Читать книгу Bog-Myrtle and Peat - S. R. Crockett - Страница 24

After leaving Spellino we went downhill. There was a plain beneath, but up on the hillside only the sheep were feeding contentedly, all with their broad-tailed sterns turned to us. The sun was shining on the white diamond-shaped causeway stones which led across a marshy place. We came again to the foot of the hill. It had indeed been no more than a dividing ridge, which we had crossed over by Spellino.

We saw the riband of the road unwind before us. One turn swerved out of sight, and one alone. But round this curve, out of the unseen, there came toward us the trampling of horses. A carriage dashed forward, the coachman's box empty, the reins flying wide among the horses' feet. There was but little time for thought; yet as they passed I caught at their heads, for I was used to horses. Then I hung well back, allowing myself to be jerked forward in great leaps, yet never quite loosing my hold. It was but a chance, yet a better one than it looked.

At the turn of the road towards Spellino I managed to set their heads to the hill, and the steep ascent soon brought the stretching gallop of the horses to a stand-still.

It seemed a necessary thing that there should be a lady inside. I should have been content with any kind of lady, but this one was both fair and young, though neither discomposed nor terrified, as in such cases is the custom.

"I trust Madame is not disarranged," I said in my poor French, as I went from the horses' heads to the carriage and assisted the lady to alight.

"It serves me right for bringing English horses here without a coachman to match," she said in excellent English. "Such international misalliances do not succeed. Italian horses would not have startled at an old beggar in a red coat, and an English coachman would not have thrown down the reins and jumped into the ditch. Ah, here we have our Beppo"—she turned to a flying figure, which came labouring up hill. To him the lady gave the charge of the panting horses, to me her hand.

"I must trouble you for your safe-conduct to the hotel," she said. Now, though her words were English, her manner of speech was not.

By this time Henry had come up, and him I had to present, which was like to prove a difficulty to me, who did not yet know the name of the lady. But she, seeing my embarrassment, took pity on me, saying—

"I am the Countess Castel del Monte," looking at me out of eyes so broadly dark, that they seemed in certain lights violet, like the deeps of the wine-hearted Greek sea.

By this time Beppo had the horses well under control, and at the lady's invitation we all got into the carriage. She desired, she said, that her brother should thank us.

We went upwards, turning suddenly into a lateral valley. Here there was an excellent road, better than the Government highway. We had not driven many miles when we came in sight of a house, which seemed half Italian palazzo and half Swiss cottage, yet which had nevertheless an undefined air of England. There were balconies all about it, and long rows of windows.

It did not look like a private house, and Henry and I gazed at it with great curiosity. For me, I had already resolved that if it chanced to be a hotel, we should lodge there that night.

The Countess talked to us all the way, pointing out the objects of interest in the long row of peaks which backed the Val Bergel with their snows and flashing Alpine steeps. I longed to ask a question, but dared not. "Hotel" was what she had said, yet this place had scarcely the look of one. But she afforded us an answer of her own accord.

"You must know that my brother has a fancy of playing at landlord," she said, looking at us in a playful way. "He has built a hostel for the English and the Italians of the Court. It was to be a new Paris, was it not so? And no doubt it would have been, but that the distance was over great. It was indeed almost a Paris in the happy days of one summer. But since then I have been almost the only guest."

"It is marvellously beautiful," I replied. "I would that we might be permitted to become guests as well."

"As to that, my brother will have no objections, I am sure," replied the Countess, "specially if you tell your countrymen on your return to your own country. He counts on the English to get him his money back. The French have no taste for scenery. They care only for theatres and pretty women, and the Italians have no money—alas! poor Castel del Monte!"

I understood that she was referring to her husband, and said hastily—

"Madame is Italian?"

"Who knows?" she returned, with a pretty, indescribable movement of her shoulders. "My father was a Russian of rank. He married an Englishwoman. I was born in Italy, educated in England. I married an Italian of rank at seventeen; at nineteen I found myself a widow, and free to choose the world as my home. Since then I have lived as an Englishwoman expatriated—for she of all human beings is the freest."

I looked at her for explanation. Henry, whose appreciation of women was for the time-being seared by his recent experience of Madame of the Red Eyelids, got out to assist Beppo with the horses. In a little I saw him take the reins. We were going slowly uphill all the time.

"In what way," I said, "is the Englishwoman abroad the freest of all human beings?"

"Because, being English, she is supposed to be a little mad at any rate.

Secondly, because she is known to be rich, for all English are rich.

And, lastly, because she is recognised to be a woman of sense and

discretion, having the wisdom to live out of her own country."

We arrived on the sweep of gravel before the door. I was astonished at the decorations. Upon a flat plateau of small extent, which lay along the edge of a small mountain lake, gravelled paths cut the green sward in every direction. The waters of the lake had been carefully led here and there, in order apparently that they might be crossed by rustic bridges which seemed transplanted from an opera. Little windmills made pretty waterwheels to revolve, which in turn set in motion mechanical toys and models of race-courses in open booths and gaily painted summer-houses.

"You must not laugh," said the Countess gravely, seeing me smile, "for this, you must know, is a mixture of the courts of Italy and Russia among the Alps. It is to my brother a very serious matter. To me it is the Fair of Asnières and the madhouse at Charenton rolled into one."

I remarked that she did the place scant justice.

"Oh," she said, "the place is lovely enough, and in a little while one becomes accustomed to the tomfoolery."

We ascended the steps. At the top stood a small dark man, with a flash in his eyes which I recognised as kin to the glance which Madame the Countess shot from hers, save that the eyes of the man were black as jet.

"These gentlemen," said the Countess, "are English. They are travelling for their pleasure, and one of them stopped my stupid horses when the stupider Beppo let them run away, and jumped himself into the ditch to save his useless skin. You will thank the gentlemen for me, Nicholas."

The small dark man bowed low, yet with a certain reserve.

"You are welcome, messieurs," he said in English, spoken with a very strong foreign accent. "I am greatly in your debt that you have been of service to my sister."

He bowed again to both of us, without in the least distinguishing which of us had done the service, which I thought unfair.

"It is my desire," he went on more freely, as one that falls into a topic upon which he is accustomed to speak, "that English people should be made aware of the beauty of this noble plateau of Promontonio. It is a favourable chance which brings you here. Will you permit me to show you the hotel?"

He paused as though he felt the constraint of the circumstances. "Here, you understand, gentlemen, I am a hotel-keeper. In my own country—that is another matter. I trust, gentlemen, I may receive you some day in my own house in the province of Kasan."

"It will make us but too happy," said I, "if in your capacity as landlord you can permit us to remain a few days in this paradise."

I saw Henry look at me in some astonishment; but his training forbade him to make any reply, and the little noble landlord was too obviously pleased to do more than bow. He rang a bell and called a very distinguished gentleman in a black dress-coat, whose spotless attire made our rough outfit look exceedingly disreputable, and the knapsacks upon our backs no less than criminal. We decided to send at once to Vico Averso for our baggage.

But these very eccentricities riveted the admiration of our distinguished host, for only the mad English would think of tramping through the Val Bergel in the heart of May with a donkey's load on their backs. Herr Gutwein, a mild, spectacled German, and the manager of this cosmopolitan palace, was instructed to show us to the best rooms in the house. From him we learned that the hotel was nearly empty, but that it was being carried on at great loss, in the hope of ultimate success.

We found it indeed an abode of garish luxury. In the great salon, the furniture was crimson velvet and gold. All the chairs were gilt. The very table-legs were gilded. There were clocks chiming and ticking everywhere, no one of them telling the right time. In the bedrooms, which were lofty and spacious, there were beautiful canopies, and the most recent improvements for comfort. The sitting-rooms had glass observatories built out, like swallows' nests plastered against the sides of the house. Blue Vallauris vases were set in the corners and filled with flowers. Turkey carpets of red and blue covered the floor. Marvellous gold-worked tablecloths from Smyrna were on the tables. Everywhere there was a tinge of romance made real—the dream of many luxuries and civilisations transplanted and etherealised among the mountains.

Then, when we had asked the charges for the rooms and found them exceedingly reasonable, we received from the excellent Herr Gutwein much information.

The hotel was the favourite hobby of Count Nicholas. It was the dream of his life that he should make it pay. While he lived in it, he paid tariff for his rooms and all that he had. His sister also did the same, and all her suite. Indeed, the working expenses were at present paid by Madame the Countess of Castel del Monte, who was a half-sister of Count Nicholas, and much younger. The husband of Madame was dead some years. She had been married when no more than a girl to an Italian of thrice her age. He, dying in the second year of their marriage, had left her free to please herself as to what she did with her large fortune. Madame was rich, eccentric, generous; but to men generally more than a little sarcastic and cold.

At dinner that night Count Nicholas took the head of the table, while Dr. Carson, the resident English physician, sat at his left hand, and Madame at his right. I sat next to the Countess, and Henry Fenwick next to the doctor. We made a merry party. The Count opened for us a bottle of Forzato and another of Sassella, of the quaint, untranslatable bouquet which will not bear transportation over the seas, and to taste which you must go to the Swiss confines of the Valtellina.

"Lucia," said Count Nicholas, "you will join me in a bottle of the Straw wine in honour of the stopping of the horses; and you will drink to the health of these gentlemen who are with us, to whom we owe so much." Afterwards we drank to Madame, to the Count himself, and to the interests of science in the person of the doctor. Then finally we pledged the common good of the hotel and kursaal of the Promontonio.

The Countess was dressed in some rose-coloured fabric, thickly draped with black lace, through whose folds the faint pink blush struggled upward with some suggestion of rose fragrance, so sheathed was she in close-fitting drapery. She looked still a very girl, though there was the slower grace of womanhood in the lissom turn of her figure, slender and svelte. Her blue-black hair had purple lights in it. And her great dark violet eyes were soft as La Vallière's. I know not why, but to myself I called her from that moment, "My Lady of the Violet Crown." There was a passion-flower in her hair, and on her pale face her lips, perfectly shaped, lay like the twin petals of a geranium flower fallen a little apart.

Dinner was over. The lingering lights of May were shining through the hill gaps, glorifying the scant woods and the little mountain lake. Henry Fenwick and the Count were soon deep in shooting and breechloaders. Presently they disappeared in the direction of the Count's rooms to examine some new and beautiful specimens more at their leisure.

In an hour Henry came rushing back to us in great excitement.

"I have written for all my things from Lago d'Istria," he said, "and I am getting my guns from home. There is some good shooting, the Count says. Do you object to us staying here a little time?"

I did not contradict him, for indeed such a new-born desire to abide in one place was at that moment very much to my mind. And though I could not conceive what, save rabbits, there could be to shoot in May on a sub-Alpine hillside, I took care not to say a word which might damp my pupil's excellent enthusiasms.