A House-Party, Don Gesualdo, and A Rainy June

From the Princess di San Zenone, Coombe-Bysset, Luton, Bedfordshire, to the Lady Gwendolin Chichester, British Embassy, St. Petersburg.

But, surely, if he loved me, he would be as perfectly happy with me alone as I am with him alone. I want no other companion, no other interest, no other thought.

From the Lady Gwendolen Chichester, British Embassy, St. Petersburg, to the Princess di San Zenone, Coombe-Bysset, Luton, Bedfordshire.

Of course you do not, because you are a woman. San Zenone is your god, your idol, your ideal, your universe. But you are only one out of the many women who have pleased him, and attached to the pleasure you afford him is the very uncomfortable conviction that he will never be able to get away from you. My dear child, I have no patience with any woman when she says, "He does not love me." If he does not, it is probably the woman's fault. Probably she has worried him. Love dies directly it is worried, quite naturally. Poor Gladys! You were always such a good child; you were always devoted to your old women, and your queer little orphans, and your pet cripples, and your East End missions. It certainly is hard that you should have fallen into the hands of a soulless Italian, who reads naughty novels all day long and sighs for the flesh-pots of Egypt! But, my child, in reason's name, what did you expect? Did you think that all in a moment he would sigh to hear Canon Farrar or Dean Liddell, take his guitar to a concert in Seven Dials, and teach Italian to Bethnal Green babies? Be reasonable, and let your poor caged bird fly out of Coombe-Bysset, which will certainly be your worst enemy if you shut him up in it much longer.

From the Prince di San Zenone, Coombe-Bysset, to the Duchessa dell'Aquila Fulva, Palazzo Fulva, Milano.

I am still in my box of wet moss. I have been in it two weeks, four days, and eleven hours, by the calendar and the clocks. I have read all my novels. I have spelled through my "Figaro," from the title to the printer's address, every morning. I have smoked twenty cigarettes every twenty minutes, and I have yawned as many times. This is Paradise, I know it; I tell myself so; but, still,—I cannot help it,—I yawn. There is a pale, watery sun, which shines fitfully. There is a quantity of soaked hay, which they are going to dry by machinery. There is a great variety of muddy lanes in which to ride. There is a post-office seven miles off, and a telegraph-station fifteen miles farther off. The ensemble is not animated. When you go out you see very sleek cattle, very white sheep, very fat children. You may meet at intervals laboring-people, very round-shouldered and very sulky. You also meet, if you are in luck's way, with a traction-engine; and wherever you look you perceive a church-steeple. It is all very harmless, except the traction-engine, but it is not animated, or enlivening. You will not wonder that I soon came to the end of my French novels. The French novels have enabled me to discover that my angel is very easily ruffled. In fact, she is that touchy thing, a saint. I had no idea that she was a saint when I saw her drinking her cup of tea in that garden on the Thames. True, she had her lovely little serene, holy, noli-me-tangere air; but I thought that would pass. It does not pass. And when I wanted her to laugh with me at "Autour du Mariage," she blushed up to the eyes, and was offended. What am I to do? I am no saint. I cannot pretend to be one. I am not worse than other men, but I like to amuse myself. I cannot go through life singing a miserere. I am afraid we shall quarrel. You think that very wholesome. But there are quarrels and quarrels. Some clear the air like thunderstorms. Ours are little irritating differences, which end in her bursting into tears, and in myself looking ridiculous and feeling a brute. She has cried quite a number of times in the last fortnight. I dare say, if she went into a rage, as you justly say Nicoletta would do, and, you might have added, you have done, it would rouse me, and I should be ready to strike her, and should end in covering her with kisses. But she only turns her eyes on me like a dying fawn, bursts into tears, and goes out of the room. Then she comes in again—to dinner, perhaps, or to that odd ceremony, five-o'clock tea—with her little sad, stiff, reproachful air as of a martyr, answers meekly, and makes me again feel a brute. The English sulk a long time, I think. We are at daggers drawn one moment, but then we kiss and forget the next. We are more passionate, but we are more amiable. I want to get away, to go to Paris, Homburg, Trouville, anywhere, but I dare not propose it. I only drop adroit hints. If I should die of ennui, and be buried under the wet moss forever, weep for me.

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?

From the Lady Gwendolen Chichester, St. Petersburg, to the Princess di San Zenone, Coombe-Bysset.

No, it isn't your fault, you dear little donkey: it is only the natural sequence of things. Men are always like that when the woman loves them: when she don't, they behave much better. My dear, this is just what is so annoying about love: the man's is always going slower and slower towards a dead stop, as the woman's is "coaling" and getting steam up. I borrow papa's admirably accurate metaphor: nothing can be truer. It is a great pity, but I suppose the fault is Nature's. Entre nous, I don't think Nature ever contemplated marriage, any more than she did crinolettes, pearl powder, or the electric light. There is no doubt that Nature intended to adjust the thing on the butterfly and buttercup system,—on the je reste, tu t'en vas principle. And nothing would be easier or nicer, only there are children and property. So the butterfly has to be pinned down by the buttercup. That is why the Communists and Anarchists always abolish Property and Marriage together. The one is evolved out of the other, just as the dear scientists say the horse was evolved out of a bird, which I never can see makes the matter any easier of comprehension; but, still—what was I saying? Oh, I meant to say this: you are only lamenting, as a special defalcation and disloyalty in San Zenone, what is merely his unconscious and involuntary and perfectly natural alteration from a lover into a husband. The butterfly is beginning to feel the pin which has been run through him to stick him down. It is not your fault, my sweet little girl; it is the fault, if at all, of the world, which has decreed that the butterfly, to flirt legitimately with the buttercup, must suffer the corking-pin. Now, take my advice: the pin is in, don't worry if he writhe on it a little bit! It is only what the beloved scientists again call automatic action. And do try and beat into your little head the fact that a man may love you very dearly, and yet yawn a little for the petits théâtres in the silent recesses of his manly breast. Of course I know this sort of rough awakening from delightful dreams is harder for you than it is for most, because you began at such tremendous altitudes. You had your Ruy Blas and Petrarca and the mandoline and the moonlight and the love-philtres all mixed up in an intoxicating draught. You have naturally a great deal more disillusion to go through than if you had married a country squire or a Scotch laird, who would never have suggested any romantic delights. One cannot go near heaven without coming down with a crash, like the poor men in the balloons. You have been up in your balloon, and you are now coming down. Ah, my dear, everything depends on how you come down! You will think me a monster for saying so, but it will rest so much in your own hands. You won't believe it, but it will. If you come down with tact and good humor, it will all be right afterwards; but if you show temper, as men say of their horses, why, then the balloon will lie prone, a torn, empty, useless bag, that will never again get off the ground. To speak plainly, dear, if you will receive with resignation and sweetness the unpleasant discovery that San Zenone is mortal, you won't be unhappy, and you will soon get used to it; but if you perpetually fret about it you won't alter him, and you will both be miserable; or, if not miserable, you will do something worse; you will each find your amusement in somebody else. I know you so well, my poor, pretty Gladys; you want such an immense quantity of sympathy and affection; but you won't get it, my dear child. I quite understand that the prince looks like a picture, and he has made life an erotic poem for you for a month, and the inevitable reaction which follows seems dull as ditch-water, you would even say as cruel as the grave. But it is nothing new. Do try and get that well in your mind. Try, too, and be as light-hearted as you can. Men hate an unamusable woman. Make believe to laugh at the petits théâtres if you can't really do it: if you don't, dear, he will go to somebody else who will. Why do those demi-monde women get such preference over us? Only because they don't bore their men. A man would sooner we flung a champagne-glass at his head than cried for five minutes. We can't fling champagne-glasses: the prejudices of our education are against it. It is an immense loss to us; we must make up for it as much as we can by being as agreeable as we know how to be. We shall always be a dozen lengths behind those others. By the way, you said in one of your earliest notes that you wondered why our mother ever married. I am not sufficiently au courant with pre-historic times to be able to tell you why, but I can see what she has done since she did marry. She has always effaced herself in the very wisest and most prudent manner. She has never begrudged papa his Norway fishing or his August yachting, though she knew he could ill afford them. She has never bored him with herself, or about us. She has constantly urged him to go away and enjoy himself, and when he is down with her in the country she always takes care that all the women he admires and all the men who best amuse him shall be invited in relays, to prevent his being dull or feeling teased for a moment. I am quite sure she has never cared the least about her own wishes, but has only studied his. This is what I call being a clever woman and a good woman. But I fear such women are as rare as blue roses. Try and be like her, my dear. She was quite as young as you are now when she married. But, unfortunately, in truth, you are a terrible little egotist. You want to shut up this poor young man all alone with you in a kind of attitude of perpetual adoration—of yourself. That is what women call affection: you are not alone in your ideas. Some men submit to this sort of demand, and go about forever held tight in a leash, like unslipped pointers. The majority—well, the majority bolt. And I am sure I should if I were one of them. I do not think you could complain if your beautiful Romeo did. I can see you so exactly, with your pretty little grave face, and your eyes that have such a fatal aptitude for tears, and your solemn little views about matrimony and its responsibilities, making yourself quite odious to this mirthful Apollo of yours, and innocently believing all the while that you are pleasing Heaven and saving your own dignity by being so remarkably unpleasant! Are you very angry with me? I am afraid so. Myself, I would much sooner have an unfaithful man than a dull one: the one may be bored by you, but the other bores you, which is immeasurably worse.

From the Princess di San Zenone, Coombe-Bysset, to the Lady Gwendolen Chichester, St. Petersburg.

Dear Gwen,—

How can you possibly tell what mamma did when she was young? I dare say she fretted dreadfully. Now, of course, she has got used to it,—like all other miserable women. If people marry only to long to be with other people, what is the use of being married at all? I said so to Piero, and he answered, very insolently, "Il n'y a point! Si on le savait." He sent for some more dreadful French books, Gyp's, and Richepin's, and Gui de Maupassant's, and he lies about reading them all day long when he isn't asleep. He is very often asleep in the daytime. He apologizes when he is found out, but he yawns as he does so. You say I should amuse him; but I can't amuse him. He doesn't care for any English news, and he is beginning to get irritable because I cannot talk to him in Italian, and he declares my French detestable, and there is always something dreadful happening. There has been such a terrible scene in the village. Four of the Coombe-Bysset men, two blacksmiths, a carpenter, and a laborer, have ducked Toniello in the village pond on account of his attention to their women-kind; and Toniello, when he staggered out of the weeds and the slime, drew his knife on them and stabbed two very badly. Of course he has been taken up by the constables, and the men he hurt moved to the county hospital. The magistrates are furious and scandalized; and Piero!—Piero has nobody to play billiards with him. When the magistrates interrogated him about Toniello, as, of course, they were obliged to do, he got into a dreadful passion because one of them said that it was just like a cowardly Italian to carry a knife and make use of it. Piero absolutely hissed at the solemn old gentleman who mumbled this. "And your people," he cried, "are they so very courageous? Is it better to beat a man into a jelly, or kick a woman with nailed boots, as your English mob does? Where is there anything cowardly? He was one against four. In my country there is not a night that goes without a rissa of that sort; but nobody takes any notice. The jealous persons are left to fight it out as best they may. After all, it is the women's fault." And then he said some things that really I cannot repeat; and it was a mercy that, as he spoke in the most rapid and furious French, the old gentleman did not, I think, understand a syllable. But they saw he was in a passion, and that scandalized them, because, you know, English people always think that you should keep your bad temper for your own people at home. Meantime, of course, Toniello is in prison, and I am afraid they won't let us take him out on bail, because he has hurt one of the blacksmiths dreadfully. Aunt Carry's solicitors are doing what they can for him, to please me; but I can see they consider it all peines perdues for a rogue who ought to be hanged. "And to think," cries Toniello, "that in my own country I should have all the populo with me! The very carabineers themselves would have been with me! Accidente a tutti quei grulli!" which means, "May apoplexy seize these fools!" "They were only the women's husbands," he adds, with scorn: "they are well worth making a fuss about, certainly!" Then Piero consoles him, and gives him cigarettes, and is obliged to leave him sobbing and tearing his hair, and lying face downward on his bed of sacking. I thought Piero would not leave the poor fellow alone in prison, and so I supposed he would give up all idea of going from here; and so I began to say to myself, "A quelque chose malheur est bon." But to-day, at luncheon, Piero said, "Sai, carina! It was bad enough with Toniello, but without him, I tell you frankly, I cannot stand any more of it. With Toniello, one could laugh and forget a little. But now—anima mia, if you do not wish me to kill somebody, and be lodged beside Toniello by your worthy law-givers, you must really let me go to Trouville." "Alone!" I said; and I believe it is what he did mean, only the horror in my voice frightened him from confessing it. He sighed and got up. "I suppose I shall never be alone any more," he said, impatiently. "If only men knew what they do when they marry, on ne nous prendrait jamais. No, no. Of course I meant that you must consent to come away with me somewhere out of this intolerable place, which is made up of fog and green leaves. Let us go to Paris, to begin with: there is not a soul there, and the theatres are en relâche; but it is always delightful, and then, in a week or so, we will go down to Trouville: all the world is there." I couldn't answer him for crying. Perhaps that was best, for I am sure I should have said something wicked, which might have divided us forever. And then what would people have thought?