Sixty-Five Short Stories - Somerset Maugham

'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 attache 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 tears 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.

Laura made light of it when Tito's financial difficulties forced them to give up the apartment in Florence; she had had enough of Florentine society by then and was not displeased to live altogether in the grand house that had belonged to his ancestors. Tito liked city life and the prospect dismayed him, but he could not complain since it was his own folly that had made it necessary for them to cut down expenses. They still had the car and he amused himself by taking long drives while his father and Laura were busy, and if they knew that now and then he went into Florence to have a flutter at the club they shut their eyes to it. So a year passed. Then, he hardly knew why, he was seized with a vague misgiving. He couldn't put his finger on anything; he had an uneasy feeling that perhaps Laura didn't care for him so much as she had at first; sometimes it seemed to him that his father was inclined to be impatient with him; they appeared to have a great deal to say to one another, but he got the impression that he was being edged out of their conversation, as though he were a child who was expected to sit still and not interrupt while his elders talked of things over his head; he had a notion that often his presence was unwelcome to them and that they were more at their ease when he was not there. He knew his father, and his reputation, but the suspicion that rose in him was so horrible that he refused to entertain it. And yet sometimes he caught a look passing between them that disconcerted him, there was a tender possessiveness in his father's eyes, a sensual complacency in Laura's, which, if he had seen it in others, would have convinced him that they were lovers. But he couldn't, he wouldn't believe that there was anything between them. The count couldn't help making love to a woman and it was likely enough that Laura felt his extraordinary fascination, but it was shameful to suppose for a moment that they, these two people he loved, had formed a criminal, almost an incestuous, connexion. He was sure that Laura had no idea that there was anything more in her feeling than the natural affection of a young, happily married woman for her father-in-law. Notwithstanding he thought it better that she should not remain in everyday contact with his father, and one day he suggested that they should go back to live in Florence. Laura and the count were astonished that he should propose such a thing and would not hear of it. Laura said that, having spent so much money on the villa, she couldn't afford to leave it, now that Laura had made it so comfortable, to live in a wretched apartment in the city. An argument started and Tito got rather excited. He took some remark of Laura's to mean that if she lived at the villa it was to keep him out of temptation. This reference to his losses at the poker-table angered him.