THE CONTESSA'S TRIUMPH.
And it was with very mingled sensations that Sir Tom heard from Lucy
(for it was from her lips he heard it) the intimation that Madame di
Forno-Populo was going to be so good as to remain at the Hall till they
moved to London, and then to accompany them to Park Lane. Sir Tom was
taken entirely by surprise. He was not a man who had much difficulty in
commanding himself, or showing such an aspect as he pleased to the
general world; but on this occasion he was so much surprised that his
very jaw dropped with wonder and astonishment. It was at luncheon that
the intimation was made, in the Contessa's presence, so that he did not
venture to let loose any expression of his feelings. He gave a cry, only
half uttered, of astonishment, restrained by politeness, turning his
eyes, which grew twice their size in the bewilderment of the moment,
from Lucy to the Contessa and back again. Then he burst into a
breathless laugh--a twinkle of humour lighted in those eyes which were
big with wonder, and he turned a look of amused admiration towards the
Contessa. How had she done it? There was no fathoming the cleverness of
women, he said to himself, and for the rest of the day he kept bursting
forth into little peals of laughter all by himself. How had she managed
to do it? It was a task which he himself would not have ventured to
undertake. He would not, he said to himself, have had the slightest idea
how to bring forward such a proposition. On the contrary, had not his
sense that Lucy had much to forgive in respect to this invasion of her
home and privacy induced him to make a great sacrifice, to withdraw his
opposition to those proceedings of hers of which he so much disapproved?
And yet in an afternoon, in one interview, the Contessa had got the
upper hand! Her cleverness was extraordinary. It tickled him so that he
could not take time to think how very little satisfied he was with the
result. He, too, had fallen under her enchantments in the country, in
the stillness, if not dulness, of those long evenings, and he had been
very willing to be good to her for the sake of old times, to make her as
comfortable as possible, to give her time to settle her plans for her
London campaign. But that she should begin that campaign under his own
roof, and that Lucy, his innocent and simple wife, should be visible to
the world as the friend and ally of a lady whose name was too well known
to society, was by no means satisfactory to Sir Tom. When his first
astonishment and amazement was over, he began to look grave; but what
was he to do? He had so much respect for Lucy that when the idea
occurred to him of warning her that the Contessa's antecedents were not
of a comfortable kind, and that her generosity was mistaken, he rejected
it again with a sort of panic, and did not dare, experienced and
courageous as he was, to acknowledge to his little wife that he had
ventured to bring to her house a woman of whom it could be said that she
was not above suspicion. Sir Tom had dared a great many perils in his
life, but he did not venture to face this. He recoiled from before it,
as he would not have done from any lion in the way. He could not even
suggest to her any reticence in her communications, any reserve in
showing herself at the Contessa's side, or in inviting other people to
meet her. If all his happiness depended upon it, he felt that he could
not disturb Lucy's mind by any such warning. Confess to her that he had
brought to her a woman with whom scandal had been busy, that he had
introduced to her as his friend, and recommended to honour and kindness,
one whose name had been in all men's mouths! Sir Tom ran away morally
from this suggestion as if he had been the veriest coward; he could not
breathe a word of it in Lucy's ear. How could he explain to her that
mixture of amazement at the woman's boldness, and humorous sense of the
incongruity of her appearance in the absolute quiet of an English home,
without company, which, combined with ancient kindness and careless good
humour, had made him sanction her first appearance? Still less, how
could he explain the mingling of more subtle sensations, the
recollections of a past which Sir Tom could not himself much approve of,
yet which was full of interest still, and the formation of an
intercourse which renewed that past, and brought a little tingling of
agreeable excitement into life when it had fallen to too low an ebb to
be agreeable in itself? He would not say a word of all this to Lucy. Her
purity, her simplicity, even her want of imagination and experience, her
incapacity to understand that debatable land between vice and virtue in
which so many men find little harm, and which so many women regard with
interest and curiosity, closed his mouth. And then he comforted himself
with the reflection that, as his aunt herself had admitted, the Contessa
had never brought herself openly within the ban. Men might laugh when
the name of La Forno-Populo was introduced, and women draw themselves up
with indignation, or stare with astonishment not unmingled with
consternation as the Duchess had done; but they could not refuse to
recognise her, nor could any one assert that there was sufficient reason
to exclude her from society. Not even when she was younger, and
surrounded by worshippers, could this be said. And now when she was
less---- But here Sir Tom paused to ask himself, was she less attractive
than of old? When he came to consider the question he was obliged to
allow that he did not think so; and if she really meant to bring out
that girl---- Did she mean to bring out that girl? Could she make up her
mind to exhibit beside her own waning (if they were waning) charms the
first flush of this young beauty? Sir Tom, who thought he knew women (at
least of the kind of La Forno-Populo), shook his head and felt it very
doubtful whether the Contessa was sincere, or if she could indeed make
up her mind to take a secondary place. He thought with a rueful
anticipation of the sort of people who would flock to Park Lane to renew
their acquaintance with La Forno-Populo. "By Jove! but shall they
though? Not if I know it," said Sir Tom firmly to himself.
Williams, the butler, was still more profoundly discomposed. He had
opened his mind to Mrs. Freshwater on various occasions when his
feelings were too many for him. Naturally, Williams gave the Contessa
the benefit of no doubt as to her reputation. He was entirely convinced,
as is the fashion of his class, that all that could have been said of
her was true, and that she was as unfit for the society of the
respectable as any wretched creature could be. "That foreign madam" was
what he called her, in the privacy of the housekeeper's room, with many
opprobrious epithets. Mrs. Freshwater, who was, perhaps, more
good-natured than was advantageous to the housekeeper and manager of a
large establishment, was melted whenever she saw her, by the Contessa's
gracious looks and ways, but Williams was immovable. "If you'd seen what
I've seen," he said, shaking his head. The women, for Lucy's maid
Fletcher sometimes shared these revelations, were deeply excited by
this--longing, yet fearing to ask what it was that Williams had seen.
"And when I think of my lady, that is as innocent as the babe unborn,"
he said, "mixed up in all that---- You'll see such racketing as never was
thought of," cried Williams. "I know just how things will go. Night
turned into day, carriages driving up at all hours, suppers going on
after the play all the night through, masks and dominoes
arriving;--no--to be sure this is England. There will be no _veglionis_,
at least--which in England, ladies, would be masked balls--with Madam
the Countess and her gentlemen--and even ladies too, a sort of
ladies--in all sorts of dresses."
"O-oh!" the women cried.
They were partially shocked, as they were intended to be, but partially
their curiosity was excited, and a feeling that they would like to see
all these gaieties and fine dresses moved their minds. The primitive
intelligence always feel certain that "racketing" and orgies that go on
all night, must be at least guiltily delightful, exciting, and amusing,
if nothing else. They were not of those who "held with" such
dissipation; still for once in a way to see it, the responsibility not
being theirs, would be something. They held their breath, but it was not
altogether in horror; there was in it a mixture of anticipation too.
"And I know what will come of it," said Williams. "What has come afore:
the money will have to come out o' some one's pocket; and master never
knew how to keep his to himself, never, as long as I've known him. To be
sure, he hadn't got a great deal in the old days. But I know what'll
happen; he'll just have to pay up now--he's that soft," said Williams;
"a man that can't say no to a woman. Not that I care for the money. I'd
a deal sooner he gave her an allowance, or set her up in some other
place, or just give her a good round sum--as he could afford to do--and
get shut of her. That is what I should advise. Just a round sum and get
shut of her."
"I've always heard," said Miss Fletcher, "as the money was my lady's,
and not from the Randolph side at all."
"What's hers is his," said Williams; "what's my lady's is her husband's;
and a good bargain too--on her side."
"I declare," cried Fletcher energetically, stung with that sense of
wrong to her own side which gives heat to party feeling--"I declare if
any man took my money to keep up his--his--his old sweetheart, I'd
murder him. I'd take his life, that's what I should do."
"Poor dear," said Mrs. Freshwater, wiping her eyes with her apron. "Poor
dear! She'll never murder no one, my lady. Bless her innocent face. I
only hope as she'll never find it out."
"Sooner than she don't find it out I'll tell her myself," cried
Williams. "Now I don't understand you women. You'd let my lady be
deceived and made game of, rather than tell her."
"Made game of!" cried Fletcher, with a shriek of indignation. "I should
like to see who dared to do that."
"Oh, they'll dare do it, soon enough, and take their fun out of
her--it's just what them foreigners are fond of," said Williams, who
knew them and all their tricks down to the ground, as he said. Still,
however, notwithstanding his evil reports, good Mrs. Freshwater, who was
as good-natured as she was fat, could scarcely make up her mind to
believe all that of the Contessa. "She do look so sweet, and talk so
pretty, not as if she was foreign at all," the housekeeper said.
That evening, however, the Contessa herself took occasion to explain to
Sir Tom what her intentions were. She had thought the subject all over
while she dressed for dinner, with a certain elation in her success, yet
keen clear-mindedness which never deserted her. And then, to be sure,
her object had not been entirely the simple one of getting an invitation
to Park Lane. She had intended something more than this. And she was not
sure of success in that second and still more important point. She meant
that Lady Randolph should endow Bice largely, liberally. She intended to
bring every sort of motive to bear--even some that verged upon
tragedy--to procure this. She had no compunction or faltering on the
subject, for it was not for herself, she said within herself, that she
was scheming, and she did not mean to be foiled. In considering the best
means to attain this great and final object, she decided that it would
be well to go softly, not to insist too much upon the advantages she had
secured, or to give Lucy too much cause to regret her yielding. The
Contessa had the soul of a strategist, the imagination of a great
general. She did not ignore the feelings of the subject of her
experiment. She even put herself in Lucy's place, and asked herself how
she could bear this or that. She would not oppose or overwhelm the
probable benefactress to whom she, or at least Bice, might afterwards
owe so much. When Sir Tom approached her chair in the evening when he
came in after dinner, as he always did, she made room for him on the
sofa beside her. "I am going to make you my confidant," she said in her
most charming way, with that air of smiling graciousness which made Sir
Tom laugh, yet fascinated him in spite of himself. He knew that she put
on the same air for whomsoever she chose to charm; but it had a power
which he could not resist all the same. "But perhaps you don't care to
be taken into my confidence," she added, smiling, too, as if willing to
admit all he could allege as to her syren graces. She had a delightful
air of being in the joke which entirely deceived Sir Tom.
"On the contrary," he said. "But as we have just heard your plans from
my wife----"
The Contessa kissed her hand to Lucy, who occupied her usual place at
the table.
"I wonder," she said, "if you understand, being only a man, what there
is in that child; for she is but a child. You and I, we are Methuselahs
in comparison."
"Not quite so much as that," he said, with a laugh.
"Methuselahs," she said reflectively. "Older, if that is possible;
knowing everything, while she knows nothing. She is our good angel. It
is what you would not have dared to offer, you who know me--yes, I
believe it--and like me. Oh no, I do not go beyond that English word,
never! You like the Forno-Populo. I know how you men speak. You think
that there is amusement to be got from her, and you will do me the
honour to say, no harm. That is, no permanent harm. But you would not
offer to befriend me, no, not the best of you. But she who by nature is
against such women as I am--Sweet Lucy! Yes it is you I am talking of,"
the Contessa said, who was skilful to break any lengthened speeches like
this by all manner of interruptions, so that it should never tire the
person to whom it was addressed. "She, who is not amused by me, who does
not like me, whose prejudices are all against me, she it is who offers
me her little hand to help me. It is a lovely little hand, though she is
not a beauty----"
"My wife is very well," said Sir Tom, with a certain hauteur and
abruptness, such as in all their lengthened conversations he had never
shown before.
The Contessa gave him a look in which there was much of that feminine
contempt at which men laugh as one of the pretences of women. "I am
going to be good to her as she is to me," she said. "The Carnival will
be short this year, and in England you have no Carnival. I will find
myself a little house for the season. I will not too much impose upon
that angel. There, now, is something good for you to relieve your mind.
I can read you, _mon ami_, like a book. You are fond of me--oh yes!--but
not too long; not too much. I can read you like a book."
"Too long, too much, are not in my vocabulary," said Sir Tom; "have they
a meaning? not certainly that has any connection with a certain charming
Contessina. If that lady has a fault, which I doubt, it is that she
gives too little of her gracious countenance to her friends."
"She does not come down to breakfast," said the Contessa, with her soft
laugh, which in itself was a work of art. "She is not so foolish as to
put herself in competition with the lilies and the roses, the English
flowers. Poverina! she keeps herself for the afternoon which is
charitable, and the light of the lamps which is flattering. But she
remembers other days--alas! in which she was not afraid of the sun
himself, not even of the mid-day, nor of the dawn when it comes in above
the lamps. There was a certain _bal costume_ in Florence, a year when
many English came to the Populino palace. But why do I talk of that? You
will not remember----"
There was something apparently in the recollection that touched Sir Tom.
His eye softened. An unaccustomed colour came to his middle-aged cheek.
"I! not remember? I remember every hour, every moment," he said, and
then their voices sank lower, and a murmur of reminiscences, one filling
up another, ensued between the pair. Their tone softened, there were
broken phrases, exclamations, a rapid interchange which was far too
indistinct to be audible. Lucy sat by her table and worked, and was
vaguely conscious of it all. She had said to herself that she would take
no heed any more, that the poor Contessa was too open-hearted, too
generous to harm her, that they were but two old friends talking of the
past. And so it was; but there was a something forlorn in sitting by at
a distance, out of it all, and knowing that it was to go on and last,
alas! by her own doing, who could tell how many evenings, how many long
hours to come!