by Ann Bridge
“No—but I think it must have been she, from her words.”
He considered. “Very likely—it was that old clown Carlo whom we heard calling. I daresay she was with him, and they may have seen us before they called. Carlo is always full of tact! It might have been someone else, though. Well, what else? Did she give any other reason?”
“No—only that.”
“And what is this about money? Has she not paid you?”
“No.”
“How much was owed to you?”
“Only a month. Even that would not have been enough, except for third class.”
“But this is monstrous!” the young man said, his indignation rising. “She should have given you your salary and your fare! What excuse did she give for not paying you?”
“She said,” the girl began—and stopped. “She said one did not pay people who are dismissed for impropriety,” she whispered, and hid her face in her hands.
“Oh Holy Virgin and all the Saints! This is too much!” he exploded. “She, with her amours in all directions, mistress to her own husband’s cousin! She must be insane!” He fumed up and down the room. “One can sue her for this! I will not have it.” Then he noticed Almina again; the sight of her crushed figure brought him back to the question of her immediate needs. He rang the bell.
“Tell Alba that we shall be two for dinner,” he said, when Antonio came. “Let her make something extra—an omelette or something.”
“Sissignor Conte.”
“And there is no hurry—she must do it decently,” he said, looking at his watch.
“Sissignor Conte.”
When the man had gone he went back to Almina’s chair, knelt down beside it, and put his arms round her. “Dearest little one!” he murmured, kissing her. She turned and clung to him, as she had never done before—that trembling eager clasp told more plainly than any words of her feeling of ship-wreck and despair. “I must be wise for her—she’s used up,” he thought, as he smoothed her hair. “It’s the devil of a kettle of fish, though! Suzy’s a tough customer, with her position, and people are so accustomed to her escapades that denouncing her wouldn’t do much good. And of course we have been meeting—only the mornings, it’s true, but who’s to prove it? I wonder who did see us at Meden?” His thoughts ran on—angry as he was with Suzy, the practical issues were clear to his mind. Roffredo was extremely practical about any matter while he gave his mind to it—the trouble was that he seldom gave his mind to a thing for any length of time; some other idea, entering, could easily drive it out—also to tiresome things he seldom gave his mind at all. Now, however, while he stroked Almina’s hair, he thought hard about what she had better do. Really, for her own sake, it would be best if she were to go. She had not quite good enough a case to take on Suzy, especially as he, Roffredo, was her main witness. He was not such a good one! He would get her money for her, though, if he had to go to the Marchese Francesco to do it. But any return to Vill’ Alta was impossible, and there would be no hope of her finding a place anywhere else in the Province—Suzy would see to that!— had seen to it, really, with this shameful dismissal.
“Cara, what do you want to do?” he asked, raising her face so that he could see it.
“Oh, I must go!” she said, letting go of him and sitting bolt upright. “I must go! If only I can get the ticket. Have you enough money? I shall send it you at once when I get home.”
“I have plenty” he soothed her—he pulled out his case and showed her a thick pad of notes, and drew a handful of gold pieces from his pocket—in those days there were gold pieces all over Europe. “We can get whatever ticket you want, and you shall have plenty in hand. But senta, cara, when do you want to go?”
“Oh, tonight! I must go tonight! The express goes at eleven,” she said, again with that sort of wildness of energy which betrayed her shaken nerves.
“You are sure you are equal to it?”
“Oh yes, perfectly. Besides, where could I be? I have nowhere to go—I can’t stay at an hotel alone.”
This was all true enough, and Roffredo agreed to it. “Very well—I will drive you in to the train,” he said. “But there is plenty of time—it’s barely eight yet. We will have dinner together quietly, and you shall rest a little, and get up your strength. Come—do you want to wash? See to your hair? Dinner will be ready in a moment.”
They dined, after some delay, rather well. Old Alba had a passion, like that of love, for her task—moreover she had the native Italian genius for flavours and improvisations, and doted on the young Count. And she was seething with excitement over this development. What in the world was the little Inglesa doing here, with all her luggage, at seven o’clock at night? The young Marchesa over at Vill’ Alta had the hand in it, for a certainty—she was up to no good! Alba was as well-informed as Antonio over Suzy’s nocturnal visits to the villa, of which there had been more than one, and even more au fait with her other affairs. So she cooked the best possible dinner, to celebrate this excitement. And Roffredo, feeling that Almina needed all the support she could get, opened a bottle of champagne, as well as the red wine which stood on the table; he made her drink both, and constantly re-filled her glass. While Antonio was in the room he spoke on indifferent topics. “I sent off my plans last week to the N.S.A.,” he said—“the very day you were here.”
“Have you heard from them?” Almina asked.
“Only the acknowledgement. But I may hear any day now. It will be a great thing for me,” he said earnestly, “if they take this idea. I shall be assured then of a future in the industry— a real stake in it.” He talked on, with a sort of glowing practicality very characteristic of him, about the future of the motor industry, which he envisaged purely in terms of engines, and of flying, which he conceived in terms of horsepower and revolutions per second. In fact this absorbing subject, while it lasted, very nearly drove Almina’s troubles out of his head. He even ordered another bottle of champagne to drink to the success of the invention.
But towards the end of the meal, when Antonio had retired, leaving the dessert and coffee on the table, all the young man’s tenderness and concern returned. Almina had comported herself during dinner with what seemed to him a peculiar perfection —sitting very quiet and formal, eating extremely little, but obediently drinking what she was told; listening, mostly in silence, to what he said, but occasionally raising immense eyes to his face, and making some appropriate remark—to herself and her own troubles making no reference whatever. This extreme stillness of manner, instead of her usual youthful animation, gave an added depth, a sort of tragic quality to her beauty. He saw her almost with astonishment—love had already made her more lovely, but pain had made her wonderful. It was hard to have to lose her, just at this moment—it was not going to be easy to part! He stretched a hand across the table and took hers, looking at her suddenly with deeper eyes—perdition! how lovely she was.
“Come into the sitting-room, cara,” he said abruptly. “We shall be more comfortable there.” She rose and went in to the other room, moving with great dignity, very slowly and carefully; he followed, bringing the glasses and the last of the champagne. Let them make the best of these last hours, he thought, already a little reckless with the amount of wine he had drunk, a little dizzy with his mounting passion, as he set down the glasses and bottle on the writing-table; he Went over to where she stood by the mantelpiece, and took her in his arms. “Oh, you lovely, you darling,” he murmured, and covered her face with kisses.
Almina’s great deliberation and dignity of movement were actually due to the fact that she found it very difficult to move at all. A curious lassitude, which she did not in the least understand, had come over her— her limbs were strangely heavy, as if she had lead, not blood, in her veins; on the other hand her head had an odd lightness about it—she seemed to be somehow remote from her surroundings; the table, the peach on her plate, were at a great distance from her, Roffredo’s voice came to her from far away, and was moreover slightl
y dulled by a soft continuous rushing sound in her ears, like the noise in a sea-shell—even her own words seemed to distil themselves, of their own accord, from her mouth. They did this very slowly and carefully; and when she rose to go into the other room those curiously stiff limbs of hers made their own motions, also very slowly and carefully; but somehow they were dissociated from her, she was independent of them and they of her. She had in fact drunk a great deal, and she was in no case to resist it. She had had nothing to eat since lunch at 12.30 (for she had been far too hurried and distracted to think of tea) and in the interval she had passed through the fiercest emotional upheaval of her whole life. The brandy-and-soda, administered with the best intentions by Roffredo, had revived her, but it had also gone directly to her head—it left her without appetite, but very thirsty. So she ate very little, and drank a great deal.
And let no one be surprised that she did not at once recognise the symptoms of intoxication. How should she? Young women in her day seldom met with alcohol; the helpful experience, now so universally obtained at sherry and cocktail-parties, did not exist for her. Nothing was drunk before meals by anyone, and by girls, very little at them. There was an immense amount of wine about—sherry, white wine, claret, champagne and port appeared at quite ordinary dinner-parties, but it was not good form for girls to drink them; that, too, was “actressy”, and hostesses looked askance at a young woman who took more than a polite sip of champagne on special occasions. Nothing had surprised Almina more, in Italy, than to see Elena and Marietta calmly drinking wine at lunch and dinner, even though they usually mixed it, after the custom of the country, with water. In time she had learned to follow their example, but a glass of the light country wine took no effect, and there was nothing to warn her of the results of mixing brandy, red wine and champagne, in considerable quantities, on an empty stomach. And her distress and confusion of mind were anyhow so great and so unprecedented that they would in themselves have accounted for almost any unusual sensations. “I must be very tired, tireder than I knew,” she thought, finding how hard it was to walk into the sitting-room.
But when Roffredo came and took her in his arms, she found that in this prevailing remoteness one part of her being was still awake. He was being good to her, taking care of her—in this strange revelation of cruelty and despair, which had turned her universe upside down, he stood firm, her one anchor, her single link with the old safe world of affection and kindness. She clung to him, for that. And he loved her. That was of enormous importance, now that the shadow of disgrace had for the first time impinged on her own life, her own person—his love stood, a bulwark between her and the loss of her self-respect. And she so loved him! So, with even more fervour than in those moments which had startled him before dinner, she turned to him now, returning his kisses with a sort of involuntary and helpless simplicity and ardour.
That innocent abandonment robbed Roffredo of the last remnants of his wits and his self-control. She was too exquisite, like this—too unbelievably marvellous; at once yielded and passionate. “Come to the divan, cara,” he murmured into her mouth. “Come!” He led her across the room, and then lifted her bodily and laid her down on the heaped cushions. Prolonging the perfection of her mood, in spite of her protests he gave her yet more champagne, took more himself. But at last he set the glasses down, and returned to her. Lying there, enveloped in his caresses, that strange anaesthesia which had sometimes frightened her before returned. But now it was at once more powerful and less frightening. And she was leaving him—soon, in an hour! She might never see him again. That, almost her last conscious thought, gave poignancy to her love—she could not, in these last moments together, love him enough—her darling, her Roffredo. But the anaesthesia gradually overcame her altogether—remotely and yet burningly, her body was aware of his hands, her yielded mouth of his; she was aware too of an incredible impulse towards him, and yet of a complete passivity and surrender. This was all utterly unknown, unheard of, incomprehensible—and as its mighty strangeness increased, her awareness of it lessened. Consciousness, at last, faded away—to be torn, when quite out of reach, by a furious and intimate pain. Then absolute blankness.
Chapter Eighteen
There was a slat missing in one of the green sun-shutters outside the window on the east side of the sitting-room at the Villa Gemignana. Through the gap thus formed the early sunlight streamed in, making an oblong bar of light which reached to the opposite wall; in its passage across the shuttered room it touched various objects, making them stand out with a clearness which was almost startling in the greenish twilight—three squat inkpots on the top of the draughtsman’s desk standing in the window, the projecting corner of the printing-frame, in white unvarnished wood, rather dirty, and the two champagne-glasses on the table, in which it turned the liquid, still and bubbleless now, to a weak gold; finally it struck the wall above the divan and rested, a bright rectangular shape, on the pink distemper. This bright shape struck the wall rather high up when it first entered the room, but as the time passed it crept steadily downwards and sideways, till at last it reached the divan itself. When it touched Almina’s face it disturbed her, and she woke up.
She did not at first realise where she was. She was conscious that her head was aching with extraordinary violence, so that the bright sunshine was painful—she shifted her position to avoid it, and shut her eyes again. The change of position brought on a strange swimming giddiness—she seemed to be spinning round and round. She changed her position again, more than once, seeking to find one in which she could feel steady, feel still. Then she opened her eyes once more, and looked about her in a sort of dulled confusion, peering through the dim light, while her senses slowly awoke. Surely this was Roffredo’s room? But why did she feel so sick? It was more than feeling sick—she felt ill, deathly ill; so ill that that in itself frightened her. And the swimming giddiness did not stop. Then she saw the champagne bottle on the table—the bar of sunlight was touching it now, lighting up the gilt foil on its shoulders. That brought back, instantly, the memory of last night. But what was she doing here still, with the sun shining, in daylight? The effort of thought made her head ache worse than ever, and her mouth was extraordinarily uncomfortable—there was a sickening taste in it. But she was to have caught the train last night! Starded, beginning now to be frightened of something besides her sense of illness, she sat bolt upright—and then saw her clothes over a chair.
Nothing in Almina’s life or training had prepared her to meet such a moment. Her inexperience offered no concrete explanation of what had happened, and the views in which she had been brought up no excuse. She simply found herself, without any warning, in a situation of horror so impossible that her mind could not face it. For some time she lay quite still under the rug, trembling a little now and then. A sound outside roused her to the necessity of getting dressed before anyone should come, and, hurriedly, she began to do this. But when she tried to stand the giddiness and nausea overtook her again, and her shaking and uncertain hands made the process a slow and difficult one. She felt acutely thirsty—a glass of water was what she craved for. She even went over to the table, thinking that she might drink some of the stale champagne; but when she got there, some vague associated memories produced a violent recoil—she left it untouched. Now her mind, still numbed with shame and bewilderment, began to work a little, but slowly, and only on immediate things. She must go, somehow. But where was Roffredo, and how was she to get to the station?
Then the difficulty of putting up her masses of hair without mirror, brush or comb suddenly absorbed her. Her luggage must be somewhere about, but she dared not try to find anyone to ask for it. She could not bear to see anyone, anyone! Except Roffredo. She found her hairpins in a little jade cup on the table, but her hand was shaking so that she spilt them, and had to pick them up—stooping made the pain in her head almost unendurable. And raising her arms to put up her hair brought the giddiness and the feeling of illness on again so violently that she had to
sit down. Tears of helplessness and despair ran down her cheeks. She found her handkerchief on the divan, wiped them away, and went on wrestling with her hair, while that bewildered shame invaded her more and more completely as, slowly, her mind grew clearer. If only she had some water to wash her face, it might stop this appalling headache! But though she knew her way to Roffredo’s room, where she had washed the previous evening, she could not bring herself to adventure outside the door. And where was Roffredo? And she was still without money, she thought desperately, and it must be getting late—the sun was high and strong. She found her watch on the table, but it had stopped. Mechanically she wound it, slipped the chain over her head and buttoned the watch into the little pocket on her blouse.
There was a sound of slippered feet shuffling along the passage. Almina stood and listened, trembling. Then there came a tap at the door, and old Alba pattered in, carrying a tray with coffee and rolls, which she set down on the writing-table, saying “Buon’ giorno, Signorina” very cheerfully. She went and threw open the shutters, letting the sunshine stream broadly into the room, and set a chair before the tray, glancing at Almina with a sort of cheerful inquisitiveness the while. Oh, she did look bad, poor little thing! Well, it was no good making a sour mouth at her because of what had happened last night. The young Count should not have given her all that champagne, or taken so much himself either, for that matter. She didn’t look at all that sort!—she looked frightened to death, like a lamb in a butcher’s yard.
“Let the Signorina take her coffee—it will do her good,” Alba said, drawing back the chair invitingly.
Almina never moved—she stood, in her little blue coat and skirt, with her badly-arranged hair, staring at the old woman. At last:
“Where is the Signor Conte?” she asked, nervously.