“Yes, I suppose I live here,” she assented. “I live in the Palazzo Stricci, you must come and see me. I’m at home on Mondays.”
“Oh, thank you; I’ll come the very first Monday that ever is,” I vowed. For, though she had teased me and laughed at me, I thought she was very charming, all the same.
“Well, and how did you get on with the Countess Bracca?” Miss Belmont asked. When I had answered her, she proceeded, as her wont was, to volunteer certain information. “She was a Miss Wilthorpe, you know—the Cumberland Wilthorpes, a staunch old Catholic family. Her mother was a Frenchwoman, a Montargier. Monsignor Wilthorpe is her cousin. Her husband, Count Bracca, held a commission in the Guardia Nobile—between ourselves, a creature of starch and whalebone, a pompous noodle. She was married to him when she was eighteen. He died three or four years ago: a good thing too. But she has continued to live in Rome, in the winter. In the summer she goes to England, to her people. Did she ask you to go and see her? Go, on the first occasion. Cultivate her. She’s clever. She’ll do you good. She’ll form you,” Miss Belmont concluded, looking at me with a critical eye.
On Monday, at the Palazzo Stricci, I was ushered through an immense sombre drawing-room, and beyond, into a gay little blue-and-white boudoir. The Contessa was there alone. “I am glad you have come early,” she was good enough to say. “We can have a talk together, before any one else arrives.”
She wore a delightful white frock, of some flexile woollen fabric embroidered in white silk with leaves and flowers. And I discovered that she had very lovely hair, great quantities of it, undulating richly away from her forehead; hair of an indescribable light warm brown, a sort of fawn colour, with reflections dimly red. She was seated in the corner of a sofa, leaning upon a cushion of blue satin covered with white lace. I had not noticed her hair the other day at Miss Belmont’s, in the vague candle-light. Now I could not take my eyes from it. It filled me with astonishment and admiration.
“Oh,” I said—I suppose I blushed and stammered, but I had to say it—“you—you must let me tell you—what—what wonderful hair you have.”
The poor lady! She shook her head; she lay back in her place and laughed. “Forgive me, forgive me for laughing,” she said. “But—your compliment—it was a trifle point-blank—I was slightly unprepared for it. However, you’re quite right. It’s not bad hair,” she conceded amiably. “And it was very—very natural and—and nice—of you to mention it. Now sit down here, and we will have a good long talk,” she added. “You must tell me all about yourself. We must get acquainted.”
There was always, perhaps, the tiniest point of raillery in that crisp voice, in those gleaming eyes, of hers; but it did not prevent them from being friendly and interested. She went on to ask me all manner of friendly, interested questions, adopting, apparently as a matter of course, the tone of maturity addressing ingenuous youth; and I found myself somehow accepting that relation without resentment. Where had I made my studies? What was I going to do in the world? She asked me everything; and I, guilelessly, fatuously no doubt, responded. I imagine I expatiated at some length, and with some fervour, upon my literary aspirations, whilst she encouraged me with her kind-glowing eyes; and I am afraid—I am afraid I even went so far as to allow her to persuade me to repeat divers of my poems. In those days one wrote things one fondly nicknamed poems. Anyhow, I know that I was enjoying myself very much indeed—when we were interrupted by the entrance of another caller.
And then a whole stream of callers passed through her dainty room: men and women, old and young; all of them people with a great deal of manner, and not much else—certainly with precious little wit. The men were faultlessly dressed, they had their hair very sleekly brushed, they caressed their hats, grinned vacuously, and clacked out set phrases; the women gossiped turbulently in Italian; and my hostess gave them tea, and smiled (was there just a tinge of irony in her smile?), and listened with marvellous endurance. But I thought to myself, “Oh, if this is the kind of human society you are condemned to, how ineffably you must be bored!”