The great old family, though it still held up its head with high dignity, seemed to have outlived its fortune in the world. The Marchesa sat in the midst of tattered and shredded relics of splendour, mildly boiling her kettle over a spirit-lamp; and I don’t know how she came there, but in many years she had never succeeded in wearing her faded state with confidence, and she looked forlorn and patient, quietly accepting as a duty a condition of things that she didn’t understand. She was too lady-like in her gentle manners for the worldly pride of her majestic drawing-room; and whereas its majesty held aloof more proudly than ever in impoverishment, she herself was too humble to reject the little comfort and kindness of a hissing kettle and a few sociable friends to tea. She tried to keep one hand upon their homely support without losing touch at the same time with the palatial scorn that watched her; and yet there was a disconnexion somehow, and she hadn’t the power, the impudence, the adaptability, whatever it might be, to make herself the link between the two. It may have been easier in the Marchese’s lifetime (he was long departed); but now she had to carry her prodigious name by herself, and the weight of the responsibility, and her earnest sense of her duty, and her simple unassuming inefficiency—what with it all there was much to make her look anxious and bewildered while we sat, she and I, waiting for the kettle to boil. She was conscious of having too much history on her hands; and yet she couldn’t in loyalty disown it and settle comfortably down upon the style and culture of a plain quiet Englishwoman.
The good Marchesa, she had somehow been left all alone in her august establishment by deaths, accidents, dispositions that are obscure to me; but the result of them was that she sat by herself in a corner of her mighty palace, watched and terrorized from a distance by a crowd of her kindred, offshoots in many degrees of her husband’s race—a needy Roman throng possessing complicated claims on her, rights to bully her, chances to torment her with conscientious scruples; and no doubt she had found that her integrity and her perfect manners were a very poor match for the guile of twenty centuries of Rome. “I’m expecting two English nephews of mine this afternoon,” she said—“such dear boys”; and again, “My sister writes to me from Devonshire to ask me if I can introduce them to a few nice friends”: that was the tone of the Marchesa, and it wouldn’t seem that she could offer much resistance to a band of hungry wily Romans. It was more, however, than might be thought, for her back was straight and firm in her duty at any cost to herself; only it all made a puzzling task, and there was no one and nothing around to support her, to stand by her side with encouragement and explanation, unless it was the companionable English tea-cup in a corner of her huge old drawing-room. It will presently appear how it is that I can read such a tale in her shy plainness, but much of it would be legible even without what I afterwards learned. She was an exceedingly simple soul.
The Principessa was simple too in her way, but it was not the same way. “Why, Gertrude,” she cried, rustling down the long room from the doorway, “don’t you look lovely to-day!” (It was the voice of New York.) “But that’s nothing new—I don’t tell you what you don’t very well know—only it strikes me fresh every time I see you!” And indeed the slight flush and smile that began to spread upon the Marchesa’s brownish pallor did become her, as she rose to greet her guest. “Every time I see you,” repeated the Principessa, brightly glancing. “There’s something about you that’s perfection, and I shall never know just what it is. Don’t you want to tell me what it is? You needn’t be afraid—I shan’t ever be able to copy it. I watch my little girl every day to see if she won’t catch a look of it somehow. ‘My blessed child,’ I say to her, ‘for mercy’s sake try to look real—like the Marchesa.’ But she doesn’t, she looks like her father—and you know the sort of old Greek plaster-cast that he is, and all his family. I tell them they can’t impose on me with their grand pretences; I’ve seen the real thing. I never meant to marry Filippo, I meant to marry a man out of an English novel—yes, the same novel that you come out of, Gertrude, whichever it is; if I happen to find it I shall throw over Filippo and bolt—he’s well aware of it. Don’t you want to tell me his name, Gertrude—the name of the hero in your novel? Maltravers, Sir John Mauleverer, something like that; you know I come here in the hope of meeting him. Some day he’ll turn up and I shall fly into his arms; he’ll quite understand.”
The Principessa was perfect too in her way, but it was not the way of the Marchesa. They sat side by side on a broad couch; and if the most eloquent aspect of their contrast was on their lips and in their speech, there was another almost as vivid that was plainly displayed at this moment on the floor. The Marchesa’s long flat foot, with its well-worn shoe and the hole in her grey stocking, rested on the floor beside the Principessa’s smart little arch, with its dolphin-like plunge from heel to toe and its exquisite casing of down-soft leather and filigree silk; it was a lucid contrast, the two of them side by side. The Principessa was altogether small, compact, and neater than I should have thought it possible for any one to be neat on our rolling globe; but small and trim as she was she managed to rustle (to rustle!—I revive the forgotten word in an age that no longer knows the liquefaction of her clothes whenas she goes!)—she rustled in a manner that the Marchesa, though with so much more height to sweep from, had never dreamed of emulating. Rustling, it may be, depended more on depth of purse than height of person; and indeed you couldn’t notice the tip of the Principessa’s little finger, let alone the brilliant arch of her foot, without observing that it cost more at every breath she drew than the whole angular person of the Marchesa through the long quiet day. The Principessa was consummately expensive—though with a finely pointed extremity of taste that again the Marchesa had never caught a glimpse of; from the tilt of her big hat the little Principessa was the spirit of expense to the click of her neat heel. And yet, yet—what is it that she sees in the good incompetent Marchesa, sees and admires and owns to be beyond imitation? Let me ask—why yes, most appropriately, let me ask Miss Gilpin.
Miss Gilpin, however, is not so ready with information as Miss Gadge; for Miss Gilpin in the palace of the Marchesa is considerably more pre-occupied, less communicative, than she is in the lodging of the Clarksons. Several other people had arrived or were arriving, and a side-glance of her attention in passing was all she could spare for her awkward young friend. She was very agile and easy herself, slipping among the company like a bird of pretty plumage, moving so lightly that you would never suppose such a fresh young thing to be a woman of professional learning and experience. She lifts her wide clear gaze to the face of the person whom she addresses, and it might be almost embarrassing in its frank admiration, but her gay little well-worded remarks relieve it; and she never lingers, never clings, she is drawn away to somebody else and flits on with a shining look behind her; and so she weaves her dance-figure through the company, and it brings her gradually to the side of the Principessa—at sight of whom she gives a tiny jump, as the unexpected pleasure beams out in her childlike eyes. The Principessa seemed to be less surprised, and Miss Gilpin got rather a cool return for her sparkle of delight. The dance was arrested with some abruptness; but there is this about Miss Gilpin, that she always has her wits about her and can adapt herself to a sudden change of plan. Her eye darted quickly forward to the Marchesa—and it was to the Marchesa after all that she had a particular word to say, if the other lady would forgive her for hastening on. One can safely count on the excellent Marchesa; yet it must be confessed that life is complicated, and Miss Gilpin sank a little wearily into an absorbing conversation with our hostess.
But what was the pretty plumage of Miss Gilpin, even at its most unruffled, compared with the rich hues of the creature that now swooped upon the modest gathering? Half flower and half bird—half peony and half macaw—Madame de Baltasar was in our midst; and so much so that nothing else for a while was in our midst—the central object was Madame de Baltasar. Peony in face, macaw in voice and raiment, she embraced and enveloped the Marchesa—who closed her eyes, evidently in prayer, as she nerved herself for the assault. The poor pale lady bore it unflinchingly, but that was all; she was cowed, she was numbed, by the mere voice of the visitor, equally penetrating in any language. The visitor, however, had no further need for the Marchesa; what she needed was a slim and very beautiful young man who happened to be talking to the Principessa—she plucked and removed him without delay. Even as she did so another young man, also very well in his fashion, appeared accidentally in her path; he too was annexed; and Madame de Baltasar, doing what she could to lend them a conquering rather than a consenting air, established them in a corner with herself between them. The Marchesa, reviving, gave a sudden gasp at the sight; for the second victim, who was a very British and candid-looking youth in naval uniform, was one of the dear boys, her nephews, and a glimpse of the peony-face beside him brought the letter from Devonshire very sharply to her mind. “A few nice friends—!” The Principessa looked up with humour. “I feel for you, dear Gertrude,” she said, “but what do you expect? Why ever do you let that woman into your house?” “I don’t let her,” wailed the Marchesa, very helpless. “Well, she’s grabbed Don Mario from me and your nephew from you,” said the Principessa comically; “at any rate they’ll keep her quiet for a time.” A peal of liberal shrieks rang out from the lady in the corner, and the Marchesa closed her eyes again in a mute petition.
It was a pleasantly expressive picture all the same, that of the group in the corner. The parti-coloured lady, who was by no means young, had so settled herself that she appeared imprisoned, penned in her place by two masterful men; and it would be natural to suppose that the two men were disputing for possession of her, but this effect was less easily contrived—since one of the men was English, of an odd unchivalrous tribe whose ways are beyond calculation. I don’t know what race had produced Madame de Baltasar—the united effort of them all, may be, for all their tongues were mingled in her shrieks; but there was no doubt concerning Don Mario—he was the last perfection of Latinity and he played his part. He was peerlessly beautiful, and he sat with his long fingers entwined about his knee, his eyes attentively upon the peony, his cold profile turned with utter correctness to his rival. He was far too mannerly, of course, to be jealous, to be hostile in any open movement; even when his rival failed to notice the lady’s glove on the floor it was only by the barest implication of a gesture that Don Mario rebuked and triumphed over him. A lady in a corner may rely on Don Mario; however hard she begins to find it to tighten that horrid loose fold under her chin, however mauve the powder on her cheek now shows upon the underlying crimson, Don Mario’s eyes are still fixed on her in deep unwavering attention. And Madame de Baltasar, I dare say, had by this time schooled herself to be blind to something that she might easily have seen, if she had chosen, in his steady regard—in that knightly “belgarde” which she accepted without scrutinizing it too closely; for he wasn’t troubled to hide the serene amused impudence with which he played his part. The crazy old ruin, with her cautious neckband and her ruddled wrinkles—he lent himself politely to her ancient game, remarking that she had grown careless in the handling of the orange lights in her hair, which were certainly fitful and obscured towards the roots. But a lady needn’t concern herself with the finer shades in Don Mario’s eloquent looks; he can be thoroughly trusted, at any rate in a public corner of a drawing-room.
An Englishman on the other hand, a candid young Briton, is a queer untutored thing of which you can never be really sure. The Marchesa’s nephew was pink and pleasant, and his undisguised interest in Madame de Baltasar might please her, you would think, for any one could see that it was much more genuine than Don Mario’s. It did please her, no doubt, and she liberally challenged and rallied him; she gave him more than his share, it was he who had the full blaze of her charms. He luminously faced them in return with the frankest interest and wonder; never, never had he seen such a wildly remarkable object. “Well, of all the queer old picture-cards—!” he said to himself; and he laughed with a volleying explosion at the freedom of her humour. He liked her too, the quaint old freak and spark that she was; you couldn’t help liking her loud familiar cackle, her point-blank coquetries discharged with such brass and bounce; she brisked you up and rattled you on in a style you don’t expect in the Marchesa’s solemn saloon. To Madame de Baltasar, no doubt, the pink British face was an open book, and in his barbaric fashion the young man was well enough, and she enjoyed herself. But then his barbarism was declared in a manner of simplicity which proved to her, yes, that these island-seamen are not to be trusted as one may trust Don Mario. The open young sailor, instead of turning his own more faulty profile to his rival and ousting him in triumph—what must he do but burst out pleasantly to the knightly Latin, appeal to him with mirthful eyes, join hands with him hilariously to watch the sport! It was so, there was no mistaking it; the young British monster had drawn the other man, his antagonist, into a partnership of youth, irreverent, unchivalrous, to watch the raree-show of this marvellous old bird and stimulate her to wilder efforts. And so naturally too, so ingenuously, like the great silly oaf that he really was, with his long legs and huge hands! It hadn’t so much as crossed his mind that a woman, still a fine woman in her ripeness, was signally honouring a man; he only saw a crazy jolly absurd old sport who made him laugh so heartily that he had to share the fun with his neighbour. One can’t be surprised if Madame de Baltasar asked herself what, in heaven’s name, they teach these young monsters in their barbaric wild.
I find it impossible to tear my eyes from the group. What, I wonder, does Don Mario think of the young Englishman? They were evidently much of an age; but Don Mario could regard himself, no doubt, as a highly experienced gentleman compared with this bubbling school-boy. He knew the world, he knew himself, he very well knew the lady; and I fear it must be inferred that he thought the Englishman a negligible simpleton. The school-boy’s familiarity could hardly please him, but he took it with his accomplished amenity, transformed it into a quiet and neutral kindness and handed it back; and the Englishman—ah, this is where the simple youth enjoys such an advantage, where he is unassailable—he saw no difference at all between what he gave and what he received again, he supposed they were the same. The same—his own thoughtless guffaw of companionship, Don Mario’s civilized and discriminating smile!—well might Don Mario feel that the barbarian took much for granted. Communication upon such terms is out of the question, with the Englishman ready to fall on your neck—in fact the islander’s arm was affectionately round Don Mario’s at this moment—if you decently mask your irony in a fine thin smile. But let it not be imagined that the Roman civiltà, heritage of the centuries, will exhibit any signal of discomfort, even with the hand of the savage patting it sociably and encouragingly on the back. Don Mario talked easily and with all his charm; he told a story, some experience of his own, for the entertainment of the lady. The details escape me, but it was a story in which the Englishman, listening closely, seemed to detect a drift and purpose, an approach to a point; and he listened still more carefully, gazing at the speaker, working it out in his mind; and his brow contracted, he was lost—but aha! he suddenly saw the light and he seized the point. “You mean you’re in love with somebody,” he jovially exclaimed. The words fell with a strange clatter on the polished surface of the tale, but Don Mario had caught them up in a wink. “Why certainly,” he said—“I’m in love with Madame de Baltasar.” Lord!—for the moment it was too quick for the blank and simple youth; but relief came with the lady’s scream of delighted amusement, and he broke into the humour of the jest with resounding appreciation. A good fellow, this Don Whatever-he-is, and a sound old sport, Madame de What’s-her-name—and altogether a cheerier time than one would look for at Aunt Gertrude’s rather alarming tea-fight.
The Marchesa herself was finding it less enlivening; one of the dear boys had got into the wrong corner, the other was still missing, poor Nora Gilpin would try to waylay the Principessa; and though the Marchesa was used to the sense that nothing in the world goes ever easily, she betrayed in her look the weight of all she was carrying. But she was grateful to the Principessa, and with cause; for so long as Miss Gilpin was kept at a distance the little American was indeed a treasure to an anxious hostess. Nothing gayer, nothing more ornamental and affable could be desired for a festival that threatened to languish. She sat on a round stool or tuffet, her small person erect, her knee tilted and her toe pointed like a porcelain shepherdess—a wonder of art, an exquisite toy of the eighteenth century; and one could infer how precious and rare the little figure must be from the fact that it was entirely perfect, not a finger broken, not a rose damaged on her decorative hat—which showed with what scrupulous care she had been packed and kept. One could almost have sworn that the tint of clear colour in her cheek was alert and alive, that it came and went with a living pulse; she was a triumph of the hand of the craftsman who produced her. And to think that she came, not from the cabinet of the Pompadour, but from the roaring market of democracy—how have they learnt such perfection of delicate workmanship over there? She seemed as manifestly the result of ages of inherited skill as Don Mario himself; at least I should say so, perhaps, but for the chance that again places them side by side before me. For Don Mario, the party in the corner having at last broken up, had returned to the Principessa; and he stood by her side, charmingly inclined, with glances more burning, less scorching, than those he had levelled at the orange-clouded fringe. And I now remark that with all Don Mario’s beautiful finish he doesn’t set one gaping at the price he must have cost; one sees in a moment than an object of that sort is not to be bought with money. “Not to be bought?”—I can imagine the tone of the Principessa, if she chose to speak: “He looks as though he weren’t to be bought? Why, it’s exactly that that will fetch his price, and well he knows it. Not to be bought indeed!—I could tell you a little about that. Now there behind you—there’s where money fails, if you like!”