From the Princess di San Zenone, Coombe-Bysset,' to Lady Gwendolen Chichester, St. Petersburg.
Coombe is quite too lovely now. It does rain sometimes, certainly; but between the showers it is so delicious. I asked Piero to come out and hear the nightingale,—there really is one in the home wood,—and he laughed at the idea. He said, "We have hundreds of nightingales shouting all day and all night at Lanciano. We don't think about them; we eat them in pasta: they are very good." Fancy eating a nightingale! You might as well eat Romeo and Juliet. Piero has got a number of French books from London, and he lies about on the couches and reads them. He wants me to listen to naughty bits of fun out of them; but I will not, and then he calls me a prude, and gets angry. I don't see why he shouldn't laugh as much as he likes himself without telling me why he laughed. I dislike that sort of thing. I am horribly afraid I shall care for nothing but him all my life; while he—he yawned yesterday. Papa said to me, before we were married, "My dear little girl, San Zenone put on such a lot of steam at first, he'll be obliged to ease his pace after a bit. Don't be vexed if you find the thing cooling!" Now, papa speaks so oddly; always that sort of floundering, bald metaphor: you remember it; but I knew what he meant. Nobody could go on being such a lover as Piero was. Ah, dear, it is in the past already! No, I don't quite mean that. He is Romeo still very often, and he sings me the divinest love-songs, lying at my feet on cushions, in the moonlight. But it is not quite the same thing as it was at first. He found fault with one of my gowns this morning, and said I was fagotée. Fagotée! I am terribly frightened lest Coombe has bored him too much. I would come here. I wanted to be utterly out of the world, and so did he; and I'm sure there isn't a lovers' nest anywhere comparable to Coombe in midsummer. You remember the rose-garden, and the lime-avenues, and the chapel ruins by the little lake? When Aunt Carrie offered it to us for this June I was so delighted; but now I am half afraid the choice of it was a mistake, and that he does not know what to do with himself. He is dépaysé. I cried a little yesterday: it was too silly, but I couldn't help it. He laughed at me, but he got a little angry. "Enfin que veux-tu?" he said, impatiently: "je suis à toi, bien à toi, beaucoup trop à toi!" He seemed to me to regret being mine. I told him so: he was more angry. It was, I suppose, what you would call a scene. In five minutes he was penitent, and caressed me as only he can do; and the sun came out, and we went into the woods and heard the nightingale; but the remembrance of it alarms me. If he can say as much as this in a month, what can he say in a year? I do not think I am silly. I had two London seasons, and all those country houses show one the world. I know people, when they are married, are always glad to get away from one another; they are always flirting with other people. But I should be miserable if I thought it would ever be like that with Piero and me. I worship his very shadow, and he does—or he did—worship mine. Why should that change? Why should it not go on forever, as it does in poems? If it can't, why doesn't one die?
From the Lady Gwendolen Chichester, St. Petersburg, to the Princess di San Zenone, Coombe-Bysset.
What a goose you are, you dearest Gladys! You were always like that. To all you have said I can only reply, "connu." When girls are romantic—and you always were, though it was quite gone out ages before our time—they always expect husbands to remain lovers. Now, my pet, you might just as well expect hay to remain grass. Papa was quite right. When there is such a lot of steam on, it must go off by degrees. I am afraid, too, you have begun with the passion, and the rapture, and the mutual adoration, and all the rest of it, which is quite, quite gone out. People don't feel in that sort of way nowadays. Nobody cares much: a sort of good-humored liking is the utmost one sees. But you were always such a goose! And now you must marry an Italian, and expect it all to be balconies, and guitars, and moonlight, for ever and ever. I think it quite natural he should want to get to Paris. You should never have taken him to Coombe. I do remember the rose-gardens, and the lime-avenues, and the ruins; and I remember being sent down there when I had too strong a flirtation with Philip Rous, who was in F. O. and had nothing a year. You were a baby then, and I remember that I was bored to the very brink of suicide: I have detested the smell of a lime-tree ever since. I can sympathize with the prince if he longs to get away. There can't be anything for him to do all day long except smoke. The photo of him is wonderfully handsome; but can you live all your life, my dear, on a profile?
From the Princess di San Zenone, Coombe-Bysset, to the Lady Gwendolen Chichester, St. Petersburg.
Because almost all Englishmen have snub noses, Englishwomen always think there is something immoral and delusive about a good profile. At all events, you will admit that the latter is the more agreeable object of contemplation. It still rains,—rains dreadfully. The meadows are soaked and they can't get the hay in, and we can't get out of the house. Piero does smoke, and he does yawn. He has been looking in the library for a French novel, but there is nothing except Mrs. Craven's goody-goody books and a boy's tale by Jules Verne. I am afraid you and mamma are right. Coombe, in a wet June, is not the place for a Roman who knows his Paris by heart and doesn't like the country anywhere. We seem to do nothing but eat. I put on an ulster and high boots, and I don't mind the rain a bit; but he screams when he sees me in an ulster. "You have no more figure in that thing than if you were a Bologna sausage," he says to me; and certainly ulsters are very ugly. But I had a delicious fortnight with the duchess in a driving-tour in West-meath. We only took our ulsters with us, and it poured all the time, and we stayed in bed in the little inns while our things dried, and it was immense fun: the duke drove us. But Piero would not like that sort of thing. He is like a cat about rain. He likes to shut the house up early, and have the gas lit, and forget that it is all slop and mist outside. He declares that we have made a mistake in the calendar, and that it is November, not June. I change my gowns three times a day, just as if there were a large house-party; but I feel I look awfully monotonous to him. I am afraid I never was amusing. I always envy those women who are all chic and "go," who can make men laugh so at rubbish. They seem to carry about with them a sort of exhilarating ether. I don't think they are the best sort of women; but they do so amuse the men. I would give twenty years of my life if I could amuse Piero. He adores me; but that is another thing. That does not prevent him shaking the barometer and yawning. He seems happiest when he is talking Italian with his servant, Toniello. Toniello is allowed to play billiards with him sometimes. He is a very gay, merry, saucy, beautiful-eyed Roman. He has made all the maids in the house and all the farmers' daughters round Coombe in love with him, and I told you how he had scandalized one of the best tenants, Mr. John Best. The Bedford rustics all vow vengeance against him; but he twangs his mandoline, and sings away at the top of his voice, and doesn't care a straw that the butler loathes him, the house-steward abhors him, the grooms would horsewhip him if they dared, and the young farmers audibly threaten to duck him in the pond. Toniello is very fond of his master, but he does not extend his allegiance to me. Do you remember Mrs. Stevens, Aunt Caroline's model housekeeper? You should see her face when she chances to hear Piero laughing and talking with Toniello. I think she believes that the end of the world has come. Piero calls Toniello "figliolo mio" and "caro mio," just as if they were cousins or brothers. It appears this is the Italian way. They are very proud in their own fashion, but it isn't our fashion. However, I am glad the man is there when I hear the click of the billiard-balls, and the splash of the rain-drops on the window-panes. We have been here just three weeks. "Dio! it seems three years," Piero said, when I reminded him of it, this morning. For me, I don't know whether it is like a single day's dream or a whole eternity. You know what I mean. But I wish—I wish—it seemed either the day's dream or the eternity of Paradise to him! I dare say it is all my fault in coming to these quiet, bay-windowed, Queen-Anne rooms, and the old-fashioned servants, and the dreary lookout over the soaking hay-fields. But the sun does come out sometimes, and then the wet roses smell so sweet, and the wet lime-blossoms glisten in the light, and the larks sing overhead, and the woods are so green and so fresh. Still, I don't think he likes it even then: it is all too moist, too windy, too dim, for him. When I put a rose in his button-hole this morning, it shook the drops over him, and he said, "Mais quel pays!—même une fleur c'est une douche d'eau froide!" Last month, if I had put a dandelion in his coat, he would have sworn it had the odor of the magnolia and the beauty of the orchid. It is just twenty-two days ago since we came here, and the first four or five days he never cared whether it rained or not: he only cared to lie at my feet, really, literally. We were all in all to each other, just like Cupid and Psyche. And now—he will play billiards with Toniello to pass the time, and he is longing for his petits théâtres. Is it my fault? I torment myself with a thousand self-accusations. Is it possible I can have been tiresome, dull, over-exacting? Is it possible he can be disappointed in me?