"Aha!" cried Aunt Clo in a loud, ringing contralto.
She stood on the small, empty platform and waved her hand above her
head with a spacious, graceful gesture, as Lily got out of the train.
Miss Stellenthorpe's short, iron-grey curls were uncovered and parted
in a masculine style on one side of her head, and she wore a dark-blue,
fisherman's jersey and a pair of dark-blue knickerbockers. Her large,
well-shaped legs and feet were bare.
"Aha! Good! Good!"
She kissed Lily upon both cheeks in an emphatic, foreign sort of way,
and gazed at her with a fondly humorous smile.
"_Ecco!_" said Aunt Clo.
She hurried Lily across the little platform, affectionately grasping
her arm, and talking so cordially all the while that her niece felt
quite unable to interrupt her.
At last she said:
"My luggage, Aunt Clo. I'm afraid there's a trunk----"
"A trunk! _Dio mio!_ Let us not forget the trunk!"
Aunt Clo sped back again, appearing not at all disconcerted, and
disposed of the trunk question with much animation.
"The trunk," she exclaimed to Lily in mock-bombastic style, "the trunk
is provided for. All is well with the trunk. It appears at the gate of
Il Monasterio _au plaisir de ce brave Lorenzo_."
There were many French phrases and a few Italian ones scattered through
Aunt Clo's conversation, and she frequently gave a strangely foreign
construction to the sentences that she spoke in English.
Lily was impressed by her fluency, by the perfection of her French, and
by a certain humorous candour that Aunt Clo displayed in voicing her
opinions.
Nevertheless, she could not quite kill her remembrance of having, as a
child, disliked Aunt Clo.
Outside the station was a very small waggonette with a striped red and
yellow awning. A sleepy, good-natured-looking peasant, his shirt open
at the neck, sat on the box.
"_Ecco_, Umbertino!"
Miss Stellenthorpe waved her niece into the waggonette and sprang in
after her. The vigor of her ascent seemed out of all proportion to the
dilatory progress that they made along a baked and arid-looking road,
the fields on either side unrelieved by any shade.
"But the vineyards round Genazzano!" said Aunt Clo expressively.
"_Patienza!_"
Genazzano proved to be a small village consisting of one cobble-stoned
street, winding up the side of a steep hill, and an ancient grey
pile that stood raised from the roadside at the top of half a dozen
irregular steps.
"The _Cathedrale_," Aunt Clo introduced it.
A mattress, imperfectly concealed behind a heavy red curtain, hung
before the entrance to the cathedral after the Italian fashion.
A small, brown-skinned child was squeezing its way inside, and a
sturdy peasant woman, carrying a baby and a basket, was pushing her way
out.
"_Buon' giorno, Teresa mia!_" cried Aunt Clo, waving her hand.
The woman smiled in reply.
"This is the country of the Miraculous Virgin," Miss Stellenthorpe told
Lily. "The Madonna of Genazzano. The statue is in the cathedral and we
have a wonderful procession once a year. Ah! _ce cher Genazzano!_"
Tenderness radiated from her face and voice.
The waggonette drew up before a small iron fence that enclosed a tiny
stone house, built along the four sides of a square. A little cloister
ran all round the house, and the space in the middle formed a courtyard
where shrubs flowered in painted green pots.
There was no garden, other than the small and apparently untended
courtyard, but within the house, Aunt Clo waved through the window at a
thick trellis covered with vine tendrils and fig-leaves, and framing a
sturdy arbour beneath which stood a rustic bench and table, and said:
"_La Tonnelle._"
Beyond lay a sloping track of ground on which the vines grew round
poles that stood in long, converging lines, reminding Lily of a
miniature edition of a Kentish hop-field.
"Truly have not my lines fallen to me in pleasant places?" Aunt Clo
enquired musingly. It was perhaps a slight relief to Lily that her tone
required no reply. A bald negative or affirmative seemed so inadequate
a rejoinder to Aunt Clo's rounded, elaborate periods.
When they were sitting in the _tonnelle_ that evening, however, just
before the falling of the brief Italian dusk, Miss Stellenthorpe made
enquiries to which more detailed answers were necessary.
"And what of Philip--what of your father, Lily?"
Lily answered as fully as was compatible with that old obsession that
it was disloyal to present one's near relations to the gaze of another
in any aspect save that particular one in which they might choose to
regard themselves. She knew that Philip often described himself as a
broken man, and conscientiously did her best to put a picture of a
broken man before Aunt Clo.
"_Aha!_" said Aunt Clo, and "_Ecco!_" and nodded with deliberation, as
though merely acquiescing in the recital of a state of affairs that had
long been known to her.
"_Nous nous aimons de loin_," she said with resignation. "It doesn't
do to remove the crutches before a lame man is ready to walk. I myself
have stood without a prop all my life, and I wanted to see your father
and mother strong and straight and unsupported, too. But perhaps I
was hard and hasty. I was young. They clutched at the artificial
supports that I tried to make them spurn--they resented the council of
perfection.... Well, well ... I thank whatever gods there be, that I
myself have learnt to stand upright and face the sunlight."
Aunt Clo drew up her tall person as she spoke, and threw back her head
in a gesture expressive of freedom and gallantry.
Later on, when Lily and she had dinner together, Miss Stellenthorpe
became less metaphorical and more colloquial.
Her appearance was a surprise to her niece. She had discarded the
blue jersey and the knickerbockers for an admirably fitting drapery
of flame-coloured brocade, closely following the lines of her fine
figure, and a Greek fillet encircled her head. Her arms were bare to
the shoulder and Lily, glancing surreptitiously downwards, saw that she
wore flame-coloured stockings and shoes that were laced sandal-wise.
"Certainly, I descend to the conventions in the evening," cried Aunt
Clo, not altogether truthfully, as her gaze followed Lily's. "Would
you believe it, Lily, that I shocked Genazzano profoundly when I first
lived here!"
Lily felt that she could believe it easily.
"'But,' they cried, 'the signorina shows her legs! She wears clothes
like a man! It is immodest!' Imagine it--such a point of view here in
Genazzano, which is like an earthly Paradise. I was confounded."
"'But is this Suburbia?' I asked. One expects Suburbia to be
shocked--or even the provinces. Lily!" cried Aunt Clo in a tone of
playful accusation. "I believe your father would be shocked. My
legs--the legs that God gave me--would shock your father, if he saw
them uncovered."
Once more the very fervour of Lily's inward acquiescence kept her
silent.
"Oh, these people who are shocked!" said Aunt Clo with a musical groan.
"But Genazzano is now used to my knickerbockers--who knows but that one
day your father may be reconciled to the thought of uncovered legs?
Or would he say--ha, ha!--would he say that they were immodest? an
indecent spectacle?... I believe that's what he would say!"
Aunt Clo, speaking with mournful roguishness, seemed disposed, in a
breezy, open-minded sort of way, to attribute the most prurient-minded
views and expressions to the rest of humanity.
She told Lily that there was a girl in the village who was suspected of
being about to have an illegitimate child. She was only fifteen.
"I have sent for her to come up here to-morrow. Naturally, her
relations can get nothing out of her. They have frightened her, and
made her believe that she has done something to be ashamed of."
She leant forward and scrutinized Lily's face by the indifferent light
of the two oil-lamps in the room.
"_Biglia Mia!_ But I've made you blush! It suits you, and is
charming--but why--why?"
Lily was indeed blushing, deeply annoyed with herself for so doing, and
yet irresistibly compelled to it by Aunt Clo's open mention of subjects
that were never referred to at home, and had only been furtively
whispered about by the least endurable of the girls at school.
"I--I suppose I'm not used to hearing those things talked about," she
stammered. "I've never been told anything--I'm not even sure that I
know what 'illegitimate' means, exactly."
"Philip's child--Philip's child!" almost moaned Aunt Clo. "I might have
guessed it! He would never face life himself, and he brings up his
child to suppose that ignorance means innocence. Oh, horrible!"
She shuddered and almost sprang from her seat. "Come out under the
starlight, my child--you want no fruit? That's right--you and I must
have some talk."
Lily felt ashamed of the irrepressible feeling of disappointment with
which she followed Miss Stellenthorpe, whirled away from her beautiful
untasted plateful of ripe figs.
But, of course, illegitimacy was not a subject to be discussed over
dessert.
Aunt Clo, however, said nothing more about illegitimacy. She began
instead to tell Lily how, long ago, she had solemnly warned Philip and
Eleanor that they were refusing to face Truth; to look at facts as they
were.
"It was about the poor little Yvonne. She would have been saved, if
they had brought themselves to acknowledge her weakness, instead of
trying to persuade themselves and the world that she was like other
children. Let me see--you were two years younger--but you can remember?"
"Yes," said Lily rather curtly.
Vonnie had been so seldom mentioned, since her death, and then always
in such consecrated phrases that Lily felt Aunt Clo's outspokenness
almost as an indecency.
"Aha! _nous avons changé tout cela_--but when you were mites together,
I remember very well how superior you thought yourself to poor little
Vonnie. Hardly your fault, child--you were the favourite. They never
disguised it, although, of course, they never would acknowledge it, in
so many words. _Ah, quel système!_"
Aunt Clo shook her head.
"Dear little one, how much you've improved since then!"
There was delicate approbation in her tone, and in the large, genial,
scrutinizing eye that Lily could just perceive, gleamingly turned upon
her in the moonlight.
Although, theoretically, Lily supposed herself to be striving after
perfection, it caused her a distinct feeling of resentment to hear
that she had "improved," but she dishonestly attributed her annoyance
to her growing conviction that it would be in better taste if Aunt Clo
were rather less candid in criticism of her niece's nearest relations.
With her disconcerting penetration, Miss Stellenthorpe seemed to be
aware of some such unsympathetic atmosphere surrounding her.
"You mustn't resent my plain speaking. _Pour moi, il n'y a que la
vérité._ When we have known one another a little longer, my Lily, you
will realize that truth is an obsession with me. Nothing but the truth.
Deceit in any shape or form is the one unforgivable sin!"
Lily gave a fleeting glimpse to certain aspects of herself with a
feeling of veritable horror, and a most sincere resolution that these
must be for ever concealed from her hostess.
It was impossible not to desire Miss Stellenthorpe's approval. She was
so spaciously generous in her appreciations, so gravely despondent in
her well-weighed condemnations.
It was true that Lily was sometimes surprised at the courses taken by
appreciation or condemnation alike.
There was the case of the village girl, Carla. Nothing could be more
evident than that Aunt Clo's impassioned interest in her situation
amounted to positive enjoyment. Lily heard her aunt's voice in fluent
rhetoric, morning after morning, encouraging and upholding Carla,
exhorting and rebuking Carla's tearful mother, eloquently proclaiming
her championship of Carla to her own servant, to the young man who
brought the milk, to the postman, in fact to anyone of the little
community of peasantry at Genazzano who would listen to her.
"Of course the man is the parish priest at Sta. Lucia--I don't doubt
it. So, thank God, there can be no question of making him marry her.
Thank God for that, say I!" Aunt Clo fervently told Lily at breakfast
one morning.
"But wouldn't it be better if she was married before--before----?" Lily
blushed again, bewildered.
"Never!" said Miss Stellenthorpe, striking the table with her open
hand. "It would be a far greater wrong than the first, to compel that
poor child to marriage."
The point of view implied was so new to Lily that she immediately felt,
in her complete reaction from the standards set before her in her
childhood, that it was probably the right point of view.
But as, for some inexplicable reason, she very much objected to those
prolonged dissections of the _affaire Carla_ in which Aunt Clo was so
ready to indulge, Lily gently turned the conversation to a christening
which she had seen take place in the cathedral on the previous
afternoon. Aunt Clo was always ready to be intensely interested in
ceremonies celebrated by the Catholic or other alien denominations,
that would have bored her extremely in the Church to which she belonged.
But on this occasion, she showed but little enthusiasm on the subject
of the postmaster's twins.
"Ah, and they've a child not a year old yet--and Heaven alone knows how
many Augustino and Maria have had altogether. Criminal, criminal! When
will they learn the folly and wickedness of breeding in that reckless
way!"
Lily could suggest no helpful solution to a problem of which she
scarcely grasped the outline.
To her it merely seemed as if Aunt Clo had no approbation to spare for
babies unless they were illegitimate ones.
Staying at Genazzano, Lily began for the first time to experience in
some slight degree what is meant by the liberty of the individual.
Aunt Clo showered books and opinions upon her, but encouraged her to
form her own judgments of either. Not only was there no disloyalty in
differing from Aunt Clo, but she seemed positively to prefer argument
to acquiescence. Certainly, to adduce an opposite point of view,
generally led to a lucid and eloquent exposition, embellished by many
polished French phrases, of Aunt Clo's opinions of the subject in
question, but she always said--"Aha?" and "So!" very kindly indeed to
Lily's diffident interpolations.
There were certain, quite trivial, little things, nevertheless, which
Lily felt that her aunt would despise in her, and the compulsion under
which she thought herself to conceal these kept alive in her the old
guilty feeling that she was not really like other people and was only
pretending to be grown up.
She would rather have been detected by Miss Stellenthorpe in a forgery,
than in the infantile practice of eating sweets, so insistent was her
certainty that Aunt Clo would be far less contemptuous of the former
predilection than of the latter.
Yet they had never discussed the matter, although Aunt Clo, in the
midst of reminiscences of a day spent in Paris in company of a wealthy
American friend, once said, in her emphatically descriptive style:
"He was so full of _petits soins intimes_, dear person! There we were
in one of those enormous glittering _pâtisseries_ shops, and I couldn't
prevent him from loading me with great boxes of _pâtes de guimauve_,
and huge Easter eggs of pink crystallized sugar ... and all the while
there was the most heavenly riot of scent and colour in a flower-shop
next door. If only one could have exchanged all the _bonbons_ for one
single bunch of violets!"
Aunt Clo heaved a sigh of retrospective regret, and not for the world
would Lily have owned to her own degraded preference for _pâtes de
guimauve_ and pink crystallized sugar above all the bunches of violets
that Parma could produce.
Lily reflected impatiently that when she was a child it had been
naughty to want sweets, and now that she was grown up, it would be
childish. It seemed that there was no time of life at which such a
desire could ever be laid claim to honourably. As for Aunt Clo, she
often seemed to be quite unaware that such a thing as food existed.
When they went for expeditions, and visited Roman churches and museums,
Lily was greatly ashamed of the undoubted fact that her enjoyment was
constantly haunted by the fear that Aunt Clo, towards twelve o'clock,
would exclaim in a breezy manner:
"_Il Palatino_, now, my Lily! Shall we take a base advantage of the
Germans and Americans, who will all be flocking in search of food, and
have the glory of the place to ourselves?"
And Aunt Clo would spring vigorously up the steepest paths, under the
hottest sun, and very likely remember nothing more about luncheon at
all until it was time to take the tram to the station for their train,
when she might observe with one of her most negligent gestures:
"Have we eaten? I forget! But _qu'importe_, in the midst of this--and
this--and _this_!"
Once they even missed the train that should at least have returned them
to Genazzano in time for tea, because Aunt Clo leaped out of the tram
just before the station was reached, at the sudden realization that
Lily had never been inside the Church of Sta. Maria degli Angeli.
Impervious alike to hunger, thirst, and fatigue, she remained on her
feet for nearly an hour in the dim, cool church, pointing out in an
impassioned undertone the reasons why certain frescoes were to be
admired, and shuddering away from others to which the chief drawback
appeared to be that all tourists always looked at them first.
Aunt Clo's knowledge of Art in all its branches seemed to be almost
illimitable, and she gave Lily a copy of a thin book of her own,
that bore upon the title-page: "Beauty: a Finger-post. By Clotilde
Stellenthorpe. _Privately printed._"
The Finger-post pointed to the great necessity for surrounding oneself
with Spaces, and Silences, and occasional Splashes--of light or colour,
or sound--and also indicated deleterious features in many hitherto
accepted standards. It rather inclined to leave the reader with the
impression that Beauty, as a whole, had received a thorough revision at
the hands of the author of the book, and would henceforth be found to
be within the range of the book's appreciators. There was an underlying
suggestion that those outside this circle had not yet reached the
stage of development at which Beauty could be of any advantage to them.
Nowadays, Aunt Clo no longer wrote about Beauty. She told Lily that
she tried to live it, instead. Everything in the tiny house at
Genazzano had been chosen for the sake of either form or colour, and
the little bronze mirror that hung, sloping, over Miss Stellenthorpe's
writing-table possessed a further qualification.
"I like to go through life _le sourire aux lèvres_," said Aunt Clo,
markedly accentuating the habitual pleasantness of her expression as
she spoke. "It is pleasing, refreshing--to look up and meet a smile.
What will you, if it happens to be one's own?"
Aunt Clo laughed outright at her own quaint fancy. "When I raise my
head from my writing, I see reflected in my little mirror a pair of
steady eyes, a face that holds the lines graven by many experiences,
some grave, some gay, and a smile--I hope a strong, steadfast, humorous
smile. Time was, my Lily, when the face that I saw in the mirror was
that of a tragic muse. Thank God, the phase has passed!"
Aunt Clo not infrequently threw out similar sombre indications that her
past had held some deep, unspecified cause for woe.
She was very kind to Lily, although frequently deploring in her the
traces of her upbringing.
"You must learn to say Yes to Life!" she cried ringingly from time to
time, her hand upon her niece's shoulder, her handsome head tilted
backwards. "You know your Nietzsche?"
Lily shook her head, feeling much abashed and conscious that Aunt Clo
thought her very young indeed.
"Courage!" said Miss Stellenthorpe. "Ah, _jeunesse, jeunesse_!"
Lily reflected quite irritably that Aunt Clo might just as well have
said: "Youth, youth!" and have done with it.