“We seem to have put ourselves into a slightly different position from everybody else and they’ve accepted it. Let’s stick to it.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to be presented?”
“Quite sure,” said Constanza. Tales of her mother’s presentation—by the American Ambassadress, at a small Court, the Queen’s expression, Edward VII behind the throne as Prince of Wales—had regaled her childhood. She had no wish to repeat herself the contemporary version of this experience.
“The pageantry. . . .” said Anna.
“I had some of that in our Church.”
“All the same,” said her mother, “there is a meaning in it.”
“Well, you know mama, I’m rather anti-monarchy. Yes, yes, I know it’s extremely mal-vu here, a republican is worse than a socialist—I can’t help it. Constitutional monarchies have their uses, but why keep the trappings? Like primitive and organized religion, and it’s all so bourgeois.”
Anna said, “You haven’t seen their jewels.”
“Perhaps I’m prejudiced because ours is so very jumped up. You can’t expect us to venerate the House of Savoy.”
“They are very fine people and the Crown has given a sense of unity to the Italians.”
“A nice sentiment for a daughter of the American Revolution.”
“Fiddlesticks,” said Anna. “You have no more respect for the United States than you have for your own Royal Family. I’ve heard you poke fun at both. Roman irreverence, that’s all it is.”
Constanza said, “Meno male.”
•
If for her daughter Anna put a bright face on things—much of the time—she did not do so for Mena. Whenever Anna was in her implacable or disconsolate or her restless mood Mena bore the brunt. When Mena had a sad time with her, which Mena felt, Anna would try to make it up by giving her a present.
“That’s a nice bright new alarm clock you have,” said Constanza. “Mama?” Mena nodded. “Oh, dear.” She examined the clock. “Not a very big present, that’s a mercy.”
“I didn’t spend it all on the clock,” said Mena; “I put it by for the nephew’s land.”
“Oh, dear,” said Constanza.
“We are in for another move soon. They’ve asked her to sign a lease.”
“It’s high time.”
“She can’t bear to feel she’s settled.”
“Better than having no home at all.”
“She misses her own.”
“So much?”
Mena said, “She thinks of nothing else.”
“Poor mama.”
Mena added loyally, “Era magnifico.”
“Yes——” said Constanza. “I suppose so. Was is the word, it doesn’t bear thinking about what the house must be like these days. It was always cold, even with mama’s steam heating; and so dark. I’m thinking of the painted ceiling, with luck it was supposed to have held for another eighteen months, two winters; that was when we left. The estimates for saving it were astronomical. With the ceiling gone, they’d have to shut off the salone and the rooms beyond. I cannot imagine how papa has the heart to go on there.”
“My sister writes that everything is in the best of shapes in the palazzo,” said Mena. “They’re always having workmen, Socrate tells her, everything is in repair.”
“All bella figura. Socrate would spread that to save face. I know them.” Secretly Constanza thought it possible that her father was still prosperous with the embezzled money. What surprised her was his spending it on a house he did little except sleep in, and not on Castelfonte.
Mena said, “If I were the Madonna and had the ordering of things, I would make the Signora Principessa live in the palazzo and you could live at Castelfonte with il babbo.”
“I do miss Castelfonte. But I don’t think I want quite that now.”
To their relief, Anna took to travelling again. It was too strong an instinct, and someone had the inspiration to speak of it as her wanderings. From then on it was that. When Anna went off to Montreux in good company, on a Scandinavian cruise or a round of country visits, she was able to chalk it up as part of her burden, a stretch of her life sentence.
Now and then Constanza broached their most stormy subject. Anna always fought it with her own unhappiness. One day Constanza said: “I am going. What kind of daughter have I been! To papa, who has always been good to me. What does it look like?”
“What will it look like for me if you go to him against my wishes.”
“Your wishes are not reasonable. I am not a child. I am a grownup woman.”
“You are not twenty-one,” said Anna, “you cannot go. I have your legal custody.”
“Yes, I gathered that. Surely, mama, that’s a scrap of paper. What you say goes—and you wouldn’t prevent me from seeing my father now?”
“Don’t force me into something,” said Anna.
•
“Signorina Constanza—don’t do it to her.”
“How can I do it to her? And how can I explain to papa?”
“He knows her,” said Mena.
“He used to say, remember? ‘That’s the least we can do—poor woman, all alone in a foreign country!’ ”
•
Constanza and the prince wrote to each other. It was a meagre exchange. They were poor correspondents; they had no life in common; there was too much that each believed he must keep from the other.
•
Constanza came of age in the spring of 1914. At once she made her arrangements. Giorgio was spending the whole of May with them, this time it was she who would take him back. She presented her position simply. “I shall spend this summer with papa. I did not go before because it would have offended you too much; if I do not go now I shall be offending him.”
“And what will the world say if you rush off to him the minute you are free?”
“What you tell it to. It always has.”
It became their first clash of wills. Anna went into the now familiar cycle. She kept to her room, refused trays. Soon poor Mena was beside herself. “She really doesn’t eat. One day she will starve herself to death.” Constanza went ahead.
Giorgio had a wretched visit. Constanza took pity on him. She led him to a nearby mews where some of the stables had been converted into garages. Giorgio came home late for his supper, covered in black grease and full of exciting lore. He had made friends with the chauffeurs, his days were no longer a problem.
“How does he get all this stuff about pistons and gaskets?” said Constanza. “He doesn’t speak English.”
“Oh yes, he does!” said Mena.
“We thought he had forgotten.”
“He is furbo.”
“That’s what they said of me.”
“Ah, well. . . .”
Constanza had telegraphed Rome. Then three days before she was due to leave, Giorgio started mumps. In the event no-one else caught the disease, but they all stayed in quarantine for twenty-one days. When these were over, Constanza had capitulated. Fate, she believed, had given too strong a hint; she allowed herself to compromise. Giorgio left without her. The Roman journey was postponed until the autumn. The principessa was jubilant, revived, grateful. Constanza for the first time in her life felt deeply uneasy.
Six weeks later Europe was at war.
•
To Anna and Constanza it was the bitterest blow, the reversal of everything, an end. “So it has come,” they said, “it was possible.” On that first night, the night of the day on which Germany had declared war on Russia, they talked little about sides, about who was right, who was wrong, about the Kaiser, England’s entry or neutrality; they hardly touched on outcome, the future; they talked of what had happened, was happening now, this night, to men and their women, to men entraining, marching now, with rifles, with bayonets, to tear each other’s living flesh.
“Don’t they see it, these decently brought-up gentlemen round their tables, as what it is? Physical blackmail, direct, brutal, primitive blackmail—G
ive up this, apologize for that, or we’ll burn your crops, starve your children, shoot your people to pieces. All blurred by numbers, fine words, divided responsibility, abstract thinking. That is war. War as an instrument of policy. If individuals dared behave, or even talk, like the representatives of nations they’d be shut up and put away.”
Mother and daughter cancelled their engagements, stayed in London and stayed in. They sat together, on that Saturday, in their drawing-room. It happened to be the same house again at Regent’s Park that they had lived in during their first summer. The curtains of those tall windows were undrawn against the long twilight; Anna sat mostly silent, listening to Constanza’s raving.
“Has everybody gone mad—blind—stupid?”
Anna said, “Who can want it? The people cannot really want it?”
“Fat lot of good that does them. We see now that the people have no control over peace or war.”
“They should control the men who have.”
“But they can’t and they didn’t and some of them didn’t even want to. From what we’ve seen in the last week what they want is yell and hate and feel they belong to the biggest puddle with the largest cannon, the biggest place on the map, the brightest flag. Hate, vicarious self-love and the pleasure of being in it.”
“I shall never get over the Social-Democrats in the Reichstag,” said Anna, “voting for the war credits.”
“And the crowds in Paris.”
“They had 1870 to remember. War breeds war.”
“A fine prospect. Mama, unforgivingness breeds war; exploited resentment, treasured grievances. If we don’t learn to forget a wrong no sooner than it’s done or said, if we don’t all of us—privately and collectively—draw a line below the past every day of our lives, we’re going to be sunk. We are sunk.”
Later on, she said, “I’d like to stand back and wash my hands.”
By ten o’clock Mr. James joined them. He thought, he said, he might find them in London. They welcomed him.
“Did you think it could happen?” Constanza asked him.
“In my mind—yes.”
“How did it happen?”
“As it always does: concatenation of circumstances and men’s very considerable propensity for evil.”
Anna had a couple of bottles of wine fetched up for Mr. James and themselves. It was a Moselle. Nobody noticed this.
Mr. James said, “Here’s to civilization.”
Constanza said, “No toasts.”
“Is there any chance at all that it can still be stopped?” said Anna. “If the British Government and my country and the Pope and the Scandinavians were to make an appeal——?”
“No.”
“There is no chance,” Constanza said, “of the crowds smashing up the Chancelleries and the women lying down before the mobilization trains? No chance of the men stopping in the factories, the soldiers refusing to shoot and the General Staff tearing up their plans and bursting into tears? No chance of Poincaré and the Czar and old Francis-Joseph and Kaiser Bill having second thoughts?”
“No.”
“We were near it in 1911,” said Anna, “and it didn’t come.”
“That it has happened is never proof that it had to happen,” said Constanza.
“It didn’t look at all inevitable even two days ago,” said Anna.
“When I was a child I used to wonder why God never spoke to us when necessary in a direct loud voice. Today would have been the moment.”
“One more voice in the wilderness.”
“Mr. James, what is wrong with human affairs?”
“Too many, discovering too much, too soon.”
“Giorgio. Millions and millions of Giorgios, equipped with high explosives, printing presses, wireless telegraphy.”
“What can we do?” said Anna.
“Learn to be wise and kind,” said Constanza.
“Wait for Evolution,” said Mr. James.
“Meanwhile break the machines,” said Constanza.
“Giorgio wouldn’t stand for that.”
“It is the abyss?”
“An instalment,” said Mr. James.
“Is it the worst thing that ever happened?”
“Quantitatively speaking, it may turn out to be. Intentions have been worse, a good deal worse; it’s the material power now that is so immeasurably greater.”
“Must power always be for destruction?” said Anna. “That has so far been largely the experience.” “Torture was worse,” said Constanza. “Judicial torture, every form of torture. But is it so very different to be wounded and maimed in a war?”
“You are a hero and belong, instead of being a martyr or a criminal.”
“Or a conscript. Don’t forget that the French, the German and the Russian are all conscript armies. You haven’t seen our people at Castelfonte being marched off to military service.”
This gave their thoughts a new turn.
“I pray that Italy will not come in with the Germans,” said Anna.
“I pray that Italy will not come in,” said Constanza.
“Tonight,” said Mr. James, “we, the three of us here, are neutrals; three neutral nationals. . . .”
They sat up late, drinking their wine. At one point Anna spoke of her father. They felt tender about one another, each lucid and tender about the others’ vulnerability. When Mr. James left, he said he would walk. Constanza let him out. He kissed her.
“Your coming of age hasn’t brought you much good so far,” he said, “has it?”
“No,” she said, “I’ve thought of that, too. Well, luckily, I was never one who could not wait for time to pass.”
3
THROUGHOUT the war Constanza remained, and called herself, a pacifist. Some people broke with her, she quarrelled with a few of her friends, with some she quarrelled occasionally. Many bore with her, some did not take her seriously, others became of her mind; she made new friends, slightly shifted her circles. In other respects her war was like the war of most young women of her London world. The immediate surprise of things going on as they were, the adjustment, the shock of the first losses; things no longer going on as they were and the adjustment to that; the tension, the heightening, the drabness, the excitement, the dark stretches, the waiting, the routine; the acceleration of living, emotions, decisions. She worked at a canteen and later for an organization in aid of prisoners of war, sent parcels to the front, helped entertain enlisted men, fell in and out of love more rapidly and violently than she had done before and often enjoyed herself very much. Half of her friends, half of the men she knew and loved, were killed. The war from any concrete point turned out infinitely worse than she or anybody had envisaged. The sense of revulsion, the inner conviction that all of it was wrong, outside the scheme of sanity, never left her, she was never quite without some consciousness of the split between her life and that of the trenches and the men in them. Yet she did not feel again with that intensity, that clarity of detached despair that had united the three of them on that first night at Regent’s Park.
•
Some weeks after the German invasion of Belgium, Anna said, “Forgive my bringing this up. I don’t want to involve you in these things, Constanza, but I should like to have your approval and it does concern you too. I’d like to talk to you about my investments. You see, Jack writes he wants to change them; he says the events are bound to be reflected in the United States economy. He wants me to switch over chiefly into steel, and Mr. Baxter, the dear vice-president of our bank, I mean I remember him as vice-president when I was a girl, actually he’s been president these last twelve years, and now the dear man is dead and his son, who is vice-president, is the new trustee and he wants us to keep pace and anticipate the boom he foresees in certain heavy industries, and I don’t feel that I ought to——”
“Mama, can we get this clear? Are you supposed to change your investments because of the war or because of the new Mr. Baxter?”
“Well, both I suppose.”
> “And you object to making money out of the war? But not to the new broom?”
“Jack says he’s brilliant. I’m glad you see it my way. No, I don’t want to put a cent into something that may turn into a war industry. I don’t mean I don’t want to give to the war, Constanza; I cannot see that we have any choice now except to fight and beat the Germans; but I don’t want to profit by it. As everything I have will come to you—and Giorgio, if he proves himself capable of responsibility—I want to know how you feel about it.”
“You know my views, mama.”
“I am very glad,” said Anna. “It may mean a heavy loss.”
“Well, we can’t think of that,” said Constanza. “What are you in now?”
“A good deal is in Russian Railways and in soap.”
“Soap?”
“Apparently it does very well. Not the soap we wash with, darling. Laundry soap.”
“I thought that was made at home. Obviously not. Let that pass. I should keep the soap, then, and get out of the Russian Railways. Get rid of those. Somehow, I don’t like the idea of them at all.”
“The old Mr. Baxter was very keen on them. I felt it was bolstering despotism.”
“Well, tell the brilliant young Mr. B. that Russian Railways are out. He can buy more soap. Do they listen to you? Do they have to?”
“Perhaps not strictly under the terms of the trust, but I hardly think they’d like going against my wishes. And there is another matter I want to talk to you about. I wanted to break the trust—they won’t let me—it seems it can’t be done—my father and the uncles made explicit provision against that. Now I want to go into capital.”
“Haven’t you?” said Constanza. “That was Aunt Emily, the bit that was not tied up. They won’t let me sell out anything else, or only driblets, and we can’t live on the income.”
“Do we live too expensively?”
“We live simply,” said Anna, “simply and decently.”
“We may not live like millionaires, but I’m under the impression that we live like the rich.”
“You know nothing about such matters,” said her mother.
“I’d be quite good at figures, if you gave me any. Mama, if we ought to retrench, as they say, let me help you.”
A Favourite of the Gods and a Compass Error Page 14
