Enchanter's Nightshade

by Ann Bridge

  The old Marchesa looked at him for a long time in silence, with a very curious expression on her face. It was not like a monkey, this time—there was an odd softness in her look. But at length—“Roffredo, I had no idea that you had so much common-sense,” she said drily. Then she reverted to the matter in hand. She took the letter from him, and looked at it again.

  “Very curious,” she said, examining it. “So it was a trick. H’m! Someone has been behaving very badly. Suzy went to this precious rendezvous, and somehow got wet through; and she had to walk home, alone. Today she is ill. Had you heard this?”

  Roffredo had not heard a word. He expressed proper concern, asked all the right questions.

  “The Doctor comes again this evening,” the old lady said. “I am afraid it is grave, but we shall know more then.” She looked at the letter again. “But who can have written this?”

  “Who? There is only one person in the Province who could have-written that,” the young man said, energetically— “and naturally she will have had her knife into Suzy over all this; she was devoted to Miss Prestwich. Of course, it is my cousin Elena.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  La Vecchia Marchesa was not as familiar with Elena’s activities in the matter of forgery as might have been supposed. Fräulein Gelsicher was deeply shamed by them, and had always done her utmost to prevent accounts of them from getting about; and the awe in which even Elena stood of the old Marchesa had been sufficient hitherto to protect the household at Vill’ Alta from any direct attacks, except occasionally one on Marietta—about those the little girl giggled subsequently with her cousins, but held her peace to her elders. The Sorellone had once been victimized, but about such things the victims themselves are wont to be rather silent; it was therefore a well-known joke among the younger branches of the Castellone clan, but was more or less confined to them.

  When Roffredo had gone the old lady read the letter again, carefully. The handwriting was a perfect imitation, the phrasing diabolically clever. It was just what one might have expected a young man to write, in all the circumstances. With the curious detachment of the very old, she even paid the document the compliment of giving her little dry chuckle over it. But it was essential to find out what had happened, for Suzy’s sake and Francesco’s, and she despatched yet another note, this time to Fräulein Gelsicher, demanding that Elena be sent over in the carriage immediately to see her.

  Fräulein Gelsicher was slightly mystified by the note, but at once did as she was asked. Elena was not; the news of the Marchesa Suzy’s illness had reached Odredo, by the usual channels, during the early afternoon, and the usual futile efforts to prevent Marietta from hearing of it had been initiated—efforts more futile than usual, since Count Carlo was plunged by the tidings into a babbling distress. In her secret heart Elena was slightly dismayed; she was also full of curiosity as to what had happened; but she was equally full of a certain determination. She put on a neat frock, tidied her hair, and set off, without comment, in the carriage.

  La Vecchia Marchesa was inclined to think rather highly of Elena. She did not put her on the same shelf as Marietta, but she liked her trimness of appearance, her liveliness, her uncomplicated fearless sagacity, her rather mechante wit. When the girl had made her curtsey, tendered her rosy blooming cheek for the routine kiss, and seated herself, with a twitch of her white skirts and the correct side-by-side emplacement of her white shoes (young girls in Italy thirty years ago were not encouraged to cross even their ankles) the old lady regarded her, far from inimically, for a moment before opening fire. Yes, she was a proper Castellone—full of spirit, fine and wellset-up; a fit cousin to Roffredo. How that flimsy creature Carlo came to have such a daughter! However, discipline had to be administered, and facts established. She set to work, with her usual determination.

  “My child, I have sent for you to ask you some questions, which you will have the goodness to answer accurately,” she began. “On Saturday my daughter-in-law, Suzy, received a letter, purporting to come from your cousin Roffredo, inviting her to meet him last night at a certain ruin in the little wood near his Villa, by what I believe they call the Holy Well. The letter urged her to dismiss her carriage, as he would bring her home. She went, and sent the man back. What happened there, I do not know—and as she is now gravely ill, indeed in delirium, it is impossible to find out. But Roffredo, whom I have seen, denies all knowledge of the letter, and I am inclined to believe him.” She paused, and looked steadily at her great-niece. “Do you know anything of it?”

  “Yes. I wrote it,” Elena said at once.

  “You did! And may one ask why you did such a thing?” The girl looked at the formidable old lady with a level gaze. “Yes, Bonne-Mama,” (Elena and Giulio, like Marietta, used the familiar title.) “I will tell you. I did it because I was not at all pleased with Zia Suzy for the way she treated Postiche. Indeed, I have not been pleased with her for a long time! I hated to see her always having her own way, tormenting people and making them her slaves, and being perfectly successful with it—still praised, still admired! Even Papa! Oh yes—I have seen that quite clearly, just lately; she has had him too! It is not what I like—one’s own Father made a fool of in that way! Anyone can see what poor Papa is—weak as water; but because she is dull here, and must have a man, she takes him, and keeps him on a string! It is not dignified for him—or for us, me and Giulio.” She paused, as if gathering her forces, and then looked straighter than ever at the old Marchesa, who listened to this outburst in complete silence. “And when it came to downright cruelty to that poor little creature, who is as innocent as milk, I would not let it go unpunished! Do you know that she sent her away without money? All this going to Roffredo and being seduced is quite directly the fault of Zia Suzy; unless she was in desperation, Postiche would never have gone near the Villa. Roffredo is a fool and a brute—he has no self-control; I blame him too —but if that wretched little thing has a baby, the real responsibility will lie at Zia Suzy’s door! And what a way to behave, sending her only to the diligence, and having her left there alone! Do you know that a peasant came by as she waited, and struck her with his whip, across the neck?” Her always high colour had risen, her superb brown eyes blazed, the ring of her words was almost splendid. “So I said to myself that she too, Zia Suzy, should be left on the road alone; and know what it was to be insulted, perhaps, by peasants, as she had chosen should happen to a girl, almost a child} and a foreigner at that! That is why I wrote that letter.”

  The impact of youth’s independent standards on maturity, the recognition of the child as a person, and a person with quite marked views of his own, always comes as something of a shock, even to middle age. To great age, when the protagonists gaze at one another across the gap of two or more generations, the shock is sometimes more startling still. Across that gulf of time the old Marchesa now gazed at Elena di Castellone, with feelings, quite simply, of absolute astonishment. This young creature, barely out of the schoolroom, had thought this whole business out, assessed it, judged it, and most vigorously acted on her judgement. What startled the old woman most was what Elena said about her Father and Suzy. She herself, holding the accepted standards of her class and her day, had serenely tolerated the liaison, since it involved no open breach, no violent disturbance of the convenances; this girl of eighteen now sat there and told her to her face, not only that she was aware of it, but that it infringed the dignity of herself and her brother. This was quite a new point of view to the old Marchesa—it had never really occurred to her that Elena and Giulio had any dignity, let alone any views on the morals of their elders.

  But great age, oddly enough, finds it far easier to bridge the gulf of two or three generations with tolerance and comprehension than middle age does that of one. Middle age has all sorts of vested interests to defend—its authority, its dignity and its personal life, on all of which youth’s clear-sightedness and independance of oudook may painfully impinge. Old age is less concerned with these things—its p
ersonal life is becoming remote; the dignity of age can look after itself, and the old care the less about authority, since they bear no real responsibilities any more. Great age has only one serious vested interest—warmth: physical warmth for its old bones, the sunshiny warmth of affection for its old heart. So it was not really surprising that the old Marchesa should rally rather briskly from the shock of Elena’s outlook. Here, within an hour or two, were both she and Roffredo, the pair of them, vigorously assailing the character and actions of Suzy, her favourite daughter-in-law; and, in Elena’s case, energetically reprobating a manner of life, a set of standards which she herself had always thought, within certain limits, perfectly admissible. But with the curious detached adaptability of age, she was able to make a swift mental adjustment to the new point of view. The fundamental honesty, accuracy and justness of her mind rose to recognise, and even to salute not only the sincerity but the justice of the girl’s speech. Yes, she was right—it was undignified for them, and unfair to them. About the rest, at bottom, Elena was right too. The old lady felt a sudden respect for the girl’s instinct for righteousness, violently and even wrongly as she had expressed it.

  But for the moment she left all that. She had still to get at all the facts.

  “So—you wrote it. And Roffredo knew nothing of it. And you arranged for her to go home alone, on foot. But how came she to be wet through? It did not rain. Agnese says that on her return she was soaked to the skin and covered with some sticky stuff, like bird-lime.”

  Elena looked at the old Marchesa with round eyes.

  “How she got wet, I don’t know, unless she fell into the pool,” she said. “There is a pool, just by the ruin. But the bird-lime I arranged myself. I did not mean to, at first—I meant only to let her go, and hope to find Roffredo, and not find him; and to have to walk home alone. You see, I know quite well that it was only out of jealousy that she dismissed Postiche; because she wanted Roffredo for herself, as well as Papa—or perhaps instead of him!—and she had found out that he was in love with Postiche.” She paused, her colour vivid again with indignation; there was a ring of scorn in her young voice. “But on Saturday, we had uccellini for lunch, and that suddenly gave me the idea of the bird-lime—to put it on the bushes round the ruin. So I made Gela invite Zio Francesco—he is so blind, he sees nothing, and poor little Marietta is always so moony!—and while he painted the flower, this Enchanter’s something, and she read and moped, I ran across to Trino and got a bucket and a brush, and put it all over the bushes.”

  The old woman glanced at the fresh face opposite her with something very close to awe, tinged with comic appreciation. This was something like an intrigante!.

  “So this invitation to my son, to paint the flower, was purely for that—to give you the chance to lime the bushes?”

  This time Elena blushed, but she answered steadily.

  “Yes, Bonne-Mama.”

  “”H’m!” said the old lady. She looked at her niece, with her bright black eyes, and her head cocked on one side, with something of the half-wise, half-ironic expression that one sometimes imagines in the bright eye of a small bird. “And do you think that was a pretty trick?” she asked, in a perfectly amicable voice.

  Elena continued to blush.

  “No, Bonne-Mama,” she said, still with her ready frankness. “I believe it might have been better if I had not had that idea.”

  “So do I,” said the old lady. “That was rather an ugly joke. I think you have too much intelligence to play such tricks as that.”

  Elena said nothing. The old lady looked thoughtfully at her.

  “Well, my child,” she said at length, “I am glad you have told me everything plainly. It seems clear what happened— poor Suzy will have got all gummed and entangled with this substance, and must have fallen, in the dark, into the well. That explains why she was so wet. And now she has pneumonia,” the old lady said, as if to herself, with a sudden simplicity of sadness in her voice.

  “Bonne-Mama, for that, indeed I am sorry,” Elena said, impulsively.

  “My child, I believe you. And that, you could not foresee. But now listen—I have something to say to you.” She sat silent for a few moments, tapping with her hand on the chairarm; and Elena sat silent opposite her, her eyes fixed on the old lady’s face. The absence of direct reproof had rather disarmed her, and she was cooling down after her outburst— she was somehow quite prepared to listen.

  “I see,” the old lady went on at length, “that it is perhaps natural that you should resent Suzy’s relation to your Father. Very young people believe that their parents belong to them; and parents believe that their children belong to them, too. They are both wrong! No one belongs to anyone else, though one may attach others, by good fortune, or by one’s own affection.” She paused, and her old eyes looked far away. “But actually,” she resumed with one of her little bursts of briskness, “I believe this relationship has brought him both comfort in a genuine grief, and a sympathy which has given him real happiness. There has been that side of it —which you have perhaps overlooked! Men are very oddly made—you, who observe so much, might consider this aspect also! Your Father cared too deeply, I believe, for your Mother to wish to marry again; but he required relief—they all do—and Suzy gave it to him. If you had thought a little further, had looked beyond your own feelings, this might perhaps have occurred to you.”

  The honesty and directness of the old lady’s words moved Elena as much as they surprised her. She too sat silent for some moments, looking at her lap—then she raised her large brown eyes to the old lady’s face.

  “Bonne-Mama, I do see that,” she said. “But with one’s own Father and one’s own Aunt, one does not like it! Is that wrong? I wish very much to know what you think. Giulio and I have both felt it—unpleasant; and Gela is too loyal—in somma, she will not discuss it, and I understand that she cannot, with us. But I feel—somehow, a second marriage would be different. That too I might not like, but I should feel it differently. Is that just silly, selfish?”

  Posed with this question, with a directness equal to her own, it struck the old Marchesa suddenly what an abnormal conversation this was to be taking place between herself and a girl of eighteen. But abnormality per se is often met by the very old with a strange equanimity.

  “No,” she replied. “It is not wholly selfish; at least, it is quite natural—selfishness is natural,” she said, with a dry smile. “But the family has claims, in such a case; I, in my time, have acknowledged them.” And as she had done when talking to the Marchesa Nadia, she first looked far away, and then closed her eyes. She opened them again, quickly, and went on—“I should have seen sooner that this would not do.” (It was clear to Elena that now she was talking to herself.) “No—it will not do. It must end.” She sighed. “I hope it does not end forcibly—my poor Suzy!” And she went on murmuring something, vague sounds of tenderness, of which Elena could not catch the words; but the sense—of anxiety and loving distress—the girl did grasp. She bounced up off her chair, and kissed the old lady. “Bonne-Mama, I am sorry —about this—and you. I did not mean to hurt you and cause you this anxiety.”

  The old lady returned her kiss. “My child, playing Providence is generally a dangerous game,” she said, with a return of her briskness. “Sometimes one must do one’s part, arrange things; but vengeance, at least, is best left to the Lord God. It is said that He has a taste for it!” she added, with one of her sly looks. Then, abruptly, she changed the subject. “How much does Marietta know of all this?”

  “About Zia Suzy’s illness?”

  “No, the rest—Miss Prestwich and her dismissal, and Roffredo; and also about her Mother’s part in it all. Does she know anything?”

  “Yes—she knows most of it; about Roffredo and Zia Suzy certainly—about Papa, I think not,” Elena said.

  The old lady looked vexed. “Could this not have been avoided? I thought the Signorina had more sense.”

  “It was not Gela’s fault. It is
mine, if anyone’s. I told her,” Elena said. “But she was picking up so much from the servants anyhow that she must have heard it in time. And also Giulio flew to her, mad with despair, after he had seen Roffredo and heard about Postiche from him, and poured out the whole thing.”

  “Why should he tell her? And why was he mad with despair?”

  “Oh, he tells Marietta everything—they are thick as thieves,” Elena replied, with a slight return of her usual airiness. “And Giulio, you know, is head over ears in love with Postiche, so for him this is all awful. He is in a most miserable state; he will not eat, he does not sleep, and he cannot work, or read, or do anything. We do not know what to do with him; Gela is at her wits’ end.”

  “And Marietta? How does she take it?” the old lady asked anxiously.

  “She is very unhappy, I think,” Elena answered. “She never says anything, you know—or very seldom. But she loved Miss Prestwich, and believes in her, and I think she has not liked what Zia Suzy did. And that will have hurt her too. For her, really, it is worse than for anyone, for she has two affections spoilt,” Elena said, with her customary brief assessing of the situation.

  The old lady tapped on her chair. Then she asked Elena to give her her writing-pad, and indited her third note that day, summoning Fräulein Gelsicher to visit her next morning; and gave it to Elena, and dismissed her. When the girl had gone, she sat again, thinking about the whole thing. The onslaught of youth on maturity made her feel more tender and protective to Suzy than before. But —really that young girl, Elena, was right. Youth had its claims. It was time that this business of Suzy and Carlo should stop. Indeed, for Marietta’s sake, Suzy’s activities of that sort must really all stop. And remembering her interview with her son that morning, she thought that it was perhaps the case that he too, the ageing husband, had some claims which now deserved consideration, as well as youth. Poor Francesco, he had not had much out of life! His flowers!—and even that passion had been used by that impertinent little monkey, Elena, to bring about his wife’s discomfiture and illness, perhaps her death. Youth was very unscrupulous, the old lady thought. But the thought of Suzy’s illness suddenly spurred her—she must go in a moment and see how she was, poor Suzy—gay, delightful, affectionate Suzy. She was a little tired, after so much talking with these definite violent young creatures, who all seemed to find it necessary to shout at one! But she must go. She rang her little bell for Giacinta; she liked the maid’s escort for all expeditions about the house. But by the time the maid slipped noiselessly in, the old lady had fallen into one of her sudden sleeps.