A Lady of Rome

by F. Marion Crawford

But she need not have disturbed herself and her friends about that. Montalto would as soon have let the place where his mother and his wife had lived with him as he would have put up his titles at auction. He had sent orders that the vast suite was to be got ready in a month’s time, and as no one had expected that he would ever come back to live there, the accumulation of dust was found to be portentous. Moreover, all the carpets had disappeared, no one knew how, the upholstered furniture was all moth-eaten, the window fastenings would not work, the mirrors were hopelessly tarnished, and the ceiling of the ballroom had been badly damaged by the bursting of a water-pipe in the apartment over it.

To make matters worse, the old steward of the Roman estates, whose business it was to keep the palace in order, was in his dotage, and was expected to have a stroke of apoplexy at any moment.

Then one morning a business-like young man arrived from Montalto, the great family seat on the Austrian frontier, with instructions to put matters right, and to lose no time about it. The old Roman steward flew into a frightful rage because the Montalto steward was his superior, and promptly had his stroke of apoplexy, which helped things a little without killing him. The business-like young man spent one whole day in watching the people at work and never said a word, but when the evening came, he had them all paid and he turned them out, to their amazement and mortification. Then he took a cab and drove to the Via San Martino and asked to see the Countess, just before she dressed for dinner. He was a very modest young man, and he waited in the hall for her answer; and when Agostino came back to inquire more particularly who he was and what he wanted, he said that he was the chief steward of Montalto and had a message from His Excellency the Count to Her Excellency the Countess, if she would be so kind as to receive him. In the eyes of the butler he at once became an important personage, and many apologies were offered for having let him wait in the outer hall.

Maria received him in her sitting-room. In her deep mourning she looked unnaturally pale, and her dark eyes seemed very big. She pointed to a chair and sat down herself.

The young man lost no time and told her at once that the Count had sent him to see that the palace was made habitable at once, and desired that the Countess should be consulted on every point about which she was willing to give her opinion. She was to select her own rooms and direct that they should be hung and furnished to her taste, and the Count would esteem it a great favour if she would take the trouble to order everything else to be changed as she thought best, excepting only the late Dowager Countess’s rooms, which he desired should not be touched. Her Excellency doubtless knew which those rooms were, and would she be so very kind as to say when it would be convenient for her to meet her obedient servant at the palace and to give him her orders. He was instructed to spare no trouble or expense in order to please her if possible.

Maria recognised her husband’s formal expressions in what the quiet young man said so fluently. Doubtless Montalto had written every word of his orders with his own hand, and the steward had read them over till he knew them by heart. She thanked him and said she would meet him at the palace the next morning at ten o’clock.

She did not take Leone with her, for she was sure that the great neglected house would be gloomy beyond description, and she did not wish him to have a sad impression of the house in which he had been born, and in which he was now to live. Besides, she could not quite trust herself, and the small boy’s eyes were marvellously quick to detect any change in her face.

The places where things very good or very bad to remember have happened to us are ever afterwards inhabited by invisible ghosts, kind or malignant, who show themselves to us when we revisit the spots they haunt, though they never disturb any one else. Maria knew that; an evil genius had long dwelt under those ilex-trees in the Villa Borghese, and she had exorcised it, but there were spectres in her former home that would not be laid. She bit her lip as she entered the once familiar hall, and saw room after room opening out beyond it in a long perspective that ended in a closed door adorned with mirrors in its panels. That door had always been kept shut when all the others were open; it led into the room that had been her boudoir. Even at that great distance Maria could see how dim the old glasses in the panels had become.