The Atlantic Novel

ENCHANTER’S NIGHTSHADE

BY ANN BRIDGE

CHAPTERS 9-15

If You Missed the Earlier Chapters . . .

IN the spring of 1905 the provincial nobility of Gardone migrated as usual to their large, rambling country houses in the hills a few miles to the north of the town. To Odredo came the household of the widowed Count Carlo di Castellone, including besides himself his eighteen-year-old daughter Elena, his son Giulio, three years her senior, and the family’s indispensable factotum, Fräulein Gelsicher — affectionately known to the Count as ‘La Signorina Gelosia’ and to the children as ‘Gela’; while to Castellone itself came the Countess Livia, Carlo’s widowed sister-in-law, his nephew Ernest and his family, and two spinster cousins, notorious for their zeal as gossips — the Countesses Aspasia and Roma, dubbed ‘ the Sorellone ’ by the less respectful members of the family. Roffredo, Livia’s only son and an inventor whose ardent temperament admits but two passions, — motor cars and the fair sex, — had taken for this summer a small villa on the Pisignacco road. And from Rome to Vill’ Alta came the ninety-nine-year-old Marchesa — a distant cousin of the Castellones, her son Francesco, his beautiful foreign wife Suzy, — ‘the Enchantress’ — and their daughter Marietta, a serious child of fifteen.

There seemed to be no good reason why this summer should be any different from countless others that had gone before. Count Carlo would resume his flirtation with the Marchesa Suzy — under the nearsighted eyes of the Marchese Francesco, who lived for his botany; Elena would play her usual pranks; Giulio would read his beloved Croce and chafe against a scheme of life which kept him from pursuing his studies abroad; Fräulein Gelsicher would exercise her Swiss fortitude and bear with the irregular behavior of those about her; and La Vecchia Marchesa would see and hear only what she wished to.

But the arrival of Marietta’s English governess, Miss Almina Prestwich, — promptly nicknamed ‘Pastiche’ by Count Carlo,—alters everything: for, contrary to all expectations, she proves, despite her Oxford degree and intellectual attainments, to be both young and exceedingly pretty. Giulio and Roffredo are at once smitten - a circumstance which does not please the Marchesa Suzy, since, beginning to tire of her liaison with Count Carlo, she has herself determined to captivate the latter young man. Such a state of affairs is naturally fraught with ominous possibilities — and yet more so in the present instance, in as much as Almina’s careful Victorian upbringing has not in the least prepared her for the exigencies of so difficult a situation.

Further to complicate matters — especially for La Vecchia Marchesa, and, in fact, for all the Vill’ Altas — the Marchesa Nadia, another daughter-in-law, announces suddenly that she wishes to separate from her husband, Pipo di Vill’ Alta, on grounds of infidelity. To the ancient Marchesa, with her strong feeling for solidarity where the family is concerned, this is unthinkable. So, Nadia is summoned from Bologna, and all the forces of persuasion are brought to bear in an attempt to reconcile her to the recalcitrant Pipo’s philandering. By birth a Russian, however, she cannot be convinced that a marriage can endure without love. Thus —