Enchanter's Nightshade

by Ann Bridge

  The two Countesses were not the sort of people to be of much help in this situation. Both meant to be kind—in a way both were kind to her; but the difference between the English and Italian mentalities was a great obstacle, besides the girl’s youth and shyness. Neither realised the sort of help she needed, nor would either really have been capable of giving it. Roma’s inquisitive prying into her feelings was as useless as Aspasia’s bland moral unconcern:—young men would be young men, Roffredo was particularly thoughtless, and she, Almina, peculiarly unlucky. This was almost more comfortless than their busy practical curiosity as to whether she was going to have a baby or not. When the Countess came in of a morning after she had breakfasted and enquired briskly if she felt at all sick, Almina could at least say honestly and with relief that she did not. From the two spinsters, indeed, who were fairly well-informed in such matters, she did at last learn the main facts about reproduction; but it was a poor way of doing it—the ladies were not scientific, and the context, usually scandalous, made the whole subject violently distasteful to the English girl. For their practical benevolence, for putting a roof over her head and getting her money for her, for their general supervision of her and her affairs she was deeply and silently grateful, and for Aspasia, with her healthy bluntness, her cheerfulness and her strong character, she was beginning to feel a certain genuine affection. But as far as her own private problems were concerned, during those days of Suzy’s illness Almina was very miserably alone.

  There was one person in the Province who was even more alone, just then, than Miss Prestwich, and that was Suzy herself. Who can say where the sick go during the long days and hours of acute illness? Watching them, one has the feeling that they are neither here nor there—words do not reach them, their responses—a hand flung out, a slight movement, low confused sounds from the lips—seem to be to some other stimulus than that of our compassionate speech. What does the spirit do, then? Does it move in some world of its own, or does it lie dormant, dulled by the same heavy confusion that clouds the brain? The sick can seldom say, for the brain is the channel through which we communicate the movements of the spirit, either to ourselves or to others—the words, the ideas in which we try to clothe those experiences are furnished by the brain’s mechanism. But from all human communication, once illness has blanketed the brain’s activity, the sick are cut off. So Suzy lay, alone in her own world, with who knows what bitter companionship of thought drawn from her last conscious experiences.

  To those beside her—to the old Marchesa and to Francesco —this withdrawnness was peculiarly troubling. The old Marchesa, like most healthy old people, disliked the very sight of illness; all the complicated apparatus of poultices and gamgee jackets filled her with alarmed distaste. But far more distressing was the strange feeling of impotence; seeing Suzy there before her, and yet not there, not within reach of her love and sorrow, utterly unresponsive to speech or touch. As the days drew on towards the crisis, though the fever persisted and even rose, a great weakness checked the clearer signs of delirium—there was hardly any evidence of mental life at all, no sounds but those moaning unsyllabled breaths. During the final twenty-four hours they would not let the old lady go into the room—the Sister on duty sat, her fingers lightly on the wrist to note the pulse, her head bent low to mark the breathing, watching, waiting, trying to gauge whether the body would have enough resistance left to survive the shock when the temperature came down with a crash. On Sunday night the doctor stayed in the house; he forced Giacinta to give the old Marchesa a sleeping-draught in her evening glass of warmed wine, after which she was put, unresisting, to bed—he was almost as anxious about “La Vecchia” as he was about his patient. As a result the old lady slept deeply and long; when she woke, she at once sent Giacinta to enquire for the night’s news. A few moments later there was a tap on her door, and the Marchese Francesco walked in. He was still in his flowered dressing-gown, his beard untrimmed, his thin hair anyhow, but his face was luminous with happiness. “It is past,” he said. “It is past, and she lives! She is terribly weak, but she lives. Oh, Mama”— and the poor man knelt down by her bed and put his dishevelled grey head in her lap, as he used to do when the hair was brown and thick, sixty years before, and fairly sobbed in his relief.

  Messengers to enquire had been coming all that week from all over the Province, and from Odredo and Castellone at least twice a day; by midday on Monday it was fairly generally known in the neighbourhood that the crisis was past and that the Marchesa Suzy was going to recover. At about five o’clock a little pencilled note was brought up to the old Marchesa, who had had her first good afternoon nap for several days, conveying warm congratulations on the news from the Countess Aspasia, and asking whether the Marchesa felt equal to receiving her in person for a few moments? “I, too, have some good news for you,” the note concluded.

  The old Marchesa sent a message requesting her to come up —after the solitude and anxiety of the past week she felt quite in the mood to see Aspasia. When the usual flow of greetings and congratulations was over, and a full account of the course of Suzy’s illness had been given by the old Marchesa, and almost visibly pocketed by the Countess Aspasia, “And what is your good news, my dear Aspasia? Is it about her?” the old lady asked.

  “Yes, Marchesa. It is all right, the Virgin be thanked! That, at least, that poor child is spared.”

  “I am glad. I am thankful,” the old lady said gravely. “Poor little creature, she is a good girl—I cannot feel that she was really much in fault. Tell me, how is she?”

  “She is relieved, of course, but she is still low in herself,” the Countess replied. “I think that morally, the thing preys very much on her mind,” she added, with unexpected penetration. “She was childishly innocent, ignorant, about all such matters—really, it is ridiculous! She knew nothing! I cannot think what her Mother was about.”

  “You know what the English are,” the old Marchesa countered, with a fine inflection of disdain. “Since the little Victoria came to the throne, they decided that to ignore love would save young girls from the consequences of it! This is, in fact, an error.” She considered, and tapped. “For any girl, however, this is a trying experience,” she pursued. “So she frets. You can do nothing?”

  “I have tried. But the English are so reticent! She is dumb as an animal about her feelings,” the Countess said, with quite unresentful detachment. “She is perfectly gentle, and docile, and good-tempered—but when she is alone, she just sits and looks! It is not good for her. It may be better when she goes home.”

  “In my opinion, she should not go home just yet,” the old lady said. “My dear Aspasia, you have done a good work for that little thing—could you continue it for a week or so more? I should like a little time to consider—I think I might possibly arrange something. But perhaps this is inconvenient?”

  The Countess Aspasia assured her that it was not in the least inconvenient.

  “Va bene. I am obliged to you. These last few days, with Suzy so ill, I have done nothing. But now—I must see,” she repeated.

  The old Marchesa’s “seeing” involved, in the first place, the writing or two or three letters, and a brief and rather acid interview with Count Carlo. She told him roundly that he must now let Giulio have his wish, and go to Oxford. She did not mince her words. “His being mewed up at home in this old-fashioned way, with a sister and a governess, was always ridiculous; now it is become impossible. You must let him go.”

  Count Carlo did not like the idea, and was unwise enough to advance one or two arguments against it. They were decisively dealt with. At last—“And if he goes to England, who knows but that he may marry this girl, Postiche. He is mad about her. What then?” he asked, with a comically dismayed face.

  “What then? He marries then the granddaughter of an English peer, whose misfortunes are due solely to the very discreditable behaviour of your nephew and your mistress,” the old lady retorted, suddenly angry. “Yes, and I have this further to say to
you, Carlo—this affair with Suzy must now stop. It is enough. Marry again, if you must, or take a mistress in Venice; but this business en famille I will not stand.” Quelled and routed, the unhappy man eventually agreed to both propositions—he was mopping his brow with his fine cambric handkerchief as he walked down the broad staircase after leaving La Vecchia’s room.

  The old Marchesa’s next move was to send, on the following day, for Giulio. In a rather curious way, it was precisely her tender and protective feeling for Suzy, her sense that she had somehow been tripped up by Life and betrayed her better self, which was making the old lady so energetic in her efforts to straighten out the tangle and repair, as far as possible, the damage that had been done. Almost unconsciously, she felt that if most of the damage could be repaired, Suzy’s wrongdoing would in some way become less. Certainly she would have less to regret, when she was well enough to think of such things again. (At present she still lay, weak and helpless, supported on champagne and sips of brandy and milk—but, to the old woman’s infinite relief, once more conscious, there, capable of comprehension and response.) The old Marchesa’s efforts were of course partly due to the intelligent person’s impatient dislike to seeing other people make fools of themselves, and muddle up their lives. Nearly a century of observation of this process had made the old lady unusually intolerant of it; but till recently, beyond occasional caustic criticisms she had looked on with ironic detachment, only interfering rarely, and in the most immediate and urgent cases —she recognised, as she had said to Elena, that playing Providence was usually a dangerous as well as a thankless game. But now some obscure impulse seemed to be driving her on to this remedial activity in all directions. She told herself, half in excuse, that it would be agreeable if these family matters could be made reasonably tidy before her birthday, now only a few days off. She did not want any distresses and disturbances to spoil that day.

  With Giulio and his lovesick condition she felt peculiarly impatient, and she awaited him in a rather irritable mood. He must go to Oxford, of course; nevertheless it was tiresome of him to have caused these extra complications, to worry Fräulein Gelsicher, and to have blurted out everything about the little Prestwich to her darling Marietta. But when the boy actually walked into her room, impatience and irritation died. She was shocked by his appearance; he had a peculiar stricken look, and when he sat down and began to speak, the curious uncontrolled inflections of his voice and the movements of his hands suddenly made her realise that his nervous condition was really serious. He must be got out of it somehow, and quickly.

  It was a rather curious interview. The old lady felt more out of touch with Giulio, with his books and his philosophy, than with any of her other young relations; but in the end she managed to reach him. She began by talking to him about going to Oxford, and was further disturbed by his listlessness and lack of enthusiasm at the prospect. “I thought you wished so much to go, but you do not seem very glad,” she said at length. “Is it because you are so unhappy about Miss Prestwich?”

  Giulio winced. “Yes, Bonne-Mama,” he said.

  “H’m,” said the old lady. “I thought you were to be a philosopher. Philosophers don’t go all to pieces because they are hurt.”

  “You are thinking about the Stoics,” the boy said gloomily, argumentative even in his sadness. “And, in any case, it is more for—more for her that I mind, than for myself; that is what I can’t get over.”

  “Bother the Stoics!” said the old Marchesa sharply. “And I fancy, Giulio, that you are deceiving yourself. Miss Prestwich has had a cruel experience, which has caused us all distress; but, as it most fortunately turns out, it will have no serious or lasting consequences. Do you understand me?” she asked, looking very directly at him.

  “Yes. I am glad. Oh, I am very glad,” he said, with more animation that he had yet shown. “If it had been otherwise—” and he covered his face with his hands.

  The old lady watched him in silence for a few moments, and then asked him some exceedingly direct questions about himself and his feelings for Miss Prestwich. At first he hedged, but in the end the whole tangled mass of wretchedness and misery came pouring out, as pus follows the probe out of a wound. When he had finished, with a brisk “Now listen to me, my dear Giulio,” the old Marchesa took up her parable, and gave him some of her views on life and love. They were extremely astringent, and they were not Giulio’s views, but there was a quality about them which startled him. He felt that this old woman, who had been looking at life for nearly a hundred years, had acquired empirically something of the detachment, the philosophic outlook which he had been seeking through books and learning. This was a new aspect of her, and he listened with respect. She was very open with him. “Your real trouble is pure masculine possessiveness— another has taken what you love. So now you feel that she is spoiled, second-hand—is it not so?” And when, rather shamefacedly, he admitted it—“But that is fundamentally all nonsense,” she exclaimed vigorously; “especially since she will not have a child. Men have always these ideas! We should be in fine case, we women, if we could no longer look at a man because he had taken some other woman! Do not feel this, my child; it is a false feeling. A loose woman is one thing—a girl whom misfortune has overtaken is quite another. This is a good girl, whatever happened to her, just once. Once! Good Heavens!—and our husbands deceive us once a week, and we smile and bear them children! And at my age, are still glad that we did. No—be at peace; presently you shall see her, before she goes—I will arrange it. And if, after a time, you find that you love her still—well, you will be in England, and no doubt you will be able to meet her. In the meantime, you will have your Oxford.” She paused; then—“In any case, for all your life remember this—do not exaggerate the importance of the body. Dio mio, have we souls, or have we not? And with which does the good God concern himself?”

  These preachments did Giulio a great deal of good. She had laid strong and even rather ruthless hands on those feelings which everyone else, in shrinking compassion, had not dared to touch directly, but it seemed to him, even as he listened, that this was exactly what he had been needing. She had seen so much; she was so little and so old—one had to believe her, and belief in what she said was comforting and somehow cleansing. He thanked her, and was beginning to wonder if he ought not to be taking his leave, when suddenly she spoke of Marietta. She asked how the child was, and when Giulio said vaguely that she seemed all right, the old woman snapped out at him with a return of her normal sharpness.

  “She is all right, you think? My good Giulio, have you at all realised, in your concern for your own troubles, what she must be feeling? She too has lost Miss Prestwich, whom, remember, she also loved; and—” she hesitated for a moment—“in addition she is necessarily very unhappy about her mother, precisely on this account. She has had all this to bear, and as well, she is grieving and worrying over you and your unhappiness.” She sat looking rather sternly at him, and when he did not answer, she went on—“Might you not try now to do something to comfort her, to help her in her unhappiness?”

  Giulio looked at her, slightly startled.

  “I don’t think I should be much good at that, Bonne-Mama,” he said slowly. “I—I am very fond of Marietta, she’s a darling; but you see I am not much accustomed to helping people in such ways.”

  “No, I see that clearly. And it is high time that you began,” said the old Marchesa.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Giulio walked very slowly homewards from Vill’ Alta, thinking as he went. Yes, he felt better; he felt encouraged; that poisoning misery and hatred and despair had as it were been washed out of him by that vigorous directness. But the old Marchesa’s matter-of-fact acceptance of his love for Almina, her hint that it might some day come to fruition, and not be frowned upon—this did more to lighten his mood than anything else could have done. The worst part of his misery had actually been the feeling that in Almina’s humiliation his love had been humiliated, that this love itself wa
s somehow tainted and soiled by her disgrace. Whether the old lady realised that or not—she had not said so in so many words, but (unlike the moderns) she frequently did not think it necessary to express all her thought on a subject—she had in fact administered precisely the right treatment for this state of mind. As he strolled along the ridge path through the sun-warmed resinous fragrance of the stone pines, out of sun into soft shadow, out of shadow into patches of sun, he found himself aware, with a sense of pleasure and wellbeing which he had lost for a long time, of the strength of that aromatic scent, the brilliance of the arbutus-berries among their leaves, and a new hope and happiness sprang up within him. Like the Ancient Mariner, and moved by the same unconscious spring of love for the artless beauty of natural things, he blessed them unaware. There is no surer sign of returning mental health than this unexpected willingness to let beauty come in and help.

  Suddenly a new sweetness reached him. He sniffed it appreciatively, and recognised it as the scent of that hedge of ‘rampicante’ near Odredo. He stopped, sniffing again—yes, it was. How extraordinary!—for the hedge was at least threequarters of a mile away. Some light drift of air from the eastward must have carried it all that distance. As he stood, enjoying it, he was startled by a rush of painful feelings which, without any obvious cause, overtook him, shattering for the moment his mood of new-born hope and happiness. What was it? What was wrong? Then, slowly, the memory came back to him of the first time that he had smelt the ‘rampicante’ this year—on his return from that agonised walk to Castellone, after he had been to see Roffredo at the Villa. And as he remembered, the pain, the unreasoning unhappiness sank away again like the outgoing tide. It was not real any more, not with that acuteness—the scent had brought it back, in the strange way that smells and music, above everything else, do bring back emotions associated with them. He walked on again, remembering, calmly now, his talk with Marietta that day. Some of her words came back—what she had said about the person who was tipped out of a boat not having committed suicide. But that—he stopped a second time, astonished, as the thought struck him—that was almost exactly what La Vecchia had said! “A person who is overtaken by misfortune.” And Marietta too had spoken, as the old lady had done, about the soul—something about the unconsenting spirit holding up its head in Purgatory. He walked forward once more, thinking how extraordinary it was that a young girl like Marietta should have had the same ideas about such a situation as the old old woman. Still under the strong impression which the old Marchesa had produced, his little cousin’s words, unheeded at the time, took on a new weight; and he began now to think of what the old lady had said of Marietta and her troubles. Yes—she must indeed be very unhappy; and he had never even thought of that, had done nothing to help her! A rush of real affection and penitence, such as he had hardly ever experienced, warmed his heart still more. Always at odds with his surroundings, the young man’s eager search for the good life had been carried on through the medium of books and thought, rather than in his immediate experience; he had admired moral beauty and hated moral ugliness in those about him, but without making any serious attempt to express this sense of the aesthetics of righteousness in his own person. Now at last the old Marchesa’s words—this one little task which she had set him, to help Marietta—opened his eyes. He began to hurry—he wanted to see Marietta quickly, and tell her about all this, and do whatever he could to comfort her.