CASTELLINARIA
CHAPTER XV
THE CARDINALESSA
One day, as I was travelling through the island by rail, I lunched in the restaurant-car and divided my attention between the colazione, the view and the other lunchers.
At the table in front of me sat three gentlemen; beyond them, at a separate table, sat a distinguished-looking lady, quietly but well dressed in foamy white musliny stuff, with a good deal of lace and a few touches of pale green. She had a lovely hat and a veil, which she wore in such a way that I thought how well she would look in a motor-car. She did not appear to be much over thirty, and she was alone except that she had a little dog, whom she fed from her plate and who was evidently very fond of her. She was not strictly beautiful, her face depended for its charm more on its expression than on the regularity of its features, but there was about her a certain indescribable combination of dignity and vivacity that was curiously attractive, and that soon attracted the three gentlemen, who, I presently became aware, had entered into conversation with her. Possibly they had asked the waiter to introduce them while I was looking out of the window. Certainly they cannot have met her before, because I heard them ask her her nationality, and she told them that her father was an Italian, a native of Rome, and that her mother was French. And where was she going? To some place whose name I did not catch. Then she must change at the junction. Yes, but there would be no difficulty because she was accustomed to travelling, she had travelled in China, India, Egypt and America. No doubt she was gifted by nature with that happy temperament which
enables its possessor to make friends easily, and her extensive travels had provided opportunities for its cultivation. I supposed the three gentlemen to be accountants or advocates or perhaps engineers; but I thought from her manner that she would have been just as much at her ease if they had been carabinieri. I heard her tell them she was twenty-two; she must have been very young when she began her travels.
While the waiter was making out our bills, one of the gentlemen begged her to grant him a favour. She smiled in her frank open way as an encouragement to him to name it, and he declared that he should consider it an honour if she would permit him to pay for her luncheon. The lady accepted his generosity, and granted his request with a smile of such queenly condescension that I had a vision of great Elizabeth stepping upon Raleigh’s cloak.
Presently this gentleman went and sat by himself at a table for two and the lady joined him. This appeared to me a little odd; he might just as well have sat at her table, or have invited her to sit at his with the other two gentlemen, there was room and it would have been less marked. But they seemed to prefer to start a little colony of their own, as it were, on neutral ground. The gentleman made another proposal: A glass of wine? With pleasure. So the waiter brought it, and then the lady accepted a cigarette.
At the junction the lady and the gentleman both got out, and I saw him help her into her train, which started first for the place whose name I had not caught. Then he got into his train, which was labelled “Castellinaria,” and I went on without changing. A few days later, however, I returned to the junction, changed there and followed the accountant to Castellinaria, where I was going to see my friend Antonio, who happened to be engaged there on an engineering job. In the evening I told him about the lady in the restaurant-car. He laughed and said:
“But this lady is a particular friend of mine. She is
often here, she returned two days ago and told me all this herself, only last night. If you would like to make her acquaintance I will take you to see her.”