(1941) Up at the Villa Read Free

Signora has naturally, I
don't know why she wants to put any rouge on at all.’
    `The other women at the party will be plastered with it,
and if I don't put on a little I shall look like death.’
    She slipped into her pretty frock, put on the various
bits and pieces of jewellery she had decided to wear, and then perched on her
head a tiny, quite ridiculous, but very smart hat. For it was to be that sort
of party. They were going to a new restaurant on one of the banks of the Arno where
the food was supposed to be very good and where, sitting in the open, they
could enjoy the balmy June night and when the moon rose the lovely view of the
old houses on the opposite side of the river. The old Princess had discovered a
singer there whose voice she thought unusual and whom she wanted her guests to
hear. Mary took up her bag.
    `Now I'm ready.’
    `The Signora has forgotten the revolver.’
    It lay on the dressing-table. Mary laughed.
    `You idiot, that's just what I was trying to do. What is
the use of it? I've never fired a revolver in my life and I'm scared to death
of it. I haven't got a licence and if I were found with it I would get into all
sorts of trouble.’
    ` Me Signora promised the Signore
she'd take it.’
    `The Signore is an old silly.’
    `Men are when they're in love,' said Nina sententiously.
Mary looked away. That wasn't a matter she wished to go into just then; Italian
servants were admirable, loyal and hard-working, but it was no good to delude
yourself with the belief that they didn't know all your business, and Mary was
well aware that Nina would be perfectly willing to discuss the whole matter
with her in the frankest possible way. She opened her bag. All
right. Put the beastly thing in.’
    Ciro had brought the car round. It was a convertible
coupé that Mary had bought when she took the villa and which she was proposing
to sell for what it would fetch when she left. She stepped in. drove cautiously
along the narrow drive, out of the iron gates and down a winding country lane
till she got on to the highway that led into Florence. She turned the light on
to see what the time was and finding that she had plenty kept to a leisurely
speed. At the back of her mind was a faint disinclination to arrive, for really
she would have much preferred to dine by herself on the terrace of the villa.
To dine there on a June evening, when it was still day, and after dinner to sit
till the softness of the night gradually enveloped her, was a delight of which
Mary felt that she could never tire. It gave her a delicious feeling of peace,
but not of an empty peace in which there was something lethargic, of an active,
thrilling peace rather in which her brain was all alert and her senses quick to
respond. Perhaps it was something in that light Tuscan air that affected you so
that even physical sensation had in it something spiritual. It gave you just
the same emotion as listening to the music of Mozart, so. melodious and so gay, with its undercurrent of melancholy, which filled you with so great
a contentment that you felt as though the flesh had no longer any hold on you.
For a few blissful minutes you were purged of all grossness and the confusion
of life was dissolved in perfect loveliness.
    `I was a fool to go,' Mary said out loud.
    `I ought to have cried off when Edgar was called away.’
    But of course that would have been silly. Still, she
would have given a good deal to have that evening to herself so that she could
think things over quietly. Though she had long guessed Edgar's intentions she
had not till that afternoon been quite sure that he would ever bring himself to
the point of speaking, and till he did she had felt it unnecessary to make up
her mind what she should answer. She would leave it then to the impulse of the
moment. Well, now he had, and she felt more hopelessly undecided than before.
But by this time she had reached the city, and the crowds of people walking in