The whole house seems to have absorbed the perfumes of the garden, as if they had soaked into the wood. The corridors, the bedrooms, the wardrobes, even the chests of drawers, have the same delicate fragrance. It scented my dreams and told me where we were when I waked in the morning, confused with sleep.
XVI
A CHAPTER OF ENCHANTMENT
A birthday must be happy spent in such an exquisite place, I told myself, when I'd got up and peeped out of the window upon a land of enchantment—even a birthday more advanced than one would choose. By morning light the lake was no longer sapphire, but had taken on a brilliant, opaque blue, like lapis lazuli. Umbrella pines were stretched in dark, jagged lines on an azure background. Black cypresses pointed warning fingers heavenward, rising tall and slim and solemn, out of a pink cloud of almond blossoms. The mountains towering round the lake, as if to protect its beauty with a kind of loving selfishness, had their green or rugged brown sides softened with a purplish glow like the bloom on a grape. And in the garden that flowed in waves of radiant colour from terrace to terrace, as water flows over a weir, roses and starry clematis, amethyst wistaria, rosy azalea, and a thousand lovely things I'd never seen before, mingled tints as in a mosaic of jewels.
I had lain awake in the night listening to a bird which I could almost have believed a fairy, and, though I'd never heard a nightingale, I wondered if he could be one. He said over and over again, through the white hours perfumed with roses and flooded with moonlight: "Do look, do look! Spirit, spirit, spirit!" And so, just in case he might have been calling me, I got up early to see what he had wanted me to see. Then I was gladder than ever that we had decided to spend at least that day and another night at Serbelloni, for one might journey to all four corners of the globe and not find another place so magically beautiful.
Although I was up so early, perhaps I spent a longer time over my toilet than the two girls do over theirs; and when I was ready neither Maida nor Beechy were in their rooms. I had opened my door to go down and look for them when I came face to face with a waiter carrying an enormous bouquet. It was for me, with a perfectly lovely poem written by the Prince. At least, it was in his handwriting, so I suppose it was by him, and it was full of pretty allusions to an "adorable woman," with praises for the gracious day that gave her to the world. I was pleased! It was like going back and being a young girl again, and I could have sung for joy, as the bird did last night.
The rest of the party were on an entrancing terrace, looking down over other flowery terraces upon the town of Bellagio, with its charming old campanile, and its grey roofs like a flock of doves clustering together on the border of the lake. The water was so clear and still that the big hotels and villas on the opposite shore seemed to have fallen in head down, and each little red-and-white canopied boat waiting for passengers at the quay had its double in the bright blue mirror. Clouds and mountains were all reflected too, and it seemed as if one might take one's choice between the real world and the dream world.
Maida and Beechy had already been for a walk with Sir Ralph and Mr. Barrymore, who had taken them up by a labyrinth of wooded paths to an old ruined castle which they described as crowning the head of the promontory. It had been built by the Romans, and in the Middle Ages was the stronghold of brigands, who captured beautiful ladies and terrorized the whole country. The girls were excited about some secret passages which they had found, leading down from the ruin to wonderful nooks screened on one side by trees and hanging over sheer abysses on the other. They wanted to show also an old chapel and a monks' burying ground which you had to reach by scrambling down a narrow stairway attached to the precipitous rocks, like a spider web. But I had on my white suede shoes with the Louis Quinze heels, which look so well with a white dress and dark blue silk stockings; besides, I began to want my breakfast, and it would have been impolite to disappear before I thanked the Prince, who might come out at any moment.
We had our coffee and rolls in a kind of bower close to the terrace; and afterwards I did walk along the level path, fenced in with a tangle of roses—pink, and white, and gold, and crimson—as far as a high shelf, cut into the face of the sheer cliff which plunges vertically down, down into the blue-green water. The Prince was my companion, and he (who has distinguished friends in the neighbourhood, which he has visited before) told me a strange story of the place. Once, he said, the Princes of Stanga were lords of the land here, and a certain daughter of the house was famous as the handsomest and cruellest Princess of her time. Despite her dreadful disposition, she had crowds of lovers, whom she used to invite to walk with her by moonlight, after a tête-à-tête supper. She would lead them to this very spot on which we stood, and just as she had lured them on to make a burning declaration of love she would give a laugh, and a sudden push, which hurled them to death in the lake far below. How different, judging from what I have read in the ladies' magazines, from the home-life of our dear Princesses of to-day! And how different from my habits, if I am asked to become, and do become, a Princess. I should have liked to throw out some delicate little suggestion of this sort, and perhaps would have found the right words, had not Beechy appeared at that moment with Sir Ralph. Then my whole attention was taken up, as it had been during breakfast, by tactfully staving off any allusion on the Prince's part to my birthday. All was in vain, however; he said something gallant, and I was quite as giddy for a few seconds as one of the wicked Princess's lovers, lest Beechy should be in an impish mood and throw out allusions to my age. But she was as good as a kitten, though she looked at me in a naughty way, and only said, "Would any one believe Mamma was twenty-nine to-day—if it weren't for Me?"
When we went indoors afterwards I gave her that ruby heart ring of mine that she likes.