The Child of Pleasure Part 37

He looked at his watch.

'I can walk a little further with you.'

'Mamma, do let us go up the steps,' begged Delfina. 'I went up yesterday with Miss Dorothy. You should see it!'

They turned back and crossed the square. A child followed them persistently, offering a great branch of flowering almond, which Andrea bought and presented to Delfina. Blonde ladies issued from the hotels armed with red Baedekers; clumsy hackney coaches with two horses jogged past with a glint of bra.s.s on their oldfashioned harness; the flower-sellers thrust their overflowing baskets in front of the strangers, vociferating at the pitch of their voices.

'Will you promise me,' Andrea said to Donna Maria, as they began to ascend the steps--'will you promise me not to go to the Villa Medici without me? Give it up for to-day--please do.'

For a moment she seemed preoccupied by sad thoughts, then she answered: 'Very well, I will give it up.'

'Thanks!'

Before them the great stairway rose triumphantly, its sun-warmed steps giving out a gentle heat, the stone itself having the polished gleam of old silver like that of the fountains at Schifanoja. Delfina ran on in front with her almond-branch and, caught by the breeze of her movement, some of its faint pink petals fluttered away like b.u.t.terflies.

A poignant regret pierced the young man's heart. He pictured to himself the delights of a sentimental walk through the quiet glades of the Villa Medici in the early hours of the sunny afternoon.

'With whom do you lunch?' asked Donna Maria, after an interval of silence.

'With the old Princess Alberoni,' he replied.

He lied to her once more, for some instinct warned him that the name Ferentino might arouse some suspicion in Donna Maria's mind.

'Good-bye, then,' she said, and held out her hand.

'No--I will come up to the Piazza. My carriage is waiting for me there.

Look--that is where I live,' and he pointed to the Palazzo Zuccari, all flooded with sunshine.

Donna Maria's eyes lingered upon it.

'Now there you have seen it, will you come there sometimes--in spirit?'

'In spirit always.'

'And shall I not see you before Sat.u.r.day evening?'

'I hardly think so.'

They parted--she turning with Delfina into the avenue, Andrea jumping into his brougham and driving off down the Via Gregoriana.

He arrived at the Ferentinos' a few minutes late. He made his apologies.

Elena was already there with her husband.

Lunch was served in a dining room gay with tapestries representing scenes after the manner of Peter Loar. In the midst of these beautiful seventeenth-century grotesques, a brisk fire of wit and sarcasm soon began to flash and scintillate. The three ladies were in high spirits and prompt at repartee. Barbare la Viti laughed her sonorous masculine laugh, throwing back her handsome boyish head and making free play with her sparkling black eyes. Elena was in a more than usually brilliant vein, and impressed Andrea as being so far removed from him, so unfamiliar, so unconcerned, that he almost doubted whether yesterday's scene had not been all a dream. Ludovico Barbarisi and the Prince of Ferentino aided and abetted the ladies; Lord Heathfield entertained his 'young friend' by boring him to extinction with questions as to the coming sales and giving him minute details of a very rare edition of the _Metamorphoses_ of Apuleius--Roma, 1469--in folio, which he had acquired a day or two ago for fifteen hundred and twenty lire. He broke off every now and then to watch Barbarella, and then that gleam of dementia would flash into his eyes, and his repulsive hands trembled strangely.

Andrea's irritation, disgust, and boredom at last reached such a pitch that he was unable to conceal his feelings.

'You seem out of spirits, Ugenta,' said the princess.

'Well, a little, perhaps--Miching Mallecho is ill.'

Barbarisi at once overwhelmed him with importunate questions about the horse's ailments; and then Lord Heathfield recommenced the story of the _Metamorphoses_ from the beginning.

The Princess turned to her cousin. 'What do you think, Ludovico,' she said with a laugh, 'yesterday, at the concert, we surprised him in a flirtation with an Incognita!'

'So we did,' added Elena.

'An Incognita?' exclaimed Ludovico.

'Yes, but perhaps you can give us further information. She is the wife of the new Minister for Guatemala.'

'Aha--I know.'

'Well?'

'For the moment, I only know the Minister. I see him playing at the Club every night.'

'Tell me, Ugenta, has she been received at court yet?'

'I really do not know, Princess,' Andrea returned with some impatience.

The whole business had become simply intolerable to him. Elena's gaiety jarred horribly on him, and her husband's presence was more odious than ever. But if he was out of temper, it was more with himself than with the rest of the company. At the root of his irritation lay a dim longing after the pleasure he had so lately rejected. Hurt and offended by Elena's indifference, his heart turned with poignant regret to the other woman, and he pictured her wandering pensive and alone through the silent avenues, more beautiful, more n.o.ble than ever before.

The Princess rose and led the way into an adjoining room. Barbarella ran to the piano, which was entirely enveloped in an immense antique caparison of red velvet embroidered with dull gold, and began to sing Bizet's Tarantelle dedicated to Christine Nilsson. Elena and Eva leaned over her to read the music, while Ludovico stood behind them smoking a cigarette. The Prince had disappeared.

But Lord Heathfield kept firm hold of Andrea. He had drawn him into a window and was discoursing to him on certain little Urbanese '_coppette amatorie_' which he had picked up at the Cavaliere Davila's sale, and the rasping voice with its aggravating interrogative inflections, the gestures with which he indicated the dimensions of the cups, and his glance--now dull and fishy, now keen as steel under the great prominent brow--in short, the whole man was so unendurably obnoxious to Andrea that he clenched his teeth convulsively like a patient under the surgeon's knife.

His one absorbing thought was how to get away. His plan was to rush to the Pincio in the hope of finding Donna Maria and taking her, after all, to the Villa Medici. It was about two o'clock. He looked out of the window at the glorious sunshine; he turned back into the room, and saw the group of pretty women at the piano, bathed in the red glow struck out of the velvet cover by a strong golden ray. With this red glow the smoke of the cigarette mingled lightly as the talking and laughter mingled with the chords Barbarella Viti struck haphazard on the keys.

Ludovico whispered a word or two in his cousin's ear, which the Princess forthwith communicated to her friends, for there was a renewed burst of laughter, ringing and deep, like a string of pearls dropping into a silver bowl. Then Barbarella took up Bizet's air again in a low voice--

'Tra, la la--Le papillon s'est envole--Tra, la la----'

Andrea was anxiously on the watch for a favourable moment at which to interrupt Lord Heathfield's harangue and make his escape. But the collector had entered upon a series of rounded periods, each intimately connected with the other, without one break, without one pause for breath. A single stop would have saved the persecuted listener, but it never came, and the victim's torments grew more unbearable every minute.

'Oui! Le papillon s'est envole--Oui! Ah! ah! ah! ah!'

Andrea looked at his watch.

'Two o'clock already! Excuse me, Marquis, but I must go.'

He left the window and went over to the ladies.

'Will you excuse me, Princess, I have a consultation at two with the veterinary surgeons at my stables?'

He took leave in a great hurry. Elena gave him the tips of her fingers, Barbarella presented him with _fondant_, saying--'Give it to poor Mallecho with my love.'

Ludovico offered to accompany him.

'No, no--stay where you are.'