The Countess of Lowndes Square, and Other Stories

by E. F. Benson

We all froze under the contempt of her blue tremendous eye, and then, most unfairly, she singled me out, and pointing the finger of scorn, hissed at me:

“I ken fine what the hale clamjanfry of ye has been talkin’ about,” she said, or words to that effect, and, without deigning to translate, this tempestuous lady swept on her course. She stepped so high in her indignation that the Duchess of Alatri, lying for coolness’ sake on the pavement outside, thought that Mrs. Mackellar was dancing for her, and rising to her feet, Her Grace trod a circular Saracenic measure. Hardly pausing to swing a string-bag containing such comestibles as would be easily rendered palatable without the aid of a cook, Mrs. Mackellar turned to me again, and spoke in English in order that I might understand.

“If I were you,” she said, “I should be ashamed to keep a dog that eats as much as six Christians, I’ll be bound, be they Presbyterians or Roman Catholics.”... Even as she spoke, who should come by but Seraphina herself? Though she had been hounded out of the Casa Mackellar only yesterday, with every circumstance of ignominy and Highland expressions, Seraphina, sunny and incapable of rudeness, gave her late employer a little smile, and a little obeisance, and said, “Buona sera, Signora!” Without the smallest doubt, Mrs. Mackellar returned that smile.

Now in Alatri, I must have you know, we are all great psychologists and students of character, and often talk about each other’s actions and the gloomy traits of character exhibited therein, so that if you didn’t know the seriousness of our aims, you might think we were gossips. But the true character of Mrs. Mackellar, who she is inside herself, had always puzzled everybody. No one could pull her together into any sort of personage who would pass muster in the wildest work of fiction as being conceivable. Why, for instance, did she who averted her chaste eye from the naked foot of a fisher-boy herself wear a tight silk bathing dress that reached not quite to her knees, and nowhere near her elbows? Was it, as Mrs. Leonards said, to display the atrocity of her own figure and thereby strengthen the rickety morality of the world in general? That could hardly be the case, since on other occasions she laced herself so tight, and wore such a killing hat, and so many Cairngorms and garnets, that she could not be found guiltless of making a public temptation of herself. Why, again, by what possible psychological consistency, did she revel in a game of poker and reserve the hostility of her finest colloquialisms for those who took tickets at a lottery? Why, again—but there is no use in multiplying her contradictions, for she entirely consists of them.

But the salient point on which every psychologist’s eye was pensive to-day was why she had dismissed Seraphina after a year’s harmonious co-operation for agreeing with Salvatore that a particular beefsteak did not stink. Never had she had such a servant as Seraphina, nor ever would, and well she knew it. Someone suggested that Mrs. Mackellar had determined to be an eater of uncooked foods, and others who remembered her welter of appreciation over an ordinary mutton cutlet, hardly troubled to reply to so inadmissible a conjecture. As we whittled away at her, the point of the discussion grew ever sharper, for why had she so clearly smiled in answer to Seraphina’s greeting just now? The idea that the smile was purely sardonic had most supporters: one or two who kindly upheld the view that she was meaning to make it up with Seraphina were hissed down. The most obdurate alone stuck to it, and had the hardihood to bet five liras that this was the true explanation of the smile, and the readiness with which he found takers for that bet, caused him to experience an access of prudence, and to explain that he only meant to bet five liras all told, and not fifty. Alas!

No one was walking in my direction, and some half an hour later I went slowly home. Already I was beginning to regret that I had not taken more of those bets, for the shrewdest analyst of motive and psychology in Alatri had been bound to confess that Mrs. Mackellar’s motives, like the path of the comets that should, according to all calculations, periodically destroy the earth, were, when all was said and done, completely unconjecturable. No application of logic, or reason, of the movements of heavy bodies seemed to apply to them, and for that very reason I had rejected the sardonic nature of that smile for Seraphina, and in the spirit of “Credo, quia impossible” had taken it for a smile of reconciliation. But I stood to win five liras, and who would quarrel with so enviable a conclusion, especially since it implied the re-installation of Seraphina? That was not a wholly altruistic consideration, for Leonard had said in so many words that Mrs. Mackellar would probably attempt to seduce Francesco away from my service with the lure of higher wages. That was a horrible thought, and I quickened my steps as I came near to my villa.

I heard bounding footsteps coming down the outside stairs from the front door into the garden, which could only be Francesco’s, and I wondered whether he was prancing towards me in order to communicate his wonderful good luck in going as cook to Mrs. Mackellar, at twice the wages he at present received. I believed Mrs. Mackellar, like the prophet Habakkuk, to be “capable de tout,” but I didn’t really believe this infamy of Francesco. The garden door flew open, and he met me with a face of mourning.

“The Signora Mackellar,” he cried, “walked up with Seraphina to her house. Through your telescope, signor, I saw them kissing and kissing on the roof. Dio! Why does a woman want to kiss a woman? There are many strange things in the world, signor. St. Peter, he had a wife, and also his wife had a mother, and one day——”

“Tell me about it after dinner,” I said. “And bring up the bottle of English wine, the port wine, which I brought from Rome, I have won five liras, Francesco.”

“Sissignor,” said Francesco. “But the dinner is not yet quite ready, for I was watching with your telescope. Five liras!... There was once a man who backed five numbers at the Lotto, and behold they all came out even as he had backed them. He won a hundred thousand liras, and an estate in Calabria, and——”