When we returned to take possession, the first person we saw was
Principe Montughi. No less suave and impeccable as landlord than as
host, he showed us to our rooms, introduced Graziosa, the little
peasant girl who was to be our maid, and said dinner would be served at
seven o’clock. He was sorry he had neglected to ask what we wished,
and at what time we wished it; but if we would be good enough to put up
with our first repast, he hoped we could in the future suit ourselves
so far as the resources of his inadequate establishment permitted. He
then withdrew, and we proceeded to settle ourselves in our new domain.
Not that there was much settling to be done. Our belongings were no
more numerous than could be carried in trunks, while the rooms in
which we disposed them were preposterously bare. We suspected that
the furniture had gone the way of the front gates, which had been so
admired by a passing compatriot of ours that the Prince said he had
parted with them for ten times their value and had not yet got around
to replacing them. Neither had he yet found time to make other repairs
that some people might have considered more pressing. But that was a
part of our picnic, as we regarded it. We could have furniture and
tight windows at home; but we couldn’t have such big cool echoing
rooms, or such a loggia, or such a garden, or such a _podere_, or such
an olive yard running down to such a river.
Accordingly we were the more surprised by the dinner which Graziosa
presently came to tell us was served on the terrace. It was no picnic
art with which our uninstructed underlings had set the table and
arranged the flowers and the brass _fiorentine_ we might need later
on, with which they had chosen just the right point for looking down
the avenue or catching the last light of sunset on the tower. So
keenly did we realise it that we were ready to give them credit for the
stately setting of the terrace, for the mellowness of cracked marble
and foot-worn brick and weathered stone, for the rich evening stillness
of the garden and the fluting of the birds among the trees. We felt
rather like persons in a play, sitting down to a stage dinner. When the
soup came on we wondered whether it would be real.
It was--like the delicious trout that followed it, like the dish of
macaroni and frizzled eggplant that formed the irresistible piece
of resistance, like the crisp salad which prepared the way for a
Gorgonzola I would now commit crimes for, like the far from histrionic
Verona which bore us through to the coffee. It was all so real, and
so acute a sense of the joy of life filled us when at last Graziosa
lighted the wicks of the _fiorentine_ and left us to a platter of
walnuts and a carafe of Marsala, that we hadn’t the heart to call her
back for nut-crackers. Besides, my wife wanted the secret of that
masterpiece of resistance. So she decided to go and ask the old woman
herself. And I went along too.
There was more than one piece of foolishness between us, I remember,
as we made for the corner of the villa--the one Graziosa had turned as
she came and went with our plates. I remember it, and a nightingale in
the garden, and our serious agreement that “it” was all “wonderful,” as
one unaccountably remembers longest a few of the least serious moments
of life. But I remember too the curious change in atmosphere, almost
like a breath of chilled air, which we detected even in our foolishness
and in that dim light, when the end of the castle lifted its stark
mass above us, with the tower darkly overtopping the farther angle. We
walked toward it. And presently we made out, beyond a black blotch that
suggested a door, two little lighted windows. They twinkled like a pair
of eyes, rather too far above the ground for us to look into. I fear
we might have done so, then; for in the back of both our heads was a
desire to become better acquainted with our romantic domain. A sudden
growl in the darkness, however, decided us for the door.
It proved not to be locked. The enormous raftered room into which we
stepped, hand still in hand, must have been the original kitchen of
the castle. I caught a hasty impression of a vast fireplace, on a
central platform under a chimney hood, of tins and coppers and brasses
glimmering dully, of Graziosa standing statue-like with a candle.
What almost immediately held my eye was a superb three-legged pot of
hammered copper full of lettuce heads, standing in the fireplace. Going
over to look at it more closely, I became aware that someone else was
in the room. My surprise was the greater because this person was not at
all the old woman of the farm, or her husband either. It was a man who
sat in the shadow at one side in a chef’s white cap. He rose silently
from the deal table at which he had been eating the remains of our
dinner. And then, to my stupefaction, I recognised the Prince himself.
He took off his white cap and bowed, magnificent as ever. What a feat
that was I cannot hope to make clear in a land where we are as used to
great changes of fortune as we are to the somewhat inadequate service,
at summer hotels, of young gentlemen from the universities. The sense
of it flashed for me, as I took in the Prince’s masquerade, into a
surprised consciousness of a parallel between the man and his house--in
which a sense of strange and lamentable things mingled inarticulately
with the recognition of a personal force even deeper than I had
suspected.
I wish that had been the only reason for the open-mouthed spectacle we
made of ourselves. But the transition from the silk hat to the white
cap--under which the flare of the Prince’s eyebrows looked startlingly
made up--was so abrupt, it so carried out our earlier stage illusion,
that it is no satisfaction to recall how far we were from smiles. The
stare we gave, the glances we involuntarily exchanged, were just as
gross.
Of course after that first ignoble moment, which I hope was not so long
as the telling of it, we were both eager to extend the right hand of
fellowship. But Montughi cut the ground from under our feet.
“Graziosa,” he commanded, “the _signori_ have lost their way. Show them
up to their rooms.”
I don’t suppose it was five minutes from the time we left the table on
the terrace before we found ourselves back in our loggia, watching the
receding glimmer of Graziosa’s candle and listening to the echo of her
footsteps die away in the dark house.