Enchanter's Nightshade Read online

  ENCHANTER’S NIGHTSHADE

  ANN BRIDGE

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “As I drove through the streets I found that approval of what met my eyes was mixed with surprise, and I was forced to reflect with misgiving upon the attitude of mind which this surprise discovered. There was no doubt at all that from my conception of the universe, Hué had been left entirely out of account, for I confess that I had never even learned its name. And if Hué had been overlooked, was it not probable that a hundred other cities in other parts of the world had been passed over? And kingdoms too, perhaps, and princes and entire races, and whole worlds of thought and feeling, traditions and beliefs? Such reflections may seem to have little meaning in a state of existence where objective facts are infinite in number, and where the subject’s knowledge of them, however great, must therefore remain forever infinitely small; but to this rigid logic I prefer the common view that travel does indeed enlarge the mind … inspiring the moderation and resourcefulness requisite to the conduct of affairs in which logic has never had the first nor the last word.”

  A Journey from Peking

  Chapter One

  Fräulein Rosa Gelsicher was sitting on a low stool, wrapped in a thick dressing-gown of purple flannel, cutting her corns after her bath, in the apartment of Count Carlo di Castellone in Gardone. In small provincial towns in Italy, thirty years ago, bathrooms were a comparative rarity—Fräulein Gelsicher’s stool, accordingly, was placed at the outer edge of a broad pink mat, in the centre of which stood the flat enamel saucer-bath, painted pale green, with a wreath of flowers round the outside, in which she had just performed her morning ablutions, flanked by two large empty copper cans and a china dish, containing her bath-sponge, face-sponge, and Turkish glove. Beside the soapy and still steaming water, a pair of pince-nez perched rather precariously on her small sharp nose, under the grey hair thickly riddled with curling-pins, Fräulein Gelsicher, cornknife in hand, worked with great apparent concentration. Her feet were a perpetual trouble to her, and with the warm weather coming it behoved her to treat them carefully. On each corn, as it was cut, she dabbed a spot of dark-green strong-smelling fluid out of a small bottle marked “Celandine”; on two of the worst she carefully arranged small circular pads of white felt, with a hole in the middle and one gummy surface to stick them on with, to protect these growths from the pressure of those sharp-toed shoes, a size or two too small, which fashion then decreed even for the most unfrivolous of women; but which were, in fact, the cause of the corns.

  But in spite of her apparent absorption in her feet, Fräulein Gelsicher was really thinking very hard about several other things at the same time. She had come into the Castellone family twelve years before as governess to Elena, Count Carlo’s daughter, then a little girl of six. When Elena was twelve the Countess died, and since her death Fräulein Gelsicher had gradually assumed a position very different from that of the ordinary governess. The whole administration of the household had come, bit by bit, into her competent Swiss hands; her shrewd Swiss commonsense had made her the Count’s valued consultant and adviser on matters extending far beyond the household and the health and morals of Elena and Giulio, Count Carlo’s only son, three years older than Elena. She presided at the Count’s table and saw to the comfort of his guests, but all with such a business-like modesty, such a strong sense of her position of stewardship, as made the relation a wholly satisfactory one. The Count both valued her and liked her—he had nicknamed her “La Gelosia” (jealousy) at the outset, partly because he never could either remember or pronounce foreign names, partly out of a whimsical pleasure in giving her a name which he recognised as being completely foreign to her character. At first it had been a secret joke in the family, but for years now Fräulein Gelsicher herself had shared it, and the Count’s jocular greeting of “La Signorina Gelosia come sta?” when they met at lunch-time, while startling to guests, was a regular and pleasant feature of a very regular and pleasant family life.

  La Signorina Gelosia’s preoccupations, that morning, were mainly domestic in character. The family was about to make its usual spring migration from Gardone, where they spent the winter, to Odredo, the Count’s property in the country some eighteen miles away. As a rule Anna the cook was sent out there in advance with a team of underlings, to prepare the house for their reception; but this year Anna had strained her ankle, and it was a problem whom to send in her place. Fräulein Gelsicher would really have liked to go herself for a couple of nights; but it was of course unthinkable in Italy, in those days, that a girl of Elena’s age should be left for forty-eight hours without more adequate chaperonage than that of her father and her brother. Dabbing on another drop of Celandine, Fräulein Gelsicher sighed. She supposed they would have to send Umberto, though it was most inconvenient to do without him here. Umberto was Anna’s husband, the butler and general factotum; he was Prime Minister, so to speak, under the undisputed sovereignty of Fräulein Gelsicher; he knew where everything was, and what everybody was doing. Anyhow he must come back to pack the glass and china, she decided, if he did go; if anyone else did it, things would be broken.

  Then she must send round word quickly to Mme. Joséphine about Elena’s dress for the Opera tonight. It had not arrived according to promise yesterday evening, and the child would be disappointed. Or had she better make time to go herself? Mme. Joséphine was temperamental and difficult, she was subject to crises, and when she had a crise she would fling a dress back at a patron half-done, and refuse to finish it; it was really safer to see her than to write to her, for one could then observe on the spot to what point remonstrance could safely be pushed.

  Mme. Joséphine was an important element in the life of the Province. Every Autumn and every Spring she arrived from Paris with her models from the “great houses,” and with two assistants took up her quarters in a small apartment in Gardone, where she showed frocks, produced materials, advised, cut out, fitted and made, for a few hurried weeks. The ladies of the Province depended entirely on Mme. Joséphine for their more elegant clothes, and for their knowledge of the movements of fashion. Except for one or two families, who were either politically or socially important, the provincial nobility did not go to Rome for the winter—but neither did they remain in their large, rambling, unheated and unheatable country-houses. No, they moved in, ten, twelve, fifteen or twenty miles, in their broughams, victorias and waggonettes, followed by long narrow farm carts containing their plate and linen to Gardone, where each family had either its own town house or an apartment. How pleasant they were, those large-fronted houses, built with a certain nobility of plainness, with their narrow wrought-iron balconies, their long green shutters, their big and rather sparsely-furnished rooms, shadowily reflected in many mirrors—houses so large that two or three families could easily settle down in one of them, taking a floo
r or two apiece, in complete independence. This indeed was the usual practice. Various members of the same family would establish themselves, each with his household, under the roof which bore their common name. So the Castellone house in the Via Vittoria contained at this moment, besides Count Carlo and his establishment on the first and second floor, Countess Livia di Castellone, the widow of the eldest son, on the ground floor; the third floor would normally have been occupied by Ascanio Castellone, son of Count Carlo’s younger brother—but Ascanio had married a smart rich Belgian wife who insisted on going to Rome or Paris for the winter, so it was empty; finally, on the fourth floor, in the smaller and lower rooms, lived two spinster cousins of Count Carlo, the Countesses Aspasia and Roma di Castellone.

  So patriarchally housed, keeping their distance but able to keep also a close eye, if they so wished, on one another’s comings and goings—a privilege of which the occupants of the fourth floor took full advantage—the various members of the Castellone clan passed their little winter season, wearing Mme. Joséphine’s creations to concerts, to stiff evening receptions, and to the Opera, which took place in the small, richly rococo, and curiously elegant little opera-house; driving out to the library, to pay calls, or merely to take the air in her heavy fur-trimmed coats and enormous plumy hats, their hands in muffs hung on jewelled chains, and their cards in small silver or gold cases which dangled, also, on little chains. They gave luncheons and receptions, they ran in and out to one another and talked, they met at the Opera; but they seldom gave dinners, never went out to tea (because no one drank tea) and by no wildest stretch of the imagination could they ever have been conceived of as giving cocktail or sherry-parties, because cocktails were not invented and sherry, as an aperitif, was not yet in fashion even in England. Nor did they as a rule give balls. The young people danced informally and en famille among themselves in the livelier households, like that of the Marchesa di Vill’ Alta (and in a place where everyone was related, more or less, to everyone else, to dance en famille was almost unavoidable) but balls they left for Rome and Venice; balls were not for Gardone.

  Fräulein Gelsicher’s self-communings on the subject of Mme. Joséphine and the green dress were interrupted by a knock on the door. Not on the door of the cabinet de toilette where she was attending to her feet, for this stood wide open, but on the door of the large bedroom beyond. Without moving, Fräulein Gelsicher called out “Who is there?”

  “Annina,” replied a voice.

  “Avanti,” responded Fräulein Gelsicher briskly, and began to put on her stockings; Annina was the maid, the daughter of Anna and Umberto, and the toilets of her two mistresses held no secrets from her. Annina came in, shutting the bedroom door behind her, and advanced to the cabinet de toilette, where she announced that if it pleased the Signorina, Umberto wished to see the Signorina.

  “What is it?” Fräulein Gelsicher asked, pulling on her second stocking, of fine black lisle thread.

  “Something from the Signor Ospedi,” Annina answered.

  Fräulein Gelsicher sighed again. Ospedi was the bailiff at Odredo, and was in her opinion incompetent, if not worse. But so far she had not been able to persuade the Count to get rid of him. He made no difficulties about Count Carlo’s innovations in wine-production, as most bailiffs would have one; and improving the qualities of the local wines being the Count’s ruling passion, he looked no further, and was blind to what seemed to Fräulein Gelsicher the man’s glaring defects in other directions. Telling Annina that she would see Umberto, she slipped her feet into a pair of grey felt slippers with long tongues, and closing the door after her, moved into the bedroom, where she took from a drawer a small fleecy shawl and wound it round her head, with a view to concealing the curling-pins. This was her only concession to appearances before interviewing Umberto; in the easy continental tradition, where the ladies of the household spent the morning in wrappers, and family life only began with colazione at twelve, it was perfectly normal to receive the menservants thus attired, and both Umberto and Paolo, the coachman, came regularly to her room of a morning for orders, or for what, in Umberto’s case, might better have been described as consultations.

  Umberto presently followed his knock on her door, a short stocky man just beginning to turn grey, clean-shaven, with the grey eyes that are by no means uncommon in North Italy, and a stubborn humorous mouth—dressed in a black and white striped pantry jacket and felt slippers. Bowing, he unfolded his business. The Signor Ospedi had sent a man in on a bicycle to ask about the waggons.

  “What about the waggons?” the Signorina asked.

  Two of the waggons, it appeared, had foundered in the mud fetching wood to the castle, and had each a wheel broken; Ospedi wished to know if he was to hire other waggons for the transport of the effects next week; they could not be mended in the time, as the wheel-wright had a congestion.

  “Have you spoken to the Signor Conte?” Fräulein Gelsicher asked.

  “Sissignorina,” Umberto replied. “The Signor Conte said I should tell the Signorina.”

  Fräulein Gelsicher sighed, for the third time in half an hour. Count Carlo had been rejoicing yesterday over the arrival from Paris of an immense tome on a new system for pruning vines—until he had finished it, there would be no getting anything else into his head, she reflected resignedly. She thought rapidly, while Umberto watched her, with the eyes of a sporting dog watching a man whom he respects with a gun. Waggons they must have—but to hire was very expensive, and sheer waste; and with Elena growing up now, and needing more and better clothes, and guests coming to the house, money was not too abundant—at least, waste was more intolerable than ever. They must find some other way. And, her quickly-working practical mind having soon pounced on another way, she moved over to a small spindly unsteady walnut writing-table in one of the wide windows, and sitting down there, the streaming Spring sunshine falling incongruously across the purple flannel dressing-gown, the lacey shawl slipping back from her grey and curling-pinned head, Fräulein Gelsicher rapidly penned a note, in her pointed firm writing, to the Countess Livia downstairs, explaining the situation and asking if Count Carlo might borrow the wheel-wright from Castellone itself for a day, to repair the broken waggons. If so, she begged the Countess to have the great kindness to send also a small note to the Castellone bailiff, which might be shown him by the bailiff from Odredo. She gave the note to Umberto, explaining its import; Umberto nodded his head in a satisfied manner—the dog approved of the manœuvres of the man with the gun—and moved to the door.

  “And Umberto,” Fräulein Gelsicher called after him.

  “Sissignorina?”

  “If the Signora Contessa gives you the note to Taddei separately, do not come back, but send it, with a message. I am busy.”

  With a final nod and a “Va bene” Umberto removed himself. When he had gone, Fräulein Gelsicher continued the process of getting dressed. Her spring-weight combinations, mid-way between summer and winter ones, she had put on after her bath—now she added the rest. Her underclothes were not coquettish, but there were a great many of them—white knickers which fastened on a buttoned band, a white petticoat trimmed with fat embroidered scallops and flowers, a silk petticoat over that, tied round the waist with a tape; a woven bodice, buttoning up the front, with sleeves to the elbow and high in the neck, and, above all, stays. Stays were stays, thirty years ago, and no nonsense about stretching in two or more ways; Fräulein Gelsicher’s were made of fine slate-grey twill, with whalebone stitched into them at two-inch intervals all over, and fastening down the front with two solid steel contraptions called busks, one side of which hooked over a series of studs on the other side—they reached from her bosom well down over her hips. Having clipped herself into this harness in front, she proceeded, very swiftly and expertly, to adjust the laces behind, drawing up the crossed loops with a hooked finger, from the top downwards, from the bottom upwards to the waist, where she drew out the slack and tied it in a long dangling bow. When she was finally atti
red in her bodice and silk petticoat, she put on a loose-sleeved cambric jacket, embroidered with more of the fat scallops, and sitting down at the toilet table, which occupied the centre one of the three windows, she began to do her hair.

  Hair-doing was also something of a business in those days. The essential thing was that the natural shape of the skull should be concealed as completely as possible. To this end the hair was fluffed out, front, sides and back, into a sort of large cushion or cake, covering the head; on this structure was disposed, according to taste, either a coiled chignon, or puffs and rolls of various descriptions. But whether chignon or puffs, it required a great deal of hair to create this erection and moreover to make it solid enough to support steadily the large hats then in fashion; and few women really had the requisite amount. Fräulein Gelsicher had not the requisite amount. Seated at her dressing-table, she took out of a drawer and laid on the embroidered cloth before her three stiffened pads of horse-hair and a long and glossy switch, made up of her own “combings”; also a neat lavender-coloured cardboard box, which contained her current combings, the raw material of future switches. Carefully she removed her curling-pins, brushed out her hair, combed it, and then proceeded to attach to her head the three pads, one across the front, one above each ear. She had just reached this stage, and was embarking on the process of fluffing out her rather thin grey locks before brushing them up over the pads, when there came a light tap at the door.

  “Who is there?” Fräulein Gelsicher asked again.

  “Me!” called a girl’s voice, and without waiting for further permission Elena di Castellone ran into the room. She too was not yet dressed, but was wearing one of the cambric dressing-jackets over her petticoat; her black hair however was perfectly arranged in a large pompadour roll above her glowing complexion, with a thick twisted chignon, like a teapot-handle, on the top of her head. Her mouth was already open in laughter as she came into the room, showing irregular but deliciously white teeth; her brown eyes were sparkling with mischief; she carried two envelopes in her hand.