The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg/Chapter 5
WHEN Anna d'Orobelli left Father d'Astier before the door of the tall house where he stayed when in Brinoë, their parting was a simple good-night. There was not even a pressure of the hand, for a curious and unfamiliar restraint had taken possession of them both. All the way from the Villa Leonardo, they had driven side by side in silence while the big motor roared up hill and down through the yellow dust. At the door she did not even wait for him to mount the steps and disappear, but turned the car and rushed away across the Piazza. She was late already and at forty-nine a woman could ill afford to keep a lover waiting. But she was driven, too, by a fierce desire to escape the quiet eyes of Father d'Astier. He had, she thought, come at last to make a truce with life, and so he was calm and filled with peace. He had rest and that was a precious thing.
She fled from him as she might have tried to flee her own conscience. Father d'Astier was all the conscience she had, and now he had turned up in Brinoë when she wanted least to encounter him. Who could have expected to find him there in the horrible heat of August when everybody fled Brinoë? (In her mind echoed the shadow, "Anybody who is anybody." Not seedy people, of course, like those she had encountered this afternoon.) Oh, he knew well enough why she was there and what she was doing. That was why he had been so silent, as if she were betraying him. But he had been reasonable enough, all things considered; he had never reproached her but once and then only by the inscription on the fly-leaf of the Thomas-à-Kempis. He had kept silent, which in a way was worse than if he had spoken, especially when you had loved him for nearly thirty years.
At the door of the Palazzo Biancamano, she turned the motor over to the chauffeur. "At five tomorrow, Enrico," she said, looking a little away from him. Enrico, too, knew why she was in Brinoë. He knew why she had driven through the dust and heat all the way from Venice in August. She would not need the motor until five because she and Oreste would spend the heat of the day in the apartment.
As the motor drove off she turned and looked up at the windows of the apartment with that sudden feeling of sickness and ecstasy which always overcame her at such times. The windows were still dark. She was in time. He had not come yet. It was not her own apartment. She hated Brinoë because she thought the people who lived there dull and stuffy and full of gossip. It was an apartment loaned her by Nina de Paulhac, Nina knowing well enough what it was to be used for. A great many people knew, she thought, and yet what difference did it make? Your friends were your friends no matter what you did, and the others did not matter. Only she must not make a fool of herself. When women were old, love sometimes made them silly. She mustn't be an old fool like Mrs. Whitby, running after gigolos and dubious dukes at sixty.
The apartment was strange to her and there was only Ottilia, the femme de ménage, to show her about. Ottilia knew why she was there. Well, better that she did know. Then there wouldn't be any violated innocence. She wondered how many times the apartment had been lent to others for the same purpose.
Swarthy, moustached, with ox-like eyes, Ottilia showed her the bedrooms and the two baths.
"I am hard," she thought. "But what of it? God knows I've reason to be hard. Only where love is concerned, I am not hard. It's always me that suffers. You can't be really hard if you go on being hurt again and again."
She told Ottilia to keep the supper hot. "It's impossible to ruin Italian food," she thought. And aloud, "I'm expecting a friend to dine with me."
Yes. Ottilia knew. Signora de Paulhac had written her.
She wished Ottilia wouldn't smile like that with her eyes. Was she smiling just because she took that friendly interest which all Latins have in an intrigue, or because she thought it ridiculous in a woman of her age to have a lover? She must be about the same age as Ottilia, although Ottilia looked ten years older. Would Ottilia be going downstairs to regale other servants below with the tale? What did it matter? What did anything matter? "It is silly," she thought, "for a woman of my age and experience to behave always as if it were the first time, always worrying what people might say, always afraid of being caught." There wasn't anybody in the world who cared if she was caught, certainly not Faustino. A husband like that could be made cocu a thousand times in public and he wouldn't care at all so long as she gave him money for electric toys and a train to run by real steam around the garden at Venterollo—"like the children in the Bois riding to the Jardin d'Acclimatation the way I used to do. My God! How long ago was that? I mustn't think of it. I mustn't think. Perhaps that's why I've always kept my lovers so long, because it's always like the first time, always a renewal, a rebirth of love, rising from its own ashes. It was always exciting when it was like that. There was no growing blasé."
For a long time she lay in the hot water, allowing it to soothe her, to set loose all the nerves made taut by the wretched visit to the Villa Leonardo. When at last she rose and dried herself, she covered her body with a scented powder made for herself alone, and then fell to regarding it in the mirror. It was not an old body, but firm and young, and the face was not old.
"Nina looks old sometimes, because she gets tired. It's vitality that counts in this world. It's the only thing. I'm never tired. Faustino was old and tired at thirty-four when I married him."
Her hair, cut short but not too short, was a fine artificial red. "Thank Heaven," she thought, "I've dyed it for so many years that no one remembers it was ever any other color. It's swimming that preserves the figure. Swimming and sun and exercise. If women would only learn that." She thought of Oreste and of the many women who envied her, and she grew warm with triumph. Oreste was at least five years younger than herself, only he didn't know. "I am carnal woman," she thought, "and quite pleased with myself." She thought suddenly of the curious piece of sculpture found in the garden of the preposterous Mrs. Weatherby. The memory of it gave her strange and voluputous excitement.
Then she put on a pale green peignoir the color of sea-water and a collar of pearls.
There was a loggia off the salon which hung above the river. It was quite dark now and the moon had risen above the circling hills. The air was still hot, but the insane wind from Africa had died away at last.
"It is after nine," she thought. "He is late. He counted on being here by seven."
She walked out into the loggia and leaning on the stone balustrade looked down. Below her the river flowed in the moonlight a pale golden yellow, shrunken by the drought to the size of a brook. It smelled badly. Save for a pair of lovers the long bare quai was empty. The lovers leaned against the river wall, two small black figures melted into a single passionate shadow. Presently on the bridge just beneath appeared the dimmed lights of a motor.
"There he is now," she thought. The motor turned slowly into the street below and moved toward the Palazzo Biancamano, and the old feeling of sickness swept over her. He was coming nearer and nearer. He would stop now at the door—She waited, but he did not stop. The motor went slowly on. Perhaps he had mistaken the way or did not know the house. But that could not be. He knew Brinoë well. He knew Nina's apartment. Perhaps he had had a small accident on the way, an accident that had delayed him but not injured him, and he had telegraphed, only they had failed to deliver the telegram. Things like that happened in Italy. It wasn't any better with the Fascisti, no matter how much they said to the contrary. You couldn't change the whole character of a race overnight. In America. . . . What was America like now? It was eighteen years since she had last been there. Queer that she always thought of it as "home" when she had lived in Europe more than half her life.
In one of the apartments below someone had begun to play a piano and to sing. It was familiar music but she could not place it. The voice of the soprano was young. It sang a little uncertainly.
Newport. What was Newport like now? Who lived in the old house with the ugly stone turrets? Her room had been the one in the turret above the porte cochère . . . the room she had left to marry Faustino, Principe d'Orobelli, Conte di Venterollo. Well, it had sounded splendid enough to suit her mother—her mother, who was having an affair with a dentist years younger than herself. Wilkins was his name, Herbert Wilkins. We are bad blood (she thought). But there were plenty of other girls willing to take her place. Faustino was getting money and she was becoming a Princess—Princess d'Orobelli. A fool she was, knowing nothing about anything . . . nothing about life. Thank God, girls today were different, especially American girls; they knew what they were doing.
There was another motor coming across the bridge. It wasn't Oreste. It was a camion, rumbling and rattling through the stillness of the night.
"I mustn't watch for him," she thought. "If I watch it will only make him later."
The voice belowstairs kept on singing. She knew the music now. It was the Rosenkavalier—the music of the Feldmarschallin in the first act. The voice was singing in French and not too good French. Probably an American girl studying in Italy. A Viennese opera sung in French by an American in Brinoë. The world was getting like that. She, an American married to an Italian, had a Spanish lover. What did it matter? What did anything matter except staying young, like that fresh uncertain voice and the dark pair of lovers on the quai. The voice was like silver.
"Mais comment est-il donc possible que l'enfant que j'étais jadis puisse un jour connaître la vieillesse? Etre une Vieille! La Vieille Maréchale! Voyez, c'est elle, la vieille Princesse."
A bell rang somewhere in the apartment. She listened. Surely it was the telegram, perhaps explaining why he was late. A door opened. There was the sound of Ottilia's voice talking to someone with a man's voice, and then a laugh and then the door closing again. Ottilia would be coming now in a moment with the telegram. She stepped inside from the loggia, but Ottilia didn't come. What was keeping her? When a telegram came she ought to bring it in. All Italians were the same—hopeless.
Suddenly she rang with a too great violence, thinking at once, "I have lost all control of myself. I mustn't do that." There was another thought in the back of her mind which she kept pushing from her so that she might not even recognize it for what it was.
Ottilia was standing before her.
"The bell rang, Ottilia. Was it something for me?"
"No, Eccellenza. It was my cousin coming to pay me a visit."
Eccellenza! Eccellenza! Where had Ottilia learned that absurd method of address? If I watch for him he will never come. I must not be cross with Ottilia. Being rude to servants is a worse crime in the eyes of God than adultery. Most Latins are horrible to their servants. Faustino treats them like dogs.
She found herself in the loggia, watching, watching. "Well," she thought, "I'm here again, watching, without knowing it. There's no use going back now."
She began to see herself all at once as another woman whom she regarded from a great distance.
It was a funny thing what life did to you. Who would have thought that the girl being married in the garden at Newport would have turned into the woman waiting in the loggia for Oreste? One would have said that there was no connection between the two, but the chain was simple and clear enough. It fitted together link by link, beginning with Faustino. If a woman had a husband like Faustino what could you expect of her? It wasn't in her nature to be a religieuse, wearing black and doing good deeds. After what had happened with Faustino she wanted only life and more life. He hadn't broken her. Only three months she had lived with him, but that was long enough—too long, because it was long enough for her to conceive a child, not a child, but a monster, an idiot. Her own good blood hadn't been strong enough to overcome the taint of Faustino's life and blood. It wasn't easy to think that your first-born was a cripple and an idiot, and a grown man now. He must be twenty-six, shut up always at Venterollo with his father. She hadn't seen him in years. How many? Well, she wouldn't think of that. After all, he wasn't much more insane than Faustino himself.
She'd think instead of Victor because Victor was a boy to be proud of, with red hair, people said, like his mother's. Only her hair had never been red. It was the red hair of his father—not Faustino, praise God, not Faustino but of Nigel. Victor wasn't a d'Orobelli. He wasn't even Italian. He was son of Nigel Burnham.
Another automobile was crossing the bridge. No, that wasn't Oreste either. His motor was grey and long. If I watch for him he'll never come. Ottilia said her cousin. More likely it's her lover. I can't go inside and sit there alone. O God, don't let anything happen to Oreste!
And Faustino didn't care that Victor wasn't his son, even though he knew it. Victor was the heir, the next Prince d'Orobelli. He had saved the line, Victor, the son of an English father and an American mother, Victor, product of six happy weeks in Malta. I was young then. I thought I wanted to dabble in archæology instead of life. Maybe it would have been better; I shouldn't be standing here now, suffering. Six weeks in Malta. No, that was worth all this suffering when you thought of the happiness, even the happiness of thinking about it now, years afterward. I am old, she thought. Everything is measured in years now instead of months. There had never been anything quite like Nigel, nothing so young and clean and unspoiled. It was probably his first affair, and mine, O God, mine was with Faustino, my husband. A clean affair like that with Nigel must be better in the eyes of God than legitimate marriage with a beast like Faustino. Odd how she thought of him always as he had been in Malta in his uniform as officer of His Majesty's Navy and never as she had seen him last in Monte Carlo, middle-aged, an admiral, with two daughters growing up into tall blonde English girls. Nigel was young, all youth. And she had been young then, too, young save for the stain of Faustino. And Victor was like Nigel, as if Nigel had never grown old at all but simply changed into a son. That was why she loved Victor better than Amadeo, Jim Cain's child.
"Le temps," sang the voice, "est subtil comme un poison; on ne le sent pas, tant qu'on s'aime; mais soudain, un jour, on ne sent plus que lui. Il est autour de nous, il pénétre en nous-même. En nous sans cesse il glisse; dans le miroir il coule; il ride nos pauvres visages; même entre nous son onde coule encore, sans bruit, silencieuse. Oh, mon ami! . . ."
O God! Stop her singing! Send Oreste safely to me!
Odd how you could love in so many ways. Love with Nigel was like the morning sunlight streaming in at the windows. And with Jim Cain it was mixed with pity. Jim Cain, who thought himself a gentleman because he hadn't vitality enough to be positive. It was queer how quickly families went to seed in America, in three generations. Jim thought that doing nothing meant being a gentleman. He was a gentleman, but only by environment and accident. I could have married him instead of Faustino, but I'm glad that I didn't. I should have died of boredom with him. And I could not have betrayed him. I'd have been so sorry for him. Jim would worry a great deal about his honor, because he thought that was one of the marks of a gentleman. And he was dead now for three years. And Amadeo was like him. Nobody had ever suspected Amadeo but Faustino. Faustino knew Amadeo wasn't his child. And Jim's cousin Sabine, who suspected everything and everybody . . . she even dared to speak of Amadeo as "my cousin."
"I mustn't think these things," she told herself. "It's a bad omen, as if I were really an old woman looking back over my life. I mustn't act as if everything was finished. It isn't finished. It isn't finished."
The thought kept pressing in upon her closer and closer. I must push it away. I mustn't even let it take shape. It's nearly eleven now. O God, send him to me. O God, just this once more. Don't make me an old woman. I'm still young. My heart is young. My soul is young. O God, don't take him from me.
A motor-horn was sounding somewhere across the river in the direction of the Palazzo Gonfarini. It's a German horn, like the one Oreste has. If I wait, if I cross my fingers, it will turn into Oreste. Such miracles may happen, only we never know about them. He might have taken the road by Monte Salvatore. No, it isn't Oreste. It sounds farther away now. It was going the other direction. It was climbing the hill toward San Marco. How high the moon is, at the very top of the sky.
Jean could have saved me. Jean was the only one I ever loved. Queer that never once in twenty-five years have I called him Jean, but always Father d'Astier, politely, respectfully, as if there was nothing between us. He was the only one before whom I'd have grovelled on the ground, kissing his feet because he was a man and a good man. And it was his goodness that spoiled everything. We could have run away, anywhere, giving up everything, even though he was a priest. What difference would it have made in the end? Who would have cared? And now he is an old man with peace in his soul who thinks me a harlot. It is your fault, Jean. It is your fault. You could have taken me when you wanted me, that time at Caporolla in the garden or at Nina's or the night at Brufani's when Fate brought us together alone. You could have saved me, Jean. You could have saved me! I'd have been with you tonight happy to sit by you, instead of here in the loggia waiting for Oreste. But you turned your back and contented yourself with writing pious sayings in a book and looking at me in silence out of your black eyes. God understands. God must know that what you did was a sin. And still you can have peace and faith, shutting me out. Shutting me out.
(The thought was near now, far too near to be put away.) The city is quiet. There isn't even the sound of a motor-horn or the faint music from the Piazza. The moon has passed the zenith and everyone is in bed . . . everyone but me who stands listening and watching in the loggia. Even the lovers have gone away. They are young, happy creatures, they are young. There are years before them, and before me—perhaps a single night, a week, a month. O God, send him to me.
(The thought cried out aloud.) He is not coming now. It is too late. He is never coming. It is all over now. I am too old. Tomorrow he will write me giving excuses and letting me know that it's ended and again I shall be hurt as if I'd never learned anything. O God, don't let me be hurt this last time, this last time when I am saying good-by to youth, to love, to everything. Love, God, that's all I've ever had. I'm not a clever woman. I'm not a good woman. I've never had anything but love.
She found her nails digging into the stone of the balustrade. "I must go in now," she thought. "I mustn't stand here any longer. I'm being a fool, an old fool like Kitty Whitby. I mustn't do that. I've always been discreet. I've been dignified. O God, if only You had given me faith and peace like Jean. O God, it was You and the Church who took Jean from me. I'd have been a good wife to him.
He's not coming now. He's never coming at all. It's too late. It's all over.
She went inside and threw herself down on the sofa, where she lay for a long time not knowing what she thought, or even whether she was alive. And slowly when she had wept and wept she began to feel calm again and cool.
I must not be a fool, she told herself. It's over now and there's nothing to be done. I must make the most of it. Perhaps if I pray God will send me peace and faith. I must be an old woman now. I must go out in dignity. It's time now. Victor is a man now and he mustn't hear people laugh at his mother. The past is the past, but Victor is old enough now to understand. Victor, Nigel's son. Nigel, who was like the morning sun streaming in at the windows. He is getting old, too.
She rose and rang the bell and standing in the shadow so that Ottilia should not see she had been weeping, she told her to serve the supper and then go to bed.
I must not let her know that he is not coming. I must not let her know that it matters to me. Aloud she said, "You can leave the supper on the table. I'll serve myself."
Ottilia knew that he wasn't coming. You could tell by the look in her ox-like eyes. They weren't smiling any longer. They had in them a gleam of sympathy. That was because the "cousin" was a lover. Ottilia understood. To be pitied by a servant! In love women were all of one kind. There were no princesses and no servants.
When Ottilia had placed the supper on the table and gone away, the Princess rose and going into the bathroom disposed of the soup and a portion of the vegetables so that in the morning Ottilia would not think that she had been unable to eat. She did this in the proper order so that if Ottilia came in suddenly she would not find all the food disposed of miraculously at once. But Ottilia did not return.
Then she drank coffee, thinking perhaps if I stay awake and pray all night God will send me faith and peace like Jean's. She took out the Thomas-à-Kempis that Jean had given her long ago, and tried to read it. It was a thing she carried with her always, more precious than her pearls, not because of what it contained, but because he had given it to her. He had held it in his hands and had written in it. He had beautiful hands. She always saw them when she read out of the Thomas-à-Kempis. She read from what he had written with his beautiful hands.
Dans la damnation le feu est la moindre chose; le supplice propre au damné est le progrès infini dans le vice et dans le crime, l'âme s'endurcissant, se dépravant toujours, s'enfoncant nécessairement dans le mal de minute en progression géométrique pendant l'éternité.
That was true, but its truth did not change the ways of humanity. It went on just the same. It was a clever thought, but not strong enough to overcome and subdue the body that shut you in, a prisoner. I will wear black, she thought, and devote myself to hospitals and the poor. Perhaps a legend will grow up about me—the woman who had given all to life and turned in the end to God and the church. That would be a fitting end to the story, a fine way to end it, and it was only the end that mattered now.
She wept a little, pitying herself, and then read some more out of the little book, passages which she had read many times.
"O Lord, let that become possible to me by Thy grace, which by nature seemed impossible to me.
"Thou knowest that I am able to suffer but little, and that I am quickly cast down, when a slight adversary ariseth.
"For Thy Name's sake, let every tribulation be made pleasant and desirable to me: for to suffer and to be disquieted for Thy sake is very wholesome for my soul."
"Jean sought to cure me," she thought, "by giving me a book when he should have given me himself."
Perhaps if I read now God will reward me and send Oreste, after all. But that is foolish. I have never prayed to God except when I am unhappy. He must remember that. I only come to Him when I want to beg something of Him. No, the end must be in black. All great harlots become pious in their old age, as if faith could take the place of love.
She tried to read, but she did not know what she was reading. She kept thinking of the excuses Oreste would write tomorrow and thinking, "If I wear black I had best go to Worth. He will make me look discreet and respectable and chic. I shall be able to wear black without becoming an old horror. Satin I shall wear and black velvet. How people will talk when I am no longer seen about, when they hear that I have shut myself up at Venterollo with Faustino and my idiot son. Perhaps they will come and see me there. Surely God won't mind that. I can have Nina come. I can even have people to stay. God wouldn't mind that.
"But he that is wise and well-instructed in the Spirit is raised above these mutable things: not heeding what he feeleth in himself, of which way the wind of instability bloweth; but studies only that his mind may be directed to its supreme and final good.
"For thus he will be able to continue throughout one and the selfsame, and unshaken. . . ."
She tried to read on and on, calming her soul with the long, quiet, beautiful periods, but she could not see the page for the feeling of sickness which came over her. People, she thought, must feel like this when they are condemned to death. For me to be old is to die.
Suddenly she flung herself down once more on the sofa and began to weep. It was no use. It was all over. She hadn't it in her to shut herself away from life. And she never loved Oreste as much as she had loved him tonight. O God, send him to me. No, I must not do that. (She sat up.) I will be courageous. It is all over. Tomorrow I will go to Jean and ask him where I can go into retreat, to begin another life. I will break completely with the past and never see any of them again, not even Nina. (She rose and walked to the mirror.) I am old now. I should never weep. It makes me look weary like Nina. It's only then that I look really old. I am old. I am finished. I must find peace now in God. I must go out in a beautiful dignity. If I say it over and over again, I will believe it and have peace . . . peace such as Jean has. I am old. I am old. I am old.
It did make her feel more calm, more peaceful. She sat down once more and opened the Imitation of Christ, but as she opened it she saw again the beautiful hands of Father d'Astier.
I am calmer now, she told herself. I will read it through each day and in the end I will be saved.
"Prepare not thyself for much rest, but for great patience.
"Seek true peace, not in earth, but in heaven: not in men, nor in any other creature, but in God alone.
"For the love of God thou oughtest cheerfully to undergo all things, that is to say, all labor and pain, temptation, vexation, anxiety, necessity, infirmity, injury, obloquy, reproof, humiliation, confusion, correction and scorn."
Perhaps it was true. Perhaps there was such peace to be had on earth. In the end she would find it, like Jean, and be content. It was all over now. I am old, I am old.
"Nevertheless in all these they bore themselves patiently, and trusted rather in God than in themselves; knowing that 'the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that should be revealed in them.' . . ."
There was a bell ringing again, distantly, ardently. Perhaps it was he. O God, send me Oreste! Just this once . . . this last time. Why isn't Ottilia answering it? O God, send me Oreste!
She rose, thinking, "This is not true." It is a nightmare. In the hall she thought, "I dare not open the door. If I open it, it will change into someone else. I dare not touch the handle. I will call out his name. Then it can't change into someone else."
She stood trembling, making a great effort, and at last she was able to say in a weak voice, "Oreste."
From the other side came his voice, the voice.
"Anna. Let me in."
She tore open the door and he stood there telling her that he had had an accident in a remote valley. And she thought, "I must not cry. When I cry I look old." But her whole body was shaking with sobs. For no reason at all she was suddenly aware again of that strange statue found in the garden of the Villa Leonardo.
The book slipped forgotten to the floor, where Ottilia found it the next morning when her "cousin," the green-grocer, had gone.