by Ann Bridge
She twisted it away, brusquely, now.
“I don’t know—and nor does she!” she said.
“Marietta! What do you mean?”
“I don’t know! Not even that! Giulio, do leave me alone,” she cried passionately, and ran out of the room.
Marietta was speaking the truth then. Her instinct had for once outrun her reason, and in the torment of those moments had spoken aloud. Thinking of it, afterwards, she could still find no real grounds for what she had said. But for her distress she had a definite ground. It was all too clear that Giulio’s whole soul went out in worship to Miss Prestwich, and she—little Marietta!—was told so much because she was too young and childish to matter! She clenched her small brown fists at the thought. To be told, to be his sole confidante, was of course something. And the fact of his love for Almina she accepted, as the very young do, in agony and silence. Reviewing the waste in her heart, the broken joy, she thought again of the peacocks’ cry and the thunderstorm. But she could not even rest, unselfishly, in the thought of a happy future for him. With sharpened eyes, she watched her governess on the next day and the next; she saw her calm friendliness when Giulio appeared, and she surprised the look on her face when the well-known chug-chug of the motor-car came in through the schoolroom windows. Of whatever sort Miss Prestwich’s love might be, it was not given to Giulio! And with her continental realism, Marietta saw nothing but misery in store for him.
In her pain, she withdrew into herself more than ever. Even with Miss Prestwich and the cousins, she became singularly silent—sometimes apparently lost in thought, so that she did not always answer when spoken to, sometimes still and watchful, her eyes travelling from face to face, saying nothing. Almina, for all her absorption in her own affairs, at once noticed this change in her pupil, and redoubled her normal efforts to interest and amuse her. She even went the length, after a couple of days, of asking if she had anything on her mind?—an effort for a person of her reticence and shyness. Marietta raised her eyebrows with a cold stare and said—“No—why should I have?” Then, catching sight of the hurt astonishment in her governess’s face, she darted over to her and flung her arms round her neck. “Oh, I love you! But what can I do?” she cried, bursting into tears, and rushed from the room. Almina let her be, and made a brew of senna pods for her that night—so her Mother had always treated her own emotional outbursts. Marietta was charming over the administration of the senna—she sat up in bed, sipping it and giggling, and telling a long lavatory story about how Uncle Paolo had once taken cascara—“but, eating it like chocolate!”—in mistake for something else. Almina had to laugh, though she was on thorns to slip away to the stinkhorns, to see if there was a note to confirm a projected walk for the next morning; she was getting accustomed to the appalling frankness of Marietta and her cousins, and sufficiently inured to the water-closet brand of joke to be amused by it. When the senna was all imbibed she kissed her pupil warmly, told her to stop giggling and go to sleep, and went out. She did not know that Marietta lay awake for hours, after that, staring with hot wide eyes at the glimmering oblongs of the windows—heard her own light steps on the gravel below, going and then returning; coming upstairs; heard, much later, the little gate down by the road whine on the stone, and other footfalls crossing the terrace—did not know that the child sat up in bed then, straining her ears for sounds in the house to indicate where those last steps went, but hearing nothing—till at last, exhausted, she fell asleep.
Almina took her early walk next morning. There had been a pressing note from Roffredo, saying that he had news for her, and she fled along the ridge, and dipped down through the larch plantation into the Park with quick light breath, flying colour, and a bounding heart, wondering what the news might be. Confused thoughts of an open engagement, marriage—some sudden decision of that sort—floated in and out of her head. She was in no hurry—Edwardian maidens were seldom in anything so practical as a hurry about their love affairs; to love, to wait and dream was good enough, for a long long time. But an end of concealment would be a real relief; and a new and disquieting urgency in Roffredo’s kisses, a rather fierce audacity in his caresses, just of late, warned her startled instinct, rather than her mind, of some subtle alteration in their relationship. She could not know, poor wretched child, how the freedoms permitted and even encouraged by the Marchesa’s maturity and experience reacted on Roffredo’s much deeper feeling for herself. Left alone, her shynesses, her simplicities and obvious innocence might have led him gently into the paths of tenderness and restraint; but the constant stimulus and incitement of his relation with the Marchesa, where only the physical was involved, intensified and made more crude his passion for Almina.
The news, however, was of a different sort. Roffredo, having engulfed her in a vast embrace, and told her that she was looking like Aurora (“whoever she may be, cara!”) burst out with the tidings that he had at last worked out the modifications for his invention satisfactorily. He could speak and think of nothing else, and nothing would satisfy him but that Almina should come to the villa and see the triumphant arrangement. Very much against her will, she went with him—across the pastures, grey with dew still, under the tufted daffodil-heads of the autumn poplars, on their white slender stems, and in by the back gate in to the villa. In those days, to visit a young man’s rooms unescorted, in any circumstances, even at half-past six in the morning, was a dangerously disreputable thing to do, and Almina knew it—she was ill at ease, and even less capable than she would normally have been of taking in Roffredo’s eager explanations. From the workshop, constructed roughly on a foundation of greenhouse in the garden, he led her through a covered passage into his sitting-room and showed her the plans, set out on the sloping draughtsman’s desk—“See, here—.” “The cylinders are now set so—this makes the whole difference.” But her anxious eyes strayed constantly from the blue-prints, and the incomprehensible drawings dotted with figures to the door, fearing at any moment to see it open and old Alba’s head appear round it. She did however take in, with thirsty curiosity, all the features of this room where he lived and worked: the divan in the corner, the printing-frame set in the South window, with the tracing-cloth still fastened in it ready to make duplicates of the blue-prints when the sun should be up—Roffredo was draughtsman enough to make his own blue-prints, “though, of course, they will retrace them in their own office if they actually use this thing, because they have their own conventions about details”—the great untidy writing-table, the bookshelves full of technical volumes, the signed photographs of racing motorists on the mantelpiece. The top drawer of the writing-table was open —glancing in, among a litter of papers, she saw a revolver. “What on earth is that for?” she asked, curiously.
“Oh, I carry one when I travel—when I went to San Francisco I was quite glad of it, once or twice!” he answered, laughing carelessly. He took it out, quickly shutting the drawer—per carità! where had he left those notes of Suzy’s?— and showed it to her, and the neat mechanism for loading and ejecting; any good piece of mechanical craftsmanship had interest and actual beauty for Roffredo. They lingered long, in spite of her anxiety, for when he had shown her everything he remembered to kiss her again, and both were stirred by his doing so there, in his house, in the enclosed privacy of his room—it was past seven when at last she glanced at the watch in her belt. Nervous, unhappy now, she left; he too looked anxiously all round before they slipped out, hurried through the pastures, and so to the edge of the park. Neither saw— neither could have seen—old Alba, just out of bed, peering through the slats of her closed shutters. But she saw the pretty Inglesina clearly enough, walking away with the young Count.
In spite of the absence of telephones and other modern conveniences, the news service in the Province of Gardone was exceedingly good. There were not only the note-bearing boys on bicycles; there was also the conductor of the diligence, the postman, who practically exercised the functions of a town crier, and the waiting coachmen and foot
men at various hall-doors, who held fruitful converse with their colleagues within. By these various means, news flew. On the afternoon of that day, Antonio, Roffredo’s chauffeur-groomfactotum, was despatched by Alba to Odredo to request from Anna the cook a good boiling of black grapes for jam. Count Carlo still possessed some vines of the native variety, as well as the phylloxera-resisting Concord grape, introduced from America, with its revolting flavour of black currants, which spoiled the jam as much as elderly connoisseurs, the happy drinkers of pre-1870 claret, hold that it has spoiled French wine. The Concord grape had overrun the province, and good black ones were hard to come by—but the Count had plenty, and Antonio was Anna’s nephew. This being so, it was not unnatural that he should confide to his aunt, Alba’s confidence to him on the subject of Almina’s morning visit to the villa; and no one familiar with Italian country life will be surprised that Anna, in the course of next morning’s household colloquy with Fräulein Gelsicher, should have passed this exciting item on to her. It was slipped in very neatly and casually, sideways. “Sissignorina. The jam is made. Alba sent Antonio across yesterday for some grapes, Signorina, to make jam for the young Signor Conte— so I gave him a good basketful. He said the Signorina inglesa from Vill’ Alta had been to call on the young Signor Conte before breakfast. I gave him at least twelve kilos, as I thought the Signorina would wish them to have plenty….” etc. etc.
This piece of information upset Fräulein Gelsicher very much. Elena’s account of the morning walks, and her own opinion of the girl’s character preserved her from worrying over any possible implications of the fact that Miss Prestwich had only been seen to leave the villa, which by direct questioning she elicited from Anna; but, if true, it was quite bad enough as it was. It was madly indiscreet; it was impossible. She must be stopped. Sighing, seated at her toilet-table, the Swiss poked dejectedly at her grey hair, through which one of the brown pads peered coyly, and thought when she could see Almina. Not today—the whole Vill’ Alta party was going to a tennis tournament at Macerbo, which Elena had refused to attend because she said the play would be too bad. And tomorrow would be difficult too, because it was laundry day; and in addition they wanted, she and Anna, to make a last brew of grape jam before they got involved in the preparations for Count Carlo’s picnic to Meden at the end of the week. However, tomorrow it had better be. The children were going to Vill’ Alta for informal tennis, and she could easily go too, without any fuss or explanations. And she must think tonight, when she was quiet and less busy, exactly how she could most helpfully talk to that poor child. For Fräulein Gelsicher was one of those people who always went behind effects to causes, and sought to help there—it- was one of the secrets of her influence. And she realised that this was no casual freak, or piece of outrageous daring naughtiness such as some girls went in for. She knew Almina too well for that. The girl must be head over ears, crazy with love, to have done such a thing. And it was that ground-work, that fundamental fact, which had to be tackled; and to tackle it wisely, knowing all that she knew and Almina did not, she must learn all she could about it, from the girl herself. Tomorrow, then.
But before tomorrow came a fresh perturbation overtook Fräulein Gelsicher. Anna was again the source. Late in the afternoon they were weighing out grapes together in the huge vaulted kitchen, to stand, with the loose sugar over them, disintegrating in vast copper preserving-pans against the next day’s boiling, when Anna, having sent her rough-haired kitchen-girls flying on various errands, said, finger on lip— “Signorina, it isn’t only the little Signorina who goes to the young Conte’s villa. There has been also the Marchesa from over there”—she jerked a thumb over her shoulder; “last night Antonio saw her, going away. Nearly midnight! He brought back the basket just now, and told me. È brutta cosa, questo, sa!”
Fräulein Gelsicher listened with more concern than she allowed to appear; when Anna’s recital was over she warned her against repeating gossip, and uttered some strictures against Antonio for reporting things outside his master’s house. But she realised fully why Anna had told her, and why the cook regarded this episode as an “ugly thing.” Anna, old and loyal, knew all about the Marchesa’s liaison with Count Carlo, and accepted it tolerantly; though it had never been mentioned between them, she knew also that “La Signorina” knew of it, and knew that she, Anna, knew. This fresh development was a hit at her master, a disloyalty to the existing order of things—and though Anna, like everyone else, slightly despised Count Carlo, her dogged peasant mind saw no reason in that for being anything but unswervingly faithful to him and to his interests. So “La Signorina” had to be told. And she had also, because the gentry always did these things, to make those remarks about gossip and Antonio. But the remarks did not trouble Anna in the least. Having said her say, she settled her white kerchief further down on her greying hair, screeched a summons to her underlings, as one whistles up a lot of dogs, and went on with her work. That job was done.
For Fräulein Gelsicher, however, the job was only just beginning. This confirmation of Elena’s guesses and suspicions—for it is noteworthy that in the Marchesa’s case she had no doubts either as to the accuracy of Antonio’s statement, or as to any of its implications—made the whole thing much more difficult. Miss Prestwich and her indiscretion must of course be dealt with, but it was not much good dealing with her alone—the matter must really be treated as a whole. Like Miss Prestwich, Fräulein Gelsicher had noticed Marietta’s curious listlessness and abstraction, these last few days, and it shot across her mind now, with a spasm of real fear, that some inkling as to her Mother’s behaviour might be the reason for this change in the child’s manner. And that that should go any further, should become a real revelation, was to her strong benevolent goodness simply unbearable. It must be prevented. But to deal with the thing as a whole was, she felt, beyond her powers. This, hundredth birthday or no hundredth birthday, was a matter for La Vecchia Marchesa. Before taking any other step, she would see her. Tomorrow.
Chapter Fifteen
The conversation between those two women was, in its way, something of a masterpiece. “La Signorina” had let it be known (by means of Luigi and his bicycle, and one of the enwrapped notes) that she was accompanying the young people to Vill’ Alta, and that her visit was primarily a call on La Vecchia Marchesa. This announcement was perfectly normal, since the old lady did not receive an unlimited number of guests, and permission had, so to speak, to be obtained; but while creating no suspicions, it was quite enough to make the shrewd old woman glance sharply at the Swiss when they were seated together in her sitting-room upstairs, where the sun-blinds, lowered against the glare, made the light dim and yellow.
“The children are well? And Carlo?” she asked.
“Very well. But, Marchesa, I am not perfectly at ease about Marietta,” Fräulein Gelsicher said. She had decided that this was both the easiest and probably the most efficacious line of approach.
“No? What do you find amiss?” the old lady asked.
“She is pale, and absent-minded, and unusually silent, even for her,” the Swiss answered. “For some reason, I think that she is unhappy.”
“And have you any idea what the reason may be?” the old Marchesa enquired.
“I know, unfortunately, of something which might be the reason, though I cannot say if it is or not,” Fräulein Gelsicher said, gravely. “It is a disagreeable matter, Marchesa, and I make my apologies for the necessity of mentioning it. I do so most unwillingly, but I feel that you alone are capable of dealing with it.” She sighed, and straightened her hat.
“Speak out, my good Signorina,” the old lady said, rather sharply—suspense always made her impatient. “We know one another, after all.”
“Had it struck you that Count Roffredo was on rather— affectionate terms with the young Marchesa,” Fräulein Gelsicher said—for all the old lady’s encouragement, she found it hard to say what she had come to say.
“Everyone flirts with Suzy,” said La Vecchia
brusquely. “Of course he does too—naturally I have seen this. What else?”
“If it is a flirtation, it is being carried beyond the bounds of discretion,” the governess said, firmly. “The night before last she was at the villa till nearly midnight. The servants are talking. That in itself is not so much, but Elena has noticed it too. And it is possible that Marietta, also, sees something at last. I mean that Marietta sees something,” she added hastily, a flush mounting to her thin cheeks at her slip—“and if so, it might be this which is distressing her.”
“Hm! Don’t distress yourself too much, Signorina,” said the old lady, quite kindly. “One can’t cook a chicken without pulling out the feathers 1 How much does Elena know? Does she know about the villa?”
“I think not—Anna told me, and I forbade her to mention it to anyone else. But once talk begins, it is hard to stop it. And Elena is terribly observant.” She sighed.
“Elena would have too much sense to speak to the little one about it?” the old Marchesa queried sharply.
“Oh yes. And in any case I forbade her to, long ago,” the Swiss said. Then she coloured again—slip number two! But the old Marchesa took these matters with admirable calm. The fact was that she had seen a good deal more than she was prepared to admit to the governess—she had noticed Marietta’s pallor and silences, the last few days, and she had observed in her daughter-in-law many minute signs which betrayed, to her experience, something like infatuation. She too had heard the little gate at the foot of the steps whine late at night, and more than once. She feared that Suzy was getting reckless. Women did, at her age—and particularly about younger men! Actually this ventilation of the subject with the good Gelsicher was a relief to her.
“That was well. And she obeys you still?” she said.
“In such things, yes.”