Enchanter's Nightshade

by Ann Bridge

  The Marchesa Suzy surveyed the pair with a sort of amused impatience. Really, Roffredo might have better taste than to start a flirtation with the governess! And Postiche, too, with her mousy ways—could she be allowing herself to receive attentions on the sly? That sort of thing would never do; it would have to be put a stop to, if it were really so. Her years of triumphant beauty made it difficult for her to believe seriously in the success of another woman in her own house.

  Suzy’s immediate and instinctive method of putting a stop to it was to apply herself to Count Roffredo. By a little ingenious manipulation, a little laughing display of curiosity, she contrived to arrange that she should drive back to Vill’ Alta in his car. Seated beside him, she set to work, and the lively run of her wit, employed on mutual acquaintances in Rome and Milan and on concerns familiar to them both, soon brought him back, as it were, into her orbit—made him show himself, as usual, charmed and amused. As they drove she watched his hands on the wheel. He had very good hands, shapely and strong, with sensitive square-tipped fingers; she noticed their strength and beauty, the fine powdering of golden hairs over the backs, and a little shiver of emotion passed through her. He was very desirable, Roffredo. She made their talk now a little more personal, and got an adequate response; Roffredo himself suggested prolonging their drive by making a détour to Macerbo to see the view. By the time they got back to Vill’ Alta both were in that slightly emotional state which is ready for the next step, and feds it a pity to stop. This was the stage at which Suzy usually terminated an encounter, leaving the man unsatisfied; this evening, however, moved partly by her own feeling, partly by her determination to efface the impression of the afternoon thoroughly, she extended to the young man an invitation to remain to an informal dinner. He accepted, and stayed. During the meal they were a good deal more discreet than they had been on their drive, but there was enough possession in the Marchesa’s manner to make Almina distinctly uncomfortable; and when coffee was over the girl was glad enough to plead the excuse of fatigue to quit a field where it was impossible for her to go, so to speak, into action.

  In the house her room was still hot, and she felt vaguely restless. She shepherded Marietta to bed, and then, throwing a scarf round her shoulders, she slipped downstairs, floated like a shadow through the dusk of the hall, treading unthinkingly on the tessellated Mars and Venus, and went out onto the southern terrace; passing round under the eastern wing she went on to the ridge leading towards Odredo. Away to the north-west a warm glow made the stone pines stand out, sharp black mushroom-shaped stencillings against the gold-stained sky; to the east another glow, more silvery, showed where the moon would soon rise. It was very warm; the summer night was full of fragrances from the thyme in the grass, from the resinous needles of the pines and from the privet lower down on the northern slopes. She left the path presently, and in the shelter of an arbutus dropped onto the dry grass—leaning back against its red trunk she stared up at the sky overhead. How lovely it was here, she thought— and how beyond measure lovely it would have been if he could be here with her. But in the sense he was, still—his words still rang in her head, the pressure of his hands and lips came back to her with dizzying force. Oh yes, this was love all right, the girl thought, feeling her heart beat, feeling the strangest sensations shake her all over at the memory of those words and those kisses. Poor child, no one had ever warned her of the heady magic of sense-enchantment pure and simple, and she had no previous experience to go on—she took her body’s testimony as the heart’s faithful witness. She linked her very spirit with this untried experience—watching the great stars, imperceptibly shifting their position among the delicate pattern of the arbutus boughs overhead, she had a sudden vision of the wheeling earth, revolving in a universe whose size made her gasp, but where love, however small, and linked to this little earth, blazed down the ages, itself a star. Now this was hers—she shared it; and she told herself that her love must arise and shine, be faithful and unafraid, and not let small trials like the Marchesa’s manner to Roffredo dim its glow.

  That lady, meanwhile, had been making her own use of this summer evening. The terrace emptied gradually of its after-dinner occupants, but even in the gloom under the ilex where she lay idly in her hammock, rocked by Roffredo, it was rather raked by the windows of the house, and eventually she proposed a stroll. They too took the path along the Odredo ridge. Success with a man always went a little to Suzy’s head, lit up her beauty like a torch; and she was succeeding with Roffredo. As they walked along now, her face pale, her eyes splendid in the dusk, she was infinitely alluring; her scent, her warm low laugh, were intoxicating. He took small freedoms, with her scarf, her fan; she permitted them, laughing at him while she did so. They came presently to one of the many seats with which the ridge was dotted, and sat down. Her hand was stretched along the back, and—“How beautiful your hands are,” the young man observed, looking thoughtfully at it.

  “Well, hands are always something!” she returned, with the merry irony which was one of her strong suits. “For an engineer, you are getting quite expressive, Roffredo.”

  “There are other and perhaps better ways of expressing oneself than in words,” the young man answered; he was at once stirred and provoked by her manner and her presence. And, as she merely continued to laugh, with a brusque movement he took her in his arms and kissed her, with a vigour which had an element of temper in it. She neither yielded nor resisted; gave her lips but not her mouth; supple and pliant, she was self-possessed even in his arms. But she was stirred all the same—his youth and strength, his healthy mouth, his off-hand ways woke a deep secret response in her. And when, the long kiss over, she rose and led him back to the house, letting him know amiably that he was a fool and rather uncouth, in her heart she was telling herself that she would let this go on, for a little while at least.

  But Almina, crouched under her group of arbutus, had seen everything—seen, in the strengthening moonlight, the laughing gradual approach of her employer and the young man to whom she had just been dedicating her whole love, his hand playing with the end of her scarf; seen, with dismay, the pair settle down on a seat so close to her that she could not escape without being observed; and while she was still debating what to do, seen, with the incredulity of absolute pain, the Marchesa gathered in Roffredo’s arms. Propped against the arbutus trunk she stared at the impossible sight, unable to look away—then she hid her face in her hands, and crouched lower, shivering as if with cold, waiting for the sounds of their departure.

  They did not stay long. When they had gone, and the last murmur of voices had died away along the path, she sat up and looked about her. The pines, the flecks of moonlight on the pale grass, the great steady stars overhead were the same as half an hour before, but the girl looked at them with unbelieving and alienated eyes. In particular she stared at the now empty seat. The shock of what she had seen had been very great. It was not only her personal feelings which were wounded, at the very moment of their unfolding; all her instincts, all the traditions of her upbringing were scorched by the sudden picture of this double infidelity. This was far worse than the unknown Marchese Pipo’s unfaithfulness to his wife, because it was so much nearer; this was the mother of her pupil, the mistress of the house she lived in—a woman whom she saw daily, who had been kind to her—whom she had seen in the embrace of the man she believed herself to love and be loved by. Sheltered as her life had been, with her narrow experience, shades and grades of feeling meant nothing to her; they had kissed, with passion, so they must love. Then what had Roffredo meant that afternoon? Oh, but she could not remember that now! It was profanation. She must bury to-day for ever, never think of it again. This was the end. She had been imprudent, foolish—oh, but what did it all mean? her heart cried against these arguments. Why kiss her, why speak so to her, if he did not love her? Who would not have believed him? Had she been so foolish?

  But the thought of folly and imprudence reminded her of her mother—and with the m
emory the thought of her life at home, so safe and certain and straightforward, came sharply to her. Tears came then, of home-sickness almost as much as of misery; she sat for a long time, sobbing, under the arbutus. She was roused by hearing the uncertain chugging of an engine in the distance; that was Roffredo, going home in his car. The sound brought a fresh sense of misery and humiliation, followed by something like anger. Well, she thought, dabbing her eyes with a soaked handkerchief, she had learned her lesson—she would never be made a fool of again. And with this frail buttress against the flood of her unhappiness she went indoors.

  In the hall she encountered the Marchesa. The great chandelier was only half-lit on these summer evenings, but even by its dim light Suzy saw that the girl had been crying; her face was very white, surely? A sudden uncomfortable suspicion crossed her mind.

  “You have been out?” she said. “I thought you had gone to bed.”

  “I went up, but it was so hot, I went out again,” Almina said.

  “Not far, I hope?” the Marchesa said smoothly, but rather repressively.

  “Only in the garden,” the girl replied; she and Marietta always regarded the ridge as a sort of annexe of the garden. The Marchesa did not, and the reply satisfied her. Wishing Almina a good night’s rest, she let her go on upstairs. But as she went into her husband’s study to administer her usual goodnight kiss, she remained a little disconcerted. What was Postiche crying about? And she certainly had looked very white.

  Chapter Twelve

  The picnic to Castel Vecchio was the last gaiety at Vill’ Alta for some little time. A couple of days later, members of the family began to arrive for the consiglio difamiglia. The diplomat son arrived from Brussels with his wife, a lively Frenchwoman who treated the whole thing as a rather amusing novelty; the playwright son arrived from Paris, and sat scribbling at small sheets of manuscript all the time, even, furtively, during the actual discussions; the cardinal son came from Rome, an austere and rather splendid figure, who amused Suzy by showing at least as much concern for the welfare of his little Pekingese as for that of his brother’s immortal soul; Nadia came, graceful and silent as ever; Anastasia, the sister who had married a Colonna, came without her husband—he had, she explained to Suzy, no settled convictions on such subjects; the lawyer came, a little withered man with an apologetic manner, which became dogmatic when he felt sure of his ground, as in the matter of settlements; finally, at the very last moment, Pipo himself arrived, lively, breezy and amusing. Before he came, however, Marietta and Miss Prestwich had been despatched to Odredo, to be out of the way. “You see, it is essential that you avoid contact with the leper,” Elena observed to them laughing. Almina winced a little at this levity. Her last picture of the Marchesa Nadia had been sitting in one of the high-backed brocaded chairs of the salone, on the evening before they left, while the tide of family talk flowed about her, the fingers of her right hand—her hands that were usually so still—moving to and fro, to and fro, over the broad carved arm, with a curious uncertain movement, as if she were feeling her way in the dark. The girl had found something strangely distressing in that one movement of the silent, impassive, beautiful figure; even in her own unhappiness, she could not get the memory of it out of her head.

  Meanwhile at Vill’ Alta the discussions, public and private, took their slow and formal course, to the accompaniment of long elaborate meals, when everyone behaved as if nothing out of the way were going on, and it was an ordinary houseparty. There was a very general concern as to the effect of the unwonted disturbance on the old Marchesa; her health and her appetite and her sleep were almost as much canvassed as Nadia’s relations to her husband. In fact, the old lady was really enjoying herself hugely. The tide of human affairs, of family life, was flowing warmly and strongly about her, active and interesting; she found it most agreeably reviving. She liked having all her surviving children with her too, especially Filippo, the cardinal, who had always been her favourite. He had more vitality and energy than any of the others, except Pipo, and more intelligence than he; Filippo was a true Vill’ Alta, she thought, watching him contentedly as he sat in her room of a morning—he, alone of all the family, had the privilege of coming to take his chocolate with her before she was up. His noble head had something about it of the fierce intelligence of a Roman bust of the great early period, but made suave by the addition of that strange blend of diplomacy and theology which is the traditional equipment of the sons of the Roman Church; sitting, in his scarlet robe, bending to feed Lao T’su, the little dog, with fragments of roll dipped in the chocolate, he would look up at her and make some remark, with a wise smile of intimate understanding that warmed both her heart and her intelligence through and through. Ah, she could have wished him to marry, Filippo, the flower of the flock!—and leave sons of his own sensibility and intellect and energy to carry on the Vill’ Alta tradition. Because who was there? Pipo had only his little girl; Edoardo, the playwright, had not married—he stuck faithfully to his French mistress, the actress; and Antonio’s boy was a finicking creature, pure French, wholly the son of his mother, and with, already, a tiresome diplomatic manner which sat on him as absurdly as the red coat on an organgrinder’s monkey. There was only Marietta who was really a true Vill’ Alta, among the grandchildren—and she was a girl. Strange how little they bred in this generation; and she had had fourteen children! Pipo had been her chief hope— and now with all this fuss, there was but little chance of Nadia’s giving him another child. As that thought came to her, she sighed.

  “What is it, Mama?” Filippo asked, at the small sound.

  “I was wondering what had come over you all nowadays, that you don’t breed,” the old lady said a little impatiently; “there’s not a child apiece between the lot of you!”

  “I can’t help that, Mama.”

  “No—more’s the pity!” She twinkled back at his amused smile. “But Pipo could have had a fine family, if he were not such a fool. Nadia is strong, and she is a splendid mother; she suckled Francesca for nine months.”

  “Did she? That was well,” the priest said with approval. “But I am not surprised. She is a good woman.”

  “She is a very tiresome one,” the old lady said, with a return of her usual irritation on the subject of Nadia. “Why must she make all this to-do? Her situation is a very common one! Others have put up with it quietly, and borne a family of children to occupy themselves with. No, no, none of your mortal sin, and what the Church allows!” she went on holding up her little old hand, as her son made as if to speak. “You know as well as I do, my dear Filippo, that what I say is true. And the Church’s rules have really nothing to do with it! It is a matter of common-sense.”

  “Mama, you are a shocking bad Catholic, and I ought not to listen to you!” the priest said, rising. “No, Lao T’su—no more.” He went over, and kissed the little arbitrary wrinkled hand with much affection. “In this case, the Church and common-sense stand on the same side,” he went on, “as often happens! Here Pipo is really in the wrong; and you know it, and so do I, and so does he. And he must put it right—if he can. If you want grandchildren, talk to him yourself, and tell him he must give up this affair. His wife is his wife; he married her; and for good or ill, she is not the sort of person who can endure such a situation. I have watched her—she is almost at the end of her forces.” His voice suddenly grew stern. “And by his act—the wife whom he swore to cherish! No, Mama—he has no excuse; let him do his duty.”

  From Filippo alone would the old Marchesa have accepted such language. Quietly, almost submissively, she said— “Very well, my son. But will you not also speak to him?”

  “I have. I have pointed out his duty. But he respects me little more than you do, Mama! He says”—there was a curious bland smile that was somehow almost painful about the splendid mouth as he spoke—“that I know nothing of the life of a man! You will do better.”

  “Pipo is a fool,” said the old lady, with the deepest conviction. And she took occasion to s
peak to him privately, which she did with her usual ruthless firmness. “Since, of your own choice, you have married such a wife, you must act accordingly,” she told him. “No one chose her for you— you did the thing yourself.”

  Indeed, both in the general conferences—sitting round the great table in the big library, with its huge carved and painted beams crossing the ceiling—and in private talks, the alternatives were set so squarely before the Marchese Pipo that not even his cheerful suppleness could evade them. He must give up La Panelli, or face the disagreeableness of a separation. Suzy, with her usual merciful common-sense, was all for a separation, thinking that it would be, in the end, the best for Nadia’s peace of mind; and in this she was supported by the Cardinal. But Antonio, the diplomat, abetted by his wife, was dead against it; so was Anastasia; Edoardo and Paolo, the two bachelors, unexpectedly and to Suzy’s mind rather absurdly came out with a united declaration in die same sense; and, more formidably, La Vecchia Marchesa declared herself unalterably opposed to such a course. The Marchese Francesco stubbornly refused to express an opinion; he merely sat at the head of the table, and asked for, and listened to, the views of others. It was impossible to find out what Pipo really wanted; Nadia, whenever addressed, merely repeated very quietly—“I should prefer to separate.” But in the end family opinion was too strong for her, or for Pipo either, for that matter. He agreed, with his usual insouciance, to give up his liaison with the Countess Panelli; there was to be no separation. He and Nadia were to return to Bologna together and “try to make it work.” Suzy kissed her and wished her well, whispering, “Come to me whenever you want to breathe”; the Cardinal gave her his blessing, formally, and informally murmured—“God be with you, my child,” when he bade her goodbye; La Vecchia Marchesa kissed her briskly, and adjured both her and Pipo to have another baby as fast as possible. And Nadia, still gracious, still silent, bowed her head and went away beside her husband. Gradually, unhurriedly, the rest followed, for their various destinations. The consiglio difamiglia was over.