Here was a case of Mahomet, en route to pay his respects to the Mountain, being met halfway by the object of his pilgrimage; though to liken the Contessa di Ravello to a mountain is perhaps to brutalise a poetic license. She is a fairy of a woman, a pocket Venus. Gaetà is her name, and her sponsors in baptism must have been endowed with prophetic souls, for she is the very spirit of irresponsible, childlike gaiety.
Not that she has a sense of humour. There is all the difference in the world between a sense of humour and a sense of fun, and truth to tell, the Contessa had no more humour than a frolicsome kitten. She had always been in a frolic of some sort, when I had known her in Davos, whither she had gone because she thought it would be "what you call a lark"; and she was in a frolic now, judging by her merry laughter when she saw me.
Her great wine-brown eyes were laughing, her full, cupid-lips were laughing, and more than all, the two deep, round dimples in the olive cheeks were laughing. Even the little rings of black hair on her low forehead seemed to quiver with mirth, as her head moved with quick, bird-like gestures. She was dressed all in grey, and the cut-steel buttons on her dress twinkled as if they too were in the joke.
"Fancy meeting you here, of all places!" she said, in her pretty English, lisping but correct. "It is a good gift from the saints. We have had such stupid adventures, and we have been so bored."
"We" were evidently the handsome, slightly moustached woman of thirty-five, and the thin, darkly dour man of fifty who were with the Contessa in the carriage; and a moment later she had introduced me to the Baron and Baronessa di Nivoli. I echoed the name with some interest. "Have I the pleasure of meeting the inventor of the new air-ship which is so much talked about?" I asked.
"That is my brother Paolo," replied the Baron, unbending slightly.
"He will join us later," added the Baronessa, with a quick look at the pretty and rich little widow which betrayed to me a secret. She then turned a dark, disapproving gaze upon me which told another, and I could have laughed aloud. "They want to nobble my poor little Contessa for brother-aëronaut, and they don't countenance chance meetings with strange young men," I said to myself, greatly amused. "If they can see through the dust, and suspect in me a possible rival for the absent, they have sharp eyes, or keen imaginations, and I may be in for a little fun."
We were at the hotel door, and I was allowed to help the Contessa out, though the elder lady preferred the aid of the concierge. For the moment Gaetà had forgotten the claims of her companions, and remembered only mine. It is a butterfly way of hers to forget easily, and flutter with delight in a new corner of the garden, just because it is new.
"You are staying here? How nice!" she exclaimed, without giving me time to answer. "We should have arrived last night, but we had an accident to our carriage—a broken wheel. It was coming down from the Hospice of St. Bernard, which we had been to visit—oh, not to please me, do not think it. It was the Baron, here. In dim ages his people and the saint were cousins, though the idea of a saint having cousins seems actually sacrilegious, doesn't it? I do not love monks, I only respect them, which is so disagreeable. But the Baron took us. Dio mio! I have no warm blood left. It was frozen up there. And then, that our carriage should have broken down at a little place—the wrong end of nowhere—Bourg St. Something! We had to stop all night. Fancy me without my maid, who was to meet me here. I do not know if my dress is not on wrong side before. Later, we all have to go on to Chamounix and then to Aix-les-Bains. I've taken a villa there for a month. You must come and see me."
Thus she chattered on as we entered the hotel, and then, suddenly, her bright eyes fell upon the Boy, who had retired near the stairway. There he stood, with a book in his hand, and an unwonted colour in his brown cheeks, glowing red under the strange blue jewels of his eyes.