Castel San Guido is very like a hundred other mediaeval castles, a grim old fortress, with walls of I forget what prodigious thickness, with round towers pierced by sinister-looking meutrières, and crowned by battlements, with bare stone courts, stone halls, cold and dimly lighted, and a dismantled stone chapel. But I dare say the descendant of San Guido (not being made of wood) had his emotions. And the view was magnificent—Vallanza below, its red roofs burning in the sun, the purple bay, the olive-mantled hills, with a haze of gold-dust and pearl-dust brooding over them, and white-walled villages shining in twenty improbable situations, with their dark cypresses and slender campanili.
They had toiled up slowly, but they came spinning back at a tremendous pace, down the steep gradients, round the perilous curves, while Franco, his jaws shut tight, his brows drawn together, gave all his attention to his horses, Baldo merrily wound his horn, Anthony smoked cigarettes, and Adrian, for dear life, with his heart in his mouth, held hard to the seat-rail at his side. I think he pushed a very genuine ouf, when, without accident, they had regained the level ground.
The Villa del Ponte is a long grey rectangular building, as severe in outward aspect as a barrack or a prison, in a garden that stretches right away to the sea-wall, a garden full of palms, oranges, tall, feathery eucalyptus-trees, and lizards, perfectly Italian. But no sooner do you pass the portal of the house, than you leave Italy, as on a magic-carpet, and find yourself in the seventh circle of England, amid English furniture, English books, English periodicals, daily, weekly, monthly, (the Pink 'un perhaps the most conspicuous), and between walls embellished by English sporting-pictures and the masks and brushes of English foxes. "We hunt a good bit, you know," said Franco. "We've a little box in Northamptonshire, and hunt with the Pytchley. We both have the button." One was n't in the least surprised when an English voice, proceeding from the smuggest of smooth-shaven English countenances, informed my lord that luncheon was served.
After luncheon they sailed in the Spindrift. After that, (to Adrian's delight, I hope) they had tea, with plenty of buttered toast. Then they played tennis. Then they went for a breathless whirl along the Riva in a motor-car. Then they swam. And after dinner they played billiards, while Franco and Baldo smoked short pipes, and sipped whiskey and soda—but a half-pennyworth of whiskey, as Adrian noticed, to an intolerable deal of soda. Blood will tell, and theirs, in spite of everything, was abstemious Italian blood.
XXIII
"Now, Commendatore," said Susanna, making her face grave, "listen, and you shall hear"—but then her gravity broke down—"of the midnight ride of Paul Revere," she concluded, laughing.
She raised her eyes to his, aglow with that tender, appealing, mocking, defiant smile of hers. He, poor man, smiled too, though not very happily, I fear—nay, even with a kind of suspicious bewilderment, as one who sniffs brewing mischief, but knows not of what particular variety it will be. They were seated in the shade and the coolness of a long open colonnade at Isola Nobile, while, all round them, the August morning, like a thing alive, pulsated with warmth and light, and the dancing waves of the bay lapped musically against the walls below. The Commendatore was clad in stiffly-starched white duck, and held a white yachting-cap in his hand. Susanna wore a costume of some cool gauzy tissue, pearl-grey, with white ruffles that looked as impalpable as froth.
"Listen," she said, "and you shall hear of the midday quest of
Commendatore Fregi. I will tell you step by step what steps you are to
take. My cousin is staying with the Ponte brothers at their villa.
Well,—first step of all,—you are to call upon him."
"No," said the Commendatore, jerking his head, his baldish old head with its fringe of iron-grey curls.
"Yes," said Susanna, resolutely compressing her lips.