The Diary of a Man of Fifty

The Countess, still laughing, gave a little shrug balancing her hand to and fro.  “So-so; I always supposed you had had a quarrel.  You don’t mind my being frank like this—eh?”

“I delight in it; it reminds me of your mother.”

“Every one tells me that.  But I am not clever like her.  You will see for yourself.”

“That speech,” I said, “completes the resemblance.  She was always pretending she was not clever, and in reality—”

“In reality she was an angel, eh?  To escape from dangerous comparisons I will admit, then, that I am clever.  That will make a difference.  But let us talk of you.  You are very—how shall I say it?—very eccentric.”

“Is that what your mother told you?”

“To tell the truth, she spoke of you as a great original.  But aren’t all Englishmen eccentric?  All except that one!” and the Countess pointed to poor Stanmer, in his corner of the sofa.

“Oh, I know just what he is,” I said.

“He’s as quiet as a lamb—he’s like all the world,” cried the Countess.

“Like all the world—yes.  He is in love with you.”

She looked at me with sudden gravity.  “I don’t object to your saying that for all the world—but I do for him.”

“Well,” I went on, “he is peculiar in this: he is rather afraid of you.”

Instantly she began to smile; she turned her face toward Stanmer.  He had seen that we were talking about him; he coloured and got up—then came toward us.

“I like men who are afraid of nothing,” said our hostess.

“I know what you want,” I said to Stanmer.  “You want to know what the Signora Contessa says about you.”

Stanmer looked straight into her face, very gravely.  “I don’t care a straw what she says.”

“You are almost a match for the Signora Contessa,” I answered.  “She declares she doesn’t care a pin’s head what you think.”

“I recognise the Countess’s style!” Stanmer exclaimed, turning away.

“One would think,” said the Countess, “that you were trying to make a quarrel between us.”

I watched him move away to another part of the great saloon; he stood in front of the Andrea del Sarto, looking up at it.  But he was not seeing it; he was listening to what we might say.  I often stood there in just that way.  “He can’t quarrel with you, any more than I could have quarrelled with your mother.”

“Ah, but you did.  Something painful passed between you.”

“Yes, it was painful, but it was not a quarrel.  I went away one day and never saw her again.  That was all.”

The Countess looked at me gravely.  “What do you call it when a man does that?”

“It depends upon the case.”

“Sometimes,” said the Countess in French, “it’s a lâcheté.”

“Yes, and sometimes it’s an act of wisdom.”

“And sometimes,” rejoined the Countess, “it’s a mistake.”

I shook my head.  “For me it was no mistake.”

She began to laugh again.  “Caro Signore, you’re a great original.  What had my poor mother done to you?”

I looked at our young Englishman, who still had his back turned to us and was staring up at the picture.  “I will tell you some other time,” I said.

“I shall certainly remind you; I am very curious to know.”  Then she opened and shut her fan two or three times, still looking at me.  What eyes they have!  “Tell me a little,” she went on, “if I may ask without indiscretion.  Are you married?”

“No, Signora Contessa.”

“Isn’t that at least a mistake?”

“Do I look very unhappy?”

She dropped her head a little to one side.  “For an Englishman—no!”

“Ah,” said I, laughing, “you are quite as clever as your mother.”

“And they tell me that you are a great soldier,” she continued; “you have lived in India.  It was very kind of you, so far away, to have remembered our poor dear Italy.”

“One always remembers Italy; the distance makes no difference.  I remembered it well the day I heard of your mother’s death!”

“Ah, that was a sorrow!” said the Countess.  “There’s not a day that I don’t weep for her.  But che vuole?  She’s a saint its paradise.”

“Sicuro,” I answered; and I looked some time at the ground.  “But tell me about yourself, dear lady,” I asked at last, raising my eyes.  “You have also had the sorrow of losing your husband.”

“I am a poor widow, as you see.  Che vuole?  My husband died after three years of marriage.”

I waited for her to remark that the late Count Scarabelli was also a saint in paradise, but I waited in vain.

“That was like your distinguished father,” I said.

“Yes, he too died young.  I can’t be said to have known him; I was but of the age of my own little girl.  But I weep for him all the more.”

Again I was silent for a moment.

“It was in India too,” I said presently, “that I heard of your mother’s second marriage.”

The Countess raised her eyebrows.

“In India, then, one hears of everything!  Did that news please you?”

“Well, since you ask me—no.”

“I understand that,” said the Countess, looking at her open fan.  “I shall not marry again like that.”

“That’s what your mother said to me,” I ventured to observe.

She was not offended, but she rose from her seat and stood looking at me a moment.  Then—“You should not have gone away!” she exclaimed.  I stayed for another hour; it is a very pleasant house.

Two or three of the men who were sitting there seemed very civil and intelligent; one of them was a major of engineers, who offered me a profusion of information upon the new organisation of the Italian army.  While he talked, however, I was observing our hostess, who was talking with the others; very little, I noticed, with her young Inglese.  She is altogether charming—full of frankness and freedom, of that inimitable disinvoltura which in an Englishwoman would be vulgar, and which in her is simply the perfection of apparent spontaneity.  But for all her spontaneity she’s as subtle as a needle-point, and knows tremendously well what she is about.  If she is not a consummate coquette . . . What had she in her head when she said that I should not have gone away?—Poor little Stanmer didn’t go away.  I left him there at midnight.

12th.—I found him today sitting in the church of Santa Croce, into which I wandered to escape from the heat of the sun.

In the nave it was cool and dim; he was staring at the blaze of candles on the great altar, and thinking, I am sure, of his incomparable Countess.  I sat down beside him, and after a while, as if to avoid the appearance of eagerness, he asked me how I had enjoyed my visit to Casa Salvi, and what I thought of the padrona.

“I think half a dozen things,” I said, “but I can only tell you one now.  She’s an enchantress.  You shall hear the rest when we have left the church.”

“An enchantress?” repeated Stanmer, looking at me askance.

He is a very simple youth, but who am I to blame him?

“A charmer,” I said “a fascinatress!”

He turned away, staring at the altar candles.

“An artist—an actress,” I went on, rather brutally.

He gave me another glance.

“I think you are telling me all,” he said.

“No, no, there is more.”  And we sat a long time in silence.

At last he proposed that we should go out; and we passed in the street, where the shadows had begun to stretch themselves.

“I don’t know what you mean by her being an actress,” he said, as we turned homeward.

“I suppose not.  Neither should I have known, if any one had said that to me.”

“You are thinking about the mother,” said Stanmer.  “Why are you always bringing her in?”

“My dear boy, the analogy is so great it forces itself upon me.”

He stopped and stood looking at me with his modest, perplexed young face.  I thought he was going to exclaim—“The analogy be hanged!”—but he said after a moment—

“Well, what does it prove?”

“I can’t say it proves anything; but it suggests a great many things.”

“Be so good as to mention a few,” he said, as we walked on.

“You are not sure of her yourself,” I began.

“Never mind that—go on with your analogy.”

“That’s a part of it.  You are very much in love with her.”

“That’s a part of it too, I suppose?”

“Yes, as I have told you before.  You are in love with her, and yet you can’t make her out; that’s just where I was with regard to Madame de Salvi.”

“And she too was an enchantress, an actress, an artist, and all the rest of it?”

“She was the most perfect coquette I ever knew, and the most dangerous, because the most finished.”

“What you mean, then, is that her daughter is a finished coquette?”

“I rather think so.”

Stanmer walked along for some moments in silence.

“Seeing that you suppose me to be a—a great admirer of the Countess,” he said at last, “I am rather surprised at the freedom with which you speak of her.”

I confessed that I was surprised at it myself.  “But it’s on account of the interest I take in you.”

“I am immensely obliged to you!” said the poor boy.

“Ah, of course you don’t like it.  That is, you like my interest—I don’t see how you can help liking that; but you don’t like my freedom.  That’s natural enough; but, my dear young friend, I want only to help you.  If a man had said to me—so many years ago—what I am saying to you, I should certainly also, at first, have thought him a great brute.  But after a little, I should have been grateful—I should have felt that he was helping me.”

“You seem to have been very well able to help yourself,” said Stanmer.  “You tell me you made your escape.”

“Yes, but it was at the cost of infinite perplexity—of what I may call keen suffering.  I should like to save you all that.”

“I can only repeat—it is really very kind of you.”

“Don’t repeat it too often, or I shall begin to think you don’t mean it.”

“Well,” said Stanmer, “I think this, at any rate—that you take an extraordinary responsibility in trying to put a man out of conceit of a woman who, as he believes, may make him very happy.”

I grasped his arm, and we stopped, going on with our talk like a couple of Florentines.

“Do you wish to marry her?”

He looked away, without meeting my eyes.  “It’s a great responsibility,” he repeated.

“Before Heaven,” I said, “I would have married the mother!  You are exactly in my situation.”

“Don’t you think you rather overdo the analogy?” asked poor Stanmer.

“A little more, a little less—it doesn’t matter.  I believe you are in my shoes.  But of course if you prefer it, I will beg a thousand pardons and leave them to carry you where they will.”

He had been looking away, but now he slowly turned his face and met my eyes.  “You have gone too far to retreat; what is it you know about her?”

“About this one—nothing.  But about the other—”

“I care nothing about the other!”

“My dear fellow,” I said, “they are mother and daughter—they are as like as two of Andrea’s Madonnas.”

“If they resemble each other, then, you were simply mistaken in the mother.”

I took his arm and we walked on again; there seemed no adequate reply to such a charge.  “Your state of mind brings back my own so completely,” I said presently.  “You admire her—you adore her, and yet, secretly, you mistrust her.  You are enchanted with her personal charm, her grace, her wit, her everything; and yet in your private heart you are afraid of her.”

“Afraid of her?”

“Your mistrust keeps rising to the surface; you can’t rid yourself of the suspicion that at the bottom of all things she is hard and cruel, and you would be immensely relieved if some one should persuade you that your suspicion is right.”

Stanmer made no direct reply to this; but before we reached the hotel he said—“What did you ever know about the mother?”

“It’s a terrible story,” I answered.

He looked at me askance.  “What did she do?”

“Come to my rooms this evening and I will tell you.”

He declared he would, but he never came.  Exactly the way I should have acted!

14th.—I went again, last evening, to Casa Salvi, where I found the same little circle, with the addition of a couple of ladies.  Stanmer was there, trying hard to talk to one of them, but making, I am sure, a very poor business of it.  The Countess—well, the Countess was admirable.  She greeted me like a friend of ten years, toward whom familiarity should not have engendered a want of ceremony; she made me sit near her, and she asked me a dozen questions about my health and my occupations.