Enchanter's Nightshade

by Ann Bridge

  “Then will you forgive it, and forget it? Almina cara?” He slipped an arm round her as he spoke, and she let it stay; after her days of misery, the comfort of it was so sweet! I “Yes, I will forgive it,” she said. He drew her very gently and gradually towards him. “And you won’t be cruel to me any more?” he whispered; and as she turned her head at last to him, he slipped his mouth onto hers.

  “What is the flower, cara?” he asked her presently, when they were sitting quietly, pointing to the little spray in her hand.

  “Oh, that is something rather nice—I found it in the copse over there, where the spring is, and the little ruin—Enchanter’s Nightshade,” she said, holding it up. “I brought it with me for the Marchese. It is not very common and I haven’t found it anywhere else about here.”

  “It isn’t much of a flower,” he said, taking it from her and examining it.

  “No, it isn’t out yet—but those buds all open into rather darling little whitish flowers,” she said happily.

  “Enchanter’s Nightshade, did you say? What a curious name. And the Latin, madam Professor?”

  “Circaea Lutetiana”

  “It should be called Enchantress’s Nightshade,” he said, giving it back to her.

  “Why?”

  “Because of Zia Suzy.” But he wouldn’t explain, when she did not follow—he only laughed, and made her renew a promise to come out next morning into the Park and walk with him there. He took her back, past the lake, and parted from her only at the foot of the hill below the house—as she climbed the rough track through the plantation of young larches, smelling sweet now as the sun warmed them, she heard him whistling on his way home.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Ecco, Papa, see what our Postiche has brought you!” Marietta cried, twirling the spray of Enchanter’s Nightshade before her father’s eyes as he sat at his study table, on their return to Vill’ Alta. “Did you ever see that before?”

  The Marchese Francesco examined the small plant, with its dark delicate leaves, heart-shaped at the base and pointed at the tips, with eager care. “Yes—I know it; it is Circaea Lutetiana” he said; “I saw it once in England. But where does this come from? Not from the Province, surely?”

  “Yes, it does. She found it herself, the clever thing!—at Odredo.”

  “Where?”

  “In that thicket, by the ruined grotto and the Holy Well.” And as her Father looked blank—“O Papa, cara, you go nowhere! It is near Trino’s hill. She can take you there one day.”

  The Marchese Francesco was delighted with his new treasure. He sent for Miss Prestwich, congratulated her, and examined her minutely as to the location and quantity of the plant. Oh yes, there was plenty, she told him, and she could easily find it again, only the bushes were very thick. “But I can go there now and then, and when it is properly out, I can fetch you another piece.” As she spoke the thought darted into her head that if she could only manage to let Roffredo know, these expeditions would offer an admirable opportunity for meeting him again. They had had two or three morning walks before she and Marietta left Odredo, and the happiness, the heady sweetness of them had as it were fortified her to face the Marchesa Suzy once more. She had no longer any doubts as to the truth of Roffredo’s explanation, or as to his feelings towards her. This gave her that sense of inner justification which lovers know so well—and, paradoxically, perhaps, the fact of the Marchesa’s flirtation with Roffredo seemed to her to excuse her own concealment of her meetings with him. It was now not only impossible to reveal them— it had become unnecessary as well.

  The only difficulty, over which, in her room upstairs, later, she drew her fine eyebrows together in a puzzled frown, was how to let him know. Except for those early walks, she spent practically the whole day in her pupil’s company, especially at Vill’ Alta; and because that company was pleasant, and there was nowhere in particular to go, she had allowed that one afternoon off a week, stipulated for in her mother’s correspondence with the Marchesa, to lapse. Two or three times lately, it was true, she had asked to be allowed to go in to Gardone to do some shopping—seated in the hot swaying diligence, smelling of straw and horses’ sweat, she had gone jolting in to the town, and there made certain additions to her wardrobe, things for which Mrs. Prestwich, for all her care and anxious speculation, had not foreseen the necessity—white shoes like Elena’s, and white stockings to go with them; the tussore dustcoat recommended by the Marchesa; a green petersham belt to sew on her silver Liberty buckle, for wearing with her white skirts, and one or two more fine white blouses. These purchases had very nearly swallowed up her first quarter’s salary, and were not in fact so necessary as all that— she had made them really, as her secret heart admitted, to be more perfect in Roffredo’s eyes. But they were all good; they would “last”, they would “come in later on”—those sacred qualifications of Edwardian wardrobes, so often used, as in this case, to excuse an extravagance. And till they wait to Rome in October, she would really need no money to mention. But apart from these expeditions, she had almost no time to herself. She could of course quietly walk out of the great gates beyond the South terrace, cross the white dusty village square with its squat hollow-trunked elm, under which the loungers congregated in a black patch of shade, and post a letter in the Vill’ Alta post office; but to begin with that was unusual, since the Castello letters were taken daily in a bag to Sant’ Apollonia by a man on a bicycle; and further, the postmistress took every letter with her own hands, scrutinised the address, and chatted cheerfully with the senders on their reasons for writing—Marietta and Almina, going in to buy stamps, had often watched this proceeding and laughed over it. There was no privacy about village posts in the Province.

  The usual commerce in invitations and information was carried on by means of notes. Showers of notes passed to and fro every day; coachmen halted their carriages at the foot of the long flight of steps at-Vill’ Alta, and their mistresses sat fanning themselves and chatting, while a perspiring footman rushed up with a note; youths on bicycles, with worn broadbrimmed straw hats on their heads and flapping unbuttoned jackets, scattered all over the countryside, bearing notes, wrapped in a piece of rag to keep them clean, in their pockets —waited for the replies, in pointed writing on scented mauvish paper, and bicycled back again. But even the note industry was very fairly public; the Sorellone were not the only ladies in Gardone to go out and interview such a messenger, ask him how his master and mistress did, who was staying at the Castello, and where he was going next?—and the youth, unfolding his bit of rag to envelop the answering missive, would display the others, as yet undelivered. “Ma che! one for Carlotta at Macerbo! Aspasia, do you think Suzy can be inviting her to the tennis? She plays so badly.” No—notes were not very private either.

  It was Roffredo himself who found the solution, and a very fantastic and ingenious one, for this difficulty. On the very day after their return to Vill’ Alta he came over to tea and tennis; Giulio and Elena were there too, and afterwards the young people walked back with them towards Odredo. Roffredo had found the moment, fetching himself a glass of lemonade from the table by the court, to murmur to Almina— “Sweetheart, when do I see you again? Properly?”

  “I don’t know,” she murmured back, putting a lump of ice into his tumbler. “I could walk sometimes early; if only I could let you know when. But that is difficult—I don’t see how to manage it.”

  “I will think of something, little love. Grazie tanto, signorina,” he said loudly, as Suzy approached.

  Now, walking back along the ridge, Almina branched off down a side path, saying that she was going to look for a flower. She had half-hoped that Roffredo would escape and follow her alone, but the whole party came too. Down off the crest of the ridge, the ground was moist and smelt damply of dead leaves; elders and privets grew thickly, their branches stretching across the path.

  “Goodness, what an awful smell!” Elena exclaimed suddenly. “What on earth can it be?”

&nbs
p; “If this is the scent of your flower, signorina—!” Roffredo mocked, as they all stood still to sniff; there was indeed a strong putrid odour in the air.

  “It smells like a dead dog,” said Giulio. “Come on, do.”

  But Almina, stepping carefully in her white shoes, began to range about, pushing and peering through the bushes.

  “Postiche, you can’t want to find it,” Elena protested.

  “No, but I think I know what it is,” she said. “One minute—or you go on …. Yes, I thought so!” she exclaimed after a moment; “here you are, Giulio—here is your dead dog!”

  They followed her through the bushes to where she stood pointing triumphantly at some tall narrow toadstools, of an ugly greyish white, flecked on the cap with dirty brown—the smell here was almost overpowering. “They are stinkhorns; we have them at home,” she said.

  “Not a romantic subject for nostalgia,” Roffredo said, poking gingerly at the largest of the unpleasing objects with the toe of his shoe—it fell over sideways, revealing an unhealthy-looking spongy substance under the domed top. “Pew! it is horrible.”

  “Come away, per carità,” Marietta said, tugging at Almina’s arm. “Postiche, you know some nasty things! Don’t let’s ever come here again.”

  It may have been that last remark which gave Roffredo his idea. He walked back with Marietta and Miss Prestwich to Vill’ Alta, when they had bidden the cousins farewell, and went into the house to fetch his hat and dust-coat. He was gone some time, and when Almina went into the schoolroom that evening to tidy up, she noticed a tiny slip of folded paper sticking out of Marietta’s exercise book, which lay on the table. She pulled it out, and read her own name on it, in a round firm writing—with a little pang of surprise and suspicion she opened it. Yes, it was from him. “Country Post-Offices smell frightful, but some are safer than others,” she read. “Go and fetch your own letters, in the dogs’ cemetery, and be sure to post some!” Laughing at his nonsense, half-frightened at his audacity—for he must have run up to the schoolroom himself, a scandalous proceeding—she carried the note off to her own room, and locked it away in the jewel-box in her little dressing-case. She went down to dinner with a sort of dancing inner confidence, and after coffee ran upstairs, put on thick shoes, and scudded away along the ridge and down the side path to the elder thicket. It was nonsense to come, she told herself—there could be nothing there yet But all the same she made her way to the ill— odoured spot, and looked about in the dusk. No, not a sign of a note. Then she noticed that the fallen stink-horn, the largest of all, was no longer there. Yes—there it was, broken at one side by Roffredo’s foot; but it was standing up again, propped on a twig. She stooped and picked it up— stuck into the spongy tissue beneath the domed cap was another little folded note. She carried it up out of the wood onto the ridge, and leaning against one of the stone pines, read it by the last glow from the west. It was her first love-letter, and though short, it was a satisfying one—ardent, tender and mischievous, suggesting a rendezvous in the Park, early, on the day after tomorrow. She went back to the house, penned an answer to be slipped into the stink-horn next morning, and went happily to bed, the precious note under her pillow.

  This absurd means of communication now secured, and supported by fairly frequent meetings with Roffredo, Almina was able to look on, almost with indifference, at the progress of his flirtation with the Marchesa Suzy. Not quite with indifference, though; her disapproval of Suzy’s behaviour, and a discomfort, which would not be altogether suppressed, at her own concealments set up an underground current of hostility towards her employer, of whose force she was hardly aware. Turbulent thoughts of criticism, violent inner movements of impatience, disturbed and troubled her. She struggled against them—with the upper part of her mind she told herself firmly that the Marchesa’s behaviour was really no business of hers, and that, though wrong, it was probably only Italian!—and therefore not to be judged by her own standards. (Some of the lessons proper to governesses, so well mastered by Fräulein Gelsicher, Miss Prestwich was undoubtedly learning.)

  Others however thought differently. Elena, whose sharp ironic glance little ever escaped, was by now perfectly well aware of the Marchesa’s goings-on with Roffredo, and regisered each manifestation with rather malicious amusement. At the same time she had not failed to notice the young man’s manner to Miss Prestwich, nor those minute changes of colour and inflexions of voice which the latter, for all her careful behaviour, could not quite control; in spite of their discretion, she made a pretty shrewd guess at the state of affairs there. She had become rather warmly attached to the English girl; she thought her almost too simple to live, but she liked her all the same, and her liking was strongly tinged with an element of protectiveness, as well as of amusement. And for all her flippancy and love of mischief, Elena di Castellone, at eighteen, was quite enough of a woman of the world to realise the dangers inherent in such a situation.

  “Senta, Gela,” she began one morning as she sat sewing and gossiping in her governess’s room, “have you noticed Zia Suzy and Roffredo lately? I think they are getting on rather too well.”

  Fräulein Gelsicher sighed, put down the slate-coloured thread stocking which she was darning, and looked across at her pupil. “You are too fond of criticising your elders, Elena,” she said non-committally.

  “Forse! But Gela, this is serious—or at least it may be. So forget my youth, and Zia Suzy’s great age and inviolable respectability,” the girl said, with her irrepressible giggle, “and listen, do. I think,” she went on, with unusual emphasis, “that she is in love with him, and means to keep him for herself.”

  “Then let her—it is nothing to do with you. And do realise that I cannot properly discuss such things with you,” the Swiss said, taking up her darning again.

  Elena darted over to her, the skirts of her cambric peignoir flying above her silk petticoat, pounced on the stocking and swept it out of her governess’s hand; the polished tartan darning egg fell to the floor.

  “Scusi, Gela cara! But you must listen, and you must discuss!” she cried, picking it up. “It isn’t so easy as that. I think Roffredo doesn’t in the least want to be Zia Suzy’s cher ami, because he is much too fond of Postiche. At first I thought it was only a flirt, but now it is more—I am sure of it. Have you noticed nothing?”

  The Swiss did not answer—instead, she asked a question herself. “Why do you think so?” she enquired, re-possessing herself of the stocking. “No, it is all right—I can sew and talk.”

  “Their eyes—their voices! And they meet; I am sure of it. Once or twice he has referred to something which happened when he was not there, and we have not seen him since, so that he could not know of it unless she had told him; he has caught himself up, and covered it, but I have seen her face then. She was afraid.”

  “When could they meet? When she was here, she saw nothing of him—she avoided him rather pointedly,” Fräulein Gelsicher said.

  “I know—at first! There was some quarrel, I am sure— and pretty certainly Suzy was at the bottom of it! But the last few days she was quite different to him—and you know she always went for those long walks before breakfast.”

  “I certainly did not know it, or I should have stopped her! She is far too young and pretty to walk alone. How do you know this?” the older woman asked.

  “Oh, Annina told me, for one thing—and then she brought in that flower that Zio Francesco made such a fuss about, one morning early. But Gela, the thing is this—what are we to do? She is so innocent, she is like a child; I don’t suppose she realises in the least about Zia Suzy. But really, I do not like the whole thing at all. You know, I think Zia Suzy is capable de tout, if her own way is threatened,” Elena said, very seriously.

  For once Fräulein Gelsicher let the criticism pass unrebuked. Some profound instinct—for she had never seen the young Marchesa other than courteous and charming— made her think the same thing herself. If Elena was right, it was a rather menacing situa
tion. She sighed, and drew out a long thread on her needle, but without speaking.

  “I wondered if one should speak to her,” Elena said. “After all, she is alone here. And you know I don’t altogether trust Roffredo either; he is passionate, and he is rather volage.”

  “It was a mistake her ever coming here,” the Swiss said, almost bitterly. “More enquiries should have been made. Oxford degrees are not everything. It is not so easy as all that, to be a governess!”

  “Oh, Gela darling!” Elena, usually so detached, was touched by this. She ran across, and gave her preceptress a warm hug. “But what shall we do?” she pursued, returning to her main theme after this brief excursion into the affections. “Should we speak to her?”

  “No—leave it for the present. I will think about it,” Fräulein Gelsicher said. Then an idea struck her. “Do you think Marietta knows anything about all this?” she asked.

  “It is very difficult to be sure what Marietta knows and what she doesn’t,” the girl replied. “She isn’t such a dunce as Postiche about understanding what she sees of people and their affairs, but she notices so little, because she doesn’t pay attention—she is always dreaming and looking at the view. And she doesn’t say half she knows, besides.” She bit off a thread, chose another, and resumed, squinting at the eye of the needle—“I should think that she must have some idea about Postiche and Roffredo, at least, boxed up as they are together, all day.”

  “And about the other—thing?”

  “No,” said Elena decidedly. “I am sure not. It would never occur to her. She is odd about Zia Suzy; all that is tiresome in her she just closes her mind to. She thinks her nearly perfect, I do believe.”

  “It is much better that she should continue to do so,” the Swiss said. “I hope you realise, Elena, that you must say nothing to her about that affair. It would be a crime.”

  “Ma si! Ma si! Gela cara, I am not eight! Though, you know, I cannot guarantee that she won’t see it, one of these days, if Zia Suzy goes on at this rate,” the girl said. “But really I am more worried about Postiche. What shall we do, Gela?”