CHAPTER XIV
LETIZIA THE FIRST
“Mrs. Fuller has been so excited ever since the letter came to say that you would pay a visit to Lebanon House,” the nurse stopped to tell Nancy at the head of the stairs, before showing the way along the landing to the old lady’s room.
“Are we going to see more aunts, muvver?” Letizia anxiously inquired.
“No, darling, you’re going to see dear father’s grannie whom he loved very much; and he would like you to love her very much too.”
“Well, I will love her,” Letizia promised.
“You must remember thatyourname is Letizia and thathername is Letizia. You were christened Letizia because father loved his grannie. And remember she is very old and that’s why you’ll find her in bed.”
“Will she be like Red Riding Hood’s grannie?” Letizia asked.
“Perhaps she will be a little.”
“But a naughty wolf won’t come and eat her?” Letizia pressed on a note of faint apprehension.
“Oh, no,” her mother assured her. “There are no wolves in this house.”
Was it a trick of the gathering dusk, or did the bright-eyed young woman raise her eyebrows and smile to herself at this confident reply?
Nancy had never been so much surprised in her life as she was by the aspect of old Mrs. Fuller’s room. The old lady, wrapped in a bed-jacket of orange and yellow brocade and supported by quantities of bright vermilion cushions, was sitting up in a gilded four-post bed, thecurtains and valance of damasked maroon silk and the canopy sustained by four rouged Venetianamoriniwith golden wings. Over the mantelpiece was a copy of Giorgione’s “Pastorale.” Mirrors in frames of blown glass decorated with wreaths of pink glass rosebuds and blue glass forget-me-nots hung here and there on the white walls, the lighted candles in which gave the windowpanes such a bloom in the March dusk as is breathed upon ripe damsons. Bookcases on either side of the fireplace were filled with the sulphur backs of numerous French novels. On a mahogany table at the foot of the bed stood a green cornucopia of brilliantly tinted wax fruits that was being regarded with slant-eyed indifference by two antelopes of gilded wood, seated on either side.
Of course, Nancy had known that old Mrs. Fuller was different from the rest of the family; but this flaunting rococo bedroom made a sharper impression of that immense difference than could all the letters to her grandson. It was strange, too, that Bram should never have commented on this amazing room, set as it was in the heart of the house against which his boyhood had so bitterly revolted. In her astonishment at her surroundings she did not for the moment take in the aspect of the old lady herself; and then suddenly she saw the dark eyes of Bram staring at her from the middle of those vermilion cushions, the bright eyes of Bram flashing from a death’s head wrapped in parchment. She put her hand to her heart, and stopped short on her way across the room to salute the old lady.
“What’s the matter?” snapped a high incisive voice.
“Oh, you’re so like Bram,” cried Nancy, tears gushing like an uncontrollable spring from her inmost being, like blood from a wound, and yet without any awareness of grief, so that her voice was calm, her kiss of salutation not tremulous.
“Might I lift my little girl on Mrs. Fuller’s bed, nurse?” she asked.
“Don’t call her nurse,” the old lady rapped out. “Thisain’t a hospital. It’s only that sanctimonious ghoul Caleb who calls her nurse. She’s my companion, Miss Emily Young. And why should the wretched child be lifted up to see an old bogey like myself?”
“I think she’d like to kiss you, if she may,” said Nancy.
“Yes, Iwouldlike to kiss you,” said Letizia.
The old woman’s eyes melted to an enchanting tenderness, and, oh, how often Nancy had seen Bram’s eyes melt so for her.
“Lift her up, Emily, lift her up,” said Mrs. Fuller.
Miss Young put Letizia beside her and the old woman encircled the child with her left arm. The other hung motionless beside her.
“I’m not going to maul you about. I expect your aunts have slobbered over you enough downstairs. Just give me one kiss, if you want to. But if you don’t want to, now that you’re so close to my skinny old face, why, say so, and I shan’t mind.”
But Letizia put both arms round her great-grandmother’s neck and kissed her fervidly.
“And now sit down and tell me how you like Lebanon House,” she commanded.
“Is this Lebbon House?”
The old woman nodded.
“I like it here, but I don’t like it where those aunts are. Have you seen those aunts, grannie?”
“I made them.”
“Why did you make them, grannie? I don’t fink they was very nicely made, do you? I don’t fink their dresses was sewed on very nicely, do you?”
“You’re an observant young woman, that’s what you are.”
“What is azervant?”
“Why, you have eyes in your head and see with them.”
“I see those gold stags,” said Letizia, pointing to the antelopes.
“Ah-ha, you see them, do you?”
“Did Santy Claus give them to you? He gived me alamb and a monkey and lots and lots of fings, so I aspeck he did.”
“I expect he did too. But they’re antelopes, not stags.”
“Auntylopes?” Letizia repeated dubiously. “Will Santy Claus put gold aunts in your stocking at Christmas?”
“Mon dieu, I hope not,” the old lady exclaimed. “So you like antelopes better than aunts?”
“Yes, I do. And I like puss-cats better. And I like all fings better than I like aunts.”
“Well, then I’ll tell you something. When Santa Claus brought me those antelopes, he said I was to give them to you.”
Letizia clapped her hands.
“Fancy! I fought he did, grannie.”
“So, if you’ll take them into the next room with Miss Young, she’ll wrap them up for you while I’m talking to your mother.”
“How kind of you to give them to her,” said Nancy, from whose eyes the silent tears had at last ceased to flow.
“Letizia darling, say ‘thank you’ to your kind grannie.”
“Senza complimenti, senza complimenti,” the old woman muttered, “The pleasure in her eyes was all the thanks I wanted.”
“I aspeck they won’t feel very hungry wivout the apples and the pears,” Letizia suggested anxiously.
“Of course they won’t, darling,” her mother interrupted quickly.
“You’d better wrap up some of the fruit as well, Emily,” said the old lady with a chuckle.
“No, please ...” Nancy began.
“Hoity-toity, I suppose I can do what I like with my own fruit?” said the old lady sharply. “Draw the curtains before you go, Emily.”
When Letizia had retired with Miss Young, and the gilded antelopes and a generous handful of the wax fruit, the old lady bade Nancy draw up one of the great Venetianchairs. When her grandson’s wife was seated beside the bed, she asked her why she had come to Brigham.
Nancy gave her an account of her struggles for an engagement and told her about Bram’s death and that unuttered wish.
“He may have worried about your future,” said the old lady. “But it was never his wish that Letizia should be brought up here. Never! I know what that wish was.”
“You do?”
“He was wishing that he had become a Catholic. He used to write to me about it, and I’m afraid I was discouraging. It didn’t seem to me that there was any point in interrupting his career as a clown by turning religious somersaults as well. I’m sorry that it worried his peace at the last, but by now he is either at rest in an eternal dreamless enviable sleep or he has discovered that there really is a God and that He is neither a homicidal lunatic, nor a justice of the peace, nor even a disagreeable and moody old gentleman. I used to long to believe in Hell for the pleasure of one day seeing my late husband on the next gridiron to my own; but now I merely hope that, if there is another world, it will be large enough for me to avoid meeting him, and that, if he has wings, an all-merciful God will clip them and put him to play his harp where I shan’t ever hear the tune. But mostly I pray that I shall sleep, sleep, sleep for evermore. And so young Caleb objected to bring up my namesake? By the way, I’m glad you’ve not shrouded her in black.”
“I knew Bram wouldn’t like it,” Nancy explained.
“I loved that boy,” said the old lady gently. “You made him happy. And I can do nothing more useful than present his daughter with a pair of gilded antelopes.” Her sharp voice died away to a sigh of profound and tragic regret.
Nancy sat silent waiting for the old lady to continue.
“Of course, I could have written and warned you not to ask young Caleb for anything,” she suddenly beganagain in her high incisive voice. “But I wanted to see you. I wanted to see Letizia the second. Imustdie soon. So I didn’t attempt to stop your coming. And, as a matter of fact, you’ve arrived before I could have written to you. No, don’t hand your child over to young Caleb, girl. Just on sixty-six years ago my mother handed me over to old Caleb. I suppose she thought that she was doing the best thing for me. Or it may have been a kind of jealousy of my young life, who knows? Anyway she has been dead too long to bother about the reason for what she did. And at least I owe her French and Italian, so that with books I have been able to lead a life of my own. Letizia would hear no French or Italian in this house except from me. And even if I could count on a few more years of existence, what could I teach that child? Nothing, but my own cynicism, and that would be worse than nothing. No, you mustn’t hand her over to young Caleb. That would be in a way as wrong as what my mother did. Your duty is to educate her. Yes, you must educate her, girl, you must be sure that she is taught well. She seems to have personality. Educate her. She must not be stifled by young Caleb and those two poor crones I brought into this world. It would be a tragedy. I had another daughter, and I was not strong enough in those days to secure her happiness. Perhaps I was still hoping for my own. Perhaps in trying to shake myself free from my husband I did not fight hard enough for her. She ran away. She went utterly to the bad. She died of drink in a Paris asylum. Caterina Fuller! You may read of her in raffish memoirs of the Second Empire as one of the famous cocottes of the period. If my mother had not married me to Caleb, I daresay I should have gone to the bad myself. Or what the world calls bad. But how much worse my own respectable degradation! It was only after Caterina’s death that I ceased to lament my prison. It was as if the sentient, active part of me died with her. Thence onward I lived within myself. I amused myselfby collecting bit by bit over many years the gewgaws by which you see me surrounded. They represent years of sharp practice in housekeeping. The only thing for which I may thank God sincerely is that I wasn’t married to young Caleb. I should never have succeeded in cheating him out of a penny on the household bills. I should never have managed to buy a solitary novel, had he been my accountant. I should have remained for ever what I was when I married, raw, noisy, impudent, scatterbrained, until I died as a bird dies, beating its wings against the cage. Educate Letizia, educate her. I wish I had a little money. I have no means of getting any now. I had some, but I spent it on myself, every penny of it. Don’t despair because you’ve not had an engagement since Christmas. It’s only early March.Mon dieu, I haven’t even a ring that you could pawn. But I don’t worry about you. I’m convinced you will be all right. Easy to say, yes. But I say it with belief, and that isn’t so easy. I shall live on for a few weeks yet, and I know that I shall have good news from you before I die.”
All the while the old lady had been talking, her face had been losing its expression of cynicism, and by the time she had finished it was glowing with the enthusiasm of a girl. It was as if she had beheld reincarnate in little Letizia her own youth and as if now with the wisdom of eighty-three years she were redirecting her own future from the beginning. Presently, after a short silence, she told Nancy to search in the bottom drawer of a painted cabinet for a parcel wrapped up in brown paper, and bring it to her. With this she fumbled for a while with her left hand and at last held up a tunic made apparently of thick sackcloth and some fragments of stuff that looked like a handful of cobwebs.
“The silk has faded and perished,” she murmured. “This was once a pair of blue silk tights. I wore them when I made my descent down that long rope from the firework platform. It was a very successful descent, but my life has perished like this costume—all that part ofit which was not fireproof like this asbestos tunic: Take this miserable heap of material and never let your daughter make such a descent, however brightly you might plan the fireworks should burn, however loudly you might hope that the mob would applaud the daring of her performance, however rich and splendid you might think the costume chosen for her. Yes, this wretched bundle of what seemed once such finery represents my life. Wrap it up again and take it out of my sight for ever, but do you, girl, gaze at it sometimes and remember what the old woman who once wore it told you a few weeks before she died.”
There was a tap at the door, and the elderly parlourmaid came in to say that the fly for which Mr. Fuller had telephoned was waiting at the door.
“Do you mean to say that Mr. Fuller hasn’t ordered the brougham to take Mrs. Fuller to the station?” the old lady demanded angrily.
“I think that the horse was tired, ma’am,” said the elderly maid, retreating as quickly as she could.
“I wish I had my legs. I wish I had both arms,” the old lady exclaimed, snatching at the small handbell that stood on the table at the left of the bed, and ringing it impatiently.
Miss Young brought Letizia back.
“Emily, will you drive down with my visitors to the station? I shan’t need anything for the next hour.”
It was useless for Nancy to protest that she did not want to give all this trouble. The old lady insisted. And really Nancy was very grateful for Miss Young’s company, because it would have been dreary on this cold March night to fade out of Brigham with such a humiliating lack of importance.
“Good-bye, little Letizia,” said her great-grandmother.
“Good-bye, grannie. I’ve told my auntylopes about my lamb and about my dog and about all my fings, and they wagged their tails and would like to meet them very much they saided.”
On the way to the station Miss Young talked about nothing else except Mrs. Fuller’s wonderful charm and personality.
“Really, I can hardly express what she’s done for me. I first came to her when she was no longer able to read to herself. I happened to know a little French, and since I’ve been with her I’ve learnt Italian. She has been so kind and patient, teaching me. I used to come in every afternoon at first, but for the last two years I’ve stayed with her all the time. I’m afraid Mr. Fuller resents my presence. He always tries to make out that I’m her nurse, which annoys the old lady dreadfully. She’s been so kind to my little brother too. He comes in two or three times a week, and sometimes he brings a friend. She declares she likes the company of schoolboys better than any. She has talked to me a lot about your husband, Mrs. Fuller. I thought that she would die herself when she heard he had been killed like that. And the terrible thing was that she heard the news from Mr. Fuller, whom, you know, she doesn’t really like at all. He very seldom comes up to her room, but I happened to be out getting her something she wanted in Brigham, and I came in just as he had told her and she was sitting up in bed, shaking her left fist at him, and cursing him for being alive himself to tell her the news. She was calling him a miser and a hypocrite and a liar, and I really don’t know what she didn’t call him. She is a most extraordinary woman. There doesn’t seem to be anything she does not know. And yet she has often told me that she taught herself everything. It’s wonderful, isn’t it? And her room! Of course, it’s very unusual, but, do you know, I like it tremendously now. It seems to me to be a live room. Every other room I go into now seems to me quite dead.”
And that was what Nancy was thinking when the dismal train steamed out of Brigham to take Letizia and herself back to London, that melancholy March night.