"Ah," said I, laughing, "you are quite as clever as your mother."
"And they tell me that you are a great soldier," she continued; "you have
lived in India. It was very kind of you, so far away, to have remembered
our poor dear Italy."
"One always remembers Italy; the distance makes no difference. I
remembered it well the day I heard of your mother's death!"
"Ah, that was a sorrow!" said the Countess. "There's not a day that I
don't weep for her. But _che vuole_? She's a saint its paradise."
"_Sicuro_," I answered; and I looked some time at the ground. "But tell
me about yourself, dear lady," I asked at last, raising my eyes. "You
have also had the sorrow of losing your husband."
"I am a poor widow, as you see. _Che vuole_? My husband died after
three years of marriage."
I waited for her to remark that the late Count Scarabelli was also a
saint in paradise, but I waited in vain.
"That was like your distinguished father," I said.
"Yes, he too died young. I can't be said to have known him; I was but of
the age of my own little girl. But I weep for him all the more."
Again I was silent for a moment.
"It was in India too," I said presently, "that I heard of your mother's
second marriage."
The Countess raised her eyebrows.
"In India, then, one hears of everything! Did that news please you?"
"Well, since you ask me--no."
"I understand that," said the Countess, looking at her open fan. "I
shall not marry again like that."
"That's what your mother said to me," I ventured to observe.
She was not offended, but she rose from her seat and stood looking at me
a moment. Then--"You should not have gone away!" she exclaimed. I
stayed for another hour; it is a very pleasant house.
Two or three of the men who were sitting there seemed very civil and
intelligent; one of them was a major of engineers, who offered me a
profusion of information upon the new organisation of the Italian army.
While he talked, however, I was observing our hostess, who was talking
with the others; very little, I noticed, with her young Inglese. She is
altogether charming--full of frankness and freedom, of that inimitable
_disinvoltura_ which in an Englishwoman would be vulgar, and which in her
is simply the perfection of apparent spontaneity. But for all her
spontaneity she's as subtle as a needle-point, and knows tremendously
well what she is about. If she is not a consummate coquette . . . What
had she in her head when she said that I should not have gone away?--Poor
little Stanmer didn't go away. I left him there at midnight.
12th.--I found him today sitting in the church of Santa Croce, into which
I wandered to escape from the heat of the sun.
In the nave it was cool and dim; he was staring at the blaze of candles
on the great altar, and thinking, I am sure, of his incomparable
Countess. I sat down beside him, and after a while, as if to avoid the
appearance of eagerness, he asked me how I had enjoyed my visit to Casa
Salvi, and what I thought of the _padrona_.
"I think half a dozen things," I said, "but I can only tell you one now.
She's an enchantress. You shall hear the rest when we have left the
church."
"An enchantress?" repeated Stanmer, looking at me askance.
He is a very simple youth, but who am I to blame him?
"A charmer," I said "a fascinatress!"
He turned away, staring at the altar candles.
"An artist--an actress," I went on, rather brutally.
He gave me another glance.
"I think you are telling me all," he said.
"No, no, there is more." And we sat a long time in silence.
At last he proposed that we should go out; and we passed in the street,
where the shadows had begun to stretch themselves.
"I don't know what you mean by her being an actress," he said, as we
turned homeward.
"I suppose not. Neither should I have known, if any one had said that to
me."
"You are thinking about the mother," said Stanmer. "Why are you always
bringing _her_ in?"
"My dear boy, the analogy is so great it forces itself upon me."
He stopped and stood looking at me with his modest, perplexed young face.
I thought he was going to exclaim--"The analogy be hanged!"--but he said
after a moment--
"Well, what does it prove?"
"I can't say it proves anything; but it suggests a great many things."
"Be so good as to mention a few," he said, as we walked on.
"You are not sure of her yourself," I began.
"Never mind that--go on with your analogy."
"That's a part of it. You _are_ very much in love with her."
"That's a part of it too, I suppose?"
"Yes, as I have told you before. You are in love with her, and yet you
can't make her out; that's just where I was with regard to Madame de
Salvi."
"And she too was an enchantress, an actress, an artist, and all the rest
of it?"
"She was the most perfect coquette I ever knew, and the most dangerous,
because the most finished."
"What you mean, then, is that her daughter is a finished coquette?"
"I rather think so."
Stanmer walked along for some moments in silence.
"Seeing that you suppose me to be a--a great admirer of the Countess," he
said at last, "I am rather surprised at the freedom with which you speak
of her."
I confessed that I was surprised at it myself. "But it's on account of
the interest I take in you."
"I am immensely obliged to you!" said the poor boy.
"Ah, of course you don't like it. That is, you like my interest--I don't
see how you can help liking that; but you don't like my freedom. That's
natural enough; but, my dear young friend, I want only to help you. If a
man had said to me--so many years ago--what I am saying to you, I should
certainly also, at first, have thought him a great brute. But after a
little, I should have been grateful--I should have felt that he was
helping me."
"You seem to have been very well able to help yourself," said Stanmer.
"You tell me you made your escape."
"Yes, but it was at the cost of infinite perplexity--of what I may call
keen suffering. I should like to save you all that."
"I can only repeat--it is really very kind of you."
"Don't repeat it too often, or I shall begin to think you don't mean it."
"Well," said Stanmer, "I think this, at any rate--that you take an
extraordinary responsibility in trying to put a man out of conceit of a
woman who, as he believes, may make him very happy."
I grasped his arm, and we stopped, going on with our talk like a couple
of Florentines.
"Do you wish to marry her?"
He looked away, without meeting my eyes. "It's a great responsibility,"
he repeated.
"Before Heaven," I said, "I would have married the mother! You are
exactly in my situation."
"Don't you think you rather overdo the analogy?" asked poor Stanmer.
"A little more, a little less--it doesn't matter. I believe you are in
my shoes. But of course if you prefer it, I will beg a thousand pardons
and leave them to carry you where they will."
He had been looking away, but now he slowly turned his face and met my
eyes. "You have gone too far to retreat; what is it you know about her?"
"About this one--nothing. But about the other--"
"I care nothing about the other!"
"My dear fellow," I said, "they are mother and daughter--they are as like
as two of Andrea's Madonnas."
"If they resemble each other, then, you were simply mistaken in the
mother."
I took his arm and we walked on again; there seemed no adequate reply to
such a charge. "Your state of mind brings back my own so completely," I
said presently. "You admire her--you adore her, and yet, secretly, you
mistrust her. You are enchanted with her personal charm, her grace, her
wit, her everything; and yet in your private heart you are afraid of
her."
"Afraid of her?"
"Your mistrust keeps rising to the surface; you can't rid yourself of the
suspicion that at the bottom of all things she is hard and cruel, and you
would be immensely relieved if some one should persuade you that your
suspicion is right."
Stanmer made no direct reply to this; but before we reached the hotel he
said--"What did you ever know about the mother?"
"It's a terrible story," I answered.