, the Vecchia Marchesa watched with dispassionate attention. If there had been any serious inconvenance she would have disapproved profoundly, would have taken whatever steps she thought appropriate. But there was not—Suzy was very clever. She was all affection to her husband, all courtesy, and something more delightful than courtesy to her mother-in-law. She managed very well. And since no woman of Suzy’s temperament could possibly be content or happy with Francesco, the old Marchesa, to whom life had taught an almost unscrupulous realism in such matters, in her secret heart rather applauded her daughter-in-law for the graceful skill with which she kept herself “in health and spirits” as the old woman put it, while making the marriage as much of a success as it had ever been in its nature to be. She had done no injury to the family, nor to the traditions which it upheld—there was no overt ugliness or roughness, nothing was damaged, there was no fuss. The old Marchesa hated fuss. How much better Suzy managed than Pipo’s wife, tiresome creature, who was making all this outcry about Pipo’s affair with Livia Panelli. She had had a most tiresome letter from her only this morning. She was a Russian, though, and they had so little self-control!
Out through the doors onto the terrace came, at last, Suzy di Vill’ Alta. She was a true nordic blonde, with cendréfair hair, immense grey eyes, and a thick opaque skin of a tone more tender than white, unvarying all over. Her figure was beautiful, rising to a queenly magnificence of bust and shoulders, above a rounded slenderness below—all her movements had the finished grace of extreme sophistication. It was difficult to decide whether her face was really beautiful or not, and few people bothered to try—it had, in any case, the quality which makes beauty itself interesting. What was at once arresting about her was the whole impression of finished charm, of a completed work of art, from the elaboration of puffs and rolls of her coiffure down to the small cream-coloured kid shoes that appeared below her soft pale dress.
She came over to her Mother-in-law, stooped to give her an affectionate kiss, and said “Good-morning, Bonne-Mama. How well you look” in her warm, caressing contralto voice.
“So do you, my dear Suzy,” said the old lady, pleased. Suzy never bothered one with tiresome enquiries about one’s health; she assumed that one was well, she said so, and at once one felt well.
“Have you had any amusing letters?” the young Marchesa asked, seating herself gracefully on the parapet.
“I have had one extremely un-amusing one from Nadia,” replied the old Marchesa. “But my dear Suzy, for the love of Heaven do not sit on that stone without a cushion! You will get piles!”
Suzy laughed. “Bonne-Mama, you will have to stop talking about piles when Marietta’s Anglaise comes, or she will be shocked,” she said, fetching a cushion from the hammock, and reseating herself on it.
“My dear Suzy, to please you I would do much, but do not ask me to suit my conversation to the ears of governesses,” the old woman said, with a little moue. “I am too old.”
“You are too perverse, Bonne Mama, that’s what’s the matter with you! You are quite young enough to do whatever you choose, and you know it!” Suzy returned, with a sort of caressing archness. Ah, that was what was charming with Suzy—she teased one, she caressed one with voice and word and eye; she flirted, one might almost say, with her mother-in-law. It was nice to be flirted with by this graceful gracious creature.
“What does Nadia say now?” Suzy went on, in a different tone.
“Oh, such folly! That she knows that Livia is in Brioni with Pipo, and that if such public humiliation goes on, she will leave him! Public humiliation, indeed! No one but she need know it. Brioni is not Rome or Paris.”
“She would do much better not to know it herself,” said Suzy tranquilly, taking a gold cigarette-case out of a large gold mesh bag, and opening it. “Bonne-Mama, vous permettez?” And receiving a bow and wave of permission, she lit a minute Russian cigarette and went on: “But no doubt she has made every effort to find out. Poor Nadia!” She spoke the last words in a tone of real sympathy.
“Do you like her?” the old Marchesa asked, a little surprised.
“Yes, Bonne-Mama, I do—very much. She is simpatica, and she is generous and intelligent.”
“Intelligent!”
“Yes, Bonne-Mama, very intelligent, even. It is only that she has no savoir-faire. And she is full of idealism—she wanted a perfect marriage, and thought that to give Pipo everything was the way to get it. That was silly of her. But she is not stupid.”
“It was a ridiculous marriage,” said the old lady impatiently. “Pipo would have done far better to take my advice.”
“Poor Bonne-Mama! All your sons will marry foreigners, won’t they?” Suzy said smiling. “But you know, mariages de convenance are going out, even here. People want to arrange these things for themselves nowadays.”
“Yes, my dear Suzy, and only look at the mariages d’inconvenance they arrange for themselves! Tita Bellini and her Dutchman! They say he gets his money from an hotel! But Nadia cannot leave Pipo like that. It would make a scandal.”
“No, it would be unwise. But she is in pain, and people are unwise then.”
“In pain! What of it? Is she the first woman whose husband has a liaison? And what did she expect? Ça arrive, enfin! But she writes quite wildly. Let me show you her letter.” She fumbled in a little bag, very much like the Signorina Gelsicher’s, attached to the middle of her person, and produced a thick-looking envelope. Suzy di Vill’ Alta took it, and read through the many thin sheets, attentively, a charming wrinkle of concentration between her fine darkened eyebrows; the old lady watched her, and at the end said— “Well?”
“I am sorry she bothers you with all this, but she is right to,” the younger woman said smoothly. “She is very wretched.”
“My dear Suzy, I cannot stop her being wretched!”
“Perhaps not. I think you could advise her wisely, though. I wonder if we should not have her here.”
“You really think so?”
“I believe it might be wise. And Bonne-Mama, Pipo is also stupid! This is partly his fault, you know. I think he must be scolded! After all, he need not—” she broke off, with a faint expression of irritation. “Ecco Marietta,” she said.
Unlike the very old, when one is sixteen one sees all sorts of things which do not personally concern one—indeed at that age impersonal things have an importance, a power to stir and move the heart which very few human beings then possess. Marietta di Vill’ Alta, pausing for a moment at the door leading onto the terrace, just registered the picture of her Mother and her Grandmother sitting there, the pale figure on the wall, the black figure in the chair; but what she really saw, with eyes and heart, was what neither of the other two had noticed—the picture formed by the terrace as a whole. Vill’ Alta stands
high, and beyond the terrace parapet the eye travels clear off into the distance, to pale folds of country set with pearly white houses and pricked with the dark shapes of cypresses—in the middle, on an eminence, rises the great creamy architectural bulk of Castellone itself, creamy save for the western end, which is painted a hideous maroon—beyond, blue and clear as flowers, stand the lovely shapes of the mountains. To the left the dark mass of the great ilex, to the right the shapely eastern wing of the house cut off the view abruptly; giving it, by this limitation, a formality of intention, a pictorial quality that is almost dramatic—it is a made stage on which to set a play; any human beings on it take on at once an air of theatricality. To this aspect Marietta was not awake—but to the formal shape of the tree and the house, and the boundless freedom of the view beyond she was. As she stood for a moment, looking at them, she drew in a long breath, as if to inhale their beauty—then, shaking her head, she skipped down the steps, and ran forward to greet her elders. People demanded this tribute—trees and wide views, to which the heart went out of itself, demanded nothing! Marietta preferred trees and views.
She made her two little curtseys, offered her two little kisses, with her warm red mouth in her thin colourless face. If you have seen any of Donatello’s youthful St. John the Baptists, you have seen Marietta di Vill’ Alta—the thin young neck, the eyes wide apart, the sensitive down-drawing of the upper lip, the soft uncertain fall of hair about a forehead too big and too nobly mature for the rest of the face. The old Marchesa took the child’s hand, as she kissed her, and retained it—Suzy was young, but Marietta was younger, too young still to have developed any of those adult perversities which were so annoying; those perversities with which she watched people muddling and spoiling their lives—had watched them, with impatient disapproval, for over half a century. Free as the old woman was from so many of the customary weaknesses of great age, of this one she was not free—of its instinctive tender delight in the warmth of simple affection, such as the very young alone give. She held Marietta’s small thin hand, the characterless hand of a very young girl, while she talked to her. Marietta perched on the wall, close to her grandmother’s chair.