THE COUNTESS CASTEL DEL MONTE
After leaving Spellino we went downhill. There was a plain beneath, but
up on the hillside only the sheep were feeding contentedly, all with
their broad-tailed sterns turned to us. The sun was shining on the white
diamond-shaped causeway stones which led across a marshy place. We came
again to the foot of the hill. It had indeed been no more than a
dividing ridge, which we had crossed over by Spellino.
We saw the riband of the road unwind before us. One turn swerved out of
sight, and one alone. But round this curve, out of the unseen, there
came toward us the trampling of horses. A carriage dashed forward, the
coachman's box empty, the reins flying wide among the horses' feet.
There was but little time for thought; yet as they passed I caught at
their heads, for I was used to horses. Then I hung well back, allowing
myself to be jerked forward in great leaps, yet never quite loosing my
hold. It was but a chance, yet a better one than it looked.
At the turn of the road towards Spellino I managed to set their heads to
the hill, and the steep ascent soon brought the stretching gallop of the
horses to a stand-still.
It seemed a necessary thing that there should be a lady inside. I should
have been content with any kind of lady, but this one was both fair and
young, though neither discomposed nor terrified, as in such cases is
the custom.
"I trust Madame is not disarranged," I said in my poor French, as I went
from the horses' heads to the carriage and assisted the lady to alight.
"It serves me right for bringing English horses here without a coachman
to match," she said in excellent English. "Such international
misalliances do not succeed. Italian horses would not have startled at
an old beggar in a red coat, and an English coachman would not have
thrown down the reins and jumped into the ditch. Ah, here we have our
Beppo"--she turned to a flying figure, which came labouring up hill. To
him the lady gave the charge of the panting horses, to me her hand.
"I must trouble you for your safe-conduct to the hotel," she said. Now,
though her words were English, her manner of speech was not.
By this time Henry had come up, and him I had to present, which was like
to prove a difficulty to me, who did not yet know the name of the lady.
But she, seeing my embarrassment, took pity on me, saying--
"I am the Countess Castel del Monte," looking at me out of eyes so
broadly dark, that they seemed in certain lights violet, like the deeps
of the wine-hearted Greek sea.
By this time Beppo had the horses well under control, and at the lady's
invitation we all got into the carriage. She desired, she said, that her
brother should thank us.
We went upwards, turning suddenly into a lateral valley. Here there was
an excellent road, better than the Government highway. We had not driven
many miles when we came in sight of a house, which seemed half Italian
_palazzo_ and half Swiss cottage, yet which had nevertheless an
undefined air of England. There were balconies all about it, and long
rows of windows.
It did not look like a private house, and Henry and I gazed at it with
great curiosity. For me, I had already resolved that if it chanced to be
a hotel, we should lodge there that night.
The Countess talked to us all the way, pointing out the objects of
interest in the long row of peaks which backed the Val Bergel with their
snows and flashing Alpine steeps. I longed to ask a question, but dared
not. "Hotel" was what she had said, yet this place had scarcely the look
of one. But she afforded us an answer of her own accord.
"You must know that my brother has a fancy of playing at landlord," she
said, looking at us in a playful way. "He has built a hostel for the
English and the Italians of the Court. It was to be a new Paris, was it
not so? And no doubt it would have been, but that the distance was over
great. It was indeed almost a Paris in the happy days of one summer. But
since then I have been almost the only guest."
"It is marvellously beautiful," I replied. "I would that we might be
permitted to become guests as well."
"As to that, my brother will have no objections, I am sure," replied the
Countess, "specially if you tell your countrymen on your return to your
own country. He counts on the English to get him his money back. The
French have no taste for scenery. They care only for theatres and pretty
women, and the Italians have no money--alas! poor Castel del Monte!"
I understood that she was referring to her husband, and said hastily--
"Madame is Italian?"
"Who knows?" she returned, with a pretty, indescribable movement of her
shoulders. "My father was a Russian of rank. He married an Englishwoman.
I was born in Italy, educated in England. I married an Italian of rank
at seventeen; at nineteen I found myself a widow, and free to choose the
world as my home. Since then I have lived as an Englishwoman
expatriated--for she of all human beings is the freest."
I looked at her for explanation. Henry, whose appreciation of women was
for the time-being seared by his recent experience of Madame of the Red
Eyelids, got out to assist Beppo with the horses. In a little I saw him
take the reins. We were going slowly uphill all the time.
"In what way," I said, "is the Englishwoman abroad the freest of all
human beings?"
"Because, being English, she is supposed to be a little mad at any rate.
Secondly, because she is known to be rich, for all English are rich.
And, lastly, because she is recognised to be a woman of sense and
discretion, having the wisdom to live out of her own country."
We arrived on the sweep of gravel before the door. I was astonished at
the decorations. Upon a flat plateau of small extent, which lay along
the edge of a small mountain lake, gravelled paths cut the green sward
in every direction. The waters of the lake had been carefully led here
and there, in order apparently that they might be crossed by rustic
bridges which seemed transplanted from an opera. Little windmills made
pretty waterwheels to revolve, which in turn set in motion mechanical
toys and models of race-courses in open booths and gaily painted
summer-houses.
"You must not laugh," said the Countess gravely, seeing me smile, "for
this, you must know, is a mixture of the courts of Italy and Russia
among the Alps. It is to my brother a very serious matter. To me it is
the Fair of Asnières and the madhouse at Charenton rolled into one."
I remarked that she did the place scant justice.
"Oh," she said, "the place is lovely enough, and in a little while one
becomes accustomed to the tomfoolery."
We ascended the steps. At the top stood a small dark man, with a flash
in his eyes which I recognised as kin to the glance which Madame the
Countess shot from hers, save that the eyes of the man were black as
jet.
"These gentlemen," said the Countess, "are English. They are travelling
for their pleasure, and one of them stopped my stupid horses when the
stupider Beppo let them run away, and jumped himself into the ditch to
save his useless skin. You will thank the gentlemen for me, Nicholas."
The small dark man bowed low, yet with a certain reserve.
"You are welcome, messieurs," he said in English, spoken with a very
strong foreign accent. "I am greatly in your debt that you have been of
service to my sister."
He bowed again to both of us, without in the least distinguishing which
of us had done the service, which I thought unfair.
"It is my desire," he went on more freely, as one that falls into a
topic upon which he is accustomed to speak, "that English people should
be made aware of the beauty of this noble plateau of Promontonio. It is
a favourable chance which brings you here. Will you permit me to show
you the hotel?"
He paused as though he felt the constraint of the circumstances. "Here,
you understand, gentlemen, I am a hotel-keeper. In my own country--that
is another matter. I trust, gentlemen, I may receive you some day in my
own house in the province of Kasan."
"It will make us but too happy," said I, "if in your capacity as
landlord you can permit us to remain a few days in this paradise."
I saw Henry look at me in some astonishment; but his training forbade
him to make any reply, and the little noble landlord was too obviously
pleased to do more than bow. He rang a bell and called a very
distinguished gentleman in a black dress-coat, whose spotless attire
made our rough outfit look exceedingly disreputable, and the knapsacks
upon our backs no less than criminal. We decided to send at once to Vico
Averso for our baggage.
But these very eccentricities riveted the admiration of our
distinguished host, for only the mad English would think of tramping
through the Val Bergel in the heart of May with a donkey's load on their
backs. Herr Gutwein, a mild, spectacled German, and the manager of this
cosmopolitan palace, was instructed to show us to the best rooms in the
house. From him we learned that the hotel was nearly empty, but that it
was being carried on at great loss, in the hope of ultimate success.
We found it indeed an abode of garish luxury. In the great salon, the
furniture was crimson velvet and gold. All the chairs were gilt. The
very table-legs were gilded. There were clocks chiming and ticking
everywhere, no one of them telling the right time. In the bedrooms,
which were lofty and spacious, there were beautiful canopies, and the
most recent improvements for comfort. The sitting-rooms had glass
observatories built out, like swallows' nests plastered against the
sides of the house. Blue Vallauris vases were set in the corners and
filled with flowers. Turkey carpets of red and blue covered the floor.
Marvellous gold-worked tablecloths from Smyrna were on the tables.
Everywhere there was a tinge of romance made real--the dream of many
luxuries and civilisations transplanted and etherealised among the
mountains.
Then, when we had asked the charges for the rooms and found them
exceedingly reasonable, we received from the excellent Herr Gutwein much
information.
The hotel was the favourite hobby of Count Nicholas. It was the dream of
his life that he should make it pay. While he lived in it, he paid
tariff for his rooms and all that he had. His sister also did the same,
and all her suite. Indeed, the working expenses were at present paid by
Madame the Countess of Castel del Monte, who was a half-sister of Count
Nicholas, and much younger. The husband of Madame was dead some years.
She had been married when no more than a girl to an Italian of thrice
her age. He, dying in the second year of their marriage, had left her
free to please herself as to what she did with her large fortune. Madame
was rich, eccentric, generous; but to men generally more than a little
sarcastic and cold.
At dinner that night Count Nicholas took the head of the table, while
Dr. Carson, the resident English physician, sat at his left hand, and
Madame at his right. I sat next to the Countess, and Henry Fenwick next
to the doctor. We made a merry party. The Count opened for us a bottle
of Forzato and another of Sassella, of the quaint, untranslatable
bouquet which will not bear transportation over the seas, and to taste
which you must go to the Swiss confines of the Valtellina.
"Lucia," said Count Nicholas, "you will join me in a bottle of the Straw
wine in honour of the stopping of the horses; and you will drink to the
health of these gentlemen who are with us, to whom we owe so much."
Afterwards we drank to Madame, to the Count himself, and to the
interests of science in the person of the doctor. Then finally we
pledged the common good of the hotel and kursaal of the Promontonio.
The Countess was dressed in some rose-coloured fabric, thickly draped
with black lace, through whose folds the faint pink blush struggled
upward with some suggestion of rose fragrance, so sheathed was she in
close-fitting drapery. She looked still a very girl, though there was
the slower grace of womanhood in the lissom turn of her figure, slender
and _svelte_. Her blue-black hair had purple lights in it. And her great
dark violet eyes were soft as La Vallière's. I know not why, but to
myself I called her from that moment, "My Lady of the Violet Crown."
There was a passion-flower in her hair, and on her pale face her lips,
perfectly shaped, lay like the twin petals of a geranium flower fallen a
little apart.
Dinner was over. The lingering lights of May were shining through the
hill gaps, glorifying the scant woods and the little mountain lake.
Henry Fenwick and the Count were soon deep in shooting and
breechloaders. Presently they disappeared in the direction of the
Count's rooms to examine some new and beautiful specimens more at their
leisure.
In an hour Henry came rushing back to us in great excitement.
"I have written for all my things from Lago d'Istria," he said, "and I
am getting my guns from home. There is some good shooting, the Count
says. Do you object to us staying here a little time?"
I did not contradict him, for indeed such a new-born desire to abide in
one place was at that moment very much to my mind. And though I could
not conceive what, save rabbits, there could be to shoot in May on a
sub-Alpine hillside, I took care not to say a word which might damp my
pupil's excellent enthusiasms.