THE WICKED WOMAN IN FLORENCE
Edmund Grosse's friend was delighted to put the flat in the Palazzo at
his disposal. The weather was unusually warm for the autumn when Edmund
arrived in Florence. He was glad to get there, and glad to get away from
the gay group he had left in a beautiful villa on Lake Como; and
probably they were glad to see him go.
Edmund had indeed only stayed with them long enough to leave a very
marked impression of low spirits and irritation. "What's come to
Grosse?" was asked by more than one guest of the hostess.
"I don't know, but he really is impossible. It's partly because of
Billy--but I won't condescend to explain that Billy proposed himself and
I could not well refuse."
Billy is the only one of this gay, quarrelsome little group that need be
named here. It was really partly on his account that Edmund so quickly
left them to their gossip alternating with happy phrases of joy in the
beauty of mountains and lakes, and to their quarrels alternating with
moments of love-making, so avowedly brief that only an artist could
believe in its exquisite enjoyment. Neither Edmund nor Billy were
really _habitués_ of this Bohemian circle. They both belonged to a more
conventional social atmosphere; they were at once above and below the
rest of the party. The cause of antipathy to Billy on Sir Edmund's part
was a certain likeness in their lives--contrasting with a most marked
dissimilarity of character.
Sir Edmund could not say that Billy was a fool or a snob, because Billy
did nothing but lead a perfectly useless life as expensively as
possible; and he did the same himself. He could not even say that Billy
lived among fools and snobs, because many of Billy's friends were his
own friends too. He could not say that Billy had been a coward because
he had not volunteered to fight in the Boer war, because Sir Edmund had
not volunteered himself. He could not say that Billy employed the wrong
tailor; it would show only gross ignorance or temper to say so. But just
the things in which he felt himself superior, utterly different in fact
from Billy, were the stupid, priggish things that no one boasts of. He
read a good deal; he thought a good deal; he knew he might have had a
future, and the bitterness of his heart lay in the fact that at fifteen
years later in life than Billy he was still so completely a slave to all
that Billy loved. Every detail of their lives seemed to add to the
irritation. It was only the day he left London that he had discovered
that Billy's new motor was from the same maker as his own; in fact,
except in colour, the motors were twins. This was the latest, and not
even the least, cause of annoyance. For it betrayed what he was always
trying to conceal from himself, that there appeared to be an actual
rivalry between him and Billy, a petty, social, silly rivalry. Billy, of
simpler make, a fresher, younger, more contented animal, thought little
of all this, and was irritated by Sir Edmund's assumption of
superiority.
But he had never found Grosse so bearish and difficult before this visit
to Como. As a rule Edmund was suavity itself, but this time even his
gift of gently, almost imperceptibly, making every woman feel him to be
her admirer was failing. How often he had been the life of any party in
any class of society, and that not by starting amusements, not by any
power of initiation, but by a gift for making others feel pleased, first
with themselves, and consequently with life. He could bring the gift to
good use on a royal yacht, at a Bohemian supper party, at a schoolroom
tea, or at a parish mothers' meeting. But now--and he owned that his
liver was out of order--he was suffering from a general disgust with
things. When still a young man in the Foreign Office he had succeeded to
a large fortune, and it had seemed then thoroughly worth while to employ
it for social ends and social joys. Long ago he had attained those ends,
and long ago he had become bored with those joys; and yet he could not
shake himself free from any of the habits of body or mind he had got
into during those years. He could not be indifferent to any shades of
failure or success. He watched the temperature of his popularity as
acutely as many men watch their bodily symptoms. Even during those days
at Como, though despising his company, he knew that he felt a distinct
irritation in a preference for Billy on the part of a lady whom he had
at one time honoured with his notice. In arriving where he was in the
English social world, he had increased, not only the need for luxury of
body, but the sensitiveness and acuteness of certain perceptions as to
his fellow creatures, and these perceptions were not likely to slumber
again.
Edmund was oppressed by several unpleasant thoughts as well as by the
heat of the night on which he arrived in Florence. He decided to sleep
out in the wide brick _loggia_ of the flat, which was nearly at the top
of the great building. There was nothing to distract his gloomy thoughts
from himself, not even a defect in the dinner or in the broad couch of a
bed from which he could look up between the brick pillars of the
_loggia_ at the naked stars. If he had been younger he would, in his
sleepless hours, have owned to himself that he was suffering from "what
men call love," but he could not believe easily that Edmund Grosse at
forty was as silly as any boy of twenty. He pished and pshawed at the
absurdity. He could not accept anything so simple and goody as his own
story. That ever since Rose married he had put her out of his thought
from very love and reverence for her seemed an absurd thing to say of a
man of his record. Yet it was true; and all the more in consequence did
the thought of Rose as a free woman derange his whole inner life now,
while the thought of Rose insulted by the dead hand of the man she had
married was gall and wormwood. What must Rose think of men? She had been
so anxious to find a great and good man; and she had found David Bright,
whose mistress was now enjoying his great wealth somewhere below in the
old Tuscan capital. And how could Edmund venture to be the next man
offered to her?--Edmund who had done nothing all these years, who had
sunk with the opportunity of wealth; whose talents had been lost or
misused. He seemed to see Rose kneeling at her prayers--the golden head
bowed, the girlish figure bent. He could think of nothing in himself to
distract her back to earth, poor beautiful child! Yet he had not nursed
or petted or even welcomed the old passion of his boyhood. He wanted to
be without it and its discomforting reproaches. It was too late to
change anything or anybody. At forty how could he have a career, and
what good would come of it? Yet his love for Rose was insistent on the
necessity of making Rose's lover into a different man from the present
Edmund Grosse. It was absurd and medieval to suppose that if he did some
great or even moderately great work he could win her by doing it. It
might be absurd, yet contrariwise he felt convinced that she would never
take him as he was now.
So he wearied as he turned on the couch that became less and less
comfortable, till he rose and, with a rug thrown over him, leant on the
brick balustrade of the _loggia_. He stood looking at the stars in the
dimness, not wholly unlike the figure of some old Roman noble in his
toga, nor perhaps wholly unlike the figure of the unconverted Augustine,
weary of himself and of all things.
But this remark only shows how the stars and the deep blue openings into
the heavens, and the manifold suggestions of the towers of Dante's city,
and the neighbourhood of Savonarola's cell, affect the imagination and
call up comparisons by far too mighty. Edmund Grosse's weariness of evil
is nothing but a sickly shadow of the weariness of the great imprisoned
soul to whom an angel cried to take up and read aright the book of life.
Grosse is in fact only a middle-aged man in pajamas with a travelling
rug about his shoulders, with a sallow face, a sickly body, and a rather
shallow soul. He will not go quite straight even in his love quest, and
he cannot bring himself to believe how strongly that love has hold of
him. He is cynical about the best part of himself and to-night only
wishes that it would trouble him less.
"Damn it," he muttered at last, "I wish I had slept indoors--I am bored
to death by those stars!"
Next day Grosse set about the work for which he had come to Florence. He
called on two men whom he knew slightly, and found them at home, but
neither of them had ever heard of Madame Danterre. Dawkins, his
much-travelled servant, of course, was more successful, and by the
evening was able to take Edmund in a carriage to see some fine old iron
gates, and to drive round some enormous brick walls--enormous in height
and in thickness.
The Villa was in a magnificent position, and the gardens, Dawkins told
his master, were said to be beautiful. Madame Danterre had only just
moved into it from a much smaller house in the same quarter.
Edmund next drove to the nearest chemist, and there found out that Dr.
Larrone was the name of Madame Danterre's medical man. He already knew
the name of her lawyer from Mr. Murray, who had been in perfunctory
communication with him during the years in which Sir David had paid a
large allowance to Madame Danterre. But he knew that any direct attempt
to see these men would probably be worse than useless. What he wished to
do was to come across Madame Danterre socially, and with all the
appearance of an accidental meeting. His two friends in Florence did
their best for him, but they were before long driven to recommend
Pietrino, a well-known detective, as the only person who could find out
for Grosse in what houses it might be possible to meet Madame Danterre.
Grosse soon recognised the remarkable gifts of the Italian detective,
and confided to him the whole case in all its apparent hopelessness.
There was, indeed, a touch of kindred feeling between them, for both men
had a certain pleasure in dealing with human beings--humanity was the
material they loved to work upon. The detective was too wise to let his
zeal for the wealthy Englishman outrun discretion. He did very little in
the case, and brought back a distinct opinion that Grosse could, at
present, do nothing but mischief by interference. Madame Danterre had
always lived a very retired life, and was either a real invalid or a
valetudinarian. Her great, her enormous accession of wealth had only
been used apparently in the sacred cause of bodily health. She saw at
most six people, including two doctors and her lawyer; and on rare
occasions, some elderly man visiting Florence--a Frenchman maybe, or an
Englishman--would seek her out. She never paid any visits, although she
kept a splendid stable and took long drives almost daily. The detective
was depressed, for he had really been fired by Grosse's view as to the
will, and he had come to so favourable an opinion of Grosse's ability
that he had wished greatly for an interview between the latter and
Madame Danterre to come off.
Edmund was loth to leave Florence until one evening when he despaired,
for the first time, of doing any good. It was the evening on which he
succeeded in seeing Madame Danterre without the knowledge of that lady.
The garden of the villa into which he so much wished to penetrate was
walled about with those amazing masses of brickwork which point to a
date when labour was cheap indeed. Edmund had more than once dawdled
under the deep shadow of these shapeless masses of wall at the hour of
the general siesta.
He felt more alert while most of the world was asleep, and he could
study the defences of Madame Danterre undisturbed. A lost joy of boyhood
was in his heart when he discovered a corner where the brickwork was
partly crumbled away, and partly, evidently, broken by use. It looked as
if a tiny loophole in the wall some fifteen feet from the ground had
been used as an entrance to the forbidden garden by some small human
body. That evening, an hour before sunset, he came back and looked
longingly at the wall. The narrow road was as empty as it had been
earlier in the day. Twice he tried in vain to climb as far as the
loophole, but the third time, with trousers ruined and one hand
bleeding, he succeeded in crawling on to the ledge below the opening so
that he could look inside. He almost laughed aloud at the absurdity of
his own pleasure in doing so. Some rich, heavy scent met him as he
looked down, but, fresh from the gardens of Como, this garden looked to
him both heavy and desolate--heavy in its great hedges broken by
statuary in alcoves cut in the green, and desolate in its burnt turf and
its trailing rose trees loaded with dead roses. His first glance had
been downwards, then his look went further afield, and he knew why
Madame Danterre had chosen the villa, for the view of Florence was
superb. He had not enjoyed it for half a moment when he heard a slight
noise in the garden. Yes, down the alley opposite to him there were
approaching a lady and two men servants. He held his breath with
surprise. Was this Madame Danterre? the rival of Rose, the real love of
David Bright? What he saw was an incredibly wizened old woman who yet
held herself with considerable grace and walked with quick, long steps
on the burnt grass a little ahead of the attendants, one of whom carried
a deck chair, while the other was laden with cushions and books. It was
evident to the onlooker at the installation of Madame Danterre in the
shady, open space where three alleys met, that everything to do with her
person was carried out with the care and reverence befitting a religious
ceremony; and there was almost a ludicrous degree of pride in her
bearing and gestures. Edmund felt how amazingly some women have the
power of making others accept them as a higher product of creation,
until their most minute bodily wants seem to themselves and those about
them to have a sacred importance. At last, when chair and mat and
cushions and books had been carefully adjusted after much consideration,
she was left alone.
For a few moments she read a paper-covered volume, and Edmund determined
to creep away at once, when she suddenly got up and began walking again
with long, quick steps, her train sweeping the grass as she came towards
the great wall; and he drew back a little, although it was almost
impossible that she should see him. Her gown, of a dark dove colour,
floated softly; it had much lace about the throat on which shone a
string of enormous pearls; and she wore long, grey gloves. Edmund, who
was an authority on the subject, thought her exquisitely dressed, as a
woman who feels herself of great importance will dress even when there
is no one to see her. In the midst of the extraordinarily wizened face
were great dark eyes full of expression, with a fierce brightness in
them. It was as if an internal fire were burning up the dried and
wizened features, and could only find an outlet through the eyes.
Rapidly she had passed up and down, and sometimes as she came nearer the
wall Edmund saw her flash angry glances, and sometimes sarcastic
glances, while her lips moved rapidly, and her very small gloved hand
clenched and unclenched.
At last a noise in the deserted road behind him, the growing rumbling of
a cart, made him think it safer to move, even at the risk of a little
sound in doing so. He reached the ground safely before he could be seen,
and proceeded to brush the brick-dust off the torn knees of his grey
trousers.
He walked down the hill into the town with an air of finality, for he
had determined to go back to England. He could not have analysed his
impressions; he could not have accounted for his sense of impotence and
defeat, but so it was. He had come across the personality of Madame
Danterre, and he thereupon left her in possession of the field. But at
the same time, before leaving Florence, he gave largely of the sinews of
war to that able spy, the Italian detective, Pietrino.