Chapter 12

In size and shape the private apartments were simply a continuation of the state apartments, but they were furnished in modern fashion, with a great deal of luxury, and, in so far as the enveloping brown hollands would permit one to opine, with a great deal of taste. "The family occupy this palace during the cold months only. In summer they make a villegglatura to Isola Nobile. Therefore you do not see these rooms at their best," the old man apologized. In what he described as the _gabine'o segre'o_ of the Countess, over the fireplace, hung the full-length, life-size portrait of a gentleman, in the dress of eighteen-forty-something--high stock, flowered waistcoat, close-fitting buff trousers, and full-bottomed blue frock-coat, very tight above the hips.

"Count Antonio the Seventeenth, the last of our tyrants. The Signori will be aware that we were tyrants of Sampaolo for many centuries," said the old man, not without a touch of pride. Then, bowing to Anthony, "One would think properly the portrait of your Excellency."

Indeed, the face of the last of the tyrants and his grandson's face were surprisingly alike.

"Conte Antonio Decimose'mo was Conte when, as a lad, I had the honour to join the family," the old servant went on. "It was he who had for consort the Lordessa Crahforrdi of England. After his death, there was the Revolution, by which we annexed to Sampaolo another island called Sardinia. The Lordessa was taken prisoner in these rooms, with the Conte-figlio, and banished from the country. Then the King of Sardinia was elected tyrant of both islands, and the government was removed from Vallanza to Turin. That was many years ago, fifty years ago. When the Pope died, the government was again removed, and now it is at Rome."

"Oh? Is the Pope dead?" Adrian questioned.

"Che sì, Signore--dupo lung' anni," the old man assured him.

They strolled about the town for a little, before returning to the hotel--through the narrow cobble-paved streets, with their alternations of splendour and squalor, their palaces, churches, hovels, their dark little shops, their neglected shrines, their vociferous population, their heterogeneous smells--and along the Riva, with its waterside bustle, its ships loading and unloading, and its unexampled view of bay and mountains.

"Do you see this stick?" asked Adrian, holding up his walking-stick.

"What about it?" asked Anthony.

"I 'm coming to that," said Adrian. "But first you must truthfully answer a question. Which end of this stick would you prefer to be--the bright silver handle or the earth-stained ferrule?"

"Don't know," said Anthony, with an air of weariness.

"Don't you?" marvelled Adrian. "How funny. Well, then, you must understand that this stick is but an emblem--a thing's sign. Now for the thing signified. Have you ever paused to moralize over the irony that determines the fates of families? Take, for example, a family that begins with a great man--a great soldier, a great saint, for instance--and then for evermore thereafter produces none but mediocrities. I hope you perceive the irony of that. But contrariwise, take a family that goes on for centuries producing mediocrities, and suddenly ends with the production of a genius. Take my family, just for a case in point. Here I come of a chain of progenitors reaching straight back to Adam; and of not one of them save Adam and myself, has the world ever heard. And even Adam owes his celebrity not in the least to his personal endowments, but solely to the unique character of his position. The First Man could n't help getting a certain reputation, would he, n'ould he. But from Adam to Adrian--silence. Then sudden silvery music. And Adrian--mark the predestination--Adrian is childless. He is the last link. With him the chain, five thousand years long, stops. He is the sudden brilliant flare-up of the fire before it goes out. Well, now, tell me--which end of this stick would you prefer to be? The shining silver handle, or the dull iron other end?"

They were conveyed to Isola Nobile in one of those long slender Sampaolese _vipere_--boats that are a good deal like gondolas, except that they have no felze, and carry a short mast at the bow, with a sail that is only spread when the wind is directly aft. I suppose the palace at Isola Nobile is one of the most beautiful in the world, with its four mellow-toned marble façades rising sheer out of the water, with its long colonnades, its graceful moresque windows, and the variety, profusion, and lace-like delicacy of its carved and incised details. Here again they had to write their names in the visitors' book, and again a servant (this time a young and rather taciturn person) led them through countless vast and splendid rooms, far more splendid than those at the Palazzo Rosso, rooms rich with porphyry, alabaster, mosaics, gilded flourishes and arabesques of stucco, and containing many treasures of painting and sculpture, some of which, I believe, even the sceptical Morellists allow to be actually the handiwork of the artists to whom they are ascribed. But so far from there being any question of their visiting the private apartments at Isola Nobile, their guide, at one point in their progress, sprang forward and hurriedly closed a door that had stood open, and through which they had caught a glimpse of a pleasantly furnished library. By and by they were passed on to a gardener, who showed them the gardens on Isola Fratello and Isola Sorella, with their camphor-trees and cedars, their oranges, oleanders, magnolias, laurels, their terraces, whence thousands of lizards whisked away at the approach of Man, their fountains, grottoes, temples, their peacocks, flamingoes, and tame ring-doves, and always, always, with that wonderful outlook upon the bay and its girdle of sun-bathed hills. The gardener plucked many flowers for them, so that they returned to Vallanza with armfuls of roses, lilies, oleanders, and jessamine.

Later that afternoon, Adrian having gone alone for his donkey-ride in the country (more power to the back of the donkey!), Anthony was seated by the open window of his bedroom, in a state of deep depression. All at once, between the two promontories that form the entrance to the bay, the Capo del Papa and the Capo del Turco, appeared, heading for Vallanza, a white steamer, clearly, from its size and lines, a yacht--a very bright and gay object to look upon, as it gleamed in the sun and crisped the blue waters. And all at once, his eye automatically following it, Anthony experienced a perfectly inexplicable lightening of the heart,--as if, indeed, the white yacht were bringing something good to him. It was absurd, but he could not help it. Somehow, his depression left him, and a feeling almost of joyousness took its place.

"She said she loved me--she said she loved me," he remembered. "And at the farthest," he reflected, "at the farthest I shall be with her again in nine little days."

He got out the fan that he had stolen, and pressed it to his face. He got out his writing-materials, and wrote her a long, cheerful, impassioned letter.

His change of mood was all the more noteworthy, perhaps, because the yacht chanced to be the _Fiorimondo_, bearing the Countess of Sampaolo and her suite from Venice, whither it had proceeded two days before, upon orders telegraphed from Paris.

XXI

Adrian, coming in, saw Anthony's letter, superscribed and stamped, lying on the table.

"I 'm posting a lot of stuff of my own," he said. "Shall I post this with it?"

Had Susanna admitted him to her confidence? How otherwise could it have befallen, as it did, that she received Anthony's letter, which was of course addressed to Craford, at Isola Nobile no later than that very evening?

She read it, smiling.

"Which of the many villas that overlook the bay and are visible from my window, with their white walls and dark-green gardens,--which is yours?" he questioned. "All day I have been wondering. That is the single thing that really stirs me here, that really gives me a _feeling_--its association with you. All day I have been hearing a sonnet of Ronsard's--do you remember it?--_Voicy le bois_. But I wish I knew which villa is your villa, which garden is your garden. Why did n't I find out before I was driven from Paradise? I could easily find out here by inquiring, I suppose. But your name is too sacred. I can't profane it by speaking it aloud to people who might not bare their heads at the sound of it."

Susanna tittered.

And on another page (the letter was eight pages long) he said:--

"It is all very beautiful, of course,--the way the town piles itself up against the hillside, the pink and yellow and lilac _blondeur_ of the houses, the olive gardens, the radiant sky overhead,--it is all very picturesque and beautiful. But I am not hungry for beauty--at least, for this beauty. If you were here with me,--ah, then indeed! But you are not here, and I am hungry for Craford. There was a time when Craford used to seem to me the tritest spot in Europe, and the thought of Italy was luminous of everything romantic, of everything to be desired. There was a time when nothing gave me such joy as to wake and remember, 'I am in Italy--in Italy--in Italy!'--in Rome or Florence or Venice, as the case might be. But the times have changed, have changed. _You_ were in Italy in those days, and now you are at Craford. Italy is dust and ashes. I hunger for Craford as the only place in the world where life is life."

And on still another page:--

"I can't deny that I got a certain emotion in the grey old Cathedral. For so many generations one's people were baptized there, married there, buried there. And then how many times must _you_ have worshipped there, heard holy Mass there. They showed us the relics of San Guido and the Spina d'Oro, of course, and--well, one is n't made of wood. I tried to make up my mind in what part of the church you usually knelt, which prie-dieu was your prie-dieu,--I 'm afraid without any very notable success. But one felt something like a faint afterglow of your presence, and it made one's heart beat. Again at the Palazzo Rosso, under the eyes of all those motionless and silent, dead and gone Valdeschi, in their armour, in their ruffs and puffs and periwigs, one could n't be entirely wooden. The servant who showed us about, an old man who said he had been in the family for I forget how many hundred years, hailed me as a 'cognate,' having recognized the name of Craford, and thereupon inducted us into the _appartamenti segreti_, to exhibit a portrait of my grandsire. Wood itself, I dare say, must have vibrated a little at that. In the throne-room I was suddenly caught up and whisked away, back to a rainy afternoon at Craford; and I walked beside you on the cliffs, and heard your voice, and rejoiced in the sense of your nearness to me, and in your adorable beauty, as you breasted the wind, with the sea and the sky for a background. (Do you remember? Do you remember how keen and sweet the air was, with the scent of the wild thyme? and how the sand-martins circled round us?) As we passed through the long, bare, imposing rooms, something like a shadow of you seemed to flit before us. Or if I glanced out of one of the tall windows, it seemed as if you had just passed under them, along the Riva or across the Piazza. As for Isola Nobile, if I regret that it is n't mine, that is chiefly because I should be glad to be in a position to offer so very lordly and lovely a pleasure-house to _you_."

Susanna laughed.

Towards the end he wrote:--

"I look at the sea and I realize that it is continuous from here to England, from here to Rowland Marshes; and it seems somehow to connect us, to keep us in touch. Perhaps you, too, are looking at it at this same moment. I fancy you walking on your terrace, and looking off upon the grey-blue sea. It seems somehow to connect us. But there is no grey in the blue of the sea here--it is blue, blue, unmitigated, almost dazzling blue, save where in the sun it turns to quite dazzling white, or in the deeper shadows takes on tints that are almost crimson, tints of _lie-de-vin_. Oh, why are n't you here? If you were here, I think a veil would fall from before my eyes, and I should see everything differently. I could imagine myself _loving_ Sampaolo--if you were here. In nine days--nine days! And to-morrow it will be only eight days, and the day after to-morrow only seven. _Only_ do I say? I count in that fashion to keep my courage up. Nine days! Why can't those nine eternities be annihilated from the calendar? Why does n't some kind person kill me, and then call me back to life in nine days? Oh, it was cruel of you, cruel, cruel."

Susanna looked out of her window, across the dark bay, to where the electric lamps along the Riva threw wavering fronds of light upon the water. She kissed her hand, and wafted the kiss (as nearly as the darkness would let her guess) in the direction of the Piazza San Guido. Then she went into the library, and hunted for a volume of Ronsard.

XXII

There are two men, as they that know Sampaolo will not need to be reminded, two young men, who, during the summer months, pervade the island. In winter they go to Rome, or to Nice, or to England for the hunting; but in summer they pervade Sampaolo, where they have a villa just outside Vallanza, as well as the dark old palace of their family in the town.

The twin brothers, Franco and Baldo del Ponte--who that has once met them can ever forget them? To begin with, they are giants--six-feet-four, and stalwart in proportion. Then they are handsome giants, with good, strong, regular features, close-cropped brown hair that tends to curl, and hearty open-air complexions. Then they are jolly, pleasant-tempered, simple-minded and clean-minded giants. Then they are indefatigable giants--indefatigable in the pursuit of open-air amusements: now in their sailing-boats, now in their motor-cars, or on horse-back, or driving their four-in-hands. And finally, being Italians, they are Anglophile giants;--like so many of the Italian aristocracy, they are more English than the English. They are rigorously English in their dress, for instance; they have all their clothes from London, and these invariably of the latest mode. They give English names to their sailing-boats--the _Mermaid_, the _Seagull_. They employ none but Englishmen in their stables, which are of English design, with English fittings. They have English dogs,--fox-terriers, bull-terriers, collies,--also with English names, Toby, Jack, Spark, Snap, and so forth. They speak English with only the remotest trace of foreignness--were they not educated at Eton, and at Trinity College, Cambridge? And they would fain Anglicise, not merely the uniform of the Italian police, but the Italian constitution. "What Italy needs," they will assure you, looking wondrous wise, "is a House of Peers." Their Italian friends laugh at them a good deal; but I suspect that under the laughter there is a certain admiration, if not even (for, as Italian fortunes go, theirs is an immense one) a certain envy.

Is all this apropos of boots, you wonder? No, for behold--

After breakfast, on the following morning, Adrian was alone, enjoying a meditative digestion, in the sitting-room at the Hôtel de Rome, when he saw come bowling along the Riva, turn rattling into the Piazza, and draw up at the inn door, a very English-looking dog-cart, driven by a huge young man in tweeds, with an apparent replica of himself beside him, and an English-looking groom behind. The two huge young men descended; he who had driven said something inaudible to the groom; and the groom, touching his hat, answered: "Yes, my lord."

"So," thought Adrian, "we are not the only Britons in this island. I wonder who my lord is."

And then, nothing if not consequent, he began to sing, softly to himself--

"Lord of thy presence, and no land besi-i-ide . . ."

And he was still softly carolling that refrain, when the door of the sitting-room was opened.

"Marchese del Ponte, Marchese Baldo del Ponte," announced the waiter, with sympathetic exhilaration, flourishing his inseparable napkin.

The two huge young men entered. The room seemed all at once to contract, and become half its former size.

"Ah, Count," said one of them, advancing, and getting hold of Adrian's hand. "How do you do? I am the Marchese del Ponte; this is my brother, the Marchese Baldo. Welcome to Sampaolo. We are your connections, you know. Our ancestors have intermarried any time these thousand years."

Adrian's rosy face was wreathed in his most amiable smiles.

"How do you do? I 'm very glad to see you. Won't you take chairs?" he responded, and hospitably pushed chairs forward. "But I 'm afraid," he added, shaking his head, still smiling, "I 'm afraid I 'm not a count."

"Ah, yes," said Baldo, "we know you don't use your title."

"You 're a count all right, whether you use your title or not," said Franco. "Noblesse is in the bone. You can't get rid of it."

"Your great-grandmother was a Ponte," said Baldo, "and our own grandmother was a Valdeschi, your grandfather's cousin."

"Really?" said Adrian, pleasantly. "But I 'm afraid," he explained to Franco, "that there is n't any noblesse in _my_ bones. I 'm afraid I 'm just a plain commoner."

"Oh, you refer to the Act of Proscription--I understand," said Franco. "But that was utterly invalid--a mere piece of political stage-play. The Italian government had no more power to proscribe your title than it would have to proscribe an English peerage,--no jurisdiction. It could create a new Count of Sampaolo, which it did; but it could n't abolish the dignity of the existing Count--a dignity that was ancient centuries before the Italian government was dreamed of. You 're a count all right."

"I see," said Adrian. "And are you, then," he inferred, with sprightly interest, "agin the government?"

The familiar formula appeared to tickle the two young Anglophiles inordinately. They greeted it with deep-chested laughter.

"We 're not exactly _agin_ the government," Baldo answered, "but we believe in remodelling it. What Italy needs"--he looked a very Solon; and his brother nodded concurrence in his opinion---"is a House of Lords."

"I see--I see," said Adrian.

"We want you to come and stay with us," said Franco. "We 've a villa half a mile up the Riva. You 'd be more comfortable there than here, and it would give us the greatest pleasure to have you."

"The greatest possible pleasure," cordially echoed Baldo.

"You 're exceedingly good," said Adrian. "And I should be most happy. But I 'm afraid--"

"Not another word," protested Franco. "You 'll come. That' s settled."

"That's settled," echoed Baldo.

"We 'll send down for your traps this afternoon," said Franco. "Have you a man with you? No? Then we 'll send Grimes. He 'll pack for you, and bring up your traps. But we hope to carry you off with us now--in time for luncheon."

"I don't know how to thank you," said Adrian. "But I 'm afraid--I hate to destroy an illusion, yet in honesty I must--I 'm afraid I 'm not the person you take me for. I 'm afraid there's a misapprehension. I--"

"Oh, we 'll respect your incog all right, if that's what's troubling you," promised Baldo. "You shall be Mr. Anthony Craford."

"Craford _of_ Craford," Franco corrected him.

"But there it is," said Adrian. "Now see how I 'm forced to disappoint you. I 'm awfully sorry, but I 'm _not_ Mr. Anthony Craford--no, nor Craford _of_ Craford, either."

"What?" puzzled Franco.

"Not Craford?" puzzled Baldo.

"No," said Adrian, sadly. "I 'm awfully sorry, but my name is Willes."

"Willes?" said Franco. "But it was Craford in the visitors' book at the Palazzo Rosso. That's how we knew you were here."

"My brother is the Hereditary Constable of the Palace," said Baldo. "It is now merely an honorary office. But the visitors' book is brought to him whenever there have been any visitors."

"And we inquired for Craford downstairs," supplemented Franco. "And they said you were at home, and showed us up."

"I 'm awfully sorry," repeated Adrian. "But Craford and I are as distinct as night and morning. Craford has gone out for a solitary walk. My name is Willes. Craford and I are travelling together."

"Oh, I see," cried Franco; and slapping his thigh, "Ho, ho, ho," he laughed.

"Ho, ho, ho," laughed Baldo. "We were jolly well sold."

"We--ho, ho--we got the wrong sow by the ear," laughed Franco.

"We put the saddle on the wrong horse--ho, ho," laughed Baldo.

"We 're delighted to make your acquaintance, all the same," said Franco.

"And we hold you to your promise--you 're to come and stay with us--you and Craford both," said Baldo.

"Yes--there 's no getting out of that. We count upon you," said Franco.

"So far as I 'm concerned, I should be charmed," said Adrian. "But I can't speak for Craford. He 's a bit run down and out of sorts. I 'm not sure whether he 'll feel that he 's in a proper state for paying visits. But here he comes."

He inclined his head towards a window, through which Anthony could be seen crossing the Piazza.

"By Jove!" exclaimed Franco. "I should have known him for a Valdeschi anywhere. He 's exactly like a portrait of his grandfather in the Palazzo Rosso."

"By Jove, so he is," exclaimed Baldo.

And, to Adrian's surprise, when the introductions were accomplished, and the invitation was repeated to him, Anthony at once accepted.

"I 've given orders for my four-in-hand to come round here and pick us up," said Franco. "Shall we all go for a spin, and get an appetite for luncheon?"

"In the afternoon, if there 's a breeze, I propose a sail," said Baldo. "I 've just got a new boat out from England, schooner-rigged, the _Spindrift_. I 've not yet really had a fair chance to try her."

"Do you go in for tennis?" asked Franco. "We 've got a court at the villa."

"I don't know whether you care for swimming," said Baldo. "You get a fairly decent dive-off from the landing-stage at the end of our garden. The water here is pooty good. My brother and I generally go for a swim before dinner."

"Ah, here 's Tom with the four-in-hand," said Franco. And then, with a readiness for self-effacement that was surely less British than the language in which it found expression, "Would you care to take the ribbons, Count?" he asked. And when Anthony had declined, "Would you, Willes?" he proceeded.

"Not just at the start, thanks," said Adrian. "I should like to watch 'em step a bit first."

The hypocrite. As if he would have known what to do with the ribbons, had they been given to him.

So Franco took them himself, while Baldo blew the horn.

"Have you visited Castel San Guido yet?" Franco questioned. "Shall we make that our objective?"

They drove up and up, round and round the winding road that leads to Castel San Guido, where it clings to the almost vertical mountainside. For the greater part the road was bordered by olive orchards, but sometimes there were vineyards, sometimes groves of walnut-trees, clumps of stone-pines, or fields of yellowing maize, and everywhere there were oleanders growing wild, and always there was the view.