Augustus and Lady Maude Read online

  Anonymous

  Augustus and Lady Maude

  I. SOL

  I. Augustus to Lady Maude

  Wight, 2 June

  My dear Maude, You may be sure that I did not intend to write to you so soon after your departure for Lake Garda. Yet I need your advice and counsel in a matter of great delicacy. Indeed, I do not exaggerate when I tell you that it is a choice upon which depends all my future happiness. If a man may not consult his nearest and dearest female cousin on such occasions, where is he to look for assistance? I am tempted to believe that my life was changed utterly last night, soon after nine o'clock. Dr. Raspail would tell you, of course, that such mental impulses on my behalf go only to prove my condition of neurasthenia. I cannot help these opinions on the part of others. Let me tell you first of the event and then beg your assistance. I went last night to the recital rooms to hear Poland's greatest son-the mane of splendid hair and the fingers so white and thin-perform a double prodigy. We were to burn in the romantic grandeur of Brahms's “Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel,” having first had our spirits soothed by the elegaic cadences of my beloved Robert Schumann's “Etudes Symphoniques.” There is something so intimate and sensual about a recital of this sort on a warm summer evening. One sits among red plush and gilding, the Steinway polished to a liquid gloss of honey, the keys smooth to touch and sounding with such cool precision. One's gaze caresses the bare neck and frail shoulder blades of a fine young woman in a low-cut dress. The bone so slender and the skin so sleek with humid air. There one observes a girl of sixteen, sitting meek and demure as a nun in the spell of the music, the sweep of her nut-brown hair like the veil of a novice framing a face of pale oval beauty, her loveliness lit by the steady gaze of hazel eyes.

  Yet there is nothing more sensuous than the fine piano itself, its scents of velvet and wood, the fragrance of its polish, the pure white felt of its hammers. If ever there was a magic enchantment which put to sleep the court and castle, it was such clear and elegant music as this. So I thought to myself as a silence fell upon the beauty of women and the men in their formal dress and decorations. Then the spell was cast in the plaintive descending chords which are the prelude to the “Etudes Symphoniques.” I was so absorbed in thoughts of Schumann, the great romantic angel who died in the madhouse, his soul torn between the sublime inner music of paradise and the torment of the devil's fugues, that I could not have told you if there was a woman within a hundred yards of me. My eye came to rest on her the first time and I scarcely noticed anything about her.

  She was eighteen, I suppose, and she had straight blond hair which was put up into a coquettish little bun on the top of her head. It was worn rather as a little girl might, giving an appearance which is both prim and yet somehow provoking. We were sitting at opposite ends of a crescent-shaped row of seats. It was not surprising, then, that my eye should rest upon her from time to time. Again the plaintive elegiac chords; their harmonies extended as suggestively as only the great Schumann could do. Without being at first aware of it, I was looking at her again. You will laugh at me, my dearest Maude. I know you will. And yet I beg you to try and understand. She was no ravishing beauty. I cannot tell you what it was in her race which drew my gaze back to her so often that, at last, I felt she and every other person in the recital room must have observed the oddity of my conduct. No, my beloved cousin, it was not the face of a great beauty. Does that matter? Petrarch, they say, only saw his earthly goddess Laura De Sade on a single occasion. And yet, the greatest of all love poets devoted the rest of his life to her praise. It was not beauty alone which moved such a man to worship. What would you say if you could see my own goddess of the recital, who looked bored by Schumann at the end of the second etude? It is a rather wan and sulky little face. The eyes are a darkish hazel. The nose is somewhat long and pointed and the chin too narrow to permit of that oval beauty which is so much admired by purists. Yet still my gaze returned to her as the mournful sweetness of Schumann broke out at last into the grand leaping chords of the final variation. In her plain black dress and red shoes with tall heels to increase her apparent height, one had a good idea of her figure. She has a slim and almost fragile young body, made for youthful pleasure rather than the full maturity of womanhood. How can one imagine such a body at forty or fifty? I, at any rate, fail to. So there I sat, as the divine Petrarch of the sonnets must have done on a similar occasion. Alas, I am no writer of verses. My less worthy pursuit was to find out whatever I could about the girl who had held so much of my attention for fully half an hour.

  As you will guess, I had gone to the recital as one of Lady Anna's party. Does that not make my conduct the more extraordinary? I might have paid court easily enough to one of my own female companions. Did I wish for proud pale-skinned beauty at twenty-five?

  How easily I could have given attention to a dozen or such a kind. Was my preference for tall graceful beauty-the oval beauty of a face framed by the veil of brown hair? A dozen more waited to be wooed at sixteen years old! It would not do. Despite all that conscience and decorum could urge, I was unable to draw my thought away from the object of my curiosity. I will tell you, my dear, how far gone I was before the Schumann variations were over. I already began to indulge in flights of fancy, assuming that I had won the heart-or at least the attention-of the sulky little minx with her pert little bun of blond hair. I imagined what I would say to her-the conversations we would hold between us-though I had never heard her voice. I pictured us together in places I am sure she has never seen and upon which her eyes would open with wonder. There we were on that terrace just below San Miniato, which overlooks all the beauty of Florence and the Arno.

  Or else we walked through the gardens of the Prado in the warmth of a Spanish autumn and, later, smelt the eucalyptus and pine in the avenues of the Escorial. We ate in the most elegant restaurants of the Via Veneto-or Florian's in the Piazza San Marco at Venice. And then again we dined in the workers' cafes of the Porte de La Chapelle or by candlelight under the arcading of the Place des Vosges. Florence and Rome, Paris and Madrid, Venice and the Escorial were closer then than my companions. You see how far gone I was, my dear friend? You must not, however, believe that I fell suddenly in love with the girl-all at a thunderclap. Interest became preoccupation-and preoccupation became obsession before the evening was done. As Guenevere is made to say in her defence, it was as if one should Slip slowly down some path worn smooth and even, Down to a cool sea on a summer day… It does not convince you, my dear Maude. Does it? I cannot excuse-I cannot defend-I can scarcely explain my new infatuation. Yet I am infatuated. You must believe that. By the time that the interval in the recital came, and our party withdrew to take the air for ten minutes on the terrace, I could not banish her from my mind. “Whoe'er she be! That not-impossible she!” As we strolled under the round globes of the lamps on their ornate wrought-iron pillars, the gowns of the women were pale and luminous. It was a time between lamplight and twilight.

  What a fool I made of myself in conversation, dear Maude. I was possessed, you see, by the thought that once the recital was over the girl and I would go our separate ways. I should never know who she was and never, never be able to identify her. You see the state I was in-and still am-ma chere amie? So I said airily that I had seen a girl across the recital room, whom I could swear I knew and yet could not think of her name. I invited each of my companions to supply it, if she might. Miss Prince looked blank and Lady Bab stared at me as if I must have been mad. As for Lord Significance, he would not deign to take the cigar from his mouth. What could I want with so common a girl as the one they heard me speak of? It was Miss Prince who took pity on me at last and said she believed my goddess to be a counter-girl somewhere-a Julie Somethin
g. It was enough! With that I would track her to the ends of time and space. She was Julie!

  Julie! The name rang in my mind. My heart bounded as if I already clasped her in my arms. As we walked back into the buzz of talk, the recital room warm and filling with the devotees of Brahms, I tried to check my feelings. A gentleman does not entertain such grand passions for a shopgirl. It can lead only to disagreeable consequences. Is that not the truth, my darling cousin? My new love would either spurn me with the laughter of a street Arab or else her mean little eyes would measure the depth of my purse and calculate what could be emptied from it. Am I not right, my dearest Maude? I am.

  You know it. And yet I did not care. Oh, I might make a fool of myself and be bitterly miserable when the bizarre romance was ended. I did not care. Our greatest anxiety is for the loss of a chance which will never come again. As the clear, crisp piano notes sounded the twirls and twiddles of the motif which begins the Handel Variations, I dreaded the loss of the unknown nymph as greatly as if it were to be the death of the person who had been dearest to me until an hour before. I watched her sit down again, Maude, and I wondered as anyone might what a girl of such common stock was doing at a recital of this kind. I believe she was there only to assist her companion or employer. It was an elderly and palsied woman who sat by her side.

  Now do not scold me, my dearest, for I know you will think me a fool. Help me, in the name of that friendship and love between us since our cradles rocked side by side in the same rhythm! I must know her! I must find her! I must have her! You are too wise to believe that a man of noble birth can only be content with women of his own class. He needs from time to time the stronger, more common appetite which drives him to a sturdy blonde like the vulgar shopgirl, Maggie, or else to a plump maiden like Miss Nicoll with her halo of curls. My case is much the worse, for my desire leaves no choice.

  It must be Julie. I write because you know the girls of this resort so well and have made them objects of your affectionate and amorous study! If anyone can tell me who she be and where she comes from, it must be you. As the grand, swinging chords of the final variation concluded the recital and the applause burst upon one's eardrums, I knew that I must write to you this very minute. I send the letter express. I would bring it myself, did I not fear to lose all sight of my slim, sullen Julie! Your loving cousin, Augustus Anonymous Augustus and Lady Maude II. Lady Maude to Augustus Lago di Garda, 5 June My own Augustus, What a goose you are! A goose, of course, to lose your heart to such a little minx as Julie and a greater one not to know the prize specimen upon whom you have picked. One really does not know whether to laugh you out of your romantic stupidity or to grieve that you have grown to such age and not learnt to control your temper more firmly.

  Though I am but a month your elder, I feel as if the wisdom of centuries belonged to me when I hear you talk as you do. The blonde with the prim little bun and the sulky little face-a hard and mean little face, I have always thought it-who is she? When you told me she was called Julie and that her services were required merely to companion an old and infirm woman-who is the dowager Lady Stacker, by the way-I knew at once. Oh, my poor Augustus, you have set your choice upon a common shopgirl indeed! She who sits upon the stool behind the counter in a bookseller's shop which is little better than that of a marchand des joumaux. I shall be surprised if you do not go and ask her to measure you out an ounce of pipe tobacco. Not find her again? How could you fail? You may stand at the shop window hour after hour, if you choose, and gaze your fill upon Julie. Believe me, I know the plain black dress and the little red shoes with their high heels to give extra inches to her height. Would you like to see her more fully revealed for your adoration? Go there one day when Julie is attired less formally, in blouse and the tight denim fit of working-drawers, as she lifts and carries boxes of new books among the shelves. See the slender legs and slim young hips tightly outlined as if the lewd little bitch were naked! Consider the softer but still pert cheeks of Julie's bottom! Look closely at the sulky little teaser, my dear Gussie. Then tell me if Julie is the type of goddess for whom Petrarch swore an eternal and Platonic love! If you doubt me still, enter and buy a book of any kind. Hand her the money and listen to her voice as she counts it into the till or thanks you-if she has the grace for thanks. Tell me then if the little slut's common whining tone is the true accent of Laura de Sade!

  Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore! That is what you would say, would you not, to these words of mine? But you are not the Moor of Venice, man cher ami, nor shall I be Iago to betray you. Least of all is a painted young minx like Julie to be taken for Desdemona. She is one of Mr. Bowler's working-girls. Though he may not yet have got his hand into Julie's knickers, she will prove no vestal virgin. Let us have done, my dear, with the willful amours you pretend to with such creatures. Jacqueline Grant, the toast of every soldier, was to be your great love, was she not? And, next day, the saddler's window-dresser was to be the next lady of the manor! It will not do, Gussie! By all means enjoy such heroines for what they are but put aside these foolish romantick notions. I know too well what pleasures may be indulged with such specimens of my own sex. In the arbours of Lesbos I have tasted them often. But shopgirls and trollops are not to be the objects of such feelings as you cherish for Julie. And there let it end. Really, my dear! I was about to write to you of the delights of Lago di Garda when your letter came. I am so put out that my account must wait until after lunch. Till then, I am Your own loving Maude Anonymous Augustus and Lady Maude III. Lady Maude to Augustus Lago di Garda, 5 June p.m. My dear Augustus, Having disposed of the disagreeable matter of that little “tart" Julie this morning-the letter went by the Desenzano steamer just before lunch-I now settle down to write of pleasanter things. I shall have some fun here with the golden-skinned cat-eyed Miss Jones whom Mr. Bowler has brought to guard his fashion salon, and with the Scandinavian nymph Marit, on whom the said Jones is told to “keep an eye.” More of Marit and Miss Jones in a moment-the naked truth, dear Gussie. But first a word about this most drowsy summer lake. “Airs, languid airs, abound.” You should have come with us, you know. We have no neurasthenia here. I write this while sitting in the shade of the pergola, which is quite overgrown with purple wisteria. It forms a walk along the edge of the gardens furthest from the terrace of the Villa Lola. Small wonder if half the royalty and nobility of Europe seems to fill Gardone this season. From where I sit, one has an Olympian view ten miles across smooth water to the lemon groves above little Malcesine. To the south, through a pale mist of heat, one sees the flat Lombardy plain, running east to Verona and Venice. And there is the promontory of Sirmione with its clustered cypress trees, the “olive-silvery Sirmio,” where sweet Catullus loved and sang. Look north, and you see the lake narrow between sharp peaks of Alpine hills near the little frontier port of Riva. In this warm weather the pine trees shed their needles, so that one walks down the zig zag path to the little town through a private garden sweet with the heavy resinous perfume of these conifers. You will guess, at once, that this private domain belongs to the illustrious poet, our neighbour, a man of exotic tastes in his dealings with the young ladies who attend him! He makes us free of it, allowing us a delicious walk down to the shore of the placid lake. What a place this is to take one's pleasures, my dear Augustus! How voluptuous here are the pale limbs which tremble with desire on richest velvet! How white a young girl's shoulders or flanks when laid bare under this brilliant sun! In secret groves, the beauty of mature womanhood shudders under the lascivious caress of her pitiless lovers. Girlhood at fifteen cries with alarm as the first surge of passion overwhelms her Mormorvan con voci roche e lente la fontane invisible tra i pini His immortal lines anticipate the pleasures to be enjoyed, where the perfume of roses fills the air of closed gardens.

  The hidden fountains murmur among the trees and the sun stabs at the lovers, a dagger bright as diamonds through the branches. This place will do for me, my dear cousin. While our famous neighbour meditates his next stanza
s and Mr. Bowler stays a while at the Hotel Rialto in Venice, I am mistress here. Knowing my nature as you do, you may imagine whether or not it suits me to have the lynx-eyed Miss Jones at twenty and the nymph Marit at fifteen as my playthings.

  I will tell you at once that some rascal in the past has constructed a secret spy-hole in either wall of my own boudoir which enables the occupant to watch whatever passes in the other two bedrooms. Add to all this the delights of the Villa Lola and its gardens. At night one walks on this terrace and sees the lights twinkle across the water from Malcesine and Bardolino. The air is laden with scents of thyme and eucalyptus, ancient as Catullus himself. One hears the distant beat of the steamer's paddles, the cicadas among the olive trees, and the drifting music of mandolins from a cafe in the little town below us. Enough of such things, my dear Augustus. You can find the details of geography in Herr Baedeker's guides. It is beauty of another sort, the knowing eyes and seductive limbs, that has made the Villa Lola memorable to me.

  Yesterday afternoon, when the heat of the day began to dwindle and the sky above the lake turned a deeper blue, I took my parasol and made an excursion into our little lakeside town. It is a place constructed entirely for the pleasures of the elegant and the discerning. To either side of the pink-paved promenade, the shore at the foot of the hills extends in castellated villas with green walled gardens or cream-coloured palazzi whose waterfront windows peep out among the hanging purple of wisteria and vines. A fine crimson bougainvillea climbs to the very eaves of the Hotel Savoy. With my footman at a little distance behind me I watched the green water rock in a gentle swell as the afternoon steamer churned out from the jetty and headed north to the narrower and more mountainous end of the Lago di Garda. The street which lies behind the palms and cafes of the promenade is no mere jumble of greengrocers and coffee shops. It is the haunt of the beau monde, where the couturiers of the Via Roma or the Rue de Rivoli offer their creations next to windows displaying the finest work of the jeweller and goldsmith, which the Place Vendome could scarcely rival. Like so many temples to the goddess of beauty, these boutiques line either side of the street. If you doubt the standing of Mr. Bowler in such matters, you need only see the splendid emporium which he has taken for the summer in order to display so many velvet gowns and silken dresses. In our society, my dear Augustus, he is despised as a mere shopkeeper or a man of trade. Here he is the arbiter of style and the confidant of nobility. Many a countess or a duchess will wait her turn for half an hour of his advice in the matter of her wardrobe. In England, the squire's lady or the wives of the bourgeoisie would speak of him as “Bowler” or “the tailor,” and never pay his bill. Here in the summer society of Garda, where beauty is more than rank, he is known and addressed as “Milor.” By the same token, our neighbour the sublime poet is “Signore” to all the world.