The Lady Paramount — Context and Discussion

Susanna was already staying at the summer palace on Isola Nobile, for already--though her birthday falls on the seventeenth of April--the warm weather had set in; and when the last guests had gone their way, the Commendatore escorted her and her duenna, the Baroness Casaterrena, down through the purple Italian night, musical with the rivalries of a hundred nightingales, to the sea-wall, where, at his private landing-stage, in the bat-haunted glare of two tall electric lamps, her launch was waiting. But as he offered Susanna his hand, to help her aboard, she stepped quickly to one side, and said, with a charming indicative inclination of the head, "The Baronessa."

The precedence, of course, was rightfully her own. How like her, and how handsome of her, thought the fond old man, thus to waive it in favour of her senior. So he transferred his attention to the Baroness. She was a heavy body, slow and circumspect in her motions; but at length she had safely found her place among the silk cushions in the stern, and the Commendatore, turning back, again held out his hand to his sometime ward. As he was in the act of doing so, however, his ears were startled by a sound of puffing and of churning which caused him abruptly to face about.

"Hi! Stop!" he cried excitedly, for the launch was several yards out in the bay; and one could hear the Baroness, equally excited, expostulating with the man at the machine:

"It's all right," said Susanna, in that rather deep voice of hers, tranquil and leisurely; "my orders."

And the launch, unperturbed, held its course towards the glow-worm lights of Isola Nobile.

The Commendatore stared. . . .

For a matter of five seconds, his brows knitted together, his mouth half open, the Commendatore stared, now at Susanna, now after the bobbing lanterns of the launch,--whilst, clear in the suspension, the choir of nightingales sobbed and shouted.

"_Your_ orders?" he faltered at last. Many emotions were concentrated in the pronoun.

"Yes," said Susanna, with a naturalness that perhaps was studied. "The first act of my reign."

He had never known her to give an order before, without asking permission; and this, in any case, was such an incomprehensible order. How, for instance, was she to get back to the palace?

"But how on earth," he puzzled, "will you get back to----"

"Oh, I 'm not returning to Isola Nobile tonight," Susanna jauntily mentioned, her chin a little perked up in the air. Then, with the sweetest smile--through which there pierced, perhaps, just a faint glimmer of secret mischief?--"I 'm starting on my wander-year," she added, and waved her hand imperially towards the open sea.

It was a progression of surprises for the tall, thin old Commendatore. No sooner had Susanna thus bewilderingly spoken, than the rub and dip of oars became audible, rhythmically nearing; and a minute after, from the outer darkness, a row-boat, white and slender, manned by two rowers in smart nautical uniforms, shot forward into the light, and drew up alongside the quay.

"A boat from the _Fiorimondo_," he gasped, in stupefaction.

"Yes," said Susanna, pleasantly. "The _Fiorimondo_ takes me as far as Venice. There I leave it for the train."

The Commendatore's faded old blue eyes flickered anxiously.

"I can't think I am dreaming," he remarked, with a kind of vague plaintiveness; "and of course you are not serious. My dear, I don't understand."

"Oh, I 'm as serious as mathematics," she assured him.

She gave her head a little pensive movement of affirmation, and lifted her eyes to his, bright with an expression of trustful candour. This was an expression she was somewhat apt to assume when her mood was a teasing one; and it generally had the effect of breaking down the Commendatore's gravity. "You are a witch," he would laugh, availing himself without shame of the way-worn reproach, "a wicked, irresistible little witch."

"The thing," she explained, "is as simple as good-day. I 'm starting on my travels--to see the world--Paris, which I have only seen once--London, which I have never seen--the seaports of Bohemia, the mountains of Thule, which I have often seen from a distance, in the mists on the horizon. The _Fiorimondo_ takes me as far as Venice. That is one of the advantages of owning a steam-yacht. Otherwise, I should have to go by the Austrian-Lloyd packet; and that would n't be half so comfortable."

Her eyes, still raised to the Commendatore's, melted in a smile;--a smile seemingly all innocence, persuasiveness, tender appeal for approbation, but (I 'm afraid) with an undergleam that was like a mocking challenge.

He, perforce, smiled too, though with manifest reluctance; and at the same time he frowned.