He showed us our place, did the _Principe_, and we sat in it.
I won’t say that we didn’t wriggle in it a little, at first. We
naturally wanted to show him that if we had broken into his kitchen
we were no pair of mere inquisitive snoopers, and that the fact of
our having caught him in cap and apron could not make the slightest
difference in our relations--unless to improve them. But that was
precisely what the _Principe_ would not let us do. Such overtures as we
made in that direction encountered a stony impassivity which taught us
our own unwilling rôle. This was to make two personages of our landlord
and of our cook. The former was the impeccable gentleman of the world
we had accidentally met at Bassano, who honoured us with an occasional
call and who once a week drove splendidly away to town in the old
caleche which remained the rest of the time at our disposal. The latter
was an invisible chef of no less distinguished qualities. If when we
took in the situation and realised that we would never be able to scold
our cook we both felt a certain dismay, it was speedily dispelled by
the discovery that our cook never required a scolding. But never did
he in one character refer to the other. And never, after one or two
futile attempts, did we.
The thing was really preposterous. There we were, the three of us, cut
off from the world as if we had been castaways on a desert island, and
the man went on to the end pretending now not to be Prince and now not
to be cook. A hundred times I was on the edge of bursting out: “Come,
my dear fellow, don’t make things so hard for yourself and for us.”
Only--I never did! On the contrary, we sometimes went so far as to ask
ourselves whether the two personages might not be separate after all.
We smiled when we recalled our simple anticipations in becoming
co-tenants of Castello Montughi. One of them had been that we should
at last see something of what the sojourner in Italy so rarely does,
an Italian interior. Whereas we discovered that, like everybody else,
we were to see nothing at all. Perhaps it was our pique at finding
ourselves in so curious and unexpected a subjection that searched for
any possible flaw in the Prince’s acting, that divined a secret source
of indifference under his pride. More was there than we knew, but we
didn’t much matter one way or the other. I presume we felt it because
we thought--and I still think--one reason for our singular relation was
that we brought him a breath, such as it was, from a wider world than
Val Sugana. At all events it was impossible for us to be indifferent
about him. Who on earth was he? We could not help asking each other
that question, or feeling sure that it had an answer. And what had
brought him to the straits in which we found him? And why, most of all,
did he inhabit this tumble-down castle in the Dolomites when such a
personality as his could not fail elsewhere to make its mark?
We kept our questions to ourselves, however. We also kept, after that
first misadventure, to our part of the house. But I would create an
entirely false impression if I seemed to insinuate that we breathed
an air of Maeterlinck or of Poe. What would you? The year was yet
young, we ourselves were by no means old, we happened to have stumbled
at a moment not the least romantic in life into a setting of the
most romantic. Nor did Montughi’s eccentricity make it less so. The
half-ruined castle, the lonely valley, the rushing river, reacted upon
our new-world sensitiveness to such stimuli in a way we could scarcely
have resisted. Such twilights as darkened our deserted garden and our
great echoing rooms demanded a ghost. And we devoutly continued to
believe in the princess who should inhabit the tower.
We took her, like her tower and her loggia and her enchanted avenue of
cypresses, for granted--as a piece of the Argument from Design, whereby
all things existed for the edification of two wandering Americans
who had not long been married. We also took her, it must be said in
further disclaimer of that insinuation to which I have just alluded,
with giggles. Was she not red-haired, whose head we were one day to
behold in a casement or an embrasure of the tower? On that we usually
agreed. My wife, however, held that the mysterious lady was a flame of
Montughi’s for whom he had ruined himself and whom he had borne away to
this solitary retreat to be free of the world and its conventions, to
say nothing of importunate husbands. Whereas according to my own less
decorative theory our princess was an elderly female relative, possibly
a wife but probably a maiden aunt, who suffered from a Jane Eyre-ish
disability of the mental organs, requiring a régime of country air and
close surveillance.
In any case, she remained even more obstinately invisible than our
princely cook. But while it of course kept alive our more or less
humorous speculations to see, after dark, slits of light in the
irregularly spaced loopholes of the tower, or sometimes to hear notes
from a faraway violin which was doubtless a gramophone, we elaborately
avoided the other side of the castle. Although we could laugh about
Montughi, we did not wish to give him another occasion for putting us
in the wrong. For the same reason we pretended at first to be cool
toward Graziosa and the good old people at the _podere_. And I presume
it was not wholly our imagination that sensed a reserve under their
Latin manners. That pretense did not last long, however. There is
a fatal affinity between exiles in Italy and those who serve them.
Moreover our unwillingness to use the Prince’s gate too often, or to
lacerate ourselves by crawling through the barbed wire of our own, made
it necessary for us to go in and out of the farmyard. So we ended by
becoming fast friends with the peasants who lived there. Also with
their dragon, the watchdog of the place. This was a huge white shaggy
creature whom my wife christened Abracadabra and whom we promptly set
about corrupting. He was always let loose at night.
For the rest, we spent more and more time prowling about the country.
One reason was the _Principe_. We had a rather absurd idea that he
might like his place to himself, once in a while. Another was that we
found the garden more charming to look at than to idle in, especially
after dewfall. It was not for nothing that the moss of the avenue kept
so fairy green. Dank that garden was, even beyond the shadow of its
tall cypresses. The filmed statues showed it, and the weedy paths.
But there were pleasant places along the river, we discovered, of
sun-warmed or branch-shaded rocks. There were vineyards hanging on
the slopes of the valley, there were cool chestnut glens, there were
other farms and other villas--though none so noble as ours. At night,
too, as spring lengthened into summer, we often strolled up the road
toward Austria or down toward Bassano, stopping to chat at the _podere_
on our way back. Graziosa would always light us upstairs, as she had
done that first night. Then we always ended by sitting in the loggia
by ourselves, not without more chatter. God knows where we found so
much to say, but we were never through. Still, we also found time to
listen to the river and the nightingales, to watch the fireflies in the
garden, the stars above the jagged dark rim of the valley, the distant
twinkle of the plain.
It was an unforgettable summer.
V
To us it was unforgettable. Otherwise we must have flitted long before
we did to scenes where we needed to walk less softly. Yet just that
necessity of walking softly was part of the lure. Like so much else of
life, however, it was in great part a thing of atmosphere, of colour,
of accent, of states of feeling, of moments so real to us but so
impossible to capture in word or line that I oftenest think of Castello
Montughi in terms of music. It was another similarity of that episode
to a piece of music that while the successive phases of it could hardly
be labelled as chapters or acts, the transitions between them were
perfectly clear. We had begun with an _Andante_. We had gone on to an
_Allegro ma non troppo_. The third movement--it had settled down into a
_Scherzo_, of the mellower kind. And the final resolution?
That was a _Lamentoso_. And the transition, when at last it came, was
so unnerving that I was thankful my wife was not with me. She had
been having a touch of malaria--due, I am afraid, to the dampness of
the place. I was not really uneasy about her, though, beyond asking
myself whether it were time for us to make a move. After she dropped to
sleep, late in the evening, I went out to stretch my legs and get a
breath of air.
Without any definite intention, I found myself walking up the valley.
That was the direction I always liked best after sundown. The mountains
stood out so solemnly against the stars, and the river made such a
sound in the dark. I can hear it now. And I can see how sombre the
castle and its merloned tower loomed before me when I went back that
night. It put me in mind of the first time I had seen them. As I drew
near the gate, too, I heard the dog. But it was no bark that came from
him. It was a howl, long drawn and mournful. In a moment, however, I
discovered what pulled me up short. For there were lights in the little
chapel.
My first thought was of fire--until I had time to note that the light
was perfectly steady, and to reflect that there was probably nothing
left in the chapel to burn. Whereupon, as I watched the glimmer of
the dusty old leaded panes, I grew extremely uncomfortable. In fact
the hour, the uncanny noise of the dog, the unaccustomed circumstance
of the illuminated chapel, all the other circumstances of the place,
combined to give me a sensation I have rarely experienced. There have
been times when I would be ashamed to make such a confession. But years
have emboldened me to think that fearlessness is an insensibility of
the nerves which a man should pray to be delivered from. His affair is
to be scared as often and as violently as he pleases, but to keep his
head. Which, I presume, was the reason why it seemed to me worthy to
investigate. I therefore tiptoed around to the other entrance, where
I almost yielded to a temptation to wake up the peasants. Luckily
Abracadabra saved me from it by bounding at me out of the dark with a
growl. When he recognised me he trotted quietly along beside me. That
growl, however, reminded me of another time when I had investigated,
and had been sorry for it. I gave Abracadabra a good-night pat and went
into the house.
I found my wife still asleep. I could make out her quiet breathing,
and the soft curve of her arm across the pillow. As I bent over her I
heard Abracadabra again. I went out to the loggia. It was too late for
nightingales. There were cicadas, now, in the cypresses. The melancholy
shrilling of them, out of the black shadow, affected me almost as much
as the dog. He had stopped his noise, though. I could see the ghostly
shape of him down on the terrace, waiting. I don’t know--I felt a
sudden shame of my retreat. I tiptoed back to my room, picked up my
revolver, touched the soft arm on the pillow with my lips, and stole
down stairs.
The dog ran to meet me at the terrace door, wagging his tail and
sticking his cold nose into my hand. We turned the corner, we passed
the low arch leading into the kitchen. The two little windows beside
it were dark. So were the loopholes of the tower. But, beyond that
redoubtable angle, I found the light still burning in the chapel. I
wished the door were open at least a crack. I also wished, in spite of
Abracadabra’s company, that I had not undertaken to prove I was not
a coward. I stood there looking, listening, seeing nothing but those
faintly lighted panes, hearing nothing but the cicadas and the river. I
wondered if it were the sound of my own blood, unwilling as I was to go
forward or to go back.
Presently, from inside the chapel, I heard a violin. Of that, this
time, there could be no doubt. And in the stillness I recognised that
sobbing theme from the Sixth Symphony of Chaikovsky, which everybody
knows and sentimentalises over or laughs at. But nobody ever heard it
as I heard it that night in the shadow of Castello Montughi, while
cicadas chanted ethereally in the black cypresses and the Brenta
muttered among its rocks. I didn’t laugh. I stood quivering. The theme
swept on to its climax, returned, flowered magically, tragically, into
developments I had never listened to or dreamed. If I can’t play a
violin myself, I have sat in front of all the Russians and Jews and
Gypsies who can. But no one of them ever let loose with his bow such
pent-up passion and misery. Not one, ever. There was no mere poetry
in that violin. There was heartbreak in it. There was damnation in
it. There were wild tears, pleading, hunger, hopelessness, remorse.
There was in it all of life that is unfulfilled and not to be assuaged
and beyond utterance. And all poured out in a tone of gold, with the
stroke of a god--or a demon.
No wonder that infernal dog started howling again. I could have howled
myself. I’m not sure that I didn’t. However, before I could stop him
the dog broke away from me. He leaped forward to the chapel door,
scratched at it, finally threw his big body against it. The latch gave
and the door flew open. The dog disappeared inside. As he did so I
heard, instead of the music, a sort of crack and a brief whine. But
what I saw, across the dark court, left me no time to think of that.
For the moment I was too astonished even to be startled. Little as I
had expected what lay behind the door, I expected nothing less than
those two great candles and that statuesque profile upturned between
them. The delicate line of the profile was incredibly white against
the frescoed wall of the chapel. Then it came over me that she was
not carved in marble, on a mediæval tomb, but that she was dead,
lying there on her bier, in her _capella ardente_--that woman whose
exquisitely cut features wore such an air of race.
For what I did afterward I don’t know whether I had an excuse or not.
At first I was absurdly, horribly, shaken. I have a physical shrinking
from death that is too much for me. I would rather have faced any
marauder than that dead princess whom I had never seen, lying so
white and silent between her candles, with her black hair sweeping
down about her. Then the violin: there had been about it something
unearthly. Could I have been imagining again? Could that have been a
music of the supernatural? But as my senses grew calmer, as there came
back to me the remembrance of all that had set this place so apart in
my life, as I thought of the warm arm I had kissed a few minutes ago,
watching that profile whose still beauty seemed the very image of a
pure and noble pride, the mystery and awesomeness of it moved me less
than a kind of passion of pity--that she should be lying alone there in
the night, with no one but a dog beside her. And, yielding to a sudden
impulse, I walked into the chapel.
Never, but never, did I regret an impulse more.
Principe Montughi was standing at the foot of the bier, his great head
sunk between his powerful shoulders, his strange pale eyes on the
white face between the candles. My own astounded eyes took him in,
the two pieces of a violin bow in the hands clasped before him, the
broken violin between the paws of the dog lying at his feet. My emotion
flashed into an embarrassment so acute that I could neither speak nor
move. But he did not break out on me as I expected--as I deserved. He
did not even look at me, at first. And when he did it was as if I were
not there.
“Too late,” he muttered. “Too late. She will not hear me, now. And when
she could I would not play to her.”
His eyes were stranger and paler than ever. In the candle light they
were like two spots of phosphorescence. Then they changed. I could see
him slowly search my face, the revolver in my hand, the night behind
me. Something of it was in his eyes when they came back to my face.
Finally he spoke again.
“Is your wife honest?” he asked.
For very amazement I failed to realise the import of his question. The
scene and the man appalled me. He had met me a few hours before, with
the same self-possession. He could not long have put off that grotesque
masquerade which secretly amused me. Yet the Princess must have been
already dead, or dying. I began--I don’t know what I began to think.
Then I suddenly recollected that in Italian the Prince’s adjective had
a particular meaning, as applied to a woman.
“Is that why you shut her up here?” I burst out in indignation, in
divination.
But I grew humble as he continued to stare at me. It was as if I could
look through his blank eyes into a place of extremity which was not
good to see.
“No,” he replied at last. “That is--she never would tell me.”
He said it quite simply, gazing down at the proud white face on the
bier with a hypnotic intensity of demand. It made my anger shrivel
away into nothing. It made me shiver. I saw something dreadful in the
smile just touching the dead woman’s lips--a smile of Leonardo that
was what you chose. But to me it was less dreadful than the sighing
admission of the man’s words. They somehow grew up monstrously before
me in the candle-light of the little painted chapel. They painted for
me a picture of pride more terrifying than anything I had conceived.
Inscrutably they unlocked the tower into which I had never stepped,
peopled the lonely castle, haunted that fairy aisle of cypresses.
Inexorably they uncovered for me, behind the smiling mask of my own
life, the ghosts of sorrow and defeat, forebodings blacker and more
intolerable still.
The poignancy of that revelation choked me, blinded me. I staggered
back into the dark, leaving Montughi to take what answer he could from
the mute lips of his Princess.