# The Tattooed Countess/Chapter 3

As the Countess Nattatorrini, followed by the porter carrying her bag, descended from the train, broaching her parasol to ward off the rays of the sun, her eyes swept the platform with some embarrassment. A moment later she caught sight of her passerine sister waiting, motionless, before the wrong car, and she walked slowly down the platform to join her. It was a constant source of astonishment to her that this thin, spinster-like person, who wore clothes but who had no idea how to dress, was her sister. Lou was now gazing in every direction but the right one, a procedure entirely characteristic of her, thought the Countess. Lou turned, indeed, only when the Countess tapped her shoulder.
Ella! she cried, I've been looking for you everywhere.
Lou dear!
There was something subconsciously internecine in their embrace.
I'm afraid you'll find it rather hot here. We're having unusually warm weather for Maple Valley, were her next words.
O, I'm used to warm weather; I don't mind it, ​the Countess responded. I'm glad to see you, anyway, glad to be home.
You'll find many changes. The town has grown a good deal.
I'm sure it has, the Countess replied. Why, here's William! How are you, William?
William grunted a reply. Hardly ever did he permit his lips to form words. Stoop-shouldered, grizzly, he had been the Poores' hired-man for thirty years. He took charge of Ella's bag, which the porter had deposited on the platform, and the strange trio walked through the carious wooden station to the carriage which, drawn by its two bay horses with long, sweeping tails, waited by the kerb. Seth Poore never could tolerate the barbarity of docking.
As they drove up Pleasant Avenue, bordered on either side with pigmy parks between the side-walks and the street, in which were planted straight rows of elms, whose branches met and even interlocked, forming a canopy, a roof of leaves over the carriage, the Countess gave little exclamations of delight. She made remarks, too, concerning the houses, each set in the centre of a spacious lawn, well back from the avenue; many of these she remembered, and she questioned her sister regarding the new ones. Who lives in that great colonial barn? The new druggist. And in that brick palace? That's Mayor Lansing's house. O! Colonel Blount's house! Is he still alive? No, when he ​died he left so little money that the family was obliged to sell the property. Mrs. Blount keeps a boarding-house on Leclair Avenue. Do you remember Alice Leatherbury? The Countess gave an affirmative nod. She's practically lost her mind, Lou went on, stooping to pluck a long black horse-hair from the light lap-robe which covered their skirts. She is a sad thing to see—not a flash of recognition for anybody. She's never dressed, never taken from bed except to care for her. That's Susie Clerihew's old house. She behaved shamefully. Sam Bellows, a new lawyer, came to town and she saw a good deal of him, too much. When her husband died it was found that he had added $20,000 extra to her bequest in the will on condition that she marry Sam within a year. What did she do? the Countess demanded. She married Sam, Lou replied, but they had to leave town.
Lou gradually became slightly stiffer, not quite informal in her replies. Frequently she indulged in furtive, sidelong glances at her sister. It was apparent that something was bothering her. Suddenly she touched the arm of the Countess appealingly, and almost in a whisper, so that William could not catch her words, she pleaded: Ella, please don't be offended, but I don't believe Maple Valley will understand your rouge.
Why Lou! the Countess exclaimed with some surprise, I'm scarcely made up at all.
​There isn't a woman in town who paints, Lou explained timidly. I know how they do in Paris. I've seen them when I've been with you. I suppose it's quite fin de siècle there (it took Ella some days to learn that Lou used this popular phrase as a synonym for fashionable) but nobody here would understand. They'd just think you were fast.
I can't get along without a little make-up, the Countess replied, in a conciliatory manner, apparently with morigeration, not wishing to quarrel so soon with her sister, but I'll use as little as possible. You've no idea what a fright I look without it. Besides it gives me confidence. After my lips are made up I can say things I couldn't have said before.
Silently, Lou regarded her sister. Women past middle-age in Maple Valley did not hold personal beauty as an end in itself, she reflected. Ella evidently considered it important to look young. Well, she was a Countess; perhaps they would permit her an eccentricity or two.
The horses drew up before the white brick house, built in the early seventies, which the Countess remembered so well. Set high above the street on a grass terrace, which was supported three feet above the level of the side-walk by a stone wall, this mansion was surrounded by great oak-trees, their spreading branches shading the well-kept lawn.
Why, it hasn't changed at all! Ella cried. Not ​the least bit! It's just the way it was when I left. How slowly trees grow! She appeared to be happy, buoyant. A shadow of melancholy, however, hovered over her heart. The sight of this house reminded her unpleasantly of the passage of time. She was twenty odd years older than she had been when she had gazed upon it last. Vaguely, the feeling revived that she had made a mistake in coming back.
Ascending the stone steps to the terrace, and then the other flight to the porch, they passed on through the entrance, barred only by an unfastened screen-door, into the gloomy hallway. Ella rapidly penetrated the wide double-doorway on the left to the library, lined to the ceiling on every hand with black-walnut bookcases (one of which appeared to contain a complete bound file of Harper's New Monthly Magazine) and then through to her father's old study, behind the library, which still preserved his work-desk, a dictionary on a revolving stand, and a great globe, marked with the continents and islands and oceans of the world. This room now was evidently employed as a sewingroom, for the floor was piled with neat heaps of denim garments, and a sewing-machine, from which the cover had been removed, stood in a corner.
The ladies of the Aid Society have been here today sewing for the poor, Lou explained, as she stooped to gather stray threads from the carpet. We do, she went on sententiously, a great deal of ​good for the poor. Everybody is very generous and helpful.
Ella scarcely was listening. The tears came into her eyes. Just the same! she murmured to herself. Just the same! Just as I remember it. Poor father!
Recrossing the hall, followed by Lou, she entered the parlour on the right, papered in an ugly shade of brown. The polished oak blinds were closed, but even in the dim light she recognized the Wilton carpet, or a new one which resembled the old one, the marble fireplace with its gilded scrolls, the Rogers group on a stand near the window, and the heavy brass chandelier, with its four gas-burners with their engraved ground-glass globes, but sometime recently this chandelier had been wired and now there were four electric globes as well. A few of the pictures and a good deal of the furniture appeared to be new, although Ella at once recalled the steel-engraving of Napoleon crossing the Alps, now resting on a polished oak easel. There were reproductions in colour of a painting by Ridgway Knight of two peasant girls hailing a ferry and of a canvas by Alma Tadema representing two Roman matrons in purple and white reclining on a marble podium. There was a photograph, printed in a blue tone, of the Court of Honour at the Chicago World's Fair and a Copley print of the Countess Potocka, framed in a wide black frame. The machine-carved oak furniture was upholstered in a ​design of oak-leaves and acorns. Near the window stood a grand piano, by the side of which towered a brass piano-lamp with a pink silk shade, bordered with two rows of ruffles. The silk cushions on the couch were also ruffled. There were hassocks and tabourets, on one of which reposed a folio volume stamped World's Fair Views (the Countess was reminded that she had nearly visited the Fair with her friend, the Infanta Eulalia) and a cut-glass vase which held a number of souvenir spoons. The Countess regarded these with some curiosity. The handle of one spoon shaped itself like the head of a bison, and the legend in the bowl read: Greetings from Buffalo. Another was a Chicago I will! spoon. The handle of the spoon from New Orleans represented a live-oak-tree. Still other spoons were reminders of the World's Fair, of San Francisco, of Yellowstone National Park, of the Mammoth Cave, of Niagara Falls.
Did you bring me a souvenir spoon from Paris? Lou asked.
I don't believe they have any souvenir spoons of Paris, the Countess explained, rather apologetically.
On the mantelpiece, over the surface of which Lou now rubbed a finger absent-mindedly, so accustomed was she to search for dust and so subconsciously aware was she that she would not find it, several photographs in ornate gold frames mingled with fat-bellied ivory and gold vases with long cy​lindrical stems. Ella examined the photographs in vain for familiar faces until she came upon one of herself taken by Reutlinger in 1889.
She passed on into the dining-room where she was glad¥ to convince herself that the steel-engravings of Thorwaldsen's bas-reliefs, Night and Morning, in carved gold frames with red plush mats, still graced the walls. In every room the pictures were hung so high that one had to gaze upwards to see them.
It's nice to be home again. . . . Ella was trying to make herself believe this. . . . I wish father were with us. I'm glad to see you again, Lou.
She kissed her sister's faded and sallow cheek, smoothed the whitened, straggling hair, parted in the centre and bound in the back in a nondescript knot. Lou accepted these attentions shyly. She was not accustomed to them; demonstrativeness of any nature whatever was entirely foreign to her character. She was glad to see Ella, proud to have her home, but she did not say so. Constantly in the back of her mind she was repeating to herself the fact that Ella's ways were different and that she must get used to them. But the others—her friends in Maple Valley—how would they take Ella?
The Countess drew her sister back into the parlour and they seated themselves on a great upholstered couch placed against a corner of the room ​in such wise that its ends protruded through the double-doorways opening on the hall and dining-room so that it would have been necessary to move this piece of furniture had one decided to close the sliding-doors. The room, however, gained some privacy through the deep brown velvet portieres which hung in the doorways.
Tell me about yourself, Lou, the Countess began sympathetically.
There's not much to tell you. I've written you everything. Lou was at a loss for words. Suddenly she brightened and went on, You'd be surprised at the number of people who remember you, who want to see you.
I suppose you're having them to dinner soon.
To dinner!
Well, not all together. I mean a series of dinners.
O, Ella, we don't give dinners here . . . except family dinners on Thanksgiving and Christmas. I don't remember that I've ever been asked to dinner. The men would have such a short time to eat before they'd have to go back to business.
The perplexity of the Countess, concerning a subject which she had originally broached merely by way of being pleasant, increased momentarily. To business? she asked. Do they work evenings then?
O, no. You must remember that we dine at noon here.
O, so you do. I had forgotten. The Countess ​removed a cigarette-case from her bag, extracted a cigarette, and prepared to light it.
O, Ella, you aren't going to smoke! Lou protested.
I always do. You know that. You've seen me often enough in Paris. Again the Countess, who by nature was hot-tempered and headstrong, adopted a vaguely propitiatory tone.
But not here. You wouldn't smoke here!
Must I go to the bathroom? The Countess laughed nervously. On the train I smoked in the toilet.
O, not there, either. What would the servants think? I mean you wouldn't smoke in Maple Valley. . . .
The Countess made a swift decision. I can't be bothered, Lou, about the servants, or any one else. They'll all have to get used to me. I can't do without my cigarette. Why, grandmother smoked a pipe.
She struck a match and lighted her cigarette, while Lou's face assumed an expression which might have implied either horror or shame.
The Countess went on, lightly, What then, if not dinners?
Although Lou employed an aggrieved tone, she answered readily enough (she, too, was making an effort to be pleasant): I'm giving a reception for you tomorrow afternoon. There'll be more receptions, and kettle-drums, and euchre- and cinch-​parties. You'll be entertained everywhere. Everybody wants to see you, but dinner would be queer. Is it fin de siècle to give dinners in Paris?
Again Ella was puzzled by Lou's use of this phrase, but she replied, Well, one does.
A little later Lou escorted the Countess to her bedroom, a chamber papered in an ivory paper, sprinkled with blue flowers. A few pictures hung on wires from the white moulding. The bathroom, with its zinc tub, opened from a landing two or three steps down the hall stairs, but a wash-stand held a blue bowl and pitcher for use in emergency, and half a dozen towels, embroidered with elaborate P's were suspended on a brass rod above this stand. A table, the bureau, the upholstered chairs, the bed were all of a light, machine-carved, polished maple, and the bed was covered with a lace spread, while a bolster supported the pillows, hidden beneath lace pillow-shams.
Left to herself, Ella rearranged her hair, washed her face and hands, and changed her dress. She put on a frock of pale lilac batiste, which exposed her arms to the elbow. Then, as the bell for supper had not yet sounded, once more she looked about the room. She examined a picture by F. S. Church in which a fanciful maiden in a filmy gown fed two bears and a crane from a chafing-dish. On the table lay a few books; among them she noted a novel by Gertrude Atherton: Patience Sparhawk. She recalled that she had met Mrs. ​Atherton with Sibyl Sanderson during the Paris Exposition of 1889. She remembered the woman well, her plaits of straw-coloured hair bound round her head like a coronet, her fresh, startling beauty, her wit, her superabundant vitality. It had been some time since she had read a novel of hers; perhaps A Whirl Asunder had been the last. She determined to read Patience Sparhawk. Flipping the leaves of the current Harper's she discovered that a new serial by the author of Trilby was running in it. It seemed pleasant to meet so many French words and phrases in an American magazine.
At supper, a little later, she and Lou sat at a table long enough for twelve in the great dining-room with its high ceiling. The Countess was appalled when it came to her how many times Lou must have sat at this table in this forbidding room entirely alone. A sciapodous Bohemian girl, in a shirt-waist and skirt—servants in Maple Valley did not don cap and apron; it was not considered democratic—and great bulging boots, waited on them. Most of the servants in the town, Ella soon discovered, were Bohemians. The supper was a good, home-cooked meal of a kind which had become strange to the Countess, but which, nevertheless, she enjoyed. It seemed a sacrilege to cut asparagus into small sections and boil it in cream, but she found that it tasted good, eaten from a sidedish with a spoon. Nor did she balk at the lettuce ​chopped into bits and doused with sugar and vinegar—olive oil, apparently, was not a recognized commodity in Maple Valley. She rather fancied the silver castor holding cruets, the cut-glass fingerbowls in which floated sprigs of lemon-verbena, and the flat, cut-glass dish, rectangular in shape, filled with purple pansies and maiden-hair ferns, which decorated the centre of the table. One incident, however, marred the meal for her. She upset the salt-cellar, spilling the salt. She cast a bit over her shoulder, but, nevertheless, she feared that something untoward was going to happen.
During the meal the conversation brightened somewhat. Each sister was becoming freer, less self-conscious, under the supposedly rigid scrutiny of the other. In time, each thought, it was possible that this sense of being watched would disappear. Lou was finding the greater difficulty in adjusting herself; she had discovered, almost immediately after Ella had descended the stairs, a new cause for anxiety. She did not, however, speak of this at once. It was not, indeed, until they were eating the chopped lettuce that she found courage to observe:
Ella, you've been tattooed.
Yes. As in a revery the Countess recalled the day that she had submitted to this torture, as an additional bond which bound her to Tony. Lou's remark was a reminder both pleasant and painful and its implications did not reach Ella's conscious​ness at first. A moment later, recollecting herself, she echoed, Yes, in a slightly more uneasy tone. What, she asked herself, was coming next?
Why were you tattooed? Is it fin de siècle?
Why, no, Lou; it's eternal.
O, I know it lasts! Why did you do it?
Ella prepared to dive: It was a wager.
But on the wrist, where it shows! It wouldn't have been so bad if it had been on the back or the . . . thigh, where it could be covered.
Is that why it matters, because it shows?
Lou opened her eyes very wide. Why, of course, she replied, apparently astonished by the question. That is the sort of thing we would keep hidden here.
Ella smiled. Well, she said, I don't think it's anything to be ashamed of. Had I thought so I wouldn't have had it done, but I suppose our point of view is different. The only things I try to hide are my charities. When I help some one along through a scant year or a period of sickness I don't talk about it. But this! Why I'm proud of it!
No more was said of the matter at this time. The conversation was forced back—a process in which each did her part—to their parents, to their father's last hours—he had died while the Countess was in Africa—and to the sisters' college days. After a half-hour or so of this Ella began to yawn, admitting that she was thoroughly fatigued. The long trip across the country, she explained, had ​done her up. Lou again escorted her to her bedroom, kissing her good-night.
Breakfast, she announced, is served at eight o'clock.
Eight o'clock! the Countess cried in dismay, and then repeated: Eight o'clock!
Yes, Lou responded.
But I always have breakfast in bed, whenever I wake up.
I'm sorry, Ella, that you have become accustomed to European habits. Unless you were ill, the servants would leave if they had to carry breakfast upstairs. We will eat together in the dining-room.
After her sister had gone, the Countess stood for a moment regarding her reflection in the circular mirror set over her bureau before she began to take the pins out of her hair and undress. Once her clothes were off, she drew on a night-gown, and over that a filmy neglige. Then, extinguishing the lights and opening the blinds, she sat in one of the comfortable chairs before a window, and lighted a cigarette. Egoists colour the whole world with their own mood, atrabilious or dolent, cheerful or gay; when the world does not respond to this mood a discord results. The Countess was experiencing a discord. This then was the Maple Valley she had come to for comfort and consolation, a succession of lonely suppers with her austere sister, a series of euchre-parties and receptions. There ​would be, she surmised, drives up and down the Iowa hills, between the fields of corn and, quite possibly, boating parties on the river. There would be conversation with her old friends and, conceivably, new ones. Would these petty diversions be sufficient to cause her to forget her egrimony?
The moon had arisen and now she could see very clearly in the room. From a pocket in her travelling-bag she extracted the leather case in which she carried Tony's photograph. As she opened the case and gazed once more at his face, the tears welled into her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Tony! Tony! She sat quite still for a long time regarding the picture of the handsome youth. One of his little mannerisms came into her mind, his habit of employing his left hand alone in rolling a cigarette. She remembered how one day late in March in some Provencal town they had stood together under a flowering mimosa-tree. She could still recall the fragrance of the yellow flowers, heavy with pollen. And, from the casement of a house nearby, came the song of a young girl:
For half an hour or so she contemplated this fatal portrait, with its epithumetic suggestion, revolving ​many happy scenes from the past in her memory, but, at last, she laid it reverently beneath her pillow, and slipped her length down between the cool, linen sheets. Now the real struggle began.
Why, she was sobbing aloud, isn't there a cure for love? There are cures for tuberculosis, for cancer, for typhoid fever, for smallpox, cures for all the malignant diseases, and after one is cured the body is stronger than ever before, because the tissues are renewed, but for love there is no cure, and love destroys both the body and the soul!
It was three o'clock in the morning before the Countess Nattatorrini was able to fall asleep.