by Ann Bridge
Fräulein Gelsicher was actually exceedingly glad to receive the old Marchesa’s summons. Ever since that unlucky Wednesday of encounters and revelations she had been longing to take counsel with La Vecchia Marchesa; but her hands had been so full with Giulio, and the general relations of Odredo with Vill’ Alta were become so peculiar, that she had lacked either the time or the courage to seek an interview. So she welcomed this opportunity eagerly. Marietta too was occupying her thoughts a great deal. The governess’s perceptive and affectionate goodness, coupled with her professional preoccupation with female youth, had made her realise far more clearly than Elena the extent to which the little girl was suffering, both from the moral shock of her Mother’s behaviour and from the calamity which had overtaken Miss Prestwich. But besides this, the child’s insight into Giulio’s feelings, revealed in several conversations after that first one, had given away to the Swiss woman’s experienced penetration something of the nature of her feelings for him. And instead of brushing this aside as girlish silliness, she recognised, with serious concern, how much it added to the load of pain and problems which now rested on those little thin shoulders. About Marietta, too, therefore, she would be glad of the old Marchesa’s advice. She saw no easy outlet for her. To return and live with her Mother, with some other governess substituted for the one she loved so much, a perpetual reminder of her loss and the reason for it; watching, with eyes sharpened by this bitter experience, the manner of her Mother’s life—that was not going to be so easy. And that Mother, aware of her scrutiny and the reasons for it, and as the girl grew older increasingly irked by this watchful presence—how was she going to treat the daughter whose personal life she had always affectionately ignored, even when things were at their best and easiest between them, and she could rest secure in that blind aloof childish deference and dutiful affection? Really, the Swiss woman thought, as she drove next morning up the long curve of the hill below the great grey house, the best thing the Marchesa Suzy could do now would be to the! That would resolve several major problems at a stroke—Marietta’s future, Giulio’s and Elena’s relations to their Father, and, no doubt, a good many private preoccupations for Count Roffredo—not that she wasted much sympathy on his worries.
It seemed, on her arrival, very much as if the Marchesa Suzy were going to gratify her impious wish. The doctor’s brougham was at the door, and moved away across the sweep towards the flower-beds to make room for the Odredo carriage; upstairs she had to wait for some time in the old lady’s boudoir, since the Marchesa, as Roberto informed her, was with the doctor in the young Marchesa’s room. When the old woman at last appeared, walking in leaning on her ebony stick and escorted by Giacinta, it was with a grave and anxious face.
“Yes, she is very ill—terribly ill,” she replied briefly to the governess’s enquiries. “It is an exceedingly severe pneumonia. She has of course a wonderful constitution, and that gives some hope; and the two Sisters seem excellent. We shall not know much till Sunday or Monday—the crisis, the decision, should be reached then.” She gave a tiny sigh. “Meanwhile, I thought that you and I ought to have a little talk,” she resumed. “Elena tells me that Giulio is in a very bad state —indeed Suzy mentioned something of the sort— and that it is because he is so deeply attached to Miss Prestwich. Is that true?”
“Perfectly true, Marchesa. Poor boy, he idealised and worshipped her—he who never looked at a woman before! —and this affair at the Villa has been a fearful blow to him. I really do not know what to do with him,” the Swiss said distressfully, mechanically straightening her hat; “young men are really outside my province! I have greatly wished to ask your advice. He eats next to nothing, and hardly sleeps; he has given himself over to this sorrow in the most complete way, and unless we can do something, I cannot foresee what the end of it will be. It is eating into his mind.”
“It was the greatest folly ever getting that poor girl here,” the old lady said irritably. “However, that is the past. He must have distraction,” she said, decidedly.
“Pardon me, Marchesa, but if you mean social distraction, he will not take it. He will not see anyone if he can help it, except me and Marietta—for whom it is not good to listen constantly to his misery.”
“No; he must go away,” the old lady said. “Is there nowhere that he can be sent?”
“I do not know,” the Swiss said doubtfully. “His great wish has always been to go to Oxford to study—that is why he was so anxious to learn English with that poor girl. But I have never been able to persuade his Father to agree to it.”
“Carlo is, and always was, between you and me, a fool,” the old lady said energetically. “But now, he must see the necessity. I shall speak with him—it must be arranged. There is money enough?” she asked.
“Oh, for two or three years at Oxford, certainly,” Fräulein Gelsicher said. “Marchesa, if you could get this settled, it would do more for Giulio than anything else. I believe it would cure him.”
“It shall be arranged. Now tell me, how is that little thing, Marietta? All this is very hard for her. And Elena tells me that she knows all about it?”
“Yes, Marchesa. Giulio made her his confidante. That is a most extraordinary child,” the Swiss said, in a rare burst of enthusiasm. “Her patience, her wisdom with him!—and her silence and self-restraint about her own sorrow. A woman of forty could not show more soul. Her comprehension is astonishing.”
“She ought not to have to comprehend all these things, at her age,” the old Marchesa said, rather sadly. “But she is reasonably well—eats, sleeps?”
“Fairly well—she is a little listless. But Marchesa, I am rather concerned about her in the future,” Fräulein Gelsicher said. “The unfortunate part of this affair is that—” she hesitated “—in effect, she feels that her Mother’s action was to some extent the cause of it all, and as she was wholly devoted to Miss Prestwich, she—well, she does not in her mind endorse that action.”
“In fact, she blames her Mother?”
“Well, yes. And I feel that—I should not perhaps trouble you with all this,” the Swiss said.
“Nothing is more important than Marietta,” the old Marchesa said emphatically. “Go on, my good Gelsicher, and don’t mince your words too much.”
“Well, Marchesa, I do not think it would be a good plan to introduce a new governess into the household at all soon; it would be a constant reminder of her sorrow, and of its cause. And yet I do not see what else is to be done. She cannot be alone.”
The old lady considered.
“No—for the present, that would not do. It would be cruel. And Suzy—” she paused, and sighed. “For the moment, no. In any case, she will be delicate, need care, for a long time after this,” she said, “even at the best.” She thought again. “Could you take her?” she asked suddenly.
“I? Here?”
“No no—at Odredo, and in Rome. Elena will need you still, of course, but I imagine mainly for chaperonage now, not lessons. Would you have time? Be willing?”
“Marchesa, there is nothing I should like better,” Fräulein Gelsicher said earnestly; “but of course, the decision would not rest with me.”
“If you are willing, there should be no difficulty,” the old lady said briskly. “Some proper arrangement would of course be made with the Count. Elena is fond of her?”
“Very—and now more than ever. She is beginning to see what she is, for all her youth. Indeed, I should value the companionship for Elena,” the governess said, decidedly.
“Very well. Presently it can be seen to,” the old lady said. Then, with one of the quick turns so characteristic of old age, she gave her little sardonic smile. “I cannot altogether congratulate you on your present pupil, Signorina.”
“Elena? Is something wrong? I wondered that you sent for her,” the Swiss said anxiously.
The old lady pulled the Roffredo letter out of her little bag and handed it to the governess without a word. Fräulein Gelsicher read it in silence, and
then looked up over the sheet, with eyes in which a distressful conviction lurked, at the old Marchesa.
“This is not— her?” she asked lamentably.
“Indeed it is—she sent that, arranged the whole thing, as a stroke of vengeance.”
“Oh, Marchesa! But this is terrible. I am unspeakably sorry, ashamed,” the poor woman said. “She has caused this illness, then?”
“Not intentionally. She meant merely to leave Suzy alone on the road. But unluckily she had also the idea to put birdlime on the bushes all round the ruin, that day when my son went to paint the flower—yes, yes, that was why she arranged this famous picnic; and so we imagine that Suzy, in the dark and in her confusion, fell into the well.”
Fräulein Gelsicher’s rejoinder to this startled the old lady.
“So that was why she took the mackintosh,” she said.
“The mackintosh?”
“Yes. She took one with her, and left it there. She will have worn it while she was using the birdlime, and made it too dirty to bring home. But Marchesa, this is terribly wrong of her,” the Swiss said. “I cannot tell you how sorry I am.”
“Do not distress yourself too much, Signorina. And if I were you, I should not scold her about it. I have spoken to her. But she has made her own judgements on all this affair —on Suzy, and on her Father too. They all have; Roffredo also, and no doubt Marietta as well. One cannot say they are wrong. The thing has gone on too long. To you, I speak freely,” the old lady said. “I should have seen sooner that it must stop.”
“Marchesa, I am glad that you feel this,” the Swiss said. “To me, for some time, this has been a matter of great concern. I wished to speak to you about it, but, in effect, it was not an easy subject.”
“It was not. But I wish you had done so, all the same,” the old Marchesa said. Then she made one of her bird-like hops to a fresh idea. “How is that poor little creature, Prestwich, do you know?”
The Signorina did not know, with any accuracy. It was some days since she had seen the two Countesses.
“H’m. It is almost time some one found out,” said the old lady.
Chapter Twenty-six
It was in fact some considerable time before La Vecchia Marchesa or anyone else took any definite steps to inform themselves as to how Almina was getting on at Castellone. All that week the Marchesa Suzy’s illness overshadowed both houses, Vill’ Alta and Odredo, and dominated the thoughts of those who lived in them. In the room with the silver mirror, where once she had sat and looked at her own beauty, and secretly decided to let her late love for Roffredo have its most complete expression, Suzy now lay in the great painted bed, tossing, muttering, moaning sometimes, more often lying in the silence of exhausted weakness. A lot of her beautiful hair had had to be cut off—ill as she was, it had proved impossible to wash the bird-lime out of it, and to the accompaniment of Agnese’s bleats and even tears of distress, one of the Padua Sisters had cropped off most of its splendid length—the six inches or so that remained lay in disorderly curls round her head, or damply plastered to her brow, wetted by the compresses of aromatic vinegar which they put on to cool her. The doctor came three times a day, and a specialist was sent for from Milan; but, as is the way of specialists, he had nothing new to suggest, and said, wisely, that the Marchesa undoubtedly had lobar pneumonia, that this was purely a nursing illness, and that they had better get a third nurse. The Marchese Francesco crept in now and then, listened with a face of distress to the short rough breathing, and the little moaning sounds of discomfort which his wife made, and then crept out again and went down, wretchedly, to paint in his study; the old Marchesa walked in with her stick, and asked the Sisters and the doctor sharp questions in a sibilant whisper —while she was in the room she preserved a rather fiercely blank face, but once back in her boudoir she would sit in her chair, staring in front of her with a wistful sadness in her expression, and sigh—and then presently fall asleep. Suzy, with all her faults, those faults which the young people reprobated so energetically, had really afforded the old woman more of that precious warmth of affection than anyone else; this, her one vested interest, was now threatened by the chill shadow of fear which lay over the house—she shivered sometimes as she sat, thinking how cold her last days would be if she had to spend them without Suzy. Iron with herself, she yet found the anxiety extremely tiring; that curious pain which had assailed her on the day when she learnt of Suzy’s treatment of Miss Prestwich came more often at present, both in the darkened bedroom, and when she sat afterwards in her own room. She spoke of it to no one—who was there to tell, now? To Suzy she might have mentioned it. As it was, she drank her egg-nog rather eagerly, and dallied with thoughts of having a second glass in the afternoon—but that would be a form of weakness, she told herself irritably, and she refrained from ordering it.
Almina, during that same week, spent most of her time sitting in her room at Castellone, a piece of sewing—which she scarcely touched unless someone came in—in her lap, staring in front of her, and thinking. During the first few days after her arrival she had been, and indeed felt herself to be, a sort of pawn, moved at the will of others—to Castellone, to bed, out of bed, to bed again—without volition or interest of her own. But since the doctor had decided to stop the sedatives, and allowed her to be about, her mind, after that rather dazed lull, had begun to work once more. She had plenty of time for thinking, for she was left to herself a good deal; after the first three or four days, when the excitement of championing her and treating her as an invalid had begun to die down, the two Countesses resumed their usual occupations of running round to their neighbours’ houses and receiving visits at home. When visitors were expected, Almina was, quite kindly and thoughtfully, got out of the way—she was told that So-and-so talked loud, and would make her head ache, or it was suggested that an hour in the air would do her good, and she was despatched to the garden. In the evenings, indeed, she sat with the two ladies and heard their collection of gossip for the day; but it was from this background, so to speak, of its not being quite suitable for her to meet people in general that she started when she began to try to straighten the whole thing out in her mind—to assess what had happened to her, what it really meant, and what it was going to mean in the future.
One of the principal things which occupied her was the whole matter of her feeling for Roffredo. She gathered from the Countesses that he was being blamed on all hands for what he had done, and her own heart could not rise in his defence, could not acquit him of the most reckless selfishness and a cruel lack of self-control. This brought her back to the question which she had asked herself that morning at the Villa Gemignana, when his revolver lay on the table before her—of what was wrong with their love, which at the time had seemed to her so dazzling and perfect. Roffredo’s love, she saw it now, was clearly selfish; it was not the tender and cherishing emotion which she had read of in the works of Miss Charlotte M. Yonge and other Victorian writers, and it was, alas, fatally evident that it was not ‘pure’. But what about hers? What had she loved him for? In the cold light of her disillusionment and the clear-sightedness of pain, at last she asked herself that; and the answer was disquieting. It had not been for any of the qualities which she had been taught all her life to value —not for any special goodness, or gifts of mind or character. She had simply been carried away by his good looks, his gallant bearing, his imperiousness and wit, and the flattery of his making love to her. Oh yes, and more than the mere flattery of that—there was more. Almina did not know that convenient and graceful modern expression ’sense-enchantment’, so she did not use it; but she did at last realise and admit to herself that those dizzy raptures when she was in his arms were more of the body than of the soul. And it might be—shivering a little, she faced the possibility—it might be that if they had been more of the soul, or if she had not so readily and joyously yielded to them, things might never have come to the pass that they had reached at the villa.
To a person with Almina’s st
rong moral preoccupations this was a painful and shocking admission. No one had ever told her that she might expect to feel these things, that the normal body reacts in a particular way to certain forms of stimulus; she had really been brought up as if she were without a body at all. Neither the novelists, nor her Mother, nor her pastors and masters at Oxford had given her any definite guidance in the difficult and delicate matter of discriminating between sense and spirit in loving, nor in the still more difficult and delicate art—whose mastery is almost a life-long task —of learning how to combine the two. The special kinds of honesty and courage and tenderness needed for this task she might perhaps possess; but as she was not really conscious of the nature or even of the existence of the task, she had not used them. Brought up now by life with a cruel and crippling jerk, she began to feel blindly after some rationalisation of this problem—like Giulio, she was accustomed to live by the mind, but her mind, like his, found this set of facts rather too much for it. She got a little way, far enough to cause her great distress; but anything like clear vision or even light breaking beyond was so far denied to her.