On the way back to his house Wyman said to me:
‘You’ll like Jasper Greene. He’s clever.’
‘What’s he a professor of?’
‘He’s not a professor; he’s an instructor. A fine scholar. He’s her second husband. She was married to an Italian before.’
‘Oh?’ That didn’t chime in with my ideas at all. ‘What was her name?’
‘I haven’t a notion. I don’t believe it was a great success.’ Wyman chuckled. ‘That’s only a deduction I draw from the fact that she hasn’t a single thing in the house to suggest that she ever spent any time in Italy. I should have expected her to have at least a refectory table, an old chest or two, and an embroidered cope hanging on the wall.’
I laughed. I knew those rather dreary pieces that people buy when they’re in Italy, the gilt wooden candlesticks, the Venetian glass mirrors, and the high-backed, comfortless chairs. They look well enough when you see them in the crowded shops of the dealers in antiques, but when you bring them to another country they’re too often a sad disappointment. Even if they’re genuine, which they seldom are, they look ill-at-ease and out of place.
‘Laura has money,’ Wyman went on. ‘When they married she furnished the house from cellar to attic in Chicago. It’s quite a show place; it’s a little masterpiece of hideousness and vulgarity. I never go into the living-room without marvelling at the unerring taste with which she picked out exactly what you’d expect to find in the bridal suite of a second-class hotel in Atlantic City.’
To explain this irony I should state that Wyman’s living-room was all chromium and glass, rough modern fabrics, with a boldly Cubist rug on the floor, and on the walls Picasso prints and drawings by Tchelicheff. However, he gave me a very good dinner. We spent the evening chatting pleasantly about things that mutually interested us and finished it with a couple of bottles of beer. I went to bed in a room of somewhat aggressive modernity. I read for a while and then putting out the light composed myself to sleep.
‘Laura?’ I said to myself ‘Laura what?’
I tried to think back. I thought of all the people I knew in Florence, hoping that by association I might recall when and where I had come in contact with Mrs Greene. Since I was going to dine with her I wanted to recall something that would prove that I had not forgotten her. People look upon it as a slight if you don’t remember them. I suppose we all attach a sort of importance to ourselves, and it is humiliating to realize that we have left no impression at all upon the persons we have associated with. I dozed off, but before I fell into the blessedness of deep sleep, my subconscious, released from the effort of striving at recollection, I suppose, grew active and I was suddenly wide awake, for I remembered who Laura Greene was. It was no wonder that I had forgotten her, for it was twenty-five years since I had seen her, and then only haphazardly during a month I spent in Florence.
It was just after the First World War. She had been engaged to a man who was killed in it and she and her mother had managed to get over to France to see his grave. They were San Francisco people. After doing their sad errand they had come down to Italy and were spending the winter in Florence. At that time there was quite a large colony of English and Americans. I had some American friends, a Colonel Harding and his wife, colonel because he had occupied an important position in the Red Cross, who had a handsome villa in the Via Bolognese, and they asked me to stay with them. I spent most of my mornings sightseeing and met my friends at Doney’s in the Via Tornabuoni round about noon to drink a cocktail. Doney’s was the gathering-place of everybody one knew, Americans, English, and such of the Italians as frequented their society. There you heard all the gossip of the town. There was generally a lunch-party either at a restaurant or at one or other of the villas with their fine old gardens a mile or two from the centre of the city. I had been given a card to the Florence Club, and in the afternoon Charley Harding and I used to go there to play bridge or a dangerous game of poker with a pack of thirty-two cards. In the evening there would be a dinner-party with more bridge perhaps and often dancing. One met the same people all the time, but the group was large enough, the people sufficiently various, to prevent it from being tedious. Everyone was more or less interested in the arts, as was only right and proper in Florence, so that, idle as life seemed, it was not entirely frivolous.
Laura and her mother, Mrs Clayton, a widow, lived in one of the better boarding-houses. They appeared to be comfortably off. They had come to Florence with letters of introduction and soon made many friends. Laura’s story appealed to their sympathies, and people were glad on that account to do what they could for the two women, but they were in themselves nice and quickly became liked for themselves. They were hospitable and gave frequent lunches at one or other of the restaurants where one ate macaroni and the inevitable scaloppini, and drank Chianti. Mrs Glayton was perhaps a little lost in this cosmopolitan society, where matters that were strange to her were seriously or gaily talked about, but Laura took to it as though it were her native element. She engaged an Italian woman to teach her the language and soon was reading the Inferno with her; she devoured books on the art of the Renaissance and on Florentine history, and I sometimes came across her, Baedeker in hand, at the Uffizzi or in some church studiously examining works of art.
She was twenty-four or twenty-five then and I was well over forty, so that though we often met we became cordially acquainted rather than intimate. She was by no means beautiful, but she was comely in rather an unusual way; she had an oval face with bright blue eyes and very dark hair which she wore very simply, parted in the middle, drawn over her ears and tied in a chignon low on the nape of her neck. She had a good skin and naturally high colour; her features were good without being remarkable, and her teeth were even, small, and white; but her chief asset was her easy grace of movement, and I was not surprised when they told me that she danced ‘divinely’. Her figure was very good, somewhat fuller than was the fashion of the moment; and I think what made her attractive was the odd mingling in her appearance of the Madonna in an altar-piece by one of the later Italian painters and a suggestion of sensuality. It certainly made her very alluring to the Italians who gathered at Doney’s in the morning or were occasionally invited to lunch or dinner in the American or English villas. She was evidently accustomed to dealing with amorous young men, for though she was charming, gracious, and friendly with them she kept them at their distance. She quickly discovered that they were all looking for an American heiress who would restore the family fortunes, and with a demure amusement which I found admirable made them delicately understand that she was far from rich. They sighed a little and turned their attentions at Doney’s, which was their happy hunting-ground, to more likely objects. They continued to dance with her, and to keep their hand in flirted with her, but their aspirations ceased to be matrimonial.
But there was one young man who persisted. I knew him slightly because he was one of the regular poker-players at the club. I played occasionally. It was impossible to win and the disgruntled foreigners used sometimes to say that the Italians ganged up on us, but it may be only that they knew the particular game they played better than we did. Laura’s admirer, Tito di San Pietro, was a bold and even reckless player and would often lose sums he could ill afford. (That was not his real name, but I call him that since his own is famous in Florentine history.) He was a good-looking youth, neither short nor tall, with fine black eyes, thick black hair brushed back from his forehead and shining with oil, an olive skin, and features of classical regularity. He was poor and he had some vague occupation, which did not seem to interfere with his amusements, but he was always beautifully dressed. No one quite knew where he lived, in a furnished room perhaps or in the attic of some relation; and all that remained of his ancestors’ great possessions was a Cinquecento villa about thirty miles from the city. I never saw it, but I was told that it was of amazing beauty, with a great neglected garden of cypresses and live oaks, overgrown borders of box, terraces, artific
ial grottoes, and crumbling statues. His widowed father, the count, lived there alone and subsisted on the wine he made from the vines of the small property he still owned and the oil from his olive trees. He seldom came to Florence, so I never met him, but Charley Harding knew him fairly well.
‘He’s a perfect specimen of the Tuscan nobleman of the old school,’ he said. ‘He was in the diplomatic service in his youth and he knows the world. He has beautiful manners and such an air, you almost feel he’s doing you a favour when he says how d’you do to you. He’s a brilliant talker. Of course he hasn’t a penny, he squandered the little he inherited on gambling and women, but he bears his poverty with great dignity. He acts as though money were something beneath his notice.’
‘What sort of age is he?’ I asked.
‘Fifty, I should say, but he’s still the handsomest man I’ve ever seen in my life.’
‘Oh?’
‘You describe him, Bessie. When he first came here he made a pass at Bessie. I’ve never been quite sure how far it went.’
‘Don’t be a fool, Charley,’ Mrs Harding laughed.
She gave him the sort of look a woman gives her husband when she has been married to him many years and is quite satisfied with him.
‘He’s very attractive to women and he knows it,’ she said. ‘When he talks to you he gives you the impression that you’re the only woman in the world and of course it’s flattering. But it’s only a game and a woman would have to be a perfect fool to take him seriously. He is very handsome. Tall and spare and he holds himself well. He has great dark liquid eyes, like the boy’s; his hair is snow-white, but very thick still, and the contrast with his bronzed, young face is really breath-taking. He has a ravaged, rather battered look, but at the same time a look of such distinction, it’s really quite incredibly romantic’
‘He also has his great dark liquid eyes on the main chance,’ said Charley Harding dryly. ‘And he’ll never let Tito marry a girl who has no more money than Laura.’
‘She has about five thousand dollars a year of her own,’ said Bessie. ‘And she’ll get that much more when her mother dies.’
‘Her mother can live for another thirty years, and five thousand a year won’t go far to keep a husband, a father, and two or three children, and restore a ruined villa with practically not a stick of furniture in it.’
‘I think the boy’s desperately in love with her.’
‘How old is he?’ I asked.
’Twenty-six.’
A few days after this Charley, on coming back to lunch, since for once we were lunching by ourselves, told me that he had run across Mrs Clayton in the Via Tornabuoni and she had said that she and Laura were driving out that afternoon with Tito to meet his father and see the villa.
‘What d’you suppose that means?’ asked Bessie.
‘My guess is that Tito is taking Laura to be inspected by his old man, and if he approves he’s going to ask her to marry him.’
‘And will he approve?’
Not on your life.’
But Charley was wrong. After the two women had been shown over the house they were taken for a walk round the garden. Without exactly knowing how it had happened Mrs Clayton found herself alone in an alley with the old count. She spoke no Italian, but he had been an attaché in London and his English was tolerable.
‘Your daughter is charming, Mrs Clayton,’ he said. ‘I am not surprised that my Tito has fallen in love with her.’
Mrs Clayton was no fool and it may be that she too had guessed why the young man had asked them to go and see the ancestral villa.
‘Young Italians are very impressionable. Laura is sensible enough not to take their attention too seriously.’
‘I was hoping she was not quite indifferent to the boy.’
‘I have no reason to believe that she likes him any more than any other of the young men who dance with her,’ Mrs Clayton answered somewhat coldly. ‘I think I should tell you at once that my daughter has a very moderate income and she will have no more till I die.’
‘I will be frank with you. I have nothing in the world but this house and the few acres that surround it. My son could not afford to marry a penniless girl, but he is not a fortune-hunter and he loves your daughter.’
The count had not only the grand manner, but a great deal of charm and Mrs Clayton was not insensible to it. She softened a little.
‘All that is neither here nor there. We don’t arrange our children’s marriages in America. If Tito wants to marry her, let him ask her, and if she’s prepared to marry him she’ll presumably say so.’
‘Unless I am greatly mistaken that is just what he is doing now I hope with all my heart that he will be successful.’
They strolled on and presently saw walking towards them the two young people hand in hand. It was not difficult to guess what had passed. Tito kissed Mrs Clayton’s hand and his father on both cheeks.
‘Mrs Clayton, Papa, Laura has consented to be my wife.’
The engagement made something of a stir in Florentine society and a number of parties were given for the young couple. It was quite evident that Tito was very much in love, but less so that Laura was. He was good-looking, adoring, high-spirited, and gay; it was likely enough that she loved him; but she was a girl who did not display emotion and she remained what she had always been, somewhat placid, amiable, serious but friendly, and easy to talk to. I wondered to what extent she had been influenced to accept Tito’s offer by his great name, with its historical associations, and the sight of that beautiful house with its lovely view and the romantic garden.
‘Anyhow there’s no doubt about its being a love match on his side,’ said Bessie Harding, when we were talking it over. ‘Mrs Clayton tells me that neither Tito nor his father has shown any desire to know how much Laura has.’
‘I’d bet a million dollars that they know to the last cent what she’s got and they’ve calculated exactly how much it comes to in lire,’ said Harding with a grunt.
‘You’re a beastly old man, darling,’ she answered.
He gave another grunt.
Shortly after that I left Florence. The marriage took place from the Hardings’ house and a vast crowd came to it, ate their food and drank their champagne. Tito and his wife took an apartment on the Lungarno and the old count returned to his lonely villa in the hills. I did not go to Florence again for three years and then only for a week. I was staying once more with the Hardings. I asked about my old friends and then remembered Laura and her mother.
‘Mrs Clayton went back to San Francisco,’ said Bessie, ‘and Laura and Tito live at the villa with the count. They’re very happy.’
‘Any babies?’
‘No.’
‘Go on,’ said Harding.
Bessie gave her husband a look.
‘I cannot imagine why I’ve lived thirty years with a man I dislike so much,’ she said. ‘They gave up the apartment on the Lungarno. Laura spent a good deal of money doing things to the villa, there wasn’t a bathroom in it, she put in central heating, and she had to buy a lot of furniture to make it habitable, and then Tito lost a small fortune playing poker and poor Laura had to pay up.’
‘Hadn’t he got a job?’
‘It didn’t amount to anything and it came to an end.’
‘What Bessie means by that is that he was fired,’ Harding put in.
Well, to cut a long story short, they thought it would be more economical to live at the villa and Laura had the idea that it would keep Tito out of mischief She loves the garden and she’s made it lovely. Tito simply worships her and the old count’s taken quite a fancy to her. So really it’s all turned out very well.’
‘It may interest you to know that Tito was in last Thursday,’ said Harding. ‘He played like a madman and I don’t know how much he lost.’
‘Oh, Charley. He promised Laura he’d never play again.’
‘As if a gambler ever kept a promise like that It’ll be like last time. He’ll burst into t
ears and say he loves her and it’s a debt of honour and unless he can get the money he’ll blow his brains out And Laura will pay as she paid before.’
‘He’s weak, poor dear, but that’s his only fault. Unlike most Italian husbands he’s absolutely faithful to her and he’s kindness itself’ She looked at Harding with a sort of humorous grimness. ‘I’ve yet to find a husband who was perfect.’
‘You’d better start looking around pretty soon, dear, or it’ll be too late,’ he retorted with a grin.
I left the Hardings and returned to London. Charley Harding and I corresponded in a desultory sort of way, and about a year later I got a letter from him. He told me as usual what he had been doing in the interval, and mentioned that he had been to Montecatini for the baths and had gone with Bessie to visit friends in Rome; he spoke of the various people I knew in Florence, So-and-so had just bought a Bellini and Mrs Such-and-such had gone to America to divorce her husband. Then he went on: ‘I suppose you’ve heard about the San Pietros. It’s shaken us all and we can talk of nothing else. Laura’s terribly upset, poor thing, and she’s going to have a baby. The police keep on questioning her and that doesn’t make it any easier for her. Of course we brought her to stay here. Tito comes up for trial in another month.’
I hadn’t the faintest notion what all this was about So I wrote at once to Harding asking him what it meant He answered with a long letter. What he had to tell me was terrible. I will relate the bare and brutal facts as shortly as I can. I learned them partly from Harding’s letter and partly from what he and Bessie told me when two years later I was with them once more.
The count and Laura took to one another at once and Tito was pleased to see how quickly they had formed an affectionate friendship, for he was as devoted to his father as he was in love with his wife. He was glad that the count began to come more often to Florence than he had been used to. They had a spare room in the apartment and on occasion he spent two or three nights with them. He and Laura would go bargain-hunting in the antique shops and buy old pieces to put in the villa. He had tact and knowledge and little by little the house, with its spacious rooms and marble floors, lost its forlorn air and became a friendly place to live in. Laura had a passion for gardening and she and the count spent long hours together planning and then supervising the workmen who were restoring the gardens to their ancient, rather stately, beauty.