The Tattooed Countess/Chapter 8
In spite of the unusual number of social activities which had been arranged in honour of the return af the Countess Nattatorrini, so numerous, indeed, that often practically every hour of her day was engaged, she had not recovered the lost tranquillity which she had come to search. More than once she was on the point of packing her trunks and travelling back to Paris where at least she might conceivably pick up some news of Tony, or to China where there was some faint chance that she might forget him. She wavered, however, unable to make any decision. In the meantime letters began to arrive from abroad which served to remind her of the kind of life she would go back to, if she went back. Lady Adela Beaminster, for instance, wrote glowingly of the predicted splendour of London during the week of the Diamond Jubilee, and a vision of these stupid, solemn rites rose in Ella's mind: Piccadilly crowded with vehicles so that it would be impossible to drive anywhere without standing interminably in line, waiting one's turn, the heavy formality of the English drawing-rooms, the forbidding exclusiveness of the Duchess of Wrexe, so much more forbidding, so much more exclusive than even the similar atmosphere which permeated the salons of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. From that Faubourg, also, she had received a message, signed by the Princesse de Laumes, couched in excessively polite and evasive phrases, but none the less direct enough in its implications. Some hint of her affair with Tony had apparently become a part of current gossip. The Princesse, as a consequence, did not withdraw her protection, but she wrote of the self-imposed exile as a healing manceuvre, and suggested, quite broadly, considering the general style of the epistle, that it might be indefinitely prolonged with beneficial effect both to the patient and her friends. This letter had made the Countess extremely angry. A letter from the Marquise de Villeparisis, on the other hand, was written in a more impersonal tone. The Marquise had scribbled page after page with details concerning the Grande Semaine and the latest news about the Affaire Dreyfus. The effect of this letter was to make Ella feel as if she herself were a prisoner on the Ile du Diable. It even excited in her a little pity for Dreyfus. She was, however, able to reason that her unhappiness was not to be laid wholly to the account of her physical position in the world. She had suffered as much discontent before and elsewhere as she was now suffering in Maple Valley. Nevertheless, she always came back to the view that the absence of Tony was slowly killing her, and the silly life of this small town, which, in its modest fashion, might have diverted her before she had met Tony, now almost unduly exhausted her slight amount of patience. There were kettle-drums and euchre-parties, more lap-suppers, picnics in the cool, wooded groves which surrounded the town, and boating-excursions on the river, which the younger set attended, the men, in bright, striped blazers, playing mandolins and singing My darling Clementine on The Spanish Cavalier or My Bonnie lies over the ocean. This last song seemed to have a direct bearing on her own case and always started the tears to her readily welling eyes. She had been taken to the trotting-races, to a baseball game, to a church sociable where the tables were heavy with steaming chicken-pies and juicy strawberry short-cakes. She had played croquet.
One matter completely puzzled her. She had asked, implored would be a more accurate word, Lennie Colman, the only person she had met who had interested her, to call, and Miss Colman had not called. Every time the Countess returned to the house she scanned anxiously the pile of cards on the silver card-receiver in the hall, but as yet she had never found Lennie's card there. Nor had she met Lennie at the various entertainments, smaller and more exclusive than that arranged by her sister, which had been given in her honour. Was it possible the Countess wondered, that the school-teacher was never invited? A discreet query or two removed doubt on this subject. Lennie was often, it developed, invited. She had pleaded headaches, trumpery indispositions, as her excuse for not appearing. When, at last, the Countess, now altogether baffled, questioned Lou, her sister informed Ella of Lennie's father's weakness, but this did not seem to be a satisfactory explanation.
For the rest, the Countess was listless, often impatient, frequently even irritated. She understood and liked the men she met better than the women. They seemed more natural, more simple, talked to her as if she were one of them, even joked with her. One man in particular, Goldberg, the Jewish lawyer, had made what might be considered advances towards her, but she had been unable to regard these attentions otherwise than in a ludicrous light. With her old friends, Effie Chase in particular, she felt less at ease, less comfortable, than with her new ones. Effie had made her realize the interest the town was really taking in her, in spite of the apparent indifference to anything outside the affairs of Maple Valley which it manifested in her presence. It meant something for Effie, obviously, to have her here. Effie, she perceived, was exploiting her to Effie's own advantage. It was Effie, indeed, who had been responsible for the plan of the gala entertainment in the opera house, now definitely set for an evening early in July. Effie, on this account, had been duly careful not to offend the Countess, not to annoy her by giving her impertinent advice. In spite of her precautions, however, Effie had succeeded in sufficiently annoying the Countess. Ella was annoyed by Effie's fat, dumpy figure, by her badly fitting corsets, by her false teeth, and by her gushing manner.
Mayme Townsend had annoyed the Countess in a more unforgivable way. Mayme had called the morning after Lou's reception and had warned Ella frankly that the use of cosmetics was almost a cardinal sin in the eyes of these provincials. You know and I know, Mayme had said, but they don't. Aside from her impertinent directness on this occasion, the Countess was amazed at the reservations in Mayme's intimate conversation. Ella contrasted their ostensibly informal talks with the utterly frank gossip of a mixed dinner party in Paris, and she could not resist smiling.
Nevertheless, she saw more of Mayme than she did of any one else, Lou, of course, excepted. There was something about Mayme that she liked. In her own way, Mayme governed society in this small community and it vaguely amused the Countess to watch her do it. Mayme had a delightfully wholesome quality, a great deal of character which it would have needed no moustache to denote, and even a slight sense of humour. She was heartily intolerant, but no more intolerant, it regaled Ella to remember, than the Princesse de Laumes in her own fashion, certainly by no means as intolerant as the Duchess of Wrexe. There was, however, a reasonable codicil to this idea: Mayme's intolerance, like most American intolerance, was based on ignorant prejudice, while that of the Princesse and the Duchess was based on an established tradition of behaviour.
The Countess frequently visited the Townsends' great, red brick house on the hill, the interior of which was a curious confusion of several periods, like Rome, for Mayme's children were going to college, and their taste was freely displayed throughout the mansion, without in any way destroying what was left of the taste of two preceding generations. The Rogers groups, the stuffed bird of paradise under its glass bell, the heavy, padded chairs, with their tassels, the massively gold-framed oil-paintings remained, but Puck and Judge lay on the living-room table, a discarded rubber football, which needed blowing up, occupied a corner of the seat in the hat-rack, and here and there on the walls, between steel-engravings after masterpieces by Sir Edwin Landseer, depicting stags at bay and other animal tragedies or canvases representing Cardinals playing chess, or sheiks, embedded in cushions while they smoked hookahs, were pinned brightly coloured supplements from the Chicago Inter-Ocean, lithographs of flower sprays from the brush of Paul de Longpre, Christian martyrs about to suffer death in the arena, and Italian girls drawing water from fountains. It was the present humour of John Townsend, the nineteen year old son, to recite as often as he found an audience: I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you anyhow:
I'd rather see than be one.
Ethel, the daughter, just back from her first year at Wellesley, on the other hand, was wont to demand suddenly: Why is a mouse when it spins? and being denied adequate reply, to answer the riddle herself thus: The higher, the fewer. She also had a fancy for reciting Jabberwocky. Wellesley, it seems, found Alice very smart this year. These terrible young people had taken to themselves the privilege of hailing the Countess as Aunt Ella. Merely to be in their presence made her grow older, and when she called on Mayme she breathed a sigh of relief if she learned that these juvenile monsters were off riding their bicycles, or rowing, or playing tennis.
Mayme Townsend herself was a woman of such strong personality that in a more favourable environment she would have been as outspoken about herself as she was here about others. In Maple Valley she was a social leader; people were afraid of her, but, Ella noted, not without irony, Mayme was afraid of herself too. They all were; that was it. They all were concealing something; skeletons dangled from the hooks in all their closets, skeletons whose every bone was dissected in the town but which the owner never referred to, this being part of the strange local code. Was she herself, Ella wondered, the skeleton in the Poore closet?
It also became apparent to the Countess almost immediately that, quite apart from the disfavour in which the use of cigarettes by women and make-up were held, there were other things which were not done, things which were taboo. It was difficult enough to be sure just what these things were because nobody ever spoke of them, but they could be sensed, if one were mistaken enough to do them, by the subsequent air of disapproval which swept over a silent room. These mysterious taboos gave a visitor a feeling of self-consciousness, a lack of ease, which increased rather than diminished as time went on. So Ella's lips became paler and paler, not on account of Lou's whining admonitions and prayers or Mayme Townsend's warnings, but rather because of the unspoken (at least before the Countess) disapprobation of the town. Nor was it long before Ella confined her smoking of cigarettes to her own bedroom, setting the time for this dissipation to the hour before retiring. Nor did she descend to breakfast in the morning until she had dispensed with all traces of what, in this alien world, appeared to be deemed a vicious habit.
Lou herself, Ella soon observed, was imbued with the protective coloration of the town. She had begun by speaking, if a little timidly, what was on her mind, making audible, if weak, complaints and suggestions, but now she resorted to injured glances and a damning silence, which added ten-fold to the discomfiture of the Countess. The relation of a single incident will suffice to show the serious effect that a few weeks' sojourn in Maple Valley had made on her. With Lou, one day, she had been walking through the town, Lou pointing out old landmarks, houses that still remained from Ella's time, retailing the subsequent histories of the occupants, detailing the changes that had taken place. The career of Judge Porter had occupied her tongue for several blocks, when presently, in a side street, they passed a modest shop, flanked by a wooden Indian, where grocery supplies, in tins, and tobacco were sold. In the window was displayed an uncovered box of old-fashioned stick candy, striped pink and white, like barber poles, candy which Ella as a child had loved, and a flood of sentimental memory invaded her mind, causing her to experience a strong desire to enter the place to buy a stick to suck. But, immediately she asked herself, Would it be right? Would it be the thing? Would people understand? She hesitated before the window, and then, not without trepidation, made her decision.
I'm going in, she announced lamely, to buy some candy . . .
A flush of nervous embarrassment spread over Lou's sallow face. She had reached that point where she was careful not to needlessly controvert her sister, but her humiliation in this difficult situation was quite apparent. She furtively scanned the street up and down to see if any one were observing them (and how could she be certain that no peering pair of eyes was not gazing from between the shutters of the closed blinds of the great house opposite?). However, as the street appeared to be deserted, she followed Ella, with some reluctance, into the shop. She made this sacrifice in vain: her hesitation and alarm had served to spoil the adventure for the Countess. On principle, Ella bought the candy, in defiance of law or custom (in these instances she never could be entirely sure which it was) but when she tasted it she found that it had lost its flavour. A week later the manila paper bag of sweets still stood on the desk in her bedroom and, realizing that the unpublished tenets of Maple Valley were beginning to infect her spirit, the Countess, with a sigh, dropped it, at last, into the waste-basket. She noted that Lou, whose face had preserved an anxious frown during the course of this week, as if she feared a recurrence of this unpleasant unconventionality, grew brighter after she had committed this act of renunciation, and she wondered how many times a day Lou must have stolen into her bedroom to gaze on the little paper bag with silent prayer.
Another incident occurred which, while highly farcical in retrospect, almost caused the Countess in her contemporary temper to evacuate immediately. The Poores had always been Universalists, almost free-thinkers. Seth Poore, as a matter of fact, had been a great admirer of Robert Ingersoll. As children, neither Ella nor Lou had been compelled to attend church or Sunday school. They had been brought up in an atmosphere of religious freedom conducive to the growth of liberal ideas or, as had really happened, of no ideas on the subject of religion at all. Either of the sisters would have felt outraged or at least offended had she been dubbed an atheist, but neither was by nature devout. Ella, later, when she married, through force of circumstances became a Roman Catholic, while Lou, with the eyes of the town upon her, continued to make sporadic attendances on the Universalist Church, and contributed liberally towards its rather uncertain maintenance and the small salary of the preacher, a tiresome old fellow, who, on all occasions, wore a threadbare, frock coat, disfigured by grease spots.
Within the week an evangelist had come to Maple Valley and was conducting services at the Methodist Episcopal Church. One morning, shortly after his arrival, Mrs. Fred Baker, a spare, meagre woman in a black alpaca dress, her bony shoulders hunched at an uncomfortably ugly angle under a dark-red ice-wool shawl, paid an unexpected visit to the Poores. There were no curves in her face, which was not unlike that of an ancient and disappointed bird, and her eyes were small and watery. Carrying a reticule and a bundle of tracts, she was ushered into the library where Lou was occupied examining household accounts, preparatory to paying the June bills.
Is the Countess in? Mrs. Baker inquired, after a perfunctory word or two of greeting, in an unpleasantly nasal, sing-song voice, acquired from much singing of anthems, much intoning of psalms, and much listening to a preacher who chanted his sermon whiningly from beginning to end.
Why yes, Mrs. Baker, why yes, she is, Lou responded, puzzled. Do you want me to call her?
I'd like to have you, Mrs. Baker replied, projecting her shoulders and folding her hands smugly over the spot where her stomach would have been, had she not been too much of a scrag to permit of its existence. Her eyes, behind her glasses, watered still more. The rims were red.
Lou went to the hall and called up to Ella, who was sitting in her bedroom staring at a picture of Tony, photographed on a donkey at Avignon before the Palace of the Popes. Presently the Countess joined the ladies in the library.
The two sisters sat gazing rather apprehensively at this austere female. Although she was a near neighbour, she did not participate in the social life of Lou's circle. Mrs. Baker did not play cards or go to picnics. She had never danced since the day she was born. She prayed a good part of the time and she attended every service at the Methodist Episcopal Church and there were many of them.
After a pause, which seemed so interminable to Ella that she had almost made up her mind to re ascend the stairs to her bedroom where she might return to her favourite and melancholy habit of contemplating Tony's portrait, Mrs. Baker spoke at last.
Ladies, she began, when I see my duty I carry it out, as is right in the sight of the Lord, no matter how difficult it may be for me, and prayer has convinced me that it is my duty to talk to you.
There followed another pause. Lou and Ella remained silent.
Ladies, you doubtless know that Brother Eldridge, the world-famous evangelist, who has more converts to his credit than any other living man, is at present holding daily and nightly meetings at the Methodist Episcopal Church. I feel that it is my duty to invite you to attend these meetings, to sit at the feet of Brother Eldridge until you are ready and willing to go down on your knees before your God. . . . Mrs. Baker paused to offer a silent prayer to her Maker. . . . Begin by reading these tracts. . . . She passed two slips across to the sisters who received them mechanically. . . . Read them to yourselves, and see if it is not in your hearts that you want to come to God. I believe it is in your hearts. Learn to pray, friends, and to humble yourselves before the Almighty. He is willing to wash away your sins, no matter how deep a stain they may have made, and He will receive you into the fold, if you will stop playing cards and renounce your other vicious practices.
At this point in Mrs. Baker's discourse, the Countess permitted the tract she held in her hand to flutter to the carpet. She rose, not without dignity.
Mrs. Baker, she said (and there was a tone in her voice which would have warned any one who knew her; it did warn Lou), Mrs. Baker, it should be known to you that as an Italian Countess I am a Roman Catholic, and that you, in my eyes, are a heretic.
A papist! exclaimed Mrs. Baker in notes which scaled from B flat to F in the minor mode. A papist! That is much worse than I feared. I thought that you, like your sister, Miss Poore, were a free-thinking Universalist, but a papist! That is terrible. My dear Countess, don't you know that your soul is trembling on the brink of hell? Won't you, before it is too late, come to the arms of Jesus?
The figure of speech was unfortunate. Whenever the Countess considered the idea of going into anybody's arms they were the arms of Tony. She was very angry and she continued to stand.
Mrs. Baker, she said, I think it might be advisable for you to mind your own business!
O, Ella! Lou protested feebly.
I expect to receive insults, Mrs. Baker replied meekly, her voice now preserving the monotone of D. I expect to receive insults, like my good Lord and Master. He was stoned. He was tortured and imprisoned. He was crucified. Should I then complain? Place, she suggested, a crown of thorns on my brow, but repent, repent ere it is too late!
Ella turned to her sister. If you care to converse with this lunatic, she said, you may do so. I am going back to my room. Without a word more to Mrs. Baker, she left the library.
I fear I have been too hasty, the pious woman whimpered. I fear I have come too early, Miss Poore, but I only meant to do my duty as my Lord has asked me to do it, after I have prayed to Him, begging Him for guidance. You, perhaps . . . timidly, she proffered another tract . . . You, perhaps, will see the light. You have not walked so far along the path of error. You have not become a papist.
I am afraid, Mrs. Baker, Lou said, without much assurance, it must be admitted that I do not consider myself a sinner. There are many ways of being religious. Our opinions seem to differ on that subject and so no good can come of our talking further along this line. My sister . . .
O! your sister! I shall pray for her! A fallen woman! Perhaps a Magdalene! A papist! I shall ask Brother Eldridge to pray for the Countess.
Mrs. Baker! Be careful! Do you know what you are saying? My sister is not a fallen woman.
The visitor rose, gathered her reticule and tracts firmly in her long bony fingers, and prepared to depart.
I have been crowned with thorns, she whined, crowned with thorns, like our dear Lord!
Then, as Lou firmly pressed her towards the door, turning, just before she made her exit, she shot out: Sodom and Gomorrah, your day will come!
Lou watched her as she carefully descended the stone steps and marched slowly down the side-walk until she came to the next house, which she entered. A moment later Ella's face peered down over the banisters from above.
Has she gone? she whispered.
Yes, Lou replied.
Ella descended the stairs. What colossal cheek! she said. The woman must be dotty. Does she do this often?
No, she has never done it before. She has never been inside this house before.
Lou was obviously so much the prey of astonishment that she found speech with difficulty. The Countess, who had begun to consider the incident ridiculous, entered the parlour and sat down before the piano. Running her hands over the keys, she struck the first chords of Chaminade's Scarf Dance. Lou had followed her and stood looking at her across the black polished surface of the Steinway, absent-mindedly rubbing her fingers over the lid in a vain search for dust.
She ought to begin at home, Lou went on. Her husband goes to burlesque shows in Chicago. He was seen with a woman there once, a young girl. He goes down to Davenport . . .
To Davenport? Ella continued to play.
Yes, the river towns are . . . Lou was unable to finish this sentence.
I think I met Fred Baker once . . . somewhere . . . in a store. I was with Effie Chase. Is that . . . ?
Yes.
I liked him. He's all right. He would be all right anywhere else. Burlesque show! Davenport! A girl! The Countess laughed as her fingers moved skilfully over the keys. Don't you think, Lou, that you are a little censorious?
Well, Ella, the woman exasperated me. She called you a fallen woman, a Magdalene, and when her husband goes on like this, I think . . .
The Countess's natural good humour had all returned. Anywhere else, in any city, Fred Baker would be considered a virtuous man, high above the average. One girl and a burlesque show! Here he is damned. I wonder the men in this town don't go completely to the devil!
Some of them do. Lou was now highly excited. There's the Bohemian colony in the lower end of town. Some of the men visit girls there. O, I know. I've worked in the home for girls. I've heard their stories. Names have been mentioned. Then others visit the river towns. Some men who are not travelling men by profession go away and stay for days . . .
Lou, said the Countess, the narrow prejudices of this town, based on a complete ignorance of life, are stifling. They're damned vulgar, that's what they are! Why I heard the other day that a woman was ostracized for getting a divorce! Even religion is mean here. I wonder, she mused, if all America is like this? You'd better look out! You don't know what you're doing to the next generation. They won't stand it; no one with any brains would stand it! They'll revolt! They'll break loose! You'll see. Mark my word, you'll see!
The Countess struck up the Adeste Fideles. Lou stood staring at her, her eyes dilating with horror.