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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/14682-0.txt b/14682-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bef9a8d --- /dev/null +++ b/14682-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6498 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14682 *** + +MY FRIEND +PROSPERO + + +By HENRY HARLAND + +_Author of_ + +THE CARDINAL'S SNUFF-BOX. +Illustrated by G.C. Wilmshurst. +_One Hundred and Fifth Thousand_. + +THE LADY PARAMOUNT. +_Fifty-fifth Thousand_. + +COMEDIES AND ERRORS. +_Third Edition_. + +GREY ROSES. _Third Edition_. + +MADEMOISELLE MISS. _Second Edition_. + + + + +JOHN LANE: THE BODLEY HEAD + +LONDON & NEW YORK. MDCCCCIV + +1903 + + + + +PART FIRST + + + + +My Friend Prospero + + + + +I + + +The coachman drew up his horses before the castle gateway, where their +hoofs beat a sort of fanfare on the stone pavement; and the footman, +letting himself smartly down, pulled, with a peremptory gesture that was +just not quite a swagger, the bronze hand at the end of the dangling +bell-cord. + +Seated alone in her great high-swung barouche, in the sweet April +weather, Lady Blanchemain gave the interval that followed to a +consideration of the landscape: first, sleeping in shadowy stillness, +the formal Italian garden, its terraced lawns and metrical parterres, +its straight dark avenues of ilex, its cypresses, fountains, statues, +balustrades; and then, laughing in the breeze and the sun, the wild +Italian valley, a forest of blossoming fruit-trees, with the river +winding and glinting in its midst, with olive-clad hills blue-grey at +either side, and beyond the hills, peering over their shoulders, the +snow-peaks of mountains, crisp against the sky, and in the level +distance the hazy shimmer of the lake. + +"It is lovely," she exclaimed, fervently, in a whisper, "lovely.--And +only a generation of blind-worms," was her after-thought, "could discern +in it the slightest resemblance to the drop-scene of a theatre." + + + + +II + + +Big, humorous, emotional, imperious, but, above all, interested and +sociable Lady Blanchemain: do you know her, I wonder? Her billowy white +hair? Her handsome soft old face, with its smooth skin, and the good +strong bony structure underneath? Her beautiful old grey eyes, full of +tenderness and shrewdness, of curiosity, irony, indulgence, overarched +and emphasized by regular black eyebrows? Her pretty little plump +pink-white hands, (like two little elderly Cupids), with their shining +panoply of rings? And her luxurious, courageous, high-hearted manner of +dressing? The light colours and jaunty fashion of her gowns? Her laces, +ruffles, embroideries? Her gay little bonnets? Her gems? Linda Baroness +Blanchemain, of Fring Place, Sussex; Belmore Gardens, Kensington; and +Villa Antonina, San Remo: big, merry, sociable, sentimental, +worldly-wise, impetuous Linda Blanchemain: do you know her? If you do, +I am sure you love her and rejoice in her; and enough is said. If you +don't, I beg leave to present and to commend her. + +I spoke, by the bye, of her "old" face, her "old" eyes. She is, to be +sure, in so far as mere numbers of years tell, an old woman. But I once +heard her throw out, in the heat of conversation, the phrase, "a young +old thing like me;" and I thought she touched a truth. + + + + +III + + +Well, then, the footman, in his masterful way, pulled the bell-cord; +Lady Blanchemain contemplated the landscape, and had her opinion of a +generation that could liken it to the drop-scene of a theatre; and in +due process of things the bell was answered. + +It was answered by a man in a costume that struck my humorous old friend +as pleasing: a sallow little man whose otherwise quite featureless suit +of tweeds was embellished by scarlet worsted shoulder-knots. With +lack-lustre eyes, from behind the plexus of the grille, he rather +stolidly regarded the imposing British equipage, and waited to be +addressed. + +Lady Blanchemain addressed him in the language of Pistoja. Might one, +she inquired, with her air of high affability, in her distinguished old +voice, might one visit the castle?--a question purely of convention, for +she had not come hither without an assurance from her guide-book. + +Shoulder-knots, however,--either to flaunt his attainments, or because +indeed Pistoiese (what though the polyglot races of Italy have agreed +upon it as a lingua franca) offered the greater difficulties to his +Lombardian tongue,--replied in French. + +"I do not think so, Madame," was his reply, in a French sufficiently +heavy and stiff-jointed, enforced by a dubious oscillation of the head. + +Lady Blanchemain's black eyebrows shot upwards, marking her surprise; +then drew together, marking her determination. + +"But of course one can--it's in the guide-book," she insisted, and held +up the red-bound volume. + +The sceptic gave a shrug, as one who disclaimed responsibility and +declined discussion. + +"Me, I do not think so. But patience! I will go and ask," he said; and, +turning his back, faded from sight in the depths of the dark tunnel-like +porte-cochère. + +Vexed, perplexed, Lady Blanchemain fidgeted a little. To have taken this +long drive for nothing!--sweet though the weather was, fair though the +valley: but she was not a person who could let the means excuse the end. +She neither liked nor was accustomed to see her enterprises balked,--to +see doors remain closed in her face. Doors indeed had a habit of flying +open at her approach. Besides, the fellow's manner,--his initial stare +and silence, his tone when he spoke, his shrug, his exhortation to +patience, and something too in the conduct of his back as he +departed,--hadn't it lacked I don't know what of becoming deference? to +satisfy her amour-propre, at any rate, that the mistake, if there was a +mistake, sprang from no malapprehension of her own, she looked up +chapter and verse. Yes, there the assurance stood, circumstantial, in +all the convincingness of the sturdy, small black type:-- + +"From Roccadoro a charming excursion may be made, up the beautiful Val +Rampio, to the mediæval village of Sant' Alessina (7 miles), with its +magnificent castle, in fine grounds, formerly a seat of the Sforzas, now +belonging to the Prince of Zelt-Neuminster, and containing the +celebrated Zelt-Neuminster collection of paintings. Incorporated in the +castle buildings, a noticeable peculiarity, are the parish church and +presbytery. Accessible daily, except Monday, from 10 to 4; attendant 1 +fr." + +So then! To-day was Wednesday, the hour between two and three. So--! Her +amour-propre triumphed, but I fancy her vexation mounted.... + + + + +IV + + +"I beg your pardon. It's disgraceful you should have been made to wait. +The porter is an idiot. You wish, of course, to see the house--?" + +The English words, on a key of spontaneous apology, with a very zealous +inflection of concern--yet, at the same time, with a kind of entirely +respectful and amiable abruptness, as of one hailing a familiar +friend,--were pronounced in a breath by a brisk, cheerful, unmistakably +English voice. + +Lady Blanchemain, whose attention had still been on the incriminated +page, looked quickly up, and (English voice and spontaneous apology +notwithstanding) I won't vouch that the answer at the tip of her +impulsive tongue mightn't have proved a hasty one--but the speaker's +appearance gave her pause: the appearance of the tall, smiling, +unmistakably English young man, by whom Shoulder-knots had returned +accompanied, and who now, having pushed the grille ajar and issued +forth, stood, placing himself with a tentative obeisance at her service, +beside the carriage: he was so clearly, first of all--what, if it hadn't +been for her preoccupation, his voice, tone, accent would have warned +her to expect--so visibly a gentleman; and then, with the even pink of +his complexion, his yellowish hair and beard, his alert, friendly, very +blue blue eyes--with his very blue blue flannels too, and his brick-red +knitted tie--he was so vivid and so unusual. + +His appearance gave her a pause; and in the result she in her turn +almost apologized. + +"This wretched book," she explained, pathetically bringing forward her +_pièce justificative_, "said that it was open to the public." + +The vivid young man hastened to put her in the right. + +"It is--it _is_," he eagerly affirmed. "Only," he added, with a vaguely +rueful modulation, and always with that amiable abruptness, as a man +very much at his ease, while his blue eyes whimsically brightened, "only +the blessed public never comes--we're so off the beaten path. And I +suppose one mustn't expect a Scioccone"--his voice swelled on the word, +and he cast sidelong a scathing glance at his summoner--"to cope with +unprecedented situations. Will you allow me to help you out?" + +"Ah," thought Lady Blanchemain, "Eton," his tone and accent now nicely +appraised by an experienced ear. "Eton--yes; and probably--h'm? Probably +Balliol," her experience led her further to surmise. But what--with her +insatiable curiosity about people, she had of course immediately begun +to wonder--what was an Eton and Balliol man doing, apparently in a +position of authority, at this remote Italian castle? + + + + +V + + +He helped her out, very gracefully, very gallantly; and under his +guidance she made the tour of the vast building: its greater court and +lesser court; its cloisters, with their faded frescoes, and their +marvellous outlook, northwards, upon the Alps; its immense rotunda, +springing to the open dome, where the sky was like an inset plaque of +turquoise; its "staircase of honour," guarded, in an ascending file, by +statues of men in armour; and then, on the _piano nobile_, its endless +chain of big, empty, silent, splendid state apartments, with their +pavements of gleaming marble, in many-coloured patterns, their painted +and gilded ceilings, tapestried walls, carved wood and moulded stucco, +their pictures, pictures, pictures, and their atmosphere of stately +desolation, their memories of another age, their reminders of the power +and pomp of people who had long been ghosts. + +He was tall (with that insatiable curiosity of hers, she was of course +continuously studying him), tall and broad-shouldered, but not a bit +rigid or inflexible--of a figure indeed conspicuously supple, suave in +its quick movements, soft in its energetic lines, a figure that could +with equal thoroughness be lazy in repose and vehement in action. His +yellow hair was thick and fine, and if it hadn't been cropped so close +would have curled a little. His beard, in small crinkly spirals, did +actually curl, and toward the edge its yellow burned to red. And his +blue eyes were so very very blue, and so very keen, and so very frank +and pleasant--"They are like sailors' eyes," thought Lady Blanchemain, +who had a sentiment for sailors. He carried his head well thrown back, +as a man who was perfectly sure of himself and perfectly +unselfconscious; and thus unconsciously he drew attention to the +vigorous sweep of his profile, the decisive angles of his brow and nose. +His voice was brisk and cheerful and masculine; and that abruptness with +which he spoke--which seemed, as it were, to imply a previous +acquaintance--was so tempered by manifest good breeding and so coloured +by manifest good will, that it became a positive part and parcel of what +one liked in him. It was the abruptness of a man very much at his ease, +very much a man of the world, yet it was somehow, in its essence, +boyish. It expressed freshness, sincerity, conviction, a boyish +wholesale surrender of himself to the business of the moment; it +expressed, perhaps above all, a boyish thorough good understanding with +his interlocutor. "It amounts," thought his present interlocutrice, "to +a kind of infinitely sublimated bluffness." + +And then she fell to examining his clothes: his loose, soft, very blue +blue flannels, with vague stripes of darker blue; his soft shirt, with +its rolling collar; his red tie, knitted of soft silk, and tied in a +loose sailor's-knot. She liked his clothes, and she liked the way he +wore them. They suited him. They were loose and comfortable and +unconventional, but they were beautifully fresh and well cared for, and +showed him, if indifferent to the fashion-plate of the season, +meticulous in a fashion of his own. "It's hard to imagine him dressed +otherwise," she said, and instantly had a vision of him dressed for +dinner. + +But what--what--what was he doing at Castel Sant' Alessina? + + + + +VI + + +Meanwhile he plainly knew a tremendous lot about Italian art. Lady +Blanchemain herself knew a good deal, and could recognize a pundit. He +illumined their progress by a running fire of exposition and commentary, +learned and discerning, to which she encouragingly listened, and, as +occasion required, amiably responded. But Boltraffios, Bernardino +Luinis, even a putative Giorgione, could not divert her mind from its +human problem. What was he doing at Castel Sant' Alessina, the property, +according to her guide-book, of an Austrian prince? What was his status +here, apparently (bar servants) in solitary occupation? Was he its +tenant? He couldn't, surely, this well-dressed, high-bred, cultivated +young compatriot, he couldn't be a mere employé, a steward or curator? +No: probably a tenant. Antecedently indeed it might seem unlikely that a +young Englishman should become the tenant of an establishment so huge +and so sequestered; but was it conceivable that this particular young +Englishman should be a mere employé? And was there any other +alternative? She hearkened for a word, a note, that might throw light; +but of such notes, such words, a young man's conversation, in the +circumstances, would perhaps naturally yield a meagre crop. + +"You mustn't let me tire you," he said presently, as one who had +forgotten and suddenly remembered that looking at pictures is exhausting +work. "Won't you sit here and rest a little?" + +They were in a smaller room than any they had previously traversed, an +octagonal room, which a single lofty window filled with sunshine. + +"Oh, thank you," said Lady Blanchemain, and seated herself on the +circular divan in the centre of the polished terrazza floor. She wasn't +really tired in the least, the indefatigable old sight-seer; but a +respite from picture-gazing would enable her to turn the talk. She put +up her mother-of-pearl lorgnon, and glanced round the walls; then, +lowering it, she frankly raised her eyes, full of curiosity and +kindness, to her companion's. + +"It's a surprise, and a delightful one," she remarked, "having pushed so +far afield in a foreign land, to be met by the good offices of a +fellow-countryman--it's so nice of you to be English." + +And her eyes softly changed, their curiosity being veiled by a kind of +humorous content. + +The young man's face, from its altitude of six-feet-something, beamed +responsively down upon her. + +"Oh," he laughed, "you mustn't give me too much credit. To be English +nowadays is so ingloriously easy--since foreign lands have become merely +the wider suburbs of London." + +Lady Blanchemain's eyes lighted approvingly. Afterwards she looked half +serious. + +"True," she discriminated, "London has spread pretty well over the whole +of Europe; but England, thanks be to goodness, still remains mercifully +small." + +"Yes," agreed the young man, though with a lilt of dubiety, and a frown +of excogitation, as if he weren't sure that he had quite caught her +drift. + +"The mercy of it is," she smilingly pointed out, "that English folk, +decent ones, have no need to fight shy of each other when they meet as +strangers. We all know more or less about each other by hearsay, or +about each other's people; and we're all pretty sure to have some common +acquaintances. The smallness of England makes for sociability and +confidence." + +"It ought to, one would think," the young man admitted. "But does it, in +fact? It had somehow got stuck in my head that English folk, meeting as +strangers, were rather apt to glare. We're most of us in such a funk, +you see, lest, if we treat a stranger with civility, he should turn out +not to be a duke." + +"Oh," cried Lady Blanchemain, with merriment, "you forget that I said +_decent_. I meant, of course, folk who _are_ dukes. We're all dukes--or +bagmen." + +The young man chuckled; but in a minute he pulled a long face, and made +big, ominous eyes. + +"I feel I ought to warn you," he said in a portentous voice, "that some +of us are mere marquises--of the house of Carabas." + +Lady Blanchemain, her whole expansive person, simmered with enjoyment. + +"Bless you," she cried, "those are the ducalest, for marquises--of the +house of Carabas--are men of dash and spirit, born to bear everything +before them, and to marry the King's daughter." + +With that, she had a moment of abstraction. Again, her eyeglass up, she +glanced round the walls--hung, in this octagonal room, with dim-coloured +portraits of women, all in wonderful toilets, with wonderful hair and +head-gear, all wonderfully young and pleased with things, and all four +centuries dead. They caused her a little feeling of uneasiness, they +were so dead and silent, and yet somehow, in their fixed postures, with +their unblinking eyes, their unvarying smiles, so--as it seemed to +her--so watchful, so intent; and it was a relief to turn from them to +the window, to the picture framed by the window of warm, breathing, +heedless nature. But all the while, in her interior mind, she was busy +with the man before her. "He looks," she considered, "tall as he is, and +with his radiant blondeur--with the gold in his hair and beard, and the +sea-blue in his eyes--he looks like a hero out of some old Norse saga. +He looks like-what's his name?--like Odin. I must really compel him to +explain himself." + +It very well may be, meantime, that he was reciprocally busy with her, +taking her in, admiring her, this big, jolly, comely, high-mannered old +woman, all in soft silks and drooping laces, who had driven into his +solitude from Heaven knew where, and was quite unquestionably Someone, +Heaven knew who. + +She had a moment of abstraction; but now, emerging from it, she used her +eyeglass as a pointer, and indicatively swept the circle of painted +eavesdroppers. + +"They make one feel like their grandmother, their youth is so flagrant," +she sighed, "these grandmothers of the Quattrocento. Ah, well, we can +only be old once, and we should take advantage of the privileges of age +while we have 'em. Old people, I am thankful to say, are allowed, +amongst other things, to be inquisitive. I'm brazenly so. Now, if one of +our common acquaintances were at hand--for with England still mercifully +small, we're sure to possess a dozen, you and I--what do you think is +the question I should ask him?--I should ask him," she avowed, with a +pretty effect of hesitation, and a smile that went as an advance-guard +to disarm resentment, "to tell me who you are, and all about you--and to +introduce you to me." + +"Oh," cried the young man, laughing. He laughed for a second or two. In +the end, pleasantly, with a bow, "My name," he said, "if you can +possibly care to know, is Blanchemain." + +His visitor caught her breath. She sat up straight, and gazed hard at +him. + +"Blanchemain?" she gasped. + + + + +VII + + +There were, to be sure, reasons and to spare why the name should make +her sit up straight. Her curiosity had turned the key, and lo, with a +click, here was an entirely changed, immensely complicated, intensely +poignant situation. But our excitable old friend was an Englishwoman: +dissimulation would be her second nature; you could trust her to pull +the wool over your eyes with a fleet and practised hand. Instinctively, +furthermore, she would seek to extract from such a situation all the fun +it promised. Taken off her guard, for the span of ten heart-beats she +sat up straight and stared; but with the eleventh her attitude relaxed. +She had regained her outward nonchalance, and resolved upon her system +of fence. + +"Ah," she said, on a tone judiciously compounded of feminine artlessness +and of forthright British candour, and with a play of the eyebrows that +attributed her momentary suscitation to the workings of memory, "of +course--Blanchemain. The Sussex Blanchemains. I expect there's only one +family of the name?" + +"I've never heard of another," assented the young man. + +"The Ventmere Blanchemains," she pursued pensively. "Lord Blanchemain of +Ventmere is your titled head?" + +"Exactly," said he. + +"I knew the late Lord Blanchemain--I knew him fairly well," she +mentioned, always with a certain pensiveness. + +"Oh--?" said he, politely interested. + +"Yes," said she. "But I've never met his successor. The two were not, I +believe, on speaking terms. Of course,"--and her forthright British +candour carried her trippingly over the delicate ground,--"it's common +knowledge that the family is divided against itself--hostile branches--a +Protestant branch and a Catholic. The present lord, if I've got it +right, is a Catholic, and the late lord's distant cousin?" + +"You've got it quite right," the young man assured her, with a nod, and +a little laugh. "They had the same great-great-grandfather. The last +few lords have been Protestants, but in our branch the family have never +forsaken the old religion." + +"I know," said she. "And wasn't it--I've heard the story, but I'm a bit +hazy about it--wasn't it owing to your--is 'recusancy' the word?--that +you lost the title? Wasn't there some sort of sharp practice at your +expense in the last century?" + +The young man had another little laugh. + +"Oh, nothing," he answered, "that wasn't very much the fashion. The late +lord's great-grandfather denounced his elder brother as a Papist and a +Jacobite--nothing more than that. It was after the 'Forty-five. So the +cadet took the title and estates. But with the death of the late lord, a +dozen years or so ago, the younger line became extinct, and the title +reverted." + +"I see," said my lady. She knitted her eyebrows, computing. After an +instant, "General Blanchemain," she resumed, "as the present lord was +called for the best part of his life, is a bachelor. You will be one of +his nephews?" She raised her eyes inquiringly. + +"The son of his brother Philip," said the young man. + +Lady Blanchemain sat up straight again. + +"But then," she cried, forgetting to conceal her perturbation, "then +you're the heir. Philip Blanchemain had but one son, and was the +General's immediate junior. You're John Blanchemain--John Francis Joseph +Mary. You're the heir." + +The young man smiled--at her eagerness, perhaps. + +"The heir-presumptive--I suppose I am," he said. + +Lady Blanchemain leaned back and gently tittered. + +"See how I know my Peerage!" she exclaimed. Then, looking grave, "You're +heir to an uncommonly good old title," she informed him. + +"I hope it may be many a long day before I'm anything else," said he. + +"Your uncle is an old man," she suggestively threw out. + +"Oh, not so very old," he submitted. "Only seventy, or thereabouts, and +younger in many respects than I am. I hope he'll live for ever." + +"Hum!" said she, and appeared to fall a-musing. Absently, as it seemed, +and slowly, she was pulling off her gloves. + +"Feuds in families," she said, in a minute, "are bad things. Why don't +you make it up?" + +The young man waved his hand, a pantomimic _non-possumus_. + +"There's no one left to make it up with--the others are all dead." + +"Oh?" she wondered, her eyebrows elevated, whilst automatically her +fingers continued to operate upon her gloves. "I thought the last lord +left a widow. I seem to have heard of a _Lady_ Blanchemain somewhere." + +The young man gave still another of his little laughs. + +"Linda Lady Blanchemain?" he said. "Yes, one hears a lot of her. A +highly original character, by all accounts. One hears of her +everywhere." + +Linda Lady Blanchemain's lip began to quiver; but she got it under +control. + +"Well?" she questioned--eyes fixing his, and brimming with a kind of +humorous defiance, as if to say, "Think me an impertinent old meddler +if you will, and do your worst,"--"Why don't you make it up with _her_?" + +But he didn't seem to mind the meddling in the least. He stood at ease, +and plausibly put his case. + +"Why don't I? Or why doesn't my uncle? My uncle is a temperamental +conservative, a devotee to his traditions--the sort of man who will +never do anything that hasn't been the constant habit of his forebears. +He would no more dream of healing a well-established family feud than of +selling the family plate. And I--well, surely, it would never be for me +to make the advances." + +"No, you're right," acknowledged Lady Blanchemain. "The advances should +come from her. But people have such a fatal way--even without being +temperamental conservatives--of leaving things as they find them. +Besides, never having seen you, she couldn't know how nice you are. All +the same, I'll confess, if you insist upon it, that she ought to be +ashamed of herself. Come--let's make it up." + +She rose, a great soft glowing vision of benignancy, and held out her +hand, now gloveless, her pretty little smooth plump right hand, with +its twinkling rings. + +"Oh!" cried the astonished young man, the astonished, amused, moved, +wondering, and entirely won young man, his sea-blue eyes wide open, and +a hundred lights of pleasure and surprise dancing in them. + +The benignant vision floated towards him, and he took the little white +hand in his long lean brown one. + + + + +VIII + + +When the first stress of their emotion had in some degree spent itself +Lady Blanchemain, returning to her place on the ottoman, bade John sit +down beside her. + +"Now," she said, genially imperative, whilst all manner of kindly and +admiring interest shone in her face, "there are exactly nine million and +ninety-nine questions that you'll be obliged to answer before I've done +with you. But to begin, you must clear up at once a mystery that's been +troubling me ever since you dashed to my rescue at the gate. What in the +name of Reason is the cause of your residence in this ultramundane +stronghold?" + +John--convict me of damnable iteration if you must: Heaven has sent me a +laughing hero--John laughed. + +"Oh," he said, "there are several causes--there are exactly nine million +and ninety-eight." + +"Name," commanded Lady Blanchemain, "the first and the last." + +"Well," obeyed he, pondering, "I should think the first, the last, and +perhaps the chief intermediate, would be--the whole blessed thing." And +his arm described a circle which comprehended the castle and all within +it, and the countryside without. + +"It has a pleasant site, I'll not deny," said Lady Blanchemain. "But +don't you find it a trifle far away? And a bit up-hill? I'm staying at +the Victoria at Roccadoro, and it took me an hour and a half to drive +here." + +"But since," said John, with a flattering glance, "since you _are_ here, +I have no further reason to deplore its farawayness. So few places are +far away, in these times and climes," he added, on a note of melancholy, +as one to whom all climes and times were known. + +"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain, matter-of-fact. "Have you been here long?" + +"Let me see," John answered. "To-day is the 23rd of April. I arrived +here--I offer the fact for what it may be worth--on the Feast of All +Fools." + +"_Absit omen_," cried she. "And you intend to stay?" + +"Oh, I'm at least wise enough not to fetter myself with intentions," +answered John. + +She looked about, calculating, estimating. + +"I suppose it costs you the very eyes of your head?" she asked. + +John giggled. + +"Guess what it costs--I give it to you in a thousand." + +She continued her survey, brought it to a period. + +"A billion a week," she said, with finality. John exulted. + +"It costs me," he told her, "six francs fifty a day--wine included." + +"What!" cried she, mistrusting her ears. + +"Yes," said he. + +"Fudge!" said she, not to be caught with chaff. + +"It sounds like a traveller's tale, I know; but that's so often the +bother with the truth," said he. "Truth is under no obligation to be +_vraisemblable_. I'm here _en pension_." + +Lady Blanchemain sniffed. + +"Does the Prince of Zelt-Neuminster take in boarders?" she inquired, +her nose in the air. + +"Not exactly," said John. "But the Parroco of Sant' Alessina does. I +board at the presbytery." + +"Oh," said Lady Blanchemain, beginning to see light, while her eyebrows +went up, went down. "You board at the presbytery?" + +"For six francs fifty a day--wine included," chuckled John. + +"Wine, and apparently the unhindered enjoyment of--the whole blessed +thing," supplemented she, with a reminder of his comprehensive gesture. + +"Yes--the run of the house and garden, the freedom of the hills and +valley." + +"I understand," she said, and was mute for a space, readjusting her +impressions. "I had supposed," she went on at last, "from the handsome +way in which you snubbed that creature in shoulder-knots, and proceeded +to do the honours of the place, that you were little less than its +proprietor." + +"Well, and so I could almost feel I am," laughed John. "I'm alone +here--there's none my sway to dispute. And as for the creature in +shoulder-knots, what becomes of the rights of man or the bases of civil +society, if you can't snub a creature whom you regularly tip? For five +francs a week the creature in shoulder-knots cleans my boots +(indifferent well), brushes my clothes, runs my errands (indifferent +slow),--and swallows my snubs as if they were polenta." + +"And tries to shoo intrusive trippers from your threshold--and gets an +extra plateful for his pains," laughed the lady. "Where," she asked, +"does the Prince of Zelt-Neuminster keep himself?" + +"In Vienna, I believe. Anyhow, at a respectful distance. The parroco, +who is also his sort of intendant, tells me he practically never comes +to Sant' Alessina." + +"Good easy man," quoth she. "Yes, I certainly supposed you were his +tenant-in-fee, at the least. You have an air." And her bob of the head +complimented him upon it. + +"Oh, we Marquises of Carabas!" cried John, with a flourish. + +She regarded him doubtfully. + +"Wouldn't you find yourself in a slightly difficult position, if the +Prince or his family should suddenly turn up?" she suggested. + +"I? Why?" asked John, his blue eyes blank. + +"A young man boarding with the parroco for six francs a day--" she +began. + +"Six francs fifty, please," he gently interposed. + +"Make it seven if you like," her ladyship largely conceded. "Wouldn't +your position be slightly false? Would they quite realize who you were?" + +"What could that possibly matter? wondered John, eyes blanker still. + +"I could conceive occasions in which it might matter furiously," said +she. "Foreigners can't with half an eye distinguish amongst us, as we +ourselves can; and Austrians have such oddly exalted notions. You +wouldn't like to be mistaken for Mr. Snooks?" + +"I don't know," John reflected, vistas opening before him. "It might be +rather a lark." + +"Whrrr!" said Lady Blanchemain, fanning herself with her +pocket-handkerchief. Then she eyed him suspiciously. "You're hiding the +nine million other causes up your sleeve. It isn't merely the 'whole +blessed thing' that's keeping an eaglet of your feather alone in an +improbable nest like this--it's some one particular thing. In my time," +she sighed, "it would have been a woman." + +"And no wonder," riposted John, with a flowery bow. + +"You're very good--but you confuse the issue," said she. "In my time the +world was young and romantic. In this age of prose and prudence--_is_ it +a woman?" + +"The world is still, is always, young and romantic," said John, +sententious. "I can't admit that an age of prose and prudence is +possible. The poetry of earth is never dead, and no more is its folly. +The world is always romantic, if you have the three gifts needful to +make it so." + +"_Is_ it a woman?" repeated Lady Blanchemain. + +"And the three gifts are," said he, "Faith, and the sense of Beauty, and +the sense of Humour." + +"And I should have thought, an attractive member of the opposite sex," +said she. "_Is_ it a woman?" + +"Well," he at last replied, appearing to take counsel with himself, "I +don't know why I should forbid myself the relief of owning up to you +that in a sense it is." + +"Hurray!" cried she, moving in her seat, agog, as one who scented her +pet diversion. "A love affair! I'll be your confidante. Tell me all +about it." + +"Yes, in a sense, a love affair," he confessed. + +"Good--excellent," she approved. "But--but what do you mean by 'in a +sense'?" + +"Ah," said he, darkly nodding, "I mean whole worlds by that." + +"I don't understand," said she, her face prepared to fall. + +"It isn't one woman--it's a score, a century, of the dear things," he +announced. + +Her face fell. "Oh--?" she faltered. + +"It's a love affair with a type," he explained. + +She frowned upon him. "A love affair with a type--?" + +"Yes," said he. + +She shook her head. "I give you up. In one breath you speak like a +Mohammedan, in the next like--I don't know what." + +"With these," said John, his band stretched towards the wall. "With the +type of the Quattrocento." + +He got upon his feet, and moved from picture to picture; and a fire, +half indeed of mischief; but half it may be of real enthusiasm, +glimmered in his eyes. + +"With these lost ladies of old years; these soft-coloured shadows, that +were once rosy flesh; these proud, humble, innocent, subtle, brave, shy, +pious, pleasure-loving women of the long ago. With them; with their hair +and eyes and jewels, their tip-tilted, scornful, witty little noses, +their 'throats so round and lips so red,' their splendid raiment; with +their mirth, pathos, passion, kindness and cruelty, their infinite +variety, their undying youth. Ah, the pity of it! Their undying +youth--and they so irrevocably dead. Peace be to their souls! See," he +suddenly declaimed, laughing, "how the sun, the very sun in heaven, is +contending with me, as to which of us shall do them the greater homage, +the sun that once looked on their living forms, and remembers--see how +he lights memorial lamps about them," for the sun, reflected from the +polished floor, threw a sheen upon the ancient canvases, and burned +bright in the bosses of the frames. "Give me these," he wound up, "a +book or two, and a jug of the parroco's 'included wine'--my wilderness +is paradise enow." + +Lady Blanchemain's eyes, as she listened, had become deep wells of +disappointment, then gushing fountains of reproach. + +"Oh, you villain!" she groaned, when he had ended, shaking her pretty +fist. "So to have raised my expectations, and so to dash them!--Do you +_really_ mean," still clinging to a shred of hope, she pleaded, "really, +really mean that there's no--no actual woman?" + +"I'm sorry," said John, "but I'm afraid I really, really do." + +"And you're not--not really in love with any one?" + +"No--not really," he said, with a mien that feigned contrition. + +"But at your age--how old are you?" she broke off to demand. + +"Somewhere between twenty-nine and thirty, I believe," he laughed. + +"And in such a romantic environment, and not on account of a woman! It's +downright unnatural," she declared. "It's flat treason against the +kingly state of youth." + +"I'm awfully sorry," said John. "Yet, after all, what's the good of +repining? Nothing could happen even if there were a woman." + +Lady Blanchemain looked alarmed. + +"Nothing could happen? What do you mean? You're not _married_? If you +are, it must be secretly, for you're put down as single in Burke." + +"To the best of my knowledge," John reassured her, laughing, "Burke is +right. And I prayerfully trust he may never have occasion to revise his +statement." + +"For mercy's sake," cried she, "don't tell me you're a woman-hater!" + +"That's just the point," said he. "I'm an adorer of the sex." + +"Well, then?" questioned she, at a loss. "How can you 'prayerfully' wish +to remain a bachelor? Besides, aren't you heir to a peerage? What of the +succession?" + +"That's just the point," he perversely argued. "And you know there are +plenty of cousins." + +"Just the point! just the point!" fretted Lady Blanchemain. "What's just +the point? Just the point that you aren't a woman-hater?--just the point +that you're heir to a peerage? You talk like Tom o' Bedlam." + +"Well, you see," expounded John, unruffled, "as an adorer of the sex, +and heir to a peerage, I shouldn't want to marry a woman unless I could +support her in what they call a manner becoming her rank--and I +couldn't." + +"Couldn't?" the lady scoffed. "I should like to know why not?" + +"I'm too--if you will allow me to clothe my thought in somewhat homely +language--too beastly poor." + +"_You--poor?_" ejaculated Lady Blanchemain, falling back. + +"Ay--but honest," asseverated John, to calm her fears. + +She couldn't help smiling, though she resolutely frowned. + +"Be serious," she enjoined him. "Doesn't your uncle make you a suitable +allowance?" + +"I should deceive you," answered John, "if I said he made me an +_un_suitable one. He makes me, to put it in round numbers, exactly no +allowance whatsoever." + +"The--old--curmudgeon!" cried Lady Blanchemain, astounded, and fiercely +scanning her words. + +"No," returned John, soothingly, "he isn't a curmudgeon. But he's a +very peculiar man. He's a Spartan, and he lacks imagination. It has +simply never entered his head that I could _need_ an allowance. And, if +you come to that, I can't say that I positively do. I have a tiny +patrimony--threepence a week, or so--enough for my humble necessities, +though scarcely perhaps enough to support the state of a future peeress. +No, my uncle isn't a curmudgeon; he's a very fine old boy, of whom I'm +immensely proud, and though I've yet to see the colour of his money, +we're quite the best of friends. At any rate, you'll agree that it would +be the deuce to pay if I were to fall in love. + +"Ffff," breathed Lady Blanchemain, fanning. "What did I say of an age of +prose and prudence? Yet you don't _look_ cold-blooded. What does money +matter? _Dominus providebit_. Go read Browning. What's 'the true end, +sole and single' that we're here for? Besides, have you never heard that +there are such things as marriageable heiresses in the world?" + +"Oh, yes, I've heard that," John cheerfully assented. "But don't they +almost always squint or something? I've heard, too, that there are such +things as tufted fortune-hunters, but theirs is a career that requires a +special vocation, and I'm afraid I haven't got it." + +"Then you're no true Marquis of Carabas," the lady took him smartly up. + +"You've found me out--I'm only a _faux-marquis_," he laughed. + +"Thrrr!" breathed Lady Blanchemain, and for a little while appeared lost +in thought. By-and-by she got up and went to the window, and stood +looking out. "I never saw a lovelier landscape," she said, musingly. +"With the grey hills, and the snow-peaks, and the brilliant sky, with +the golden light and the purple shadows, and the cypresses and olives, +with the river gleaming below there amongst the peach-blossoms, +and--isn't that a blackcap singing in the mimosa? It only needs a pair +of lovers to be perfect--it _cries_ for a pair of lovers. And instead of +them, I find--what? A hermit and celibate. Look here. Make a clean +breast of it. _Are_ you cold-blooded?" she asked from over her shoulder. + +John merely giggled. + +"It would serve you right," said she, truculently, "if some one were to +rub your eyes with love-in-idleness, to make you dote upon the next +live creature that you see." + +John merely chuckled. + +"I'll tell you what," she proceeded, "I'm a bit of an old witch, and +I'll risk a soothword. As there isn't already a woman, there'll shortly +be one--my thumbs prick. The stage is set, the scene is too appropriate, +the play's inevitable. It was never in the will of Providence that a +youth of your complexion should pass the springtime in a spot all +teeming with romance like this, and miss a love adventure. A castle in a +garden, a flowering valley, and the Italian sky--the Italian sun and +moon! Your portraits of these smiling dead women too, if you like, to +keep your imagination working. And blackcaps singing in the mimosa. No, +no. The lady of the piece is waiting in the wings--my thumbs prick. Give +her but the least excuse, she'll enter, and ... Good Heavens, my +prophetic soul!" she suddenly, with a sort of catch in her throat, broke +off. + +She turned and faced him, cheeks flushed, eyes flashing. + +"Oh, you hypocrite! You monstrous fibber!" she cried, on a tone of +jubilation, looking daggers. + +"Why? What's up? What's the matter?" asked John, at fault. + +"How _could_ you have humbugged me so?" she wailed, in delight, +reverting to the window. "Anyhow, she's charming. She's made for the +part. I couldn't pray for a more promising heroine." + +"She? Who?" asked he, crossing to her side. + +"Who? Fie, you slyboots!" she crowed with glee. + +"Ah, I see," said John. + +For, below them, in the garden, just beyond the mimosa (all powdered +with fresh gold) where the blackcap was singing, stood a woman. + + + + +IX + + +She stood in the path, beside a sun-dial, from which she appeared to be +taking the time of day, a crumbling ancient thing of grey stone, green +and brown with mosses; and she was smiling pleasantly to herself the +while, all unaware of the couple who watched her from above. She wore a +light-coloured garden-frock, and was bare-headed, as one belonging to +the place. She was young--two or three and twenty, by her aspect: young, +slender, of an excellent height, and, I hope you would have agreed, a +beautiful countenance. She studied the sun-dial, and smiled; and what +with her dark eyes and softly chiselled features, the pale rose in her +cheeks and the deeper rose of her mouth, with her hair too, almost black +in shadow, but where the sun touched it turning to sombre red,--yes, I +think you would have agreed that she was beautiful. Lady Blanchemain, at +any rate, found her so. + +"She's quite lovely," she declared. "Her face is exquisite--so +sensitive, so spiritual; so distinguished, so aristocratic. And so +_clever_," she added, after a suspension. + +"Mm!" said John, his forehead wrinkled, as if something were puzzling +him. + +"She has a figure--she holds herself well," said Lady Blanchemain. + +"Mm!" said John. + +"I suppose," said she, "you're too much a mere man to be able to +appreciate her frock? It's the work of a dressmaker who knows her +business. And that lilac muslin (that's so fashionable now) really does, +in the open air, with the country for background, show to immense +advantage. Come--out with it. Tell me all about her. Who _is_ she?" + +"That's just what I'm up a tree to think," said John. "I can't imagine. +How long has she been there? From what direction did she come?" + +"Don't try to hoodwink me any longer," remonstrated the lady, +unbelieving. + +"I've never in my life set eyes on her before," he solemnly averred. + +She scrutinized him sharply. + +"Hand on heart?" she doubted. + +And he, supporting her scrutiny without flinching, answered, "Hand on +heart." + +"Well, then," concluded she, with a laugh, "it looks as if I were even +more of an old witch than I boasted--and my thumbs pricked to some +purpose. Here's the lady of the piece already arrived. There, she's +going away. How well she walks! Have after her--have after her quick, +and begin your courtship." + +The smiling young woman, her lilac dress softly bright in the sun, was +moving slowly down the garden path, towards the cloisters; and now she +entered them, and disappeared. But John, instead of "having after her," +remained at his counsellor's side, and watched. + +"She came from that low doorway, beyond there at the right, where the +two cypresses are; and she came at the very climax of my vaticination," +said her ladyship. "Without a hat, you'll hardly dispute it's probable +she's staying in the house." + +"No--it certainly would seem so," said John. "I'm all up a tree." + +"The garden looks rather dreary and empty, now that she has left, +doesn't it?" she asked. "Yet it looked jolly enough before her advent. +And see--the lizards (there are four of them, aren't there?) that +whisked away from the dial at her approach, have come back. Well, _your_ +work's cut out. I suppose it wouldn't be possible for you to give a poor +woman a dish of tea?" + +"I was on the very point of proposing it," said John. "May I conduct you +to my quarters?" + + + + +PART SECOND + + + + +I + + +Rather early next morning John was walking among the olives. He had gone +(straight from his bed, and in perhaps the least considered of toilets: +an old frieze ulster, ornamented with big buttons of mother-of-pearl, a +pair of Turkish slippers, a bathing-towel over his shoulder, and for +head-covering just his uncombed native thatch) he had gone for a swim, +some half a mile upstream, to a place he knew where the Rampio--the +madcap Rampio, all shallows and rapids--rests for a moment in a pool, +wide and deep, translucent, inviting, and, as you perceive when you have +made your plunge, of a most assertive chill. Now he was on his leisurely +way home, to the presbytery and what passed there for breakfast. + +The hill-side rose from the river's bank in a series of irregular +terraces, upheld by rough stone walls. The gnarled old trees bent +towards each other and away like dwarfs and crook-backs dancing a +fantastic minuet; and in the grass beneath them, where the sun shot his +fiery darts and cast his net of shadows, Chloris had scattered +innumerable wildflowers: hyacinths, the colour of the sky; violets, that +threaded the air for yards about with their sentiment-provoking +fragrance; tulips, red and yellow; sometimes a tall, imperial iris; here +and there little white nodding companies of jonquils. Here and there, +too, the dusty-green reaches were pointed by the dark spire of a +cypress, alone, in a kind of glooming isolation; here and there a +blossoming peach or almond, gaily pink, sent an inexpressible little +thrill of gladness to one's heart. The air was sweetened by many +incense-breathing things besides the violets,--by moss and bark, the +dew-laden grass, the moist brown earth; and it was quick with music: +bees droned, leaves whispered, birds called, sang, gossiped, disputed, +and the Rampio played a crystal accompaniment. + +John swung onwards at ease, while lizards, with tails that seemed +extravagantly long, fled from before his feet, terrible to them, no +doubt, as an army with banners, for his Turkish slippers, though not in +their pristine youth, were of scarlet leather embroidered in a rich +device with gold. And presently (an experience unusual at that hour in +the olive wood) he became aware of a human voice. + +"Ohé! My good men, there! Will you be so kind as to gather me some of +those anemones? Here is a lira for your pains." + +It was a feminine voice; it was youthful and melodious; it was finished, +polished, delicately modulated. And its inflection was at once confident +and gracious,--clearly the speaker took it for granted that she would +receive attention, and she implied her thanks abundantly beforehand. It +was a voice that evoked in the imagination a charming picture of fresh, +young, confident, and gracious womanhood. + +"Hello!" said John to himself. "Who is there in this part of the world +with a voice like that?" + +And he felt it would not be surprising if on glancing round he should +behold--as, in fact, he did--the stranger of yesterday, the Unknown of +the garden. + + + + +II + + +She stood on one of the higher terraces, (a very charming picture +indeed, bright and erect, in the warm shadow of the olives), and was +calling down to a couple of peasants at work on the other side of the +stream. Between the thumb and forefinger of an ungloved fair right hand, +she held up a silver lira. + +Anemones, said she! Near to where the men were working, by the river's +brink, there was a space of level ground, perhaps a hundred feet long, +and tapering from half that breadth to a point. And this was simply +crimson and purple with a countless host of anemones. + +She called to the men, and one seeing and hearing her would have thought +they must abandon everything, and spring to do her bidding. But they +didn't. Pausing only long enough to give her a phlegmatic stare, as if +in doubt whether conceivably she could have the impertinence to be +addressing _them_, and vouchsafing not a word, each went calmly on with +his employment;--very, very calmly, _piano_, _piano_, gently, languidly, +filling small baskets with fallen olives, and emptying them upon +outspread canvas sheets. There are, and more's the pity, two types of +Italian peasant. There's the old type, which we knew in our youth, and +happily it still survives in some numbers,--the peasant who, for all his +rags and tatters, has manners that will often put one's own to shame, +and, with a _simpatia_ like second-sight, is before one's wishes, in his +eagerness to serve and please. And there is the new type, which we know +to our disgust, and unhappily it multiplies like vermin,--the peasant +who has lent his ear to the social democrat, and, his heart envenomed by +class hatred, meets your civility with black glances and the behaviour +of a churl in the sulks. + +So, though her voice was sweet to hear, and though, standing there in +the warm penumbra of the olive orchard, tall and erect and graceful, in +her bright frock, she made a charming picture, and though she offered a +silver lira as a prize, the men merely stared at her churlishly, and +went on with their work--languidly, sluggishly, as men who deemed the +necessity to work an outrage, and weren't going to condone it by working +with anything like a will. + +Now, John Blanchemain, as I have previously mentioned, was an +unselfconscious sort of fellow. In his unselfconsciousness, forgetting +several trifles that might properly have weighed with him, (forgetting +the tarnished gorgeousness of his Turkish slippers for example, and his +towzled head, and the bathing-towel that flowed like a piece of classic +drapery from his shoulder), obeying impulse and instinct, he flung +himself into the breach. + +"Brutes," he muttered between his teeth. Then, in his easiest +man-of-the-worldy accents, "If you can wait two minutes," he called +aloud to her. And therewith he went scrambling down the terraces and +picked his way from stone to stone across the shallows, to the field of +anemones, where their satiny petals, like crisping wavelets, all +a-ripple in the moving air, shimmered with constantly changing lights. +And in a twinkling he had gathered a great armful, and was clambering +back. + +"I beg of you," he said, in his abrupt fashion, holding them out to +her, and slightly bowing, with that nothing-doubting assurance of his, +while his blue eyes (to put her entirely at her ease) smiled, frank and +friendly and serene, into her dark ones. + +But hers seemed troubled. She looked at the flowers, she looked at John, +I think she even looked at her lira. Her eyes seemed undecided. + +"Do pray take them," said he, still smiling, still frank and assured, +but as if a little puzzled, a little amused, by her hesitation, and more +airily a man-of-the-world than ever, his tone one of high detachment, to +spare her any possible feeling of personal obligation, and to place his +performance in the light of a matter of course,--as if indeed he had +done nothing more than pick up and return, say, a handkerchief she might +have dropped. "You were right," he owned to his thought of Lady +Blanchemain; "she is beautiful." Here, at close quarters with her, one's +perception of her beauty became acute,--here, under the grey old trees, +in the leafy dimness, alone with her, at two paces from her, where the +birds sang and the violets gave forth their fragrant breath. He saw that +her eyes were beautiful (soft and deep and luminous, despite their +trouble), and her low white brow, and the dark masses of her hair, under +her garden-hat, and the rose in her cheeks, and the red-rose of her +mouth. And he saw and felt the beauty and the vitality of her strong +young body. + +But meanwhile she had stretched forth, rather timidly, that ungloved +fair hand of hers, and taken the flowers. + +"You are very good, I am sure. Thank you very much," she said, rather +faintly, with a grave little inclination of the head. + +John, always with magnificent assurance, put up his hand, to doff a +man-of-the-worldy hat, and bow himself away;--and it encountered his +bare locks, bare, and still wet from recent ducking. Whereupon, +suddenly, the trifles he had forgotten were remembered, and at last (in +the formula of the criminologist) "he realized his position:" hatless +and uncombed, with the bathing-towel slung from his shoulder, in that +weather-beaten old frieze coat with its ridiculous buttons, in those +awful Turkish slippers,--offering, with his grand manner, flowers to a +woman he didn't know, and smiling, to put her at her ease! His pink +face burned to a livelier pink, his ears went hot, his heart went cold. +The bow he finally accomplished was the blighted bud of the bow he had +projected; and, as the earth didn't, of its charity, open and engulf +him, he hastened as best he could, and with a painful sense of slinking, +to remove his crestfallen person from her range of view. + +When these unselfconscious fellows are startled into selfconsciousness, +I fancy they take it hard. I don't know how long it was before John had +done heaping silent curses, silent but savage, upon himself; his luck, +his "beastly officiousness," upon the whole afflicting incident: curses +that he couldn't help diversifying now and then with a catch of +splenetic laughter, as a vision of the figure he had cut would +recurrently + + "--_flash upon that inward eye + Which is the bliss of solitude_." + +"Oh, you _ape!_" he groaned. "Rigged out like Pudding Jack, and, with +your ineffable simagrees, offering a strange woman flowers!" + +If _she_ had only laughed, had only smiled, it wouldn't have been so +bad, it would have shown that she understood. "But through it all," he +writhed to recollect, "she was as solemn as a mourner. I suppose she was +shocked--perhaps she was frightened--very likely she took me for a +tramp. I wonder she didn't crown my beatitude by giving me her lira. +These foreigners do so lack certain discernments." + +And with that rather an odd detail came back to him. _Was_ she a +foreigner? For it came vaguely back that he, impulsive and unthinking, +had spoken to her throughout in English. "And anyhow,"--this came +distinctly back,--"it was certainly in English that she thanked me." + + + + +III + + +What passed for breakfast at the presbytery was the usual Continental +evasion of that repast,--bread and coffee, despatched in your apartment. +But at noon the household met to dine. + +The dining-room, on the ground floor, long and low, with a vaulted +ceiling, whitewashed, and a pavement of worn red tiles, was a clean, +bare room, that (pervaded by a curious, dry, not unpleasant odour) +seemed actually to smell of bareness, as well as of cleanliness. There +was a table, there was a dresser, there were a few unpainted deal +chairs, rush-bottomed (exactly like the chairs in the church, in all +Italian churches), and there was absolutely nothing else, save a great +black and white Crucifix attached to the wall. But, by way of +compensation, its windows opened southwards, flooding it with sunshine, +and commanding the wonderful perspective of the valley,--the blue-grey +hills, the snow-peaks, the blossoming low-lands, and the far-away +opalescence that you knew to be the lake. + +At noon the parroco, his niece Annunziata, and his boarder met to dine. + +The parroco was a short, stout, florid, black-haired, hawk-nosed, +fierce-looking, still youngish man, if five-and-forty may be reckoned +youngish, with a pair of thin lips and powerful jaws which, for purposes +of speech, he never opened if he could help it. Never,--till Sunday +came: when, mounting the pulpit, he opened them indeed, and his pent-up +utterance burst forth in a perfect torrent of a sermon, a wild gush of +words, shouted at the topmost stress of a remarkably lusty voice, +arresting for a minute or two by reason of the sheer physical energy it +represented, and then for a long half hour exquisitely tiresome. But on +week-days he maintained a prodigious silence, and this (as, though +fierce-looking, he wasn't in the least really fierce) it would often be +John's malicious study to tempt him to break. Besides, to-day, John was +honestly concerned with the pursuit of knowledge. + +Accordingly, grace being said, "You never told me," he began, assuming a +mien of intelligent interest, "that the castle was haunted." He looked +at the Napoleonic profile of Don Ambrogio, but from the tail of his eye +he kept a watch as well upon Annunziata, and he saw that that wise +little maiden became attentive. + +"No," said Don Ambrogio, between two spoonfuls of soup. + +"You will conceive my astonishment, then," continued John, urbanely, +"when I discovered that it was." + +"It isn't," said Don Ambrogio. He gave himself diligently to the +business of the hour; his spoon flew backwards and forwards like a +shuttle. His napkin, tucked into his Roman collar, protected his bosom, +an effective white cuirass. + +"Oh? Not the castle?" questioned John. "Only the garden? And the olive +wood? True, on reflection, I've never seen it in the house." + +"Nothing here is haunted," said the parroco. He made a signal to +Annunziata, who rose to change the plates. Her big eyes were alight, her +serious little face was alert; but she would never dream of speaking in +the presence of her uncle. Marcella, the cook, brought in the inevitable +veal. + +"Oh, for that," insisted John, courteous but firm, "I beg your pardon. I +myself have seen it on two occasions; and, lest you should fancy it a +subjective illusion, I may tell you that it was yesterday seen +simultaneously by another." + +"It? It? What is _it_?" asked the parroco, his beaked and ensanguined +visage fiercer-looking than ever, as he fell upon the inevitable veal +with a somewhat dull carving-knife. + +"Ah," said John, "now you make me regret that I haven't a talent for +word-painting. It's the form of a woman, a young woman, tall, slender, +in some pale diaphanous garment, that appears here, appears there, +remaining distinctly visible for some minutes, and then disappears. No, +it isn't a subjective illusion. And it isn't, either," the unscrupulous +creature added, after a pause, raising his voice, and speaking with +emphasis, as if to repel the insinuation, while the darkness of +disenchantment swept the face of Annunziata, "it isn't, either, as some +imaginative people might too hastily conclude, a wraith, a phantom, an +insubstantial vapour. It's a real material form, that lives and +breathes, and even, if driven to it, speaks. There's nothing +supernatural about it,--unless, indeed, we take the transcendental view +that Nature herself is supernatural. I was wondering, Don Ambrogio, +whether, without violating a confidence, you could tell me whose form it +is?" + +"Nossignore," said Don Ambrogio, economizing his breath. + +"Ah," sighed John, nodding resignedly, "I feared as much. Divining that +I would institute inquiries, she has stolen a march upon me, and pledged +you to secrecy." + +"Nossignore," disavowed Don Ambrogio, raising eyes the sincerity of +which there could be no suspecting. + +John's face took on an expression of aggrieved surprise. + +"But then why won't you tell me?" + +"I cannot tell you because I do not know," said Don Ambrogio. + +"Oh, I see," said John. "And yet," he argued meditatively, "that's hard +to conceive. I don't for a moment mean that I doubt it--but it's hard to +conceive, like the atomic theory, and some of the articles of religion. +(I hear, by-the-by, that the scientists are throwing the atomic theory +over. Oh, fickle scientists! Oh, shifting sands of science!) Surely +there can't be many such tall slender forms, in diaphanous garments, +appearing and disappearing here and there in your parish? And one would +suppose, antecedently, that you'd know them all." + +"A peasant, a villager," said Don Ambrogio. + +"I put it to you as an observer of life," said John, "do peasants, do +villagers, wear diaphanous garments?" + +"A visitor, a sight-seer, from some place on the lake," said Don +Ambrogio. + +"I put it to you as a student of probabilities," said John, "would a +visitor, would a sight-seer, from some place on the lake, walk in the +garden of the castle without a hat? And would she appear at Sant' +Alessina on two days in succession?" + +But Don Ambrogio had finished his veal, and when he had finished his +veal he always left the table, first twice devoutly making the sign of +the Cross, and then with a bow to John, pronouncing the formula, "You +will graciously permit? My affairs call me. A thousand regrets." To-day +he slightly amplified that formula. "A thousand regrets," he said, "and +as many excuses for my inability to afford the information desired." + +After his departure, John turned to Annunziata, where, in her grey +cotton pinafore, her lips parted, her big eyes two lively points of +interrogation, she sat opposite to him, impatient to take up the theme. + +"Well, Mistress Wisdom!" he saluted her, smiling, and waving his hand. +"It is a good and wholesome thing for the young to witness the +discomfiture of the wicked. Your uncle retreats with flying colours. He +made, to be sure, a slender dinner, but that's his daily habit. If you +have tears to shed, shed them for me. I have made none at all." + +From points of interrogation, Annunziata's eyes changed to abysses of +wonder, and, big as they were, seemed to grow measurably bigger. + +"You have made no dinner?" she protested, in that strangely deep voice +of hers, with its effect of immense solemnity. + +"No, poor dear," said John, with pathos, "no, I have made no dinner." + +"But you have eaten a great deal," exclaimed Annunziata, frowning, +nonplussed. "And you are still eating." + +"Quite so," responded John, "though I think it's perhaps the merest +trifle unhandsome of you to fling it in my face. I have eaten a great +deal, and I am still eating. That is what I come to table for. In an +orderly life like mine there is a place for everything. I come to table +to eat, just as I go to bed to sleep and to church to say my prayers. +Would you have me sleep at table, eat in church, and say my prayers in +bed? Eating, however, has nothing to do with the case. I spoke of +dining--I said I had not dined. Now you shall be the judge. The question +is, can a Christian man dine twice on the same day? Answer me that." + +"Oh, no," answered Annunziata, her pale face very sober, and she +lengthened out her vowels in deprecation of the idea. "At least, it +would be gluttony if he did." + +"There you are," cried John. "And gluttony is not the undeadliest of the +Seven Deadly Sins. So, then, unless you would have me guilty of the +deadly sin of gluttony, you must agree that I have not dined. For I am +going to dine this evening. I am going to dine at the Hotel Victoria at +Roccadoro. I am going to dine with a lady. I am going to dine in all the +pomp and circumstance of my dress-suit, with a white tie and pumps. And +you yourself have said it, a Christian man may not, without guilt of +gluttony, dine twice on the same day. Therefore it is the height of +uncharitableness, it's a deliberate imputation of sin, to contend that I +have dined already." + +Annunziata followed his reasoning thoughtfully, and then gravely set him +right. + +"No," she said, with a drop of the eyelids and a quick little shake of +the head, "you do not understand. I will explain." Her eyes were wide +open again, and bright with zeal for his instruction. "You have dined +already. That is a certain truth, because this meal is dinner, and you +have eaten it. But to-night you are going to a dinner of ceremony--and +that is different. A dinner of ceremony does not count. It is the same +as a supper. My uncle himself once went to a dinner of ceremony at +Bergamo. No, it will not be gluttony for you to go to a dinner of +ceremony." + +"You speak like a little pope," said John, with enthusiasm. "In matters +of Faith and Morals I believe you are infallible. If you could guess the +load you have lifted from my conscience!" And he pushed a hearty ouf. + +"I am glad," said Annunziata. And then she attempted to hark back. +Curiosity again lighting her eyes, "This form that you have seen in the +garden--" she began. + +"Don't try to change the subject," John interrupted. "Let us cultivate +sequence in our ideas. What I am labouring with hammer and tongs to drag +from you is the exact date at which, somewhere between the years of our +salvation 1387 and 1455, you sat for your portrait to the beatified +painter Giovanni of Fiesole. Now, be a duck, and make a clean breast of +it." + +Annunziata's eyes clouded. A kind of scorn, a kind of pity, and a kind +of patient longanimity looked from them. + +"That is folly," she said, on the deepest of her deep notes, with a +succession of slow, reflective, side-wise nods. + +"Folly--?" repeated John, surprised, but bland. "Oh? Really?" + +"Sit for my portrait between the years 1387 and 1455,--how could I?" +scoffed Annunziata. + +"Why? What was to prevent you?" innocently questioned he. + +"_Ma come!_ I was not yet alive," said she. + +John looked at her with startled eyes, and spoke with animation. + +"Weren't you? Word of honour? Are you sure? How do you know? Have you +any definite recollection that you weren't? Can you clearly recall the +period in question, and then, reviewing it in detail, positively attest +that you were dead? For there's no third choice. A person must either be +alive or dead. And how, if you weren't alive, how ever did it come to +pass that there should be a perfect portrait of you from Giovanni's +brush in the Convent of Saint Mark at Florence? Your grave little white +face, and your wise little big eyes, and your eager little inquisitive +profile, and your curls flowing about your shoulders, and your pinafore +that's so like a peplum,--there they all are, precisely as I see them +before me now. And how was Giovanni able to do them if you weren't +alive? Perhaps you were pre-mortally alive in Heaven? Giovanni's cell, +as is well known, had a window that opened straight into Heaven. Perhaps +he saw you through that window, and painted you without your knowing it. +The name they give your portrait, by-the-by, would rather seem to +confirm that theory. What do you think they call it? They call it an _un +angiolo_. I've got a copy of it in England. When you come to London to +visit the Queen I'll show it to you." + +Annunziata gave her flowing curls a toss. + +"The form of the young woman which you have seen in the garden--" she +began anew. + +"Ah," said John, "observe how differently the big fish and the little +fish will be affected by the same bait." + +"When you first spoke of it," said she, "I thought you had seen a holy +apparition." + +"Yes," said he. "That was because I couched my communication in language +designedly misleading. I employed the terminology of ghost-lore. I said +'haunted' and 'appear,' and things like that. And you were very properly +and naturally deceived. I confidently expected that you would be. No, it +is not given to world-stained and world-worn old men like me to see holy +apparitions." + +"Old men? You are not an old man," said Annunziata. + +"Oh? Not? What am I, then?" said John. + +"You are a middle-aged man," said she. + +"Thank you, Golden Tongue," said he, with a bow. + +"And you are sure that it was merely a real person?" she pursued. + +"No," said he. "I am too profoundly imbued with the basic principles of +metaphysics ever to be sure of the objective reality of phenomena. I can +only swear to my impression. My impression was and is that it was merely +a real person." + +"Then," said Annunziata, with decision, "it must be the person who is +visiting the Signora Brandi." + +"The Signora Brandi?" repeated John. "What a nice name! Who is the +Signora Brandi?" + +"She is an Austrian," said Annunziata. + +"Oh--?" said John. + +"She lives in the pavilion beyond the clock-tower," said Annunziata. + +"I wasn't aware," said John, "that the pavilion beyond the clock-tower +was inhabited. I wasn't aware that any part of this castle was +inhabited, except the porter's lodge and the part that we inhabit. Why +have I been left till now in this state of outer darkness?" + +"The Signora Brandi has been absent," said Annunziata. "She has been in +her own country--in Austria. But the other day she returned. And with +her came a person to visit her. That is the person whose form you have +seen in the garden." + +"How do you know it wasn't the form of the Signora Brandi herself?" John +said. + +"Oh, no," said Annunziata. "The Signora Brandi is not young. She is old. +She is as old as--" + +"Methuselah? Sin? The hills?" suggested John, Annunziata having paused +to think. + +"No," said Annunziata, repudiating the suggestion with force. "No one is +so old as Methuselah. She is as old as--well, my uncle." + +"I see," said John. "Yes, it's all highly mysterious." + +"Mysterious?" said Annunziata. + +"I should think so," asseverated he. "Cryptic, enigmatic, esoteric to +the last degree. To begin with, how does the Signora Brandi, being an +Austrian, come by so characteristically un-Austrian a name? Is that +mysterious? And in the next place, why does an Austrian Signora Brandi +so far forget what is due to her nationality as to live, not in Austria, +but in Lombardy? And--as if that were not enough--at Castel Sant' +Alessina? And--as if that were not more than enough--in the pavilion +beyond the clock? Come, come! Mysterious!" + +"You are living in Lombardy, you are living at Castel Sant' Alessina, +yourself," said Annunziata. + +"I hardly think so," said John. "You can scarcely with precision call +this living--this is rather what purists call sojourning. But even were +it otherwise, there's all the difference in the world between my case +and the Signora Brandi's. I am middle-aged and foolish, but she is as +old as your uncle. Don't you see the mysterious significance of that +coincidence? And I haven't a young woman visiting me. _Who is the young +woman?_ Is that a mystery? My sweet child, we tread among mysteries. We +are at the centre of a coil of mysteries. _Who is the young woman?_ And +how--consider well upon this--how does it happen that the young woman +speaks English? Mysterious, indeed!" + +He rose, and bowed, with ceremony. + +"But we burn daylight. I must not detain you longer. Suffer me to +imprint upon your hand of velvet a token of my high regard." + +And taking Annunziata's frail little white hand, he bent low to kiss it; +and though his blue eyes were full of laughter, I think that behind the +laughter there was a great deal of real fondness and admiration. + + + + +IV + + +Half-way down the long straight avenue of ilex-trees that led from the +castle to the principal entrance of the garden, Annunziata, in her +pale-grey pinafore (that was so like a peplum), with her hair waving +about her shoulders, was curled up in the corner of a marble bench, +gazing with great intentness at a white flower that lay in her lap. It +was the warmest and the peacefullest moment of the afternoon. The sun +shone steadily; not a leaf stirred, not a shadow wavered; and the +intermittent piping of a blackbird, somewhere in the green world +overhead, seemed merely to give a kind of joyous rhythm to the silence. + +"Mercy upon me! Who ever saw so young a maiden so deeply lost in +thought!" exclaimed a voice. + +Annunziata, her reverie thus disturbed, raised a pair of questioning +eyes. + +A lady was standing before her, smiling down upon her, a lady in a frock +of lilac-coloured muslin, with a white sunshade. + +Annunziata, who, when she liked, could be the very pink of formal +politeness, rose, dropped a courtesy, and said: "Buon giorno, +Signorina." + +"Buon giorno," responded the smiling lady. "Buon giorno--and a penny for +your thoughts. But I'm sure you could never, never tell what it was you +were thinking so hard about." + +"Scusi," said Annunziata. "I was trying to think of the name of this +flower." She stooped and picked up the flower, which had slipped from +her lap to the ground when she rose. Then she held it at arm's length, +for inspection. + +"Oh?" asked the lady, smiling at the flower, as she had smiled at its +possessor. "Isn't it a narcissus?" + +"Yes," said Annunziata. "It is a narcissus. But I was trying to think of +its particular name." + +The lady looked as if she did not quite understand. "Its particular +name?" + +"It is a narcissus," explained Annunziata, "just as I am a girl. But it +must also have its particular name, just as I have mine. It is a soul +doing its Purgatory--a very good soul. If you are very good, then, when +you die, you do your Purgatory as a flower. But it is not such an easy +Purgatory--oh, no. For look: the flower is beautiful, but it is blind, +and cannot see; and it is fragrant, but it cannot smell; and people +admire it and praise it, but it is deaf, and cannot hear. It can only +wait, wait, wait, and think of God. But it is a short Purgatory. A few +days, and the flower will fade, and the soul will be released. I think +this flower's name is Cecilia, it is so white." + +The smile in the lady's eyes had brightened, as she listened; and now +she gave a little laugh, a little, light, musical, pleased and friendly +laugh. + +"Yes," she said. "I have sometimes wondered myself whether flowers might +not be the Purgatory of very good souls. I am glad to learn from you +that it is true. And yes, I should think that this flower's name was +sure to be Cecilia. Cecilia suits it perfectly. What, if one may ask, is +_your_ particular name?" + +"Mariannunziata," said its bearer, not to make two bites of a cherry. + +The lady's eyes grew round. "Dear me! A little short name like that?" +she marvelled. + +"No," returned Annunziata, with dignity. "My name in full is longer. My +name in full is Giuliana Falconieri Maria Annunziata Casalone. Is that +not long enough?" + +"Yes," the lady admitted, "that is just long enough." And she laughed +again. + +"What is _your_ name?" inquired Annunziata. + +"My name is Maria Dolores," the lady answered. "You see, we are both +named Maria." + +"Of course," said Annunziata. "All Christians should be named Maria." + +"So they should," agreed the lady. "Do you ever tell people how old you +are?" + +"Yes," said Annunziata, "if they wish to know. Why not?" + +The smile in the lady's eyes shone brighter than ever. "Do you think you +could be persuaded to tell me?" + +"With pleasure," said Annunziata. "I am eleven years and five months. +And you?" + +"I am just twice as old. I am twenty-two years and ten months. So, when +you are fifty, how old shall I be?" + +"No," said Annunziata, shaking her head. "That trick has been tried with +me before. My friend Prospero has tried it with me. You hope I will say +that you will be a hundred. But it is not so. When I am fifty, you will +be sixty-one, going on sixty-two." + +Still again the lady laughed, apparently with great amusement. + +"What a little bundle of wisdom you are!" she exclaimed. + +"Yes. My friend Prospero also says that I am wise," answered Annunziata. +"I like to see you laugh," she mentioned, looking critically at the face +above her. "You have beautiful teeth, they are so white and shining, and +so small, and your lips are so red." + +"Oh," said the lady, laughing more merrily than ever. "Then you must be +very entertaining, and I will laugh a great deal." + +Still looking critically at the lady's face, "Are you not," demanded +Annunziata, "the person who has come to visit the Signora Brandi?" + +"Signora Brandi?" The lady considered. "Yes, I suppose I must be. At any +rate, I am the person who has come to visit Frau Brandt." + +"Frao Branta? We call her Signora Brandi here," said Annunziata. "Are +you related to her?" + +"No," said the lady, who always seemed inclined to laugh, though +Annunziata had no consciousness of being very entertaining. "I am not +related to her. I am only her friend." + +"She is an Austrian," said Annunziata. "This castle belongs to +Austrians. Once upon a time, very long ago, before I was born, all this +country belonged to Austrians. Are you, too, an Austrian?" + +"Yes." The lady nodded. "I, too, am an Austrian." + +"And yet," remarked Annunziata, "you speak Italian just as I do." + +"It is very good of you to say so," laughed the lady. + +"No--it is the truth," said Annunziata. + +"But is it not good to tell the truth?" the lady asked. + +"No," said Annunziata. "It is only a duty." And again she shook her +head, slowly, darkly, with an effect of philosophic melancholy. "That is +very strange and very hard," she pointed out. "If you do not do that +which is your duty, it is bad, and you are punished. But if you do do +it, that is not good,--it is only what you ought to do, and you are not +rewarded." And she fetched her breath in the saddest of sad little +sighs. Then, briskly covering her cheerfulness, "And you speak English, +besides," she said. + +"Oh?" wondered the lady. "Are you a clairvoyante? How do you know that I +speak English?" + +"My friend Prospero told me so," said Annunziata. + +"Your friend Prospero?" the lady repeated. "You quote your friend +Prospero very often. Who is your friend Prospero?" + +"He is a signore," said Annunziata. "He has seen you, he has seen your +form, in the garden and in the olive wood." + +"Oh," said the lady. + +"And I suppose he must have heard you speak English," Annunziata added. +"He lives at the presbytery." + +"And where, by-the-by, do _you_ live?" asked the lady. + +"I live at the presbytery too," said Annunziata. "I am the niece of the +parroco. I am the orphan of his only brother. My friend Prospero lives +with us as a boarder. He is English." + +"Indeed?" said the lady. "Prospero is a very odd name for an +Englishman." + +"Prospero is not his name," said Annunziata. "His name is Gian. That is +English for Giovanni." + +"But why, then," the lady puzzled, "do you call him Prospero?" + +"Prospero is a name I have given him," explained Annunziata. "One day I +told his fortune. I can tell fortunes--with olive-stones, with +playing-cards, or from the lines of the hand. I will tell you yours, if +you wish. Well, one day, I told Prospero's, and everything came out so +prosperously for him, I have called him Prospero ever since. He will be +rich, though he is poor; and he will marry a dark woman, who will also +be rich; and they will have many, many children, and live in peace to +the end of their lives. But there!" Annunziata cried out suddenly, with +excitement, waving the hand that held her narcissus. "There is my friend +Prospero now, coming in the gig." + +Down the avenue, sure enough, a gig was coming, a sufficiently shabby, +ancient gig, drawn, however, at a very decent pace by a very +decent-looking horse, and driven by John Blanchemain. + +"_Ciao_, Prospero!" called Annunziata, as he passed. + +And John took off his hat, a modish Panama, and bowed and smiled to her +and to the lady. And one adept in reading the meaning of smiles might +have read three or four separate meanings in that smile of his. It +seemed to say to Annunziata, "Ah, you rogue! So already you have waylaid +her, and made her acquaintance." To the lady: "I congratulate you upon +your companion. Isn't she a diverting little monkey?" To himself: "And I +congratulate _you_, my dear, upon being clothed and in your right mind, +and upon having a proper hat to make your bow with." And to the universe +at large "By Jove, she _is_ good-looking. Standing there before that +marble bench, in the cool green light, under the great ilexes, with her +lilac frock and her white sunshade, and Annunziata all in grey beside +her,--what a subject for a painting, if only there were any painters +who knew how to paint!" + +"He is going to a dinner at Roccadoro," said Annunziata, while John's +back grew small and smaller in the distance. "Did you see, he had a +portmanteau under the seat? He is going to a dinner of ceremony, and he +will have his costume of ceremony in the portmaneau. I wonder what he +will bring back with him for me. When he goes to Roccadoro he always +brings something back for me. Last time it was a box of chocolate +cigars. I should like to see him in his costume of ceremony. Wouldn't +you?" + +But the lady merely laughed. And then, taking Annunziata's chin in her +hand, she looked down into her big clear eyes, and said, "I must be off +now, to join Signora Brandi. But I cannot leave without telling you how +glad I am to have met you, and what pleasure I have derived from your +conversation. I hope we shall meet often. Good-bye." + +"Good-bye, Signorina," said Annunziata, becoming formally polite again. +"I shall always be at your service." And she dropped another courtesy. +"If you will come to see me at the presbytery," she hospitably added, +"I will show you my tame kid." + +"You are all that is most kind," responded the lady, and went off +smiling towards the castle. + +Annunziata curled herself up in her old corner of the marble bench, and +appeared to relapse into profound thought. + + + + +V + + +A curious little intimate inward glow, a sense, somewhere deep down in +his consciousness, of elation and well-being, accompanied John all the +way to Roccadoro, mingling with and sweetening whatever thoughts or +perceptions occupied his immediate attention. This was a "soul-state" +that he knew of old, and he had no difficulty in referring it to its +cause. It was the glow and the elation which he was fortunate enough +always to experience when his eye had been fed with a fresh impression +of beauty; and he knew that he owed it to-day to the glimpse he had had, +in the cool light under the ilexes, of a slender figure in lilac and a +tiny figure in grey, beside a soft-complexioned old marble bench in the +midst of a shadowy, sunny, brown and green Italian garden. + +The drive to Roccadoro from Sant' Alessina is a pleasant drive. The road +follows for the most part the windings of the Rampio, so that you are +seldom out of sight of its gleaming waters, and the brawl of it, now +louder, now less loud, is perpetually in your ears. To right and left +you have the tender pink of blossoming almonds, with sometimes the +scarlet flame of a pomegranate; and then the blue-grey hills, mantled in +a kind of transparent cloth-of-gold, a gauze of gold, woven of haze and +sunshine; and then, rosy white, with pale violet shadows, the +snow-peaks, cut like cameos upon the brilliant azure of the sky. And +sometimes, of course, you rattle through a village, with its crumbling, +stained, and faded yellow-stuccoed houses, its dazzling white canvas +awnings, its church and campanile, and its life that seems to pass +entirely in the street: men in their shirt sleeves, lounging, smoking, +spitting (else the land were not Italy!), or perhaps playing cards at a +table under the leafless bush of the wine-shop; women gossiping over +their needlework, or, gathered in sociable knots, combing and binding up +their sleek black hair; children sprawling in the kindly dirt; the +priest, biretta on head, nose in breviary, drifting slowly upon some +priestly errand, and "getting through his office;" and the immemorial +goatherd, bare-legged, in a tattered sugar-loaf hat, followed by his +flock, with their queer anxious faces, blowing upon his Pan's-pipes +(shrill strains, in minor mode and plagal scale, a music older than +Theocritus), or stopping, jealously watched by the customer's avid +Italian eyes, to milk "_per due centesimi_"--say, a farthing's +worth--into an outstretched, close-clutched jug. Sometimes the almond +orchards give place to vineyards, or to maize fields, or to dusky groves +of walnut, or to plantations of scrubby oak where lean black pigs forage +for the delectable acorn. Sometimes the valley narrows to a ravine, and +signs of cultivation disappear, and the voice of the Rampio swells to a +roar, and you become aware, between the hills that rise gloomy and +almost sheer beside you, of a great solitude: a solitude that is +intensified rather than diminished by the sight of some +lonely--infinitely lonely--grange, perched far aloft, at a height that +seems out of reach of the world. What possible manner of human beings, +you wonder, can inhabit there, and what possible dreary manner of +existence can they lead? But even in the most solitary places you are +welcomed and sped on by a chorus of bird-songs. The hillsides resound +with bird-songs continuously for the whole seven miles,--and +continuously, at this season, for the whole four-and-twenty hours. +Blackbirds, thrushes, blackcaps, goldfinches, chaffinches, sing from the +first peep of dawn till the last trace of daylight has died out, and +then the nightingales begin and keep it up till dawn again. And +everywhere the soft air is aromatic with a faint scent of rosemary, for +rosemary grows everywhere under the trees. And everywhere you have the +purity and brilliancy and yet restraint of colour, and the crisp economy +of line, which give the Italian landscape its look of having been +designed by a conscious artist. + +In and through his enjoyment of all these pleasantnesses, John felt that +agreeable glow which he owed to his glimpse of the woman in the garden; +and when at last he reached the Hotel Victoria, and, having dressed, +found himself alone for a few moments with Lady Blanchemain, in the dim +and cool sitting-room where she awaited her guests, he hastened to let +her know that he shared her own opinion of the woman's charms. + +"Your beauty decidedly _is_ a beauty," he declared. "I wish you could +have seen her as I saw her an hour ago, with a white sunshade, against a +background of ilexes. It's a thousand pities that painting should be a +forgotten art." + +But Lady Blanchemain (magnificent in purple velvet, with diamonds round +her throat and in her hair) didn't seem interested. + +"Do you know," she said, "I made yesterday one of the most ridiculous +blunders of my life. It's been preying upon my mind ever since. I +generally have pretty trustworthy perceptions, and perhaps this is a +symptom of failing powers. I told myself positively that you were an +Eton and Balliol man. It never occurred to me till I was halfway home +that, as a Papist, you'd be nothing of the sort." + +"No," said John; "I'm afraid I'm Edgbaston and Paris. The way her hair +grows low about her brow, and swoops upwards and backwards in a sort of +tidal wave, and breaks loose in little curling tendrils,--it's +absolutely lyrical. And the smile at the bottom of her eyes is exactly +like silent music. And her mouth is a couplet in praise of love, with +two red lips for rhymes. And her chin is a perfect epithalamium of a +chin. And then her figure! And then her lilac frock! Oh, it's a +thousand, thousand pities that painting should he a forgotten art." + +"What, the same lilac frock?" said Lady Blanchemain, absently. "Yet you +certainly have the Eton voice," she mused. "And if I don't pay you the +doubtful compliment of saying that you have the Balliol manner, you have +at least a kind of subtilized reminiscence of it." + +"I must keep a guard upon myself," said John. "She's visiting an +Austrian woman who lives in a remote wing of the castle,--the pavilion +beyond the clock, in fact,--an Austrian woman of the exhilarating name +of Brandi." + +"I'm rather in luck for my dinner to-night," said Lady Blanchemain. +"I've got Agnes Scope, the niece of the Duke of Wexmouth. She arrived +here this morning with her aunt, Lady Louisa. Of course I'm putting you +next to her. As, besides being an extremely nice girl and an heiress, +she's an ardent pervert to Romanism,--well, a word to the wise." + +"Yes, I know her," said John. "We don't get on a bit. She moves on far +too high a plane for a groundling like me. She's intellectual and +earnest, and my ignorance and light-mindedness wound her to the quick. +She'll end, as I've told her to her face, by writing books,--serious +novels, probably,--which she'll illuminate with beautiful irrelevant +quotations from Browning and Cardinal Newman." + +"Bother," said Lady Blanchemain. "You're perverse." + +"Besides," said John, "she's engaged." + +"Engaged--?" faltered Lady Blanchemain. + +"Yes--to an intellectual and earnest man, named Blake--Bernard Blake--a +grandson of the famous Blake of Cambridge." + +Lady Blanchemain fixed him with darkening eyes. + +"Are you sure?" she pleaded. + +"I saw it officially stated in the _Morning Post_," was John's +relentless answer. + +"What a nuisance," said Lady Blanchemain, fanning. Her fan was of amber +tortoise-shell, with white ostrich feathers, and the end sticks bore her +cypher and coronet in gold. + +"What a jolly fan," said John. + +"Well, well," said Lady Blanchemain, reconciling herself. Then, after an +instant of pensiveness, "So you're already laid low by her beauty. But +you haven't found out yet who she is?" + +"Who who is?" said John, looking all at sea. + +"Tut. Don't tease. Your woman at the castle." + +"My woman at the castle appeared to leave you cold," he complained. "I +arrived full of her, and you wouldn't listen." + +"So you're already in love with her?" said Lady Blanchemain. + +"No--not yet," said he. "As yet I merely recognize in her admirable +material for a painting, and regret that such material should go begging +for the lack of a painter. But by this time to-morrow--who can tell?" + +"Have you found out who she is?" asked Lady Blanchemain. + +"No--not yet," said he. "As yet I've merely found out that she's +visiting an Austrian Signora Brandi, who lives (I can't think why) in +the pavilion beyond the clock. But by this time to-morrow!" His gesture +spoke volumes of prospective information. + +"She looked like a gentlewoman," reflected his friend. + +"For all the world," said he. + +"Yet, if she's an Austrian--" She paused and pondered. + +"Why? What's the difficulty?" said he. + +"To know whether she is _born_," said Lady Blanchemain. "Among +Austrians, unless you're born, you're impossible, you're nowhere. Brandi +doesn't sound born, does it? We mustn't let you become enamoured of her +if she isn't born." + +"Brandi sounds tremendously _un_born," assented John. "And if like +visits like, Signora Brandi's visitor will probably be unborn too. But +to me that would rather add an attraction,--provided she's _bred_. I'm +not an Austrian. I'm a Briton and a democrat. I feel it is my destiny, +if ever I am to become enamoured at all, to become enamoured of the +daughter of a miller,--of a rising miller, who has given his daughter +advantages. 'Brèd, not Born: or the Lady of the Mill'--that shall be the +title of my humble heart-history. If this woman could prove to me that +she was the daughter of a miller, I'm not sure I shouldn't become +enamoured of her on the spot. Well, I shall know to-morrow. By this time +to-morrow I shall possess her entire _dossier_. It may interest you to +learn that I am employing a detective to investigate her." + +"A detective? What do you mean?" said Lady Blanchemain. + +"A private detective, a female detective, whom, the next time you come +to Sant' Alessina, I'll introduce to you," said John. + +"What on earth do you mean?" said Lady Blanchemain. + +"The most amusing, the most adorable little detective unhung," said he. +"People are all love and laughter whenever they look at her. She'll worm +its inmost secrets from my sphinx's heart." + +"What pleasure can you take in practising upon a poor old woman who only +by a sort of fluke isn't your grandmother?" said she. + +"Lady Louisa FitzStephen, Miss Scope," said her servant, opening the +door. + + + + +VI + + +The nightingales sang him home, and the moon lighted him, the liquid +moon of April and Italy. As he approached the castle, through the purple +and silver garden, amid the mysterious sweet odours of the night, he +glanced up vaguely at the pavilion beyond the clock. He glanced up +vaguely, but next second he was no longer vague. + +There, on a low-hung balcony, not ten feet above him, full in the +moonlight, stood a figure in white--all in white, with a scarf of white +lace thrown over her dark hair. The nightingales sang and sobbed, the +moon rained its amethystine fire upon the earth, the earth gave forth +its mysterious sweet night odours, and she stood there motionless, and +breathed and gazed and listened. + +But at the sound of wheels in the avenue, she turned slightly, and +looked down. Her face was fair and delicate and pure in the moonlight, +and her eyes shone darkly bright. + +She turned, and looked down, and her eyes met John's. + +"Given the hour and the place, I wonder whether I ought to bow," he +thought. + +Before he could make up his mind, however, his hand had automatically +raised his hat. + +She inclined her head in acknowledgment, and something softly changed in +her face. + +"She smiled!" he said, and caught his breath, with a kind of astonished +exultancy. + +That soft change in her face came and went and came again through all +his dreams. + + + + +PART THIRD + + + + +I + + +"Good morning, Prospero," said Annunziata. + +"Good morning, Wide-awake," responded John. + +He was in the octagonal room on the _piano nobile_ of the castle, where +his lost ladies of old years smiled on him from their frames. He had +heard an approaching patter of feet on the pavement of the room beyond; +and then Annunziata's little grey figure, white face, and big grave +eyes, had appeared, one picture the more, in the vast carved and gilded +doorway. + +"I have been looking everywhere for you," she said, plaintive. + +"Poor sweetheart," he commiserated her. "And can't you find me?" + +"I couldn't," said Annunziata, bearing on the tense. "But I have found +you _now_." + +"Oh? Have you? Where?" asked he. + +"_Where?_" cried she, with a disdainful movement. "But _here_, of +course." + +"I wouldn't be too cocksure of that," he cautioned her. "_Here_ is a +mighty evasive bird. For, suppose we were elsewhere, then _there_ would +be here, and here would be somewhere else." + +"No," said Annunziata, with resolution. "Where a person is, that is +always _here_." + +"You speak as if a person carried his here with him, like his hat," said +John. + +"Yes, that is how it is," said Annunziata, nodding. + +"You have a remarkably solid little head,--for all its curls, there's no +confusing it," said he. "Well, have you your report, drawn up, signed, +sealed, sworn to before a Commissioner for Oaths, and ready to be +delivered?" + +"My report--?" questioned Annunziata, with a glance. + +"About the Form," said John. "I caught you yesterday red-handed in the +fact of pumping it." + +"Yes," said Annunziata. "Her name is Maria Dolores." + +"A most becoming name," said he. + +"She is very nice," said Annunziata. + +"She looks very nice," said he. + +"She is twenty-two years and ten months old," continued his informant. + +"Fancy. As middle-aged as that," commented he. + +"Yes. She is an Austrian." + +"Ah." + +"And as I told you, she is visiting the Signora Brandi. Only, she calls +her Frao Branta." + +"Frao Branta?" John turned the name on his tongue. "Branta? Branta?" +What familiar German name, at the back of his memory, did it half evoke? +Suddenly he had a flash. "Can you possibly mean Frau Brandt?" + +Annunziata gave a gesture of affirmation. + +"Yes, that is it," she said. "You sound it just as she did!" + +"I see," said John. "And Brandt, if there are degrees of unbirth, is +even more furiously unborn than Brandi." + +"Unborn--?" said Annunziata, frowning. + +"Not noble--not of the aristocracy," John explained. + +"Very few people are noble," said Annunziata. + +"All the more reason, then, why you and I should be thankful that we +are," said he. + +"You and I?" she expostulated, with a shrug of her little grey +shoulders. "_Machè!_ We are not noble." + +"Aren't we? How do you know?" asked John. "Anyhow," he impressively +moralized, "we can try to be." + +"No," said she, with conclusiveness, with fatalism. "It is no good +trying. Either you are noble or simple,--God makes you so,--you cannot +help it. If I were noble, I should be a contessina. If you were noble, +you would be a gransignore. + +"And my unassuming appearance assures you that I'm not?" said he, +smiling. + +"If you were a gransignore," she instructed him, "you would never be +such friends with me--you would be too proud." + +John laughed. + +"You judge people by the company they keep. Well, I will apply the same +principle of judgment to your gossip, Maria Dolores. By-the-by," he +broke off to inquire, "what is her Pagan name?" + +"Her Pagan name? What is that?" asked Annunziata. + +"Maria Dolores, I take it, is her Christian name, come by in Holy +Baptism," said John. "But I suppose she will have a Pagan name, come by +in the way of the flesh, to round it off with,--just as, for instance, a +certain flame of mine, whose image, when I die, they'll find engraved +upon my heart, has the Pagan name of Casalone." + +Annunziata looked up, surprised. "Casalone? That is my name," she said. + +"Yes," said John. "Yours will be the image." + +Annunziata gave her head a toss. "Maria Dolores did not tell me her +Pagan name," she said. + +"At any rate," said he, "to judge by the company she keeps, we may +safely classify her as unborn. She is probably the daughter of a +miller,--of a miller (to judge also a little by the frocks she wears) in +rather a large way of business, who (to judge finally by her cultivated +voice, her knowledge of languages, and her generally distinguished air) +has spared no expense in the matter of her education. I shouldn't +wonder a bit if she could even play the piano." + +"No," agreed Annunziata, "that is very likely. But why"--she tilted +upwards her inquisitive little profile--"why should you think she is the +daughter of a miller?" + +"Miller," said John, "I use as a generic term. Her father may be a +lexicographer or a dry-salter, a designer of dirigible balloons or a +manufacturer of air-pumps; he may even be a person of independent means, +who lives in a big, new, stuccoed villa in the suburbs of Vienna, and +devotes his leisure to the propagation of orchids: yet all the while a +miller. By miller I mean a member of the Bourgeoisie: a man who, though +he be well to do, well educated, well bred, does not bear coat-armour, +and is therefore to be regarded by those who do with their noses in the +air,--especially in Austria. Among Austrians, unless you bear +coat-armour, you're impossible, you're nowhere. We mustn't let you +become enamoured of her if she doesn't bear coat-armour." + +Annunziata's eyes, during this divagation, had wandered to the window, +the tall window with its view of the terraced garden, where the mimosa +bloomed and the blackcaps carolled. Now she turned them slowly upon +John, and he saw from their expression that at last she was coming to +what for her (as he had known all along) was the real preoccupation of +the moment. They were immensely serious, intensely concerned, and at the +same time, in their farther recesses, you felt a kind of fluttering +shyness, as if _I dare not_ were hanging upon _I would_. + +"Tell me," she began, on a deep note, a deep coaxing note.... Then _I +dare not_ got the better, and she held back.... Then _I would_ took his +courage in both hands, and she plunged. "What have you brought for me +from Roccadoro?" And after one glance of half-bashful, all-impassioned +supplication, she let her eyes drop, and stood before him suspensive, as +one awaiting the word of destiny. + +John's "radiant blondeur," his yellow beard, pink face, and sea-blue +eyes, lighted up, more radiant still, with subcutaneous laughter. + +"The shops were shut," he said. "I arrived after closing time." + +But something in his tone rendered this grim announcement nugatory. +Annunziata drew a long breath, and looked up again. "You have brought +me something, all the same," she declared with conviction; and eagerly, +eyes gleaming, "What is it? What is it?" she besought him. + +John laughed. "You are quite right," he said. "If one can't buy, beg, or +borrow, in this world, one can generally steal." + +Annunziata drew away, regarded him with misgiving. "Oh, no; you would +never steal," she protested. + +"I'm not so sure--for one I loved," said he. "What would you have liked +me to bring you?" + +Annunziata thought. "I liked those chocolate cigars," she said, her face +soft with reminiscence of delight. + +"Ah, but we mustn't have it _toujours perdrix_," said John. "Do you, by +any chance, like marchpane?" + +"Marchpane?--I adore it," she answered, in an outburst of emotion. + +"You have your human weaknesses, after all," John laughed. "Well, I +stole a pocketful of marchpane." + +Annunziata drew away again, her little white forehead furrowed. +"Stole?" she repeated, reluctant to believe. + +"Yes," said he, brazenly, nodding his head. + +"Oh, that was very wrong," said Annunziata, sadly shaking hers. + +"No," said he. "Because, in the first place, it's a matter of proverbial +wisdom that stolen marchpane's sweetest. And, in the next place, I stole +it quite openly, under the eye of the person it belonged to, and she +made no effort to defend her property. Seeing which, I even went so far +as to explain to her _why_ I was stealing it. 'There's a young limb o' +mischief with a sweet tooth at Sant' Alessina,' I explained, 'who +regularly levies blackmail upon me. I'm stealing this for her.' And then +the lady I was stealing from told me I might steal as much as ever I +thought good." + +"Oh-h-h," said Annunziata, a long-drawn _Oh_ of relief. "Then you didn't +steal it--she _gave_ it to you." + +"Well," said John, "if casuistry like that can ease your conscience--if +you feel that you can conscientiously receive it--" And he allowed his +inflection to complete the sentence. + +"Give it to me," said Annunziata, holding out her hands, and dancing up +and down in glee and in impatience. + +"Nenni-dà ," said John. "Not till after dinner. I'm not going to be a +party to the spoiling of a fair, young, healthy appetite." + +Pain wrote itself upon Annunziata's brow. "Oh," she grieved, "must I +wait till after dinner?" + +"Yes," said John. + +For a breathing-space she struggled. "Would it be bad of me," she asked, +"if I begged for just a _little_ now?" + +"Yes," said John, "bad and bootless. You'd find me as unyielding as +adamant." + +"Ah, well," sighed Annunziata, a deep and tremulous sigh. "Then I will +wait." + +And, like a true philosopher, she proceeded to occupy her mind with a +fresh interest. She looked round the room, she looked out of the window. +"Why do you stay here? It is much pleasanter in the garden," she +remarked. + +"I came here to seek for consolation. To-day began for me with a tragic +misadventure," John replied. + +Annunziata's eyes grew big, compassionating him, and, at the same time, +bespeaking a lively curiosity. + +"Poor Prospero," she gently murmured. "What was it?" on tip-toe she +demanded. + +"Well," he said, "when I rose, to go for my morning swim, I made an +elaborate toilet, because I hoped to meet a certain person whom, for +reasons connected with my dignity, I wished to impress. But it was +love's labour lost. The certain person is an ornament of the uncertain +sex, and didn't turn up. So, to console myself, I came here." + +Annunziata looked round the room again. "What is there here that can +console you?" + +"These," said John. His hand swept the pictured walls. + +"The paintings?" said she, following his gesture. "How can they console +you?" + +"They're so well painted," said he, fondly studying the soft-coloured +canvases. "Besides, these ladies are dead. I like dead ladies." + +Annunziata looked critically at the pictures, and then at him with +solemn meaning. "They are very pretty--but they are not dead," she +pronounced in her deepest voice. + +"Not dead?" echoed John, astonished. "Aren't they?" + +"No," said she, with a slow shake of the head. + +"Dear me," said he. "And, when they're alone here and no one's looking, +do you think they come down from their frames and dance? It must be a +sight worth seeing." + +"No," said Annunziata. "These are only their pictures. They cannot come +down from their frames. But the ladies themselves are not dead. Some of +them are still in Purgatory, perhaps. We should pray for them." She +made, in parenthesis as it were, a pious sign of the Cross. "Some are +perhaps already in Heaven. We should ask their prayers. And others are +perhaps in Hell," she pursued, inexorable theologian that she was. "But +none of them is dead. No one is dead. There's no such thing as being +dead." + +"But then," puzzled John, "what is it that people mean when they talk of +Death?" + +"I will tell you," said Annunziata, her eyes heavy with thought. +"Listen, and I will tell you." She seated herself on the big round +ottoman, and raised her face to his. "Have you ever been at a +pantomime?" she asked. + +"Yes," said John, wondering what could possibly be coming. + +"Have you been at the pantomime," she continued earnestly, "when there +was what they call a transformation-scene?" + +"Yes," said John. + +"Well," said she, "last winter I was taken to the pantomime at Bergamo, +and I saw a transformation-scene. You ask me, what is Death? It is +exactly like a transformation-scene. At the pantomime the scene was just +like the world. There were trees, and houses, and people, common people, +like any one. Then suddenly click! Oh, it was wonderful. Everything was +changed. The trees had leaves of gold and silver, and the houses were +like fairy palaces, and there were strange lights, red and blue, and +there were great garlands of the most beautiful flowers, and the people +were like angels, with gems and shining clothes. Well, you understand, +at first we had only seen one side of the scene;--then click! everything +was turned round, and we saw the other side. That is like life and +death. Always, while we are alive, we can see only one side of things. +But there is the other side, the under side. Never, so long as we are +alive, we can never, never see it. But when we die,--click! It is a +transformation-scene. Everything is turned round, and we see the other +side. Oh, it will be very different, it will be wonderful. That is what +they call Death." + +It was John's turn to be grave. It was some time before he spoke. He +looked down at her, with a kind of grave laughter in his eyes, admiring, +considering. What could he say? ... What he did say, at last, was +simply, "Thank you, my dear." + +Annunziata jumped up. + +"Oh, come," she urged. "Let's go into the garden. It is so much nicer +there than here. There are lots of cockchafers. Besides"--she held out +as an additional inducement--"we might meet Maria Dolores." + +"No," said John. "Though the cockchafers are a temptation, I will stop +here. But go you to the garden, by all means. And if you do meet Maria +Dolores, tell her what you have just told me. I think she would like to +hear it." + +"All right," consented Annunziata, moving towards the door. "I'll see +you at dinner. You won't forget the marchpane?" + + + + +II + + +John was in a state of mind that perplexed and rather annoyed him. Until +the day before yesterday, his detachment here at Sant' Alessina from +ordinary human society, the absence of people more or less of his own +sort, had been one of the elements of his situation which he had +positively, consciously, rejoiced in,--had been an appreciable part of +what he had summarized to Lady Blanchemain as "the whole blessed thing." +He had his castle, his pictures, his garden, he had the hills and +valley, the birds, the flowers, the clouds, the sun, he had the Rampio, +he had Annunziata, he even had Annunziata's uncle; and with all this he +had a sense of having stepped out of a world that he knew by heart, that +he knew to satiety, a world that was stale and stuffy and threadbare, +with its gilt rubbed off and its colours tarnished, into a world where +everything was fresh and undiscovered and full of savour, a great cool +blue and green world that from minute to minute opened up new +perspectives, made new promises, brought to pass new surprises. And this +sense, in some strange way, included Time as well as space. It was as if +he had entered a new region of Time, as if he had escaped from the +moving current of Time into a stationary moment. Alone here, where +modern things or thoughts had never penetrated, alone with the earth and +the sky, the mediæval castle, the dead ladies, with Annunziata, and the +parroco, and the parroco's Masses and Benedictions--to-day, he would +please himself by fancying, might be a yesterday of long ago that had +somehow dropped out of the calendar and remained, a fragment of the Past +that had been forgotten and left over. The presence of a person of his +own sort, a fellow citizen of his own period, wearing its clothes, +speaking its speech, would have broken the charm, would have seemed as +undesirable and as inappropriate as the introduction of an English +meadow into the Italian landscape. + +Yet now such a person had come, and behold, her presence, so far from +breaking the charm, merged with and intensified it,--supplied indeed +the one feature needed to perfect it. A person of his own sort? The +expression is convenient. A fellow citizen, certainly, of his period, +wearing its clothes, speaking its speech. But a person, happily, not of +his own sex, a woman, a beautiful woman; and what her presence supplied +to the poetry of Sant' Alessina, making it complete, was, if you like, +the Eternal Feminine. As supplied already by the painted women on the +walls about him, this force had been static; as supplied by a woman who +lived and breathed, it became dynamic. That was all very well; if he +could have let it rest at that, if he could have confined his interest +in her, his feeling about her, to the plane of pure æsthetics, he would +have had nothing to complain of. But the mischief was that he couldn't. +The thing that perplexed and annoyed him,--and humiliated him too, in +some measure,--was a craving that had sprung up over-night, and was now +strong and constant, to get into personal touch with her, to make her +acquaintance, to talk with her; to find out a little what manner of soul +she had, to establish some sort of human relation with her. It wasn't +in the least as yet a sentimental craving; or, if it was, John at any +rate didn't know it. In its essence, perhaps, it was little more than +curiosity. But it was disturbing, upsetting, it destroyed the peace and +the harmonious leisure of his day. It perplexed him, it was outside his +habits, it was unreasonable. "Not unreasonable to think it might be fun +to talk to a pretty woman," he discriminated, "but unreasonable to yearn +to talk to her as if your life hung in the balance." And in some +measure, too, it humiliated him: it was a confession of weakness, of +insufficiency to himself, of dependence for his contentment upon +another. He tried to stifle it; he tried to fix his mind on subjects +that would lead far from it. Every subject, all subjects, subjects the +most discrepant, seemed to possess one common property, that of leading +straight back to it. Then he said, "Well, if you can't stifle it, yield +to it. Go down into the garden--hunt her up--boldly engage her in +conversation." Assurance was the note of the man; but when he pictured +himself in the act of "boldly engaging her in conversation," his +assurance oozed away, and he was conscious of a thrice-humiliating +shyness. Why? What _was_ there in the woman that should turn a brave man +shy? + +However, the stars were working for him. That afternoon, coming home +from a stroll among the olives, he met her face to face at the gate of +the garden, whither she had arrived from the direction of the village. +Having made his bow, which she accepted with a smile, he could do no +less than open the gate for her; and as their ways must thence lie +together, up the long ilex-shaded avenue to the castle, it would be an +awkward affectation not to speak. And yet (he ground his teeth at having +to admit it) his heart had begun to pound so violently, (not from +emotion, he told himself,--from a mere ridiculous sort of nervous +excitement: what _was_ there in the woman that should excite a sane man +like that?) he was afraid to trust his voice, lest it should quaver and +betray him. But fortunately this pounding of the heart lasted only a few +seconds. The short business of getting the gate open, and of closing it +afterwards, gave it time to pass. So that now, as they set forwards +towards the house, he was able to look her in the eye, and to observe, +with impressiveness, that it was a fine day. + +She had accepted his bow with a smile, amiable and unembarrassed; and at +this, in quite the most unembarrassed manner, smiling again,--perhaps +with just the faintest, just the gentlest shade of irony, and with just +the slightest quizzical upward tremor of the eyebrows,--"Isn't it a day +rather typical of the land and season?" she inquired. + +It was the first step that had cost. John's assurance was coming swiftly +back. Her own air of perfect ease in the circumstances very likely +accelerated it. "Yes," he answered her. "But surely that isn't a reason +for begrudging it a word of praise?" + +By this he was lucky enough to provoke a laugh, a little light gay +trill, sudden and brief like three notes on a flute. + +"No," she admitted. "You are right. The day deserves the best we can say +of it." + +"Her voice," thought John, availing himself of a phrase that had struck +him in a book he had lately read, "her voice is like ivory and white +velvet." And the touch, never so light, of a foreign accent with which +she spoke, rendered her English piquant and pretty,--gave to each +syllable a crisp little clean-cut outline. They sauntered on for a +minute or two in silence, with half the width of the road-way between +them, the shaded road-way, where the earth showed purple through a thin +green veil of mosses, and where irregular shafts of sunlight, here and +there, turned purple and green to red and gold. The warm air, woven of +garden-fragrances, hung round them palpable, like some infinitely +subtile fabric. And of course blackbirds were calling, blackcaps and +thrushes singing, in all the leafy galleries overhead. A fine day +indeed, mused John, and indeed worthy of the best that they could say. +His nervousness, his excitement, had entirely left him, his assurance +had come completely back; and with it had come a curious deep +satisfaction, a feeling that for the moment at any rate the world left +nothing to be wished for, that the cup of his desire was full. He didn't +even, now that he might do so, wish to talk to her. To walk with her was +enough,--to enjoy her companionship in silence. Yes, that was +it--companionship. He caught at the word. "That is what I have been +unconsciously needing all along. I flattered myself that I was +luxuriating in the very absence of it. But man is a gregarious animal, +and I was deceived." So he could refer the effect of her propinquity to +the mere gregarious instinct, not suspecting that a more powerful +instinct was already awake. Anyhow, his sense of that propinquity,--his +consciousness of her, gracefully moving beside him in the sweet weather, +while her summery garments fluttered, and some strange, faint, elusive +perfume was shaken from them,--filled him with a satisfaction that for +the moment seemed ultimate. He had no wish to talk. Their progress side +by side was a conversation without words. They were getting to know each +other, they were breaking the ice. Each step they took was as good as a +spoken sentence, was a mutual experience, drawing them closer, helping +to an understanding. They walked slowly, as by a tacit agreement. + +Silence, however, couldn't in the nature of things last for ever. It was +she who presently broke it. + +"I owe you," she said, in her ivory voice, with her clean-cut +enunciation, "a debt of thanks." And still again she smiled, as she +looked over towards him, her dark eyes glowing, her dark hair richly +drooping, in the shadow of a big hat of wine-coloured straw. + +John's eyes were at a loss. "Oh--?" he wondered. + +"For a pleasure given me by our friend Annunziata," she explained. "This +morning she told me a most interesting parable about Death. And she +mentioned that it was you who had suggested to her to tell it me." + +"Oh," said John, laughing, while the pink of his skin deepened a shade. +"She mentioned that, did she? I'm glad if you don't feel that I took a +good deal upon myself. But she had just told the same parable to me, and +it seemed a pity it shouldn't have a larger audience." + +Then, after a few more paces taken again in silence, "What a marvellous +little person she is, Annunziata!" said Maria Dolores. + +"She's to a marvellous degree the right product of her milieu," said +John. + +Maria Dolores did not speak, but her eyes questioned, "Yes? How do you +mean?" + +"I mean that she's a true child of the presbytery," he replied, "and at +the same time a true child of this Italy, where Paganism has never +perfectly died. She has been carefully instructed in her catechism, and +she has fed upon pious legends, she has breathed an ecclesiastical +atmosphere, until the things of the Church have become a part of her +very bone. She sees everything in relation to them, translates +everything in terms of them. But at the same time odd streaks of +Paganism survive in her. They survive a little--don't they?--in all +Italians. Wherever she goes her eye reads omens. She will cast your +fortune for you with olive-stones. The woods are peopled for her by +fauns and dryads. When she takes her walks abroad, I've no doubt, she +catches glimpses of Proteus rising from the lake, and hears old Triton +blow his wreathed horn." + +Maria Dolores looked interested. + +"Yes," she said, slowly, thoughtfully, and meditated for an interval. +By-and-by, "You know," she recommenced, "she's a sort of little person +about whom one can't help feeling rather frightened." And her eyes +looked to his for sympathetic understanding. + +But his were interrogative. "No? Why should one feel frightened about +her?" + +"Oh," said Maria Dolores, with a movement, "it isn't exactly easy to +tell why. One's fears are vague. But--well, for one thing, she thinks so +much about Death. Death and what comes after,--they interest her so +much. It doesn't seem natural, it makes one uneasy. And then she's so +delicate-looking. Sometimes she's almost transparent. In every way she +is too serious. She uses her mind too much, and her body too little. She +ought to have more of the gaiety of childhood, she ought to have other +children to romp with. She's too much like a disembodied spirit. It all +alarms one." + +John, as she spoke, frowned, pondering. When she had done, his frown +cleared, he shook his head. + +"I don't think it need," he said. "Her delicacy, her frailness, have +never struck me as indicating weakness,--they seem simply the proper +physical accompaniments of her crystalline little soul,--she's made of a +fine and delicate clay. She thinks about Death, it is true, but not in a +morbid way,--and that's a part of her ecclesiastical tradition; and she +thinks quite as much about life,--she thinks about everything. I agree +with you, it's a pity she has no other children. But she isn't by any +means deficient in the instincts of childhood. She can enjoy a chocolate +cigar, for instance, as well as another; and as for marchpane, I have +her own word that she adores it." + +Maria Dolores gave another light trill of laughter. + +"Yes, I'm aware of her passion for marchpane. She confided it to me this +morning. And as, in reply to her questions, I admitted that I rather +liked it myself, she very generously offered to bring me some this +afternoon,--which, to be sure, an hour ago, she did." + +She laughed again, and John laughed too. + +"All the same" she insisted, "I can't help that feeling of uneasiness +about her. Sometimes, when I look at her, I can almost see her wings. +What will be her future, if she grows up? One would rather not think of +her as married to some poor Italian, and having to give herself to the +prosaic sort of existence that would mean." + +"The sordid sort of existence," augmented John. "No, one would decidedly +rather not. But she will never marry. She will enter religion. Her +uncle has it all planned out. He destines her for the Servites." + +"Oh? The Servites--the Mantellate? I am glad of that," exclaimed Maria +Dolores. "It is a most beautiful order. They have an especial devotion +to Our Lady of Sorrows." + +"Yes," said John, and remembered it was for Our Lady of Sorrows that she +who spoke was named. + +Slow though their march had been, by this time they had come to the end +of the avenue, and were in the wide circular sweep before the castle. +They stopped here, and stood looking off over the garden, with its +sombre cypresses and bright beds of geranium, down upon the valley, dim +and luminous in a mist of gold. Great, heavy, fantastic-shaped clouds, +pearl-white with pearl-grey shadows, piled themselves up against the +scintillant dark blue of the sky. In and out among the rose-trees near +at hand, where the sun was hottest, heavily flew, with a loud +bourdonnement, the cockchafers promised by Annunziata,--big, blundering, +clumsy, the scorn of their light-winged and business-like competitors, +the bees. Lizards lay immobile as lizards cast in bronze, only their +little glittering, watchful pin-heads of eyes giving sign of life. And +of course the blackcaps never for a moment left off singing. + +They stood side by side, within a yard of each other, in silent +contemplation of these things, during I don't know how many long and, +for John, delicious seconds. Yes, he owned it to himself; it was +delicious to feel her standing there beside him, in silent communion +with him, contemplating the same things, enjoying the same +pleasantnesses. Companionship--companionship: it was what he had been +unconsciously needing all along! ... At last she turned, and, +withdrawing her eyes lingeringly from the landscape, looked into his, +with a smile. She did not speak, but her smile said, just as explicitly +as her lips could have done, "What a scene of beauty!" + +And John responded aloud, with fervour, "Indeed, indeed it is." + +"And so romantic," she added. "It is like a scene out of some old high +musical romance." + +"The most romantic scene I know," said he. "All my life I have thought +so." + +"Oh?" said she, looking surprise. "Have you known it all your life?" + +"Well,--very nearly," said he, with half a laugh. "I saw it first when I +was ten. Then for long years I lost it,--and only recovered it, by +accident, a month ago." + +Her face showed her interest. "Oh? How was that? How did it happen?" + +"When I was ten," John recounted, half laughing again, "I was travelling +with my father, and, among the many places we visited, one seemed to me +a very vision of romance made real. A vast and stately castle, in a +garden, in a valley, with splendid halls and chambers, and countless +beautiful pictures of women. All my life I remembered it, dreamed of it, +longed to see it again. But I hadn't a notion where it was, save vaguely +that it was somewhere in Italy; and, my poor father being dead, there +was no one I could ask. Then, wandering in these parts a month ago, I +stumbled upon it, and recognized it. Though shrunken a good deal in +size, to be sure, it was still recognizable, and as romantic as ever." + +Maria Dolores listened pensively. When he had reached his period, her +eyes lighted up. "What a charming adventure!" she said. "And so, for +you, besides its general romance, the place has a personal one, all your +own. I, too, have known it for long years, but only from photographs. I +suppose I should never have seen the real thing, except for a friend of +mine coming to live here." + +"I wonder," said John, "that the people who own it never live here." + +"The Prince of Zelt-Neuminster?" said she. "No,--he doesn't like the +Italian Government. Since Lombardy passed from Austria to Italy, the +family have entirely given up staying at Sant' Alessina." + +"In those circumstances," said John, "practical-minded people, I should +think, would get rid of the place." + +"Oh," said she, laughing, "the Prince, in some ways, is practical-minded +enough. He has this great collection of Italian paintings, which, by +Italian law, he mayn't remove from Italian soil; and if he were to get +rid of Sant' Alessina, where could he house them? In other ways, though, +he is perhaps not so practical. He is one of those Utopians who believe +that the present Kingdom of Italy must perforce before long make +shipwreck; and I think he holds on to Sant' Alessina in the dream of +coming here in triumph, and grandly celebrating that event." + +"I see," said John, nodding. "That is a beautiful ideal." + +"Good-bye," said she, flashing a last quick smile into his eyes; and she +moved away, down a garden path, towards the pavilion beyond the clock. + + + + +III + + +And now, I should have imagined, for a single session, (and that an +initial one), he had had enough. I should have expected him to spend the +remainder of his day, a full man, in thankful tranquillity, in agreeable +retrospective rumination. But no. Indulgence, it soon appeared, had but +whetted his appetite. After a quarter-hour of walking about the garden, +during which his jumble of sensations and impressions,--her soft-glowing +eyes, her soft-drooping hair, under her wine-red hat; her slender +figure, in its fluttering summery muslin, and the faint, faint perfume +(like a far-away memory of rose-leaves) that hovered near her; her +smile, and the curves, when she smiled, of her rose-red lips, and the +gleam of her snow-white teeth; her laugh, her voice, her ivory voice; +her pretty crisp-cut English; her appreciation of Annunziata, her +disquieting presentiments concerning her; and his deep satisfaction in +her propinquity, her "companionship;" and the long shaded fragrant +avenue, and the bird-songs, and the gentle weather,--after a +quarter-hour of anything but thankful tranquillity, a quarter-hour of +unaccountable excitement and exaltation, during which his jumble of +impressions and sensations settled themselves, from ebullition, into +some sort of quiescence, he began to grow restlessly aware that, so far +from having had enough, he had had just a sufficient taste to make him +hunger keenly for more and more. It was ridiculous, but he couldn't help +it. And as there seemed no manner of likelihood that his hunger would +soon be fed, it was trying. At the best, he could not reasonably hope to +see her again before to-morrow; and even then--? What ghost of a reason +had he to hope that even then he could renew their conversation? He had +owed that to-day to the bare hazard of their ways lying together. +To-morrow, very likely, at the best, he might get a bow and a smile. +Very likely it might be days before he should again have anything +approaching a real talk with her. And what--a new consideration, that +struck a sudden terror to his soul--what if her visit to Frau Brandt +was to be a short one? What if to-morrow even, she were to depart? "Her +very ease in talking with me, a stranger, may quite well have been due +to the fact that she knew she would never see me again," he argued. ... +So he was working himself into a fine state of despondency, and the +world was rapidly being resolved into dust and ashes, when Heaven sent +him a diversion. Nay, indeed, Heaven sent him two diversions. + + + + +IV + + +There was a sound of wheels on gravel, of horses' hoofs on stone, and +Lady Blanchemain's great high-swung barouche, rolling superbly forth +from the avenue, drew up before the Castle, Lady Blanchemain +herself, big and soft and sumptuous in silks and laces, under a +much-befurbelowed, much-befringed, lavender-hued silk sunshade, +occupying the seat of honour. John hastened across the garden, hat in +hand, to welcome her. + +"Jump in," she commanded, with a smile, and an imperious sweep of the +arm. "I have come to take you for a drive." + +The footman (proud man) held open the door, and John jumped in. But just +as the footman (with an air) had closed the door behind him, and before +the coachman had touched up his horses, there came a rhythm of running +footsteps, and the voice of Annunziata called, insistently, "Prospero! +Prospero!" Then, all out of breath, her pale cheeks pink, her curls in +disarray, Annunziata arrived beside the carriage, and, no wise abashed +by that magnificent equipage, nor by the magnificent old lady throning +in it, (no wise abashed, but, from the roundness of her eyes, a good +deal surprised and vastly curious), she explained, gasping, "A +telegram," and held up to John a straw-coloured envelope. + +"Thank you," said he, taking it, and waving a friendly hand. "But you +should not run so fast," he admonished her, with concern. + +Whereupon the carriage drove off, Annunziata standing and watching, +always round-eyed, till it was out of sight. + +"What an interesting-looking child!" said Lady Blanchemain. + +"Yes," said John. "I should have liked to introduce her to you." + +"Who is she?" asked the lady. + +"She's the private detective I told you of. She's my affinity. She's the +young limb o' mischief for whom I ravaged your stores of marchpane. +She's the niece of the parroco." + +"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain. "Why does she call you--what was +it?--Prospero?" + +"She's an optimist. She's a bird of good omen," answered John. "She's +satisfied herself, by consulting an oracle, that Fortune has favours up +her sleeve for me. She encouragingly anticipates them by calling me +Prospero before the fact." + +Lady Blanchemain softly laughed. "That's very nice of her, and very +wise. Aren't you going to read your telegram?" + +"I didn't know whether you'd permit," said John. + +"Oh pray," said she, with a gesture. + +The carriage by this time had left the garden, and the coachman had +turned his horses' heads northwards, away from the lake, towards the +Alps, where their snowy summits, attenuated by the sun and the distance +and the blue air, looked like vapours rising into the sky. + +John tore open his envelope, read, frowned, and uttered a half-stifled +ejaculation,--something that sounded rather like "I say!" and vaguely +like "By Jove!" + +"No bad news, I hope?" inquired the lady, sympathetic, and trying to +speak as if she didn't know what curiosity meant. + +"Excellent news, on the contrary," said John, "but a bolt from the +blue." And he offered her the paper. + +"Am on my way to Rome," she read aloud. "Could I come to you for a day? +Winthorpe, Hotel Cavour, Milan."--"Winthorpe?" She pursed her lips, as +one tasting something. "I don't know the name. Who is he? What's his +County?" she demanded,--she, who carried the County Families in her +head. + +John chuckled. "He hasn't got a County--he's only an American," he said, +pronouncing that genial British formula with intention. + +"Oh," sighed Lady Blanchemain, her expectations dashed; and drawing in +her skirts, she sank a little deeper into her corner. + +"He hasn't got a County," repeated John. "But he's far and away the +greatest swell I know." + +"A swell? An American?" Lady Blanchemain pressed down her lips, and gave +a movement to her shoulders. + +"An aristocrat, a patrician," said John. + +"Fudge!" said Lady Blanchemain. "Americans and Australians--they're +anything you like, but they're never that." + +John laughed. "I adore," he said, "our light and airy British way of +tarring Americans and Australians with the same brush,--the descendants +of transported convicts and the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers!" + +"Is your Winthorpe man a descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers?" asked Lady +Blanchemain, dryly. + +"Indeed he is," said John. "He's descended from ten separate individuals +who made the first voyage in the _Mayflower_. And he holds, by-the-by, +intact, the lands that were ceded to his family by the Indians the year +after. That ought to recommend him to your Ladyship,--an unbroken tenure +of nearly three hundred years." + +"Old acres," her ladyship admitted, cautiously, "always make for +respectability." + +"Besides," John carelessly threw out, "he's a baronet." + +Lady Blanchemain sat up. "A baronet?" she said. "An American?" + +"Alas, yes," said John, "a mere American. And one of the earliest +creations,--by James the First, no less. His patent dates from 1612. But +he doesn't use the title. He regards it, he pretends, as merged in a +higher dignity." + +"What higher dignity?" asked the lady, frowning. + +"That of an American citizen, he says," chuckled John. + +"Brrr!" she breathed, impatient. + +"And moreover," John gaily continued, "besides being descended from the +Pilgrim Fathers, he's descended in other lines from half the peerage of +Seventeenth Century England. And to top up with, if you please, he's +descended from Alfred the Great. He's only an American, but he can show +a clear descent bang down from Alfred the Great! I think the most +exquisite, the most subtle and delicate pleasure I have ever experienced +has been to see English people, people of yesterday, cheerfully +patronizing him." + +"You've enlarged my sphere of knowledge," said Lady Blanchemain, grimly. +"I had never known that there was blood in America. Does this prodigious +personage talk through his nose?" + +"Worse luck, no," said John. "I wish he did--a little--just enough to +smack of his soil, to possess local colour. No, he talks for all the +world like you or me,--which exposes him to compliments in England. 'An +American? Really?' our tactful people cry, when he avows his nationality +'Upon my word, I should never have suspected it.'" + +"I suppose, with all the rest, he's rich?" asked Lady Blanchemain. + +"Immensely," assented John. "Speaking of Fortune and her favours, she's +withheld none from him." + +"Then he's good-looking, too?" + +"He looks like a Man," said John. + +"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain, moving. "If _I_ had received a wire from a +creature of such proportions, I've a feeling I'd answer it." + +"I've a very similar feeling myself," laughed John. "When we turn back, +if you think your coachman can be persuaded to stop at the telegraph +office in the village, I'll give my feeling effect." + +"I think we might turn back now," said Lady Blanchemain. "It's getting +rather gloomy here." She looked round, with a little shudder, and then +gave the necessary order. The valley had narrowed to what was scarcely +more than a defile between two dark and rugged hillsides, +--pine-covered hillsides that shut out the sun, smiting the air with +chill and shadow, and turning the Rampio, whose brawl seemed somehow to +increase the chill, turning the sparkling, sportive Rampio to the colour +of slate. "It puts one in mind of brigands," she said, with another +little shudder. But though the air was chilly, it was wonderfully, +keenly fragrant with the incense of the pines. + +"Well," she asked, when they were facing homewards, "and your woman? +What of her?" + +"Nothing," said John. "Or, anyhow, very little." (It would be extremely +pleasant, he felt suddenly, to talk of her; but at the same time he felt +an extreme reluctance to let his pleasure be seen.) + +"But your private detective?" said Lady Blanchemain. "Weren't her +investigations fruitful?" + +"Not very," said he. "She learnt little beyond her name and age." + +"And what _is_ her name?" asked the lady. + +"Her name is Maria Dolores," answered John, (and he experienced a secret +joy, strange to him, in pronouncing it). + +"Maria Dolores?" said Lady Blanchemain, (and he experienced a secret joy +in hearing it). "Maria Dolores--what?" + +"My detective didn't discover her Pagan name," said John. + +"So that you are still in doubt whether she's the daughter of a miller?" +Lady Blanchemain raised her eyebrows. + +"Oh, no: I think she's a miller's daughter safely enough," said he. "But +she's an elaborately chiselled and highly polished one. Her voice is +like ivory and white velvet; and to hear her speak English is a +revelation of the hidden beauties of that language." + +"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain, eyeing him. "So you've advanced to the +point of talking with her?" + +"Well," answered John, weighing his words, "I don't know whether I can +quite say that. But accident threw us together for a minute or two this +afternoon, and we could scarcely do less, in civility, than exchange the +time of day." + +"And are you in love with her?" asked Lady Blanchemain. + +"I wonder," said he. "What do _you_ think? Is it possible for a man to +be in love with a woman he's seen only half a dozen times all told, and +spoken with never longer than a minute or two at a stretch?" + +"_Was_ it only a minute or two--_really_?" asked Lady Blanchemain, +wooing his confidence with a glance. + +"No," said John. "It was probably ten minutes, possibly fifteen. But +they passed so quickly, it's really nearer the truth to describe them as +one or two." + +Lady Blanchemain shifted her sunshade, and screwed herself half round, +so as to face him, her soft old eyes full of smiling scrutiny and +suspicion. + +"I never can tell whether or not you're serious," she complained. "If +you _are_ serious,--well, _à quand le mariage_?" + +"The marriage?" cried John. "How could I marry her? Such a thing's out +of all question. + +"Why?" asked she. + +"A miller's daughter!" said John. "Would you have me marry the daughter +of a miller?" + +"You said yourself yesterday--" the lady reminded him. + +"Ah, yes," said he. "But night brings counsel." + +"If she's well educated," said Lady Blanchemain, "if she's well-bred, +what does it matter about her father? Though a nobody in Austria, where +nothing counts but quarterings, he's probably what we'd call a gentleman +in England. Suppose he's a barrister? Or the editor of a newspaper? +Or--" + +She paused, thoughtful-eyed, to think of respectable professions. At +last she gave up the effort. + +"Well, anything decent," she concluded, "so long as he had plenty of +money." + +"Ah," said John, sadly, and with perhaps mock humility. "If he had +plenty of money, he'd never consent to his daughter marrying a son of +poverty like me." + +"Pooh! For a title?" cried Lady Blanchemain. "Besides, you have +prospects. Isn't your name Prospero?" + +"I have precious little faith in oracles," said John. + +"I advise you to have more," said Lady Blanchemain, with a smile that +seemed occult. + +And now her carriage entered the village, and she put him down at the +telegraph office. + +"Don't wait," said John. "The walk from here to the Castle is nothing, +and it would take you out of your way." + +"Well, good-bye, then," said she. "And cultivate more faith in +oracles--when they're auspicious." + +Alone, she drew from some recondite fold of her many draperies a letter, +an unsealed letter, which she opened, spread out, and proceeded to read. +It was a long letter in her ladyship's own handsome, high-bred, +old-fashioned handwriting; and it was addressed to Messrs. Farrow, +Bernscot, and Tisdale, Solicitors, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London. She +read it twice through, and at last (with a smile that seemed occult) +restored it to its envelope. "Stop at the Post Office," she said to her +coachman, as they entered Roccadoro; and to her footman, giving him the +letter, "Have that registered, please." + +Annunziata lay in wait for John in the garden. She ran up, and seized +him by the arm. Then, skipping beside him, as he walked on, "Who was +she? Where did she come from? Where did she take you? Whom was the +telegram from?" she demanded in a breath, nestling her curls against his +coat-sleeve. + +"_Piano, piano_," remonstrated John. "One question at a time. Now, begin +again." + +"Whom was the telegram from?" she obeyed, beginning at the end. + +"Ah," said he, "the telegram was from _my_ friend Prospero. He's coming +here to-morrow. We must ask your uncle whether he can give him a bed." + +"And the old lady?" pursued Annunziata. "Who was she?" + +"The old lady was my fairy godmother," said John, building better than +he knew. + + + + +PART FOURTH + + + + +I + + +Pacing together backwards and forwards, as they talked, John and his +friend Winthorpe presented a striking and perhaps interesting contrast. +John was tall, but Winthorpe seemed a good deal taller--though, (trifles +in these matters looming so large), had actual measurements been taken, +I dare say half an inch would have covered the difference. John was lean +and sinewy, but rounded off at the joints, and of a pliant carriage, so +that it never occurred to you to think of him as _thin_. Winthorpe's +spare figure, spare and angular, with its greater height, held +unswervingly to the plane of the perpendicular, appeared absolutely to +be constructed of nothing but bone and tendon. John's head, with its +yellow hair, its curly beard verging towards red, its pink skin, and +blue eyes full of laughter, might have served a painter as a model for +the head of Mirth. Winthorpe's,--with brown hair cropped close, and +showing the white of the scalp; clean-shaven, but of a steely tint where +the razor had passed; with a marked jaw-bone and a salient square chin; +with a high-bridged determined nose, and a white forehead rising +vertical over thick black eyebrows, and rather deep-set grey +eyes,--well, clap a steeple-crowned hat upon it, and you could have +posed him for one of his own Puritan ancestors. The very clothes of the +men carried on their unlikeness,--John's loose blue flannels and red +sailor's knot, careless-seeming, but smart in their effect, and showing +him careful in a fashion of his own; Winthorpe's black tie and dark +tweeds, as correct as Savile Row could turn them out, yet somehow, by +the way he wore them, proclaiming him immediately a man who never gave +two thoughts to his dress. If, however, Winthorpe's face was the face of +a Puritan, it was the face of a Puritan with a sense of humour--the +lines about the mouth were clearly the footprints of smiles. It seemed +the face of a sensitive Puritan, as well, and (maugre that high-bridged +nose) of a gentle--the light in his clear grey eyes was a kindly and +gentle light. After all, Governor Bradford, as his writings +show,--though he tried hard, perhaps, not to let them show it--was a +Puritan with a sense of humour; John Alden and Priscilla were surely +sensitive and gentle: and Winthorpe was descended from Governor +Bradford, and from John Alden and Priscilla. The two friends walked +backwards and forwards in the great open space before the Castle, and +talked. They had not met for nearly two years, and had plenty to talk +about. + + + + +II + + +Seated at one of the open windows of the pavilion beyond the clock, +Maria Dolores (in a pale green confection of I know not what airy, filmy +tissue) looked down, and somewhat vaguely watched them,--herself +concealed by the netted curtain, which, according to Italian usage, was +hung across the casement, to mitigate the heat and shut out insects. She +watched them at first vaguely, and only from time to time, for the rest +going on with some needlework she had in her lap. But by-and-by she +dropped her needlework altogether, and her watching became continuous +and absorbed. + +"What a singular-looking man!" she thought, studying Winthorpe. "What an +ascetic-looking man! He looks like an early Christian martyr. He looks +like a priest. I believe he _is_ a priest. English priests," she +remembered, "when they travel, often dress as laymen. Yes, he is a +priest, and a terribly austere one--I shouldn't like to go to him for +confession. But in spite of his austerity, he seems to be +extraordinarily happy about something just at present. That light in his +eyes,--it is almost a light of ecstasy. It is a light I have never seen +in any eyes, save those of priests and nuns." + +Winthorpe, while that "almost ecstatic" light shone in his eyes, had +been speaking. + +Now, as he paused, John, with a glance of gay astonishment, halted, and +turned so as to face him. John's lips moved, and it was perfectly plain +that he was exclaiming, delightedly, "Really? _Really_?" + +Winthorpe joyously nodded: whereupon John held out both hands, got hold +of his friend's, and, his pink face jubilant, shook them with tremendous +heartiness. + +"The priest has received advancement--he is probably to be made a +bishop," inferred Maria Dolores; "and Signor Prospero is congratulating +him." + +The men resumed their walk; but for quite a minute John kept his hand on +Winthorpe's shoulder, and again and again gently patted it, murmuring, +"I am so glad, so immensely glad." Maria Dolores was quite sure that +this was what he murmured, for, though no word could reach her, John's +beaming face spoke louder than his voice. + +At last John let his hand drop, and, eyebrows raised a little, asked a +question. + +"But how did it happen? But tell me all about it," was what he seemed to +say. + +And Winthorpe (always with something of that ecstatic light in his eyes) +proceeded to answer. But it was a longish story, and lasted through half +a dozen of their forward and backward ambulations. Apparently, +furthermore, it was a story which, as it developed, became less and less +agreeable to the mind of John; for his face, at first all awake with +interest, all aglow with pleasure, gradually sobered, gradually +darkened, took on a frown, expressed dissent, expressed disapprobation, +till, finally, with an impatient movement, he interrupted, and +began--speaking rapidly, heatedly--to protest, to remonstrate. + +"Ah," thought Maria Dolores, "the priest is to be made a bishop, sure +enough,--but a missionary bishop. It isn't for nothing that he looks +like an early Christian martyr. He is going to some outlandish, savage +part of the world, where he will be murdered by the natives, or die of +fever or loneliness. He is a man who has listened to the Counsels of +Perfection. But his unascetic friend Prospero (one would say June +remonstrating with December) can't bring himself to like it." + +John remonstrated, protested, argued. Winthorpe, calmly, smilingly, +restated his purpose and his motives. John pleaded, implored, appealed +(so the watcher read his gesture) to earth, to heaven. Winthorpe took +his arm, and calmly, smilingly, tried to soothe, tried to convince him. +John drew his arm free, and, employing it to add force and +persuasiveness to his speech, renewed his arguments, pointed out how +unnecessary, inhuman, impossible the whole thing was. "It's monstrous. +It's against all nature. There's no _reason_ in it. What does it _rhyme_ +with? It's wilfully going out of your way to seek, to create, +wretchedness. My mind simply refuses to accept it." It was as if Maria +Dolores could hear the words. But Winthorpe, calm and smiling, would not +be moved. John shook his head, muttered, shrugged his shoulders, threw +up his hands, muttered again. "Was ever such pig-headed obstinacy! Was +ever such arbitrary, voluntary blindness! I give you up, for a perverse, +a triple-pated madman!" And so, John muttering and frowning, Winthorpe +serenely smiling, reiterating, they passed round the corner of the +Castle buildings, and were lost to Maria Dolores' view. + + + + +III + + +That afternoon, seated on the moss, under a tall eucalyptus tree near to +Frau Brandt's pavilion, Maria Dolores received a visit from Annunziata. + +Annunziata's pale little face was paler, her big grave eyes were graver, +even than their wont. She nodded her head, slowly, portentously; and her +glance was heavy with significance. + +Maria Dolores smiled. "What is the matter?" she cheerfully inquired. + +"Ah," sighed Annunziata, deeply, with another portentous head-shake, "I +wish I knew." + +Maria Dolores laughed. "Sit down," she suggested, making room beside her +on the moss, "and try to think." + +Annunziata sat down, curled herself up. "Something has happened to +Prospero," she said, _de profundis_. + +"Oh?" asked Maria Dolores. "What?" She seemed heartlessly cheerful, and +even rather amused. + +"Ah," sighed Annunziata, "that is what I wish I knew. He has had a +friend to pass the day with him." + +"Yes?" said Maria Dolores. "I expect I saw his friend walking with him +this morning?" + +"_Già _," said Annunziata. "They have been walking about all day. _His_ +friend Prospero he calls him. But he doesn't look very prosperous. He +looks like a slate-pencil. He is long and thin, and dark and cold, and +hard, just like a slate-pencil. He would not stay the night, though we +had a bed prepared for him. He is going to Rome, and Prospero has driven +him to the railway station at Cortello. I hate him," wound up +Annunziata, simply. + +"Mercy!" exclaimed Maria Dolores, opening her eyes. "Why do you hate +him?" + +"Because he must have said or done something very unkind to Prospero," +answered Annunziata. "Oh, you should see him. He is so sad--so sad and +so angry. He keeps scowling, and shaking his head, and saying things in +English, which I cannot understand, but I am sure they are sad things +and angry things. And he would not eat any dinner,--no, not that much," +(Annunziata measured off an inch on her finger), "he who always eats a +great deal,--_eh, ma molto, molto_," and, separating her hands, she +measured off something like twenty inches in the air. + +Maria Dolores couldn't help laughing a little at this. But afterwards +she said, on a key consolatory, "Ah, well, he has gone away now, so let +us hope your friend Prospero will promptly recover his accustomed +appetite." + +"Yes," said Annunziata, "I hope so. But oh, that old slate-pencil man, +how I hate him! I would like to--_uhhh!_" She clenched her little white +fist, and shook it, threateningly, vehemently, while her eyes fiercely +flashed. ... Next instant, however, her mien entirely changed. Like a +light extinguished, all the fierceness went out of her face, making way +for what seemed pain and terror. "There," she cried, pain and terror in +her voice, "I have offended God. Oh, I am so sorry, so sorry. My sin, my +sin, my sin," she murmured, bowing her head, and thrice striking her +breast. + +"I take back every word I said. I do not hate him. I would not hurt +him--I would not even stick a pin in him--if I had him at my mercy. +No--I would do anything I could to help him. I would give him anything I +had that he could want. I would give him my coral rosary. I would give +him"--she hesitated, struggled, and at last, drawing a deep breath, +gritting her teeth, in supreme renunciation--"yes, I would give him my +tame kid," she forced herself to pronounce, with a kind of desperate +firmness. "But see," she wailed, her little white brow a mesh of painful +wrinkles, "it is all no good. God is still angry. Oh, what shall I do?" +And, to the surprise and distress of Maria Dolores, she burst into a +sudden passion of tears, sobbing, sobbing, with that abandonment of +grief which only children know. + +"My dear, my dear," exclaimed Maria Dolores, drawing her to her. "My +dearest, you mustn't cry like that. Dear little Annunziata. What is it? +Why do you cry so, dear one? Answer me. Tell me." + +But Annunziata only buried her face in Maria Dolores' sleeve, and +moaned, while long, tremulous convulsions shook her frail little body. +Maria Dolores put both arms about her, hugged her close, and laid her +cheek upon her hair. + +"Darling Annunziata, don't cry. Why should you cry so, dearest? God is +not angry with you. Why should you think that God is angry with you? God +loves you, darling. Everyone loves you. There, there--dearest--don't +cry. Sweet one, dear one." + +Transitions, with Annunziata, were sometimes inexplicably rapid. All at +once her sobbing ceased; she looked up, and smiled, smiled radiantly, +from a face that was wet and glistening with tears. "Thanks be to God," +she piously exulted; "God is not angry any more." + +"Of course He isn't," said Maria Dolores, tightening her hug, and +touching Annunziata's curls lightly with her lips. "But He was never +angry. What made you think that God was angry?" + +Annunziata's big eyes widened. "Didn't you notice?" she asked, in a +hushed voice, amazed. + +"No," wondered Maria Dolores. "What was there to notice?" + +"He made them draw a cloud over the sun," Annunziata whispered. "Didn't +you notice that when I said I would like to--when I said what I said +about that friend of Prospero's--just then they drew a cloud across the +sun? That is a sign that God is angry. The sun, you know, is the window +in Heaven through which God looks down on the world, and through which +the light of Heaven shines on the world. And when the window is open, we +feel happy and thankful, and wish to sing and laugh. But when we have +done something to make God angry with us, then He sends angels to draw +clouds over the window, so that we may be shut out of His sight, and the +light of Heaven may be shut off from us. And then we are lonely and +cold, and we could quarrel with anything, even with the pigs. God wishes +to show us how bad it would be always to be shut off from His sight. But +now they have drawn the cloud away, so God is not angry any more. I made +a good act of contrition, and He has forgiven me." + +Maria Dolores smiled, but under her smile there was a look of +seriousness, a look of concern. + +"My dear," she said smiling, and looking concerned, "you should try to +control your vivid little imagination. If every time a cloud crosses the +sun, you are going to assume the responsibility for it, and to fancy +that you have offended God, I'm afraid you'll have rather an agitated +life." + +"Oh, no; not _every_ time," exclaimed Annunziata, and she was manifestly +on the point of making a fine distinction, when abruptly the current of +her ideas was diverted. "Sh-h! There comes Prospero," she cried, +starting up. "I can see the top of his white hat above the rhododendron +bushes. He has driven his friend to Cortello, and come home. I must run +away, or he will see that I've been crying. Don't tell him," she begged, +putting her finger on her lips; and she set off running, towards the +presbytery, just as John stepped forth from behind the long hedge of +rhododendrons. + + + + +IV + + +John stepped forth from behind the rhododendrons, with a kind of +devil-may-care, loose, aimless gait, the brim of his Panama pulled +brigandishly down over one ear, his hands in the pockets of his coat, +his head bent, his brow creased, his eyes sombre, every line and fibre +of his person advertising him the prey of morose disgust. But when he +saw Maria Dolores, he hastily straightened up, unpocketed his hands, +took off his hat (giving it a flap that set the brim at a less truculent +angle), and smiled. And when, the instant after, he caught sight of the +flying form of Annunziata, his smile turned into a glance of wonder. + +"What is the matter with Annunziata? Why is she running with all her +legs like that?" he asked. + +Maria Dolores had the tiniest catch of laughter. "She is running away +from you," she answered. + +"From _me_?" marvelled John. "_Je suis donc un foudre de guerre?_ What +on earth is she running away from me for?" + +Maria Dolores smiled mysteriously. + +"Ah," she said, "she asked me not to tell you. I am in the delicate +position of confidante." + +"And therefore I hope you'll tell me with the less reluctance," said +John, urbanely unprincipled. "A confidante always betrays her confidence +to some one,--that's the part of the game that makes it worth while." + +Maria Dolores' smile deepened. + +"In that pale green frock, on that bank of dark-green moss, with her +complexion and her hair,--by Jove, how stunning she is!" thought John, +in a commotion. + +"Well," she said, "Annunziata ran away because she didn't want you to +see that she'd been crying." + +John raised his eyebrows, the blue eyes under them becoming expressive +of dismay. + +"Crying?" he echoed. "The poor little kiddie! What had she been crying +about!" + +"That is a long story, and involves some of her peculiar theological +tenets," said Maria Dolores. "But, in a single word, about your +friend." + +John's eyebrows descended to their normal level, and drew together. + +"Crying about my friend? What friend?" he puzzled. + +"Your friend the priest--the man who has been passing the day here with +you," explained Maria Dolores. + +John gave a start, threw back his head, and eyed her with astonishment. + +"That is extraordinary," he exclaimed. + +"What?" asked she, lightly glancing up. + +"That you should call him my friend the priest," said John, wagging a +bewildered head. + +"Why? Isn't he a priest? He has all the air of one," said Maria Dolores. + +"No; he's an American millionaire," said John, succinctly. + +Maria Dolores moved in her place, and laughed. + +"Dear me!" she said, "I did strike wide of the mark. An American +millionaire should cultivate a less deceptive appearance. With that +thin, shaven face of his, and that look of an early Christian martyr in +his eyes, and the dark clothes he wears, wherever he goes he's sure to +be mistaken for a priest." + +"Yes," said John, with a kind of grimness; "that's what's extraordinary. +He comes of a long line of bigoted Protestants, he's a reincarnation of +some of his stern old Puritan forebears, and you find that he looks like +their pet abomination, a Romish priest. Well, you have a prophetic eye." + +Maria Dolores gazed up inquiringly. "A prophetic eye?" she questioned. + +"I merely mean," said John, with thaumaturgic airiness, "that the man is +on his way to Rome to study for the priesthood." And he gave a +thaumaturgic toss to his bearded chin. + +"Oh!" cried Maria Dolores, and leaned back against her eucalyptus tree, +and laughed again. + +John, however, dejectedly shook his head, and gloomed. + +"Laugh if you will," he said, "though it seems to me as far as possible +from a laughing matter, and I think Annunziata chose the better part +when she cried." + +"I beg your pardon," said Maria Dolores, perhaps a trifle stiffly. "I +was only laughing at the coincidence of my having supposed him to be a +priest, and then learning that, though he isn't, he is going to become +one. I was not laughing at the fact itself. Nor was it," she added, her +stiffness leaving her, and a little glimmer of amusement taking its +place, "that fact which made Annunziata cry." + +"I dare say not," responded John, "seeing that she couldn't possibly +have known it. But it might well have done so. It's enough to bring +tears to the eyes of a brazen image." He angrily jerked his shoulders. + +"What?" cried Maria Dolores, surprised, rebukeful. "That a man is to +become a holy priest?" + +"Oh, no," said John. "That fact alone, detached from special +circumstances, might be a subject for rejoicing. But the fact that this +particular man, _in_ his special circumstances, is to become a +priest--well, I simply have no words to express my feeling." He threw +out his arms, in a gesture of despair. "I'm simply sick with rage and +pity. I could gnash my teeth and rend my garments." + +"Mercy!" cried Maria Dolores, stirring. "What are the special +circumstances?" + +"Oh, it's a grisly history," said John. "It's a tale of the wanton, +ruthless, needless, purposeless sacrifice of two lives. It's his old +black icy Puritan blood. Winthorpe--that's his name--had for years been +a freethinker, far too intellectual and enlightened, and that sort of +thing, you know, to believe any such old wives' tale as the Christian +Religion. He and I used to have arguments, tremendous ones, in which, of +course, neither in the least shook the other. Darwin and Spencer, with a +dash of his native Emerson, were religion enough for him. Then this +morning he arrived here, and said, 'Congratulate me. A month ago I was +received into the Church.'" + +Maria Dolores looked up, animated, her dark eyes sparkling. + +"How splendid!" she said. + +"Yes," agreed John, "so I thought. 'Congratulate me,' he said. I should +think I did congratulate him,--with all my heart and soul. But then, +naturally, I asked him how it had happened, what had brought it to +pass." + +"Yes--?" prompted Maria Dolores, as he paused. + +"Well," said John, his face hardening, "he thereupon proceeded to tell +me in his quiet way, with his cool voice (it's like smooth-flowing cold +water), absolutely the most inhuman story I have ever had to keep my +patience and listen to." + +"What was the story?" asked Maria Dolores. + +"If you can credit such inhumanity, it was this," answered John. "It +seems that he fell in love--with a girl in Boston, where he lives. And +what's more, and worse, the girl fell in love with him. So there they +were, engaged. But she was a Catholic, and his state of unbelief was a +cause of great grief to her. So she pleaded with him, and persuaded, +till, merely to comfort her, and without the faintest suspicion that his +scepticism could be weakened, he promised to give the Catholic position +a thorough reconsideration, to read certain books, and to put himself +under instruction with a priest: which he did. Which he did, if you +please, with the result, to his own unutterable surprise, that one fine +day he woke up and discovered that he'd been convinced, that he +_believed_." + +"Yes?" said Maria Dolores, eagerly. "Yes--? And then? And the girl?" + +"Ah," said John, with a groan, "the girl That's the pity of it. That's +where his black old Puritan blood comes in. Blood? It isn't blood--it's +some fluid form of stone--it's flint dissolved in vinegar. The girl! +Mind you, she loved him, they were engaged to be married. Well, he went +to her, and said, 'I have been converted. I believe in the Christian +religion--your religion. But I can't believe a thing like that, and go +on living as I lived when I didn't believe it,--go on living as if it +weren't true, or didn't matter. It does matter--it matters +supremely--it's the only thing in the world that matters. I can't +believe it, and _marry_--marry, and live in tranquil indifference to it. +No, I must put aside the thought of marriage, the thought of personal +happiness. I must sell all I have and give it to the poor, take up my +cross and follow Him. I am going to Rome to study for the priesthood.' +Imagine," groaned John, stretching out his hands, "_imagine_ talking +like that to a woman you are supposed to love, to a woman who loves +you." And he wrathfully ground his heel into the earth. + +Maria Dolores looked serious. + +"After all, he had to obey his conscience," she said. "After all, he was +logical, he was consistent." + +"Oh, his conscience! Oh, consistency!" cried John, with an intolerant +fling of the body. "At bottom it's nothing better than common +self-indulgence, as I took the liberty of telling him to his face. It's +the ardour of the convert, acting upon that acid solution of flint which +takes the place of blood in his veins, and causing sour puritanical +impulses, which (like any other voluptuary) he immediately gives way to. +It's nothing better than unbridled passion. Conscience, indeed! Where +was his conscience when it came to _her_? Think of that poor girl--that +poor pale girl--who _loved_ him. Oh, Mother of Mercy!" + +He moved impatiently three steps to the left, three steps to the right, +beating the palm of one hand with the back of the other. + +"What did she do? How did she take it?" asked Maria Dolores. + +"What she ought to have done," said John, between his teeth, "was to +scratch his eyes out. What she did do, as he informed me with a seraphic +countenance, was not merely to approve of everything he said, but to +determine to do likewise. So, while he's on his way to Rome, to get +himself tonsured and becassocked, she's scrubbing the floors of an +Ursuline convent, as a novice. And there are two lives spoiled." He +shrugged his shoulders. + +"Oh, no, no," contended Maria Dolores, earnestly, shaking her head, "not +spoiled. On the contrary. It is sad, in a way, if you like, but it is +very beautiful, it is heroic. Their love must have been a very beautiful +love, that could lead them to such self-sacrifice. Two lives given to +God." + +"Can't people give their lives to God without ceasing to _live_?" cried +John. "If marriage is a sacrament, how can they better give their lives +to God than by living sanely and sweetly in Christian marriage? But +these people withdraw from life, renounce life, shirk and evade the life +that God had prepared for them and was demanding of them. It's as bad as +suicide. Besides, it implies such a totally perverted view of religion. +Religion surely is given to us to help us to _live_, to show us _how_ to +live, to enable us to meet the difficulties, emergencies, +responsibilities of life. But these people look upon their religion as +a mandate to turn their backs on the responsibilities of life, and +scuttle away. And as for _love_! Well, she no doubt did love, poor lady. +But Winthorpe! No. When a man loves he doesn't send his love into a +convent, and go to Rome to get himself becassocked." He gave his head a +nod of finality. + +"That, I fancy, is a question of temperament," said Maria Dolores. "Your +friend has the ascetic temperament. And it does not by any means follow +that he loves less because he resigns his love. What you call an inhuman +story seems to me a wonderfully noble one. I saw your friend this +morning, when he and you were walking together, and I said to myself, +'That man looks as if he had listened to the Counsels of Perfection. His +vocation shines through him.' I think you should reconcile yourself to +his accepting it." + +"Well," said John, on the tone of a man ready to change the subject, "I +owe him at least one good mark. His account of his 'heart-state' led me +to examine my own, and I discovered that I am in love myself,--which is +a useful thing to know." + +"Oh?" said Maria Dolores, with a little effect of reserve. + +"Yes," said John, nothing daunted, "though unlike his, mine is an +unreciprocated flame, and unavowed." + +"Ah?" said Maria Dolores, reserved indeed, but not without an undertone +of sympathy. + +"Yes," said John, playing with fire, and finding therein a heady mixture +of fearfulness and joy. "The woman I love doesn't dream I love her, and +dreams still less of loving me,--for which blessed circumstance may +Heaven make me truly thankful." + +The sentiment sounding unlikely, Maria Dolores raised doubtful eyes. +They shone into John's; his drank their light; and something violent +happened in his bosom. + +"Oh--?" she said. + +"Yes," said he, thinking what adorable little hands she had, as they lay +loosely clasped in her lap, thinking how warm they would be, and +fragrant; thinking too what fun it was, this playing with fire, how +perilous and exciting, and how egotistical he must seem to her, and how +nothing on earth should prevent him from continuing the play. "Yes," he +said, "it's a circumstance to be thankful for, because, like Winthorpe +himself, though for different reasons, I'm unable to contemplate +marriage." His voice sank sorrowfully, and he made a sorrowful movement. + +"Oh--?" said Maria Dolores, her sympathy becoming more explicit. + +"Winthorpe's too beastly puritanical--and I'm too beastly poor," said +he. + +"Oh," she murmured. Her eyes softened; her sympathy deepened to +compassion. + +"She must certainly put me down as the most complacent egotist in two +hemispheres, so to regale her with unsolicited information about +myself," thought John; "but surely it would need six hemispheres to +produce another pair of eyes as beautiful as hers."--"Yes," he said, "I +should be 'looking up' if I asked even a beggar-maid to marry me." + +Maria Dolores' beautiful eyes became thoughtful as well as +compassionate. + +"But men who are poor work and earn money," she said, on the tone that +young women adopt when the spirit moves them to preach to young men. And +when the spirit does move them to that, things may be looked upon as +having advanced an appreciable distance, the ball may be looked upon as +rolling. + +"So I've heard," said John, his head in the clouds. "It must be dull +business." + +Maria Dolores dimly smiled. "Do _you_ do no work?" she asked. + +"I've never had time," said John. "I've been too busy enjoying life." + +"Oh," said Maria Dolores, with the intonation of reproach. + +"Yes," said he, "enjoying the Humour, the Romance, the Beauty of +it,--and combine the three together, make a chord of 'em, you get the +Divinity. Or, to take a lower plane, the world's a stage, and life's the +drama. I could never leave off watching and listening long enough to do +any work." + +"But do you not wish to play a part in the drama, to be one of the +actors?" asked his gentle homilist. "Have you no ambition?" + +"Not an atom," he easily confessed. "The part of spectator seems to me +by far the pleasantest. To sit in the stalls and watch the incredible +jumble-show, the reason-defying topsy-turvydom of it, the gorgeous, +squalid, tearful, and mirthful pageantry, the reckless inconsequences, +the flagrant impossibilities; to watch the Devil ramping up and down +like a hungry lion, and to hear the young-eyed cherubim choiring from +the skies: what better entertainment could the heart of man desire?" + +"But are we here merely to be entertained?" she sweetly preached, while +John's blue eyes somewhat mischievously laughed, and he felt it hard +that he couldn't stop her rose-red mouth with kisses. "Aren't we here to +be, as the old-fashioned phrase goes, of use in the world? Besides, now +that you are in love, surely you will never sit down weakly, and say, 'I +am too poor to marry,' and so give up your love,--like your friend +Winthorpe indeed, but for ignoble instead of noble motives. Surely you +will set to work with determination, and earn money, and make it +possible to marry. Or else your love must be a very poor affair." And +her adorable little hands, as they lay ("like white lilies," thought +John) upon the pale-green fabric of her gown, unclasped themselves, +opened wide for an instant, showing the faint pink of their palms, then +lightly again interlaced their fingers. + +He laughed. "You are delicious," he said to her fervently, in silence. +"My love is all right," he said aloud. "I love her as much as it is +humanly possible to love. I love her with passion, with tenderness; with +worship, with longing; I love her with wonder; I love her with sighs, +with laughter. I love her with all I have and with all I am. And I owe +one to Winthorpe for having unwittingly opened my eyes to my condition. +But earning money? I've a notion it's difficult. What could I do?" + +"Have you no profession?" she asked. + +"Not the ghost of one," said he, with nonchalance. + +"But is there no profession that appeals to you--for which you feel that +you might have a taste?" Her dark eyes were very earnest. + +"Not the ghost of one," said he, dissembling his amusement. +"Professions--don't they all more or less involve sitting shut up in +stuffy offices, among pigeon-holes full of dusty and futile papers, +doing tiresome tasks for the greater glory of other people, like a slave +in the hold of a galley? No, if I'm to work, I must work at something +that will keep me above decks--something that will keep me out of +doors, in touch with the air and the earth. I might become an +agricultural labourer,--but that's not very munificently paid; or a +farmer,--but that would require perhaps more capital than I could +command, and anyhow the profits are uncertain. I've an uncle who's a bit +of a farmer, and year in, year out, I believe he makes a loss. 'Well, +what's left? ... Ah, a gardener. I don't think I should half mind being +a gardener." + +Maria Dolores looked as if she weren't sure whether or not to take him +seriously. + +"A gardener? That's not very munificently paid either, is it?" she +suggested, trying her ground. + +"Alas, I fear not," sighed John. Then he made a grave face. "But would +you have me entirely mercenary? Money isn't everything here below." + +Maria Dolores smiled. She saw that for the moment at least he was not to +be taken seriously. + +"True," she agreed, "though it ran in my mind that to earn money, so +that you might marry, was your only motive for going to work at all." + +"I had forgotten that," said the light-minded fellow. "I was thinking of +occupations that would keep one in touch with the earth. A gardener's +occupation keeps him constantly in the charmingest possible sort of +touch with her, and the most intimate." + +"Do they call the earth _her_ in English?" asked Maria Dolores. "I +thought they said _it_." + +"I'm afraid, for the greater part, they do," answered John. "But it's +barbarous of them, it's unfilial. Our brown old mother,--fancy +begrudging her the credit of her sex! Our brown and green old mother; +our kindly, bounteous mother; our radiant, our queenly mother, old, and +yet perennially, radiantly young. Look at her now," he cried, circling +the garden with his arm, and pointing to the farther landscape, "look at +her, shining in her robes of pearl and gold, shining and smiling,--one +would say a bride arrayed for the altar. Such is her infinite variety. +Her infinite variety, her infinite abundance, the fragrance and the +sweetness of her,--oh, I could fall upon my face and worship her, like a +Pagan of Eld. The earth and all that grows and lives upon her, the +blossoming tree, the singing bird,--I could build temples to her." + +"And the crawling snake?" put in Maria Dolores, a gleam at the bottom of +her eyes. + +"The crawling snake," quickly retorted John, "serves a most useful +purpose. He establishes the _raison d'être_ of man. Man and his heel are +here to crush the serpent's head." + +Maria Dolores leaned back, softly laughing. + +"Your infatuation for the earth is so great," she said, "mightn't your +lady-love, if she suspected it, be jealous?" + +"No," said John, "it is the earth that might be jealous, for, until I +saw my lady-love, she was the undivided mistress of my heart. For the +rest, my lady-love enjoys, upon this point, my entire confidence. I have +kept nothing from her." + +"That is well," approved Maria Dolores. "And the sky and the sea," still +softly laughing, she asked, "have they no place in your affections? + +"The sky is her tiring-maiden, and I love the sky for that," said John. +"'Tis the sky that clothes her in her many-coloured raiment, and holds +the light whereby her beauty is made manifest. And the sea is a jewel +that she bears upon her bosom,--a magical jewel, whence, with the sky's +aid, she draws the soft rain that is her scent and her cosmetic. +'Fragrant the fertile earth after soft showers.' Do you know, I could +almost forgive the dour and detestable Milton everything for the sake of +those seven words. They show that in the sense of smell he had at least +one attribute of humanity." + +Maria Dolores' dark eyes were quizzical. + +"The dour and detestable Milton?" she exclaimed. "Poor Milton! What has +he done to merit such anathema? + +"It isn't what he has done, but what he was," said John. "That he was +dour nobody will deny, dour and sour and inhuman. Ask those unfortunate, +long-suffering daughters of his, if you doubt it. _They_ could tell you +stories. But he was worse. He was a scribe and a Pharisee, a +pragmatical, self-righteous, canting old scribe and Pharisee. And he was +worse still, and still worse yet. He was--what seems to me to-day the +worstest thing unhung--he was a Puritan. Like Winthorpe's, his blood was +black and icy and vinegarish. Like Winthorpe--But there. I mustn't +abuse Winthorpe any more, and I must try to forgive Milton. Milton wrote +seven good words, and Winthorpe unwittingly opened a lover's eyes to his +condition." + +He paused, and smiled down upon her, and his newly opened (and very +blue) blue eyes said much. Her eyes were dreaming on the landscape, +where it shone in pearl and gold. However, as she gave no sign of +finding his conversation wearisome, he took heart, and continued. + +"For when he told me how he had put his love away, never again to see +her, and how at that moment she would be scrubbing floors (or taking the +discipline, perhaps?) in a convent of Ursulines, suddenly, and without +any action of the will on my part, there rose before me the vision of a +certain woman;--a woman I knew a little, admired immensely, very much +liked, but didn't for an instant suppose I was seriously in love with. +And involuntarily, with the vision of her before me, I asked myself +whether, _mutatis mutandis_, I could have done as he had, and in a flash +I saw that I could not,--that not for the wealth of Ormus and of Ind +could I or would I give her up, if once I had her. So, by that token, +and by the uncommon wrath with which his tale inflamed me," John, with a +rhetorical flourish, perorated, "I discovered that I loved." And again +his eyes said much. + +Hers were still on the prospect. + +"Yet if you only know her a little, how can you love her?" she asked, in +a musing voice. + +"Did I say I only know her a little?" asked John. "I know her a great +deal. I know her through and through. I know that she is pure gold, pure +crystal; that she is made of all music, all light, all sweetness, and of +all shadow and silence and mystery too, as women should be. I know that +earth holds naught above her. I do not care to employ superlatives, so, +to put it in the form of an understatement, I know that she is simply +and absolutely perfect. If you could see her! If you could see her eyes, +her deep-glowing, witty, humorous, mischievous, innocent eyes, with the +soul that burns in them, the passion that sleeps. If you could see the +black soft masses of her hair, and her white brow, and the pale-rose of +her cheeks, and the red-rose of her lovely smiling mouth. If you could +see her figure, slender and strong, and the grace and pride of her +carriage,--the carriage of an imperial princess. If you could see her +hands,--they lie in her lap like languid lilies. And her voice,--'tis +the colour of her mouth and the glow of her eyes made audible. And if +you could whisper to yourself her melodious and thrice adorable name. I +know her a great deal. When I said that I only knew her a little, I +meant it in the sense that she only knows me a little,--which after all, +alas, for practical purposes comes to the same thing." + +He had spoken with emphasis, with fervour, his pink face animated and +full of intention. Maria Dolores kept her soft-glowing eyes resolutely +away from him, but I think the soul that burned in them (if not the +passion that slept) was vaguely troubled. _Qui pane d'amour_--how does +the French proverb run? Did she vaguely feel perhaps that the seas they +were sailing were perilous? Anyhow, as John saw with sinking heart, she +was at the point of putting an end to their present conjunction,--she +was preparing to rise. He would have given worlds to offer a helping +hand, but (however rich in worlds) he was, for the occasion, poor in +courage. When love comes in at the door, assurance as like as not will +fly out of the window. So she rose unaided. + +"Let us hope," she said, giving him a glance in which he perceived an +under-gleam as of not unfriendly mockery, "that she will soon come to +know you better." + +"Heaven forbid!" cried he, with a fine simulation of alarm. "It is upon +her ignorance of my true character that I base such faint hopes as I +possess of some day winning her esteem." + +Maria Dolores laughed, nodded, and lightly moved away. + +"My son," said John to himself, "you steered precious close to the wind. +You had best be careful." + +And then he was conscious of a sudden change in things. The garden +smiled about him, the valley below laughed in the breeze, the blackcaps +sang, the many windows of the Castle glistened in the sun; but their +beauty and their pleasantness had departed, had retired with her into +the long, low, white-walled, red-roofed pavilion. He was conscious of a +sudden change in things, and of a sudden acute and bitter depression +within himself. + +"These are great larks," he said; "great larks while they last,--but +what's the good of them in the end? What do they lead to? What's the +good of coquetting with blisses that can't be yours?" And he breathed a +prodigious sigh. "When shall I see her again?" he asked, and thereupon +was seized by his old terror--his terror of yesterday, though it seemed +to him a terror he had known all his life--lest he should never see her +again. "She's only a visitor. What's to prevent her leaving this very +night?" + +The imagination was intolerable. He entered the Castle court, and +climbed the staircase of honour, and rambled through the long suites of +great empty rooms, empty of everything save the memory of the past and +the portraits of the dead, there, if he might, for a time at least, to +lose himself and to forget her. + + + + +V + + +"Who is the young man you have been talking with so long?" asked Frau +Brandt, as Maria Dolores came into her sitting-room, a vast, square, +bare room, with a marble floor and a painted ceiling, with Venetian +blinds to shelter it from the sun, and a bitter-sweet smell, as of +rosemary or I know not what other aromatic herb, upon its cool air. + +"Oh? You saw us?" said Maria Dolores, answering the question with +question. + +"Him I have seen many times--every day for a week at least," said Frau +Brandt. "But I never before saw you talking with him. Who is he?" She +was a small, brown, square-built, black-haired, homely-featured old +woman, in a big, round starched white cap and a flowing black silk gown. +She sat in an uncushioned oaken armchair by the window, with some +white knitting in her bony, blunt-fingered brown hands, and +tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles on her nose. But the spectacles +couldn't hide the goodness or the soundness or the sweetness that looked +forth from her motherly old honest brown eyes. + +"He is a young man who lives _en pension_ at the presbytery," said Maria +Dolores, "a young Englishman." + +"So?" said Frau Brandt. "What is his name?" + +"I don't know," said Maria Dolores, with disengagement real or feigned. +"His Christian name, I believe, is John." + +"But his family name?" persisted Frau Brandt. + +"It is probably Brown, Jones, or Robinson," said Maria Dolores. "Or it +may even be Black, Smith, or Johnson. Most Englishmen are named one or +the other." + +"So?" said Frau Brandt. "But is it prudent or seemly for you to talk +familiarly with a young man whose name is unknown to you?" + +"Why not?" asked Maria Dolores, raising her eyebrows, as if surprised. +"He seems a very harmless young man. I don't think he will eat me. And +he is English,--and I like English people. And he is intelligent,--his +conversation amuses me. And he has nice easy, impetuous manners,--so +different from the formality and restraint of Austrian young men. What +can his name matter?" + +"But"--Frau Brandt looked up impressively over her spectacles, and her +voice was charged with gravity, for she was about to ask a question to +the Teutonic mind of quite supreme importance--"but is he noble?" It was +to her what--nay, more than what--the question, "Is he respectable?" +would have been to an Englishwoman. + +Maria Dolores laughed. + +"Oh, no," she said. "At least I have every reason to believe not, and I +devoutly hope not. He belongs I expect to what they call in England the +middle class. He has an uncle who is a farmer." + +Frau Brandt's good old brown eyes showed her profoundly shocked, and +expressed profound reprehension. + +"But you were speaking with him familiarly--you were speaking with him +almost as an equal," she pronounced in bated accents, in accents of +consternation. + +Again Maria Dolores laughed. + +"True," she assented gaily, "and that is exactly what I couldn't do if +he _were_ noble. Then I should have to remember our respective +positions. But where the difference of rank is so great, one can talk +familiarly without fear. _Ça n'engage à rien_." + +Frau Brandt nodded her head, for full half a minute, with many meanings; +she nodded it now up and down, and now shook it sidewise. + +"I do not like it," she said, at last. "Your brother would not like it. +It is not becoming. Well, thanks be to Heaven, he is only English." + +"Oh, of course," agreed Maria Dolores, "if he were Austrian, it would be +entirely different." + +"But is it fair to the young man himself?" pursued Frau Brandt. "Is he +aware that he is hobanobbing with a Serene Highness? You treat him as an +equal. What if he should fall in love with you?" + +"What indeed! But he won't," laughed Maria Dolores, possibly with a +mental reservation. + +"Who can tell?" said Frau Brandt. "His eyes, when he looked at you, had +an expression. But there is a greater danger still. You are both at the +dangerous age. He is good-looking. What if your heart should become +interested in him?" + +"Oh, in that case," answered Maria Dolores, lightly, her chin a little +in the air, "I should marry him--if he asked me." + +"What!" cried Frau Brandt, half rising from her chair. + +"Yes," said Maria Dolores, cheerfully unexcited. "He is a man of +breeding and education, even if he isn't noble. If I loved a man, I +shouldn't give one thought to his birth. I'm tired of all our Austrian +insistence upon birth, upon birth and quarterings and precedencies. If +ever I love, I shall love some one just for what he is, for what God has +made him, and for nothing else. It wouldn't matter if his father were a +cobbler--if I loved him, I'd marry him." Her chin higher in the air, she +had every appearance of meaning what she said. + +Frau Brandt had sunk back in her chair, and was nodding her white-capped +old head again. + +"Oh, my child, my child," she grieved. "Will you never rid your fancy of +these high-flown, unpractical, romantic whimsies? It all comes of +reading poetry." She herself, good woman, read little but her prayers. + +"Oh, my dear true Heart," responded Maria Dolores, laughing. She crossed +the room, and placed her hand affectionately upon Frau Brandt's +shoulder. "My dearest old Nurse! Do not distress yourself. This is not +yet a question of actuality. Let us not cry before we are hurt." And she +stooped, and kissed her nurse's brown old brow. + +But afterwards she stood looking with great pensiveness out of the +window, stood so for a long while; and I fancy there was a softer glow +than ever in her soft-glowing eyes, and perhaps a livelier rose in her +pale-rose cheeks. + +"What are you thinking so deeply about?" Frau Brandt asked by-and-by. + +Maria Dolores woke with a little start, and turned from the window, and +laughed again. + +"Oh, thinking about my cobbler's son, of course," she said. + + + + +VI + + +Annunziata, seeking him to announce that supper was ready, found John, +seated in his chamber of dead ladies, his arms folded, his legs crossed, +his eyes fixed, a frown upon his prone brow; his spirit apparently rapt +in a brown study. + +"Eh! Prospero!" she called. + +Whereat he came to himself glanced up, glanced round, changed his +posture, and finally, rising, blew his preoccupations from him in a +deep, deep sigh. + +"Oh, what a sigh!" marvelled Annunziata, making big eyes. "What are you +sighing so hard for?" + +John looked at her, and smiled. + +"Sighing for my miller's daughter, my dear," he said. + +And, as he followed her to the presbytery, he sang softly to himself-- + + _"It is the miller's daughter, + And she is grown so dear, so dear, + That I would be the jewel + That trembles in her ear."_ + + + + +PART FIFTH + + + + +I + + +It was Sunday. It was early morning. It was raining,--a fine quiet, +determined rain, that blurred the lower reaches of the valley, and +entirely hid the mountain-tops, so that one found it hard not to doubt a +little whether they were still there. Near at hand the garden was as if +a thin web of silver had been cast over it, pale and dim, where wet +surfaces reflected the diffused daylight. And just across the Rampio, on +the olive-clad hillside that rose abruptly from its brink, rather an +interesting process was taking place,--the fabrication of clouds, no +less. The hillside, with its rondure of blue-grey foliage, would lie for +a moment quite bare and clear; then, at some high point, a mist would +begin to form, would appear indeed to issue from the earth, as smoke +from a subterranean fire, white smoke with pearly shadows; would thicken +and spread out; would draw together and rise in an irregular spiral +column, curling, swaying, poising, as if uncertain what to do next; and +at last, all at once making up its mind, (how like a younker or a +prodigal!), would go sailing away, straggling away, amorphous, on a puff +of wind, leaving the hillside clear again;--till, presently, the process +would recommence _da capo_. + +John and Annunziata, seated together on a marble bench in the shelter of +the great cloister, with its faded frescoes, at the north-eastern +extremity of the castle buildings, had been watching this element-play +for some minutes in silence. But by-and-by Annunziata spoke. + +"What makes the cloud come out of the hill like that?" she asked, her +eyes anxiously questioning his. "I have seen it happen many times, but I +could never understand it. There cannot be a fire underneath?" + +"If _you_ can't understand it, Mistress Wisdom," responded John, smiling +on her, "you surely mustn't expect a featherpate like me to. Between +ourselves, I don't believe any one can really understand it, though +there's a variety of the human species called scientists who might +pretend they could. It's all a part of that great scheme of miracles by +which God's world goes on, Nature, which nobody can really understand in +the very least. All that the chaps called scientists can really do is to +observe and more or less give names to the miracles. They can't explain +'em." + +"It is great pleasure to watch such things," said Annunziata. "It is a +great blessing to be allowed to see a miracle performed with your own +eyes." + +"So it is," agreed John. "And if you keep your eyes well open, there's +not a minute of the livelong day when you mayn't see one." + +"It is very strange," said Annunziata, "but when the sun shines, then I +love the sunny weather, and am glad that it does not rain. Yet when it +does rain, then I find that I love the rain too, that I love it just as +much as the sun,--it is so fresh, it smells so good, the raindrops are +so pretty, and they make such a pretty sound where they fall, and the +grey light is so pleasant." + +"Our loves," said John, "are always very strange. Love is the rummest +miracle of them all. It is even more difficult to account for than the +formation of clouds on the hillside." + +"We love the things that give us pleasure," said Annunziata. + +"And the people, sometimes, who give us pain," said John. + +"We love the people, first of all, who are related to us," said +Annunziata, "and then the people we see a great deal of--just as I love, +first of all, my uncle, and then you and Marcella the cook." + +"Who brings in the inevitable veal," said John. "Thank you, Honeymouth." +He bowed and laughed, while Annunziata's grave eyes wondered what he was +laughing at. "But it isn't every one," he pointed out, "who has your +solid and well-balanced little head-piece. It isn't every one who keeps +his love so neatly docketed, or so sanely submitted to the sway of +reason. Some of us love first of all people who aren't related to us in +the remotest degree, and people we've seen hardly anything of and know +next to nothing about." + +Annunziata deprecatingly shook her head. + +"It is foolish to love people we know nothing about," she declared, in +her deep voice, and looked a very sage delivering judgment. + +"True enough," said John. "But what would you have? Some of us are born +to folly, as the sparks fly upward. You see, there's a mighty difference +between love and love. There's the love which is affection, there's the +love which is cupboard-love, and there's the love which is just simply +love-love and nothing else. The first, as you have truly observed, has +its roots in consanguinity or association, the second in a lively hope +of future comfits, and either is sufficiently explicable. But the third +has its roots apparently in mere haphazard and causelessness, and isn't +explicable by any means whatsoever, and yet is far and away the +violentest of the three. It falls as the lightning from the clouds, and +strikes whom it will. Though I mix my metaphors fearlessly, like a man, +I trust, with your feminine intuition, you follow me?" + +"No," said Annunziata, without compunction, her eyes on the distance. "I +don't know what you mean." + +"Thank Heaven you don't, pray Heaven you never may," said her +inconsequential friend. "For love-love is a plague. You meet a person, +for example, in a garden. You know nothing whatever about her, not even +her name, though you fear it may be Schmidt. You meet her not more than +half a dozen times all told. And suddenly one morning you wake up to +discover that she has become to you the person of first importance in +the world. She is practically a total stranger to you, she's of a +different nationality, a different rank, yet she's infinitely the most +precious and important person in the world. When you're absent from her +you can do nothing but think of her, gloating with throes of aromatic +pain over the memory of your last meeting with her, longing with +soul-hunger for your next. The merest flutter of her gown, modulation of +her voice, glance of her eye, will throw your heart into a palpitation. +You look in the direction of the house that she inhabits, and you feel +the emotions of a Peri looking at the gate of Eden. And it gives you the +strangest sort of strange joy to talk about her, though of course you +take pains to talk about her in veiled terms, obliquely, so that your +listener shan't guess _whom_ you are talking about. In short, she is the +be-all and the end-all of your existence,--and you don't even know her +name, though you fear it may be Schmidt." + +He lolled back at ease on the marble bench, and twirled his yellow-red +moustaches, fancy free. + +"But you do know her name," said Annunziata, simply, in her deepest +voice, holding him with a gaze, lucent and serious, that seemed almost +reproachful. "Her name is Maria Dolores." + +The thing was tolerably unexpected. What wonder if it put my hero out of +countenance? His attitude grew rigid, his pink skin three shades pinker; +his blue eyes stared at her, startled. So for a second; then he relaxed, +and laughed, laughed long and heartily, perhaps a little despitefully +too, at his own expense. ... But he must try, if he might, to repair the +mischief. + +"My poor child," he said, resting his hand on her curls, and gently +smoothing them. "You are what the French call an _enfant terrible_. You +are what the English call a deuced sharp little pickle. And I must try, +if I can, without actually lying, to persuade you that you are utterly +mistaken, utterly and absolutely mistaken,"--he raised his voice, for +greater convincingness,--"and that her name is nothing distantly +resembling the name that you have spoken, and that in fact her name is +Mrs. Harris, and that in fine there is no such person, and that I was +merely talking hypothetically, in abstractions; I must draw a herring +across the trail, I must raise a dust, and throw a lot of it into your +amazingly clear-sighted little eyes. Now, is it definitely impressed +upon you that her name is _not_--the thrice-adorable name you +mentioned?" + +"I thought it was," answered Annunziata. "I am sorry it is not." And +then she dismissed the subject. "See, it is raining harder. See how the +rain comes down in long strings of beads,--see how it is like a network +of long strings of glass beads falling through the air. When the rain +comes down like that, it means that after the rain stops it will be very +hot. To-morrow it will be very hot." + +The bell in the clock-tower tolled out seven solemn strokes; then the +lighter-toned and nimbler-tongued bell of the church began to ring. + +"Come," peremptorily said Annunziata, jumping up. "Mass." + +She held out her hand, took John's, and, like a mother, led the meek and +unquestioning young man to his duties. + + + + +II + + +Of course there are no such heretical inventions as pews in the parish +church of Sant' Alessina. You sit upon orthodox rush-bottomed chairs, +you kneel upon orthodox bare stones. But at the Epistle side of the +altar, at an elevation of perhaps a yard from the pavement, there is a +recess in the wall, enclosed by a marble balustrade, and hung with faded +red curtains, which looks, I'm afraid, a good deal like a private box at +a theatre, and is in fact the tribune reserved for the masters of the +Castle. (In former days those masters were the Sforzas. So, from this +tribune, the members of that race of iron and blood, of fierceness and +of guile, have assisted at the mystical sacrifice of the Lamb of God!) +Heretofore, during John's residence at the presbytery, the tribune had +stood vacant. To-day it was occupied by Maria Dolores and Frau Brandt. +Maria Dolores, instead of wearing a hat, had adopted the ancient and +beautiful use of draping a long veil of black lace over her dark hair. + +John knelt in the middle of the church, in the thick of the ragged, +dirty, unsavoury villagers. When Mass was over, he returned to the +cloisters, and there, face to face, he met the lady of his dreams. + +She graciously inclined her head. + +"Good morning," she said, smiling, in a voice that seemed to him full of +morning freshness. + +"Good morning," he responded, wondering whether she could hear the +tremor of his heart. "Though, in honest truth, it's rather a bad +morning, isn't it?" he submitted, posing his head at an angle, dubious +and reflective, that seemed to raise the question to a level of +philosophic import. + +"Oh, with these cloisters, one shouldn't complain," said she, glancing +indicatively round. "One can still be out of doors, and yet not get the +wetting one deserves. And the view is so fine, and these faded old +frescoes are so droll." + +"Yes," said he, his wits, for the instant, in a state of suspended +animation. "The view is fine, the frescoes are droll." + +She looked as if she were thinking about something. + +"Don't you find it," she asked, after a moment, with the slightest +bepuzzled drawing together of her eyebrows, "a trifle unpleasant, +hearing Mass from where you do?" + +John looked blank. + +"Unpleasant? No. Why?" he asked. + +"I should think it might be disagreeable to be hemmed in and elbowed by +those extraordinarily ragged and dirty people," she explained. "It's a +pity they shouldn't clean themselves up a little before coming to +church." + +"Ah, yes," he assented, "a little cleaning up wouldn't hurt them; that's +very certain. But," he set forth, in extenuation, "it's not the custom +of the country, and the fact that it isn't has its good significance, as +well as its bad. It's one of the many signs of how genuinely democratic +and popular the Church is in Italy,--as it ought to be everywhere. It is +here essentially the Church of the people, the Church of the poor. It is +the one place where the poorest man, in all his rags, and with the soil +of his work upon him, feels perfectly at ease, perfectly at home, +perfectly equal to the richest. It is the one place where a reeking +market-woman, with her basket on her arm, will feel at liberty to take +her place beside the great lady, in her furs and velvets, and even to +ask her, with a nudge, to move up and make room. That is as it should +be, isn't it?" + +"No doubt, no doubt," agreed Maria Dolores, beginning to pace backwards +and forwards over the lichen-stained marble pavement, (stained as by the +hand of an artist, in wavy veins of yellow or pale-green, with here and +there little rosettes of scarlet), while John kept beside her. "All the +same, I should not like to kneel quite in the very heart of the crowd, +as you do." + +"You are a delicate and sensitive woman," he reminded her. "I am a man, +and a moderately tough one. However, I must admit that until rather +recently I had exactly your feeling. But I got a lesson." He broke off +and gave a vague little laugh, vaguely rueful, as at a not altogether +pleasant reminiscence. + +"What was the lesson?" she asked. + +"Well," said he, "if you care to know, it was this. The first time that +I attended Mass here, desiring to avoid the people, I sought out a far +corner of the church, behind a pillar, where there was no one. But as +soon as I had got myself well established there, up hobbled a deformed +and lame old man, and plumped himself down beside me, so close that our +coat-sleeves touched. I think he was the most repulsive-looking old man +I have ever seen; he was certainly the dirtiest, the grimiest, and his +rags were extravagantly foul. I will spare you a more circumstantial +portrait. And all through Mass I was sick with disgust and sore with +resentment. Why should he come and rub his coat-sleeve against mine, +when there was room in plenty for him elsewhere? The next time I went to +church, I chose a different corner, as remote as might be from my former +one; but again, no sooner was I well installed, than, lo and behold, the +same unspeakable old man limped up and knelt with me, cheek by jowl. And +so, if you can believe it, the next time, and so the next. It didn't +matter where I placed myself, there he was sure to place himself too. +You will suppose that, apart from my annoyance, I was vastly perplexed. +Why should he pursue me so? Who was he? What was he after? And for +enlightenment I addressed myself to Annunziata. 'Who is the hideous old +man who always kneels beside me?' I asked her. She had not noticed any +one kneeling beside me, she said; she had noticed, on the contrary, that +I always knelt alone, at a distance. 'Well,' said I, 'keep your eyes +open to-day, and you will see the man I mean.' So we went to Mass, and +sure enough, no sooner had I found a secluded place, than my old friend +appeared and joined me, dirtier and more hideous and if possible more +deformed than ever. + +"Yes?" said Maria Dolores, with interest, as he paused. + +"When we came out of church, I asked Annunziata who he was," continued +John. "And she said that though she had kept her eyes open, according to +my injunction, she had failed to see any one kneeling beside me--that, +on the contrary, she had seen me," he concluded, with an insouciance +that was plainly assumed for its dramatic value, "kneeling alone, at a +distance from every one." + +Maria Dolores' face was white. She frowned her mystification. + +"What!" she exclaimed, in a half-frightened voice. + +"That is precisely the ejaculation that fell from my own lips at the +time," said John. "Then I gave her a minute description of the old man, +in all his ugliness. And then she administered my lesson to me." + +"Yes? What was it?" questioned Maria Dolores, her interest acute. + +"Speaking in that oracular vein of hers, her eyes very big, her face +very grave, she assured me that my horrible old man had no objective +existence. She informed me cheerfully and calmly that he was an image of +my own soul, as it appeared, corrupted and aged and deformed by the sins +of a lifetime, to God and to the Saints. And she added that he was sent +to punish me for my pride in thinking myself different to the common +people, and in seeking to hold myself aloof. Since then," John brought +his anecdote to a term, "I have always knelt in the body of the church, +and I have never again seen my Doppelgänger." + +Maria Dolores was silent for a little. They had come to the southern end +of the cloisters, where the buttresses of the Castle walls, all +shaggy-mantled in a green overgrowth of creepers, fall precipitously +away, down the steep face of a natural cliff. They stopped here, and +stood looking off. The rain had held up, though the valley was still +misty with its vapours. Whiffs of velvety air, warm and sweet, blew in +their faces, lightly stirred the dark hair about her brow, and, catching +the flowery edge of her black lace mantilla, set it fluttering. + +"That is a very good story," she said, by-and-by, with a sober glance, +behind which there was the glint of laughter. "In view of it, however, I +suppose there will be no use in my delivering a message I am charged +with for you from my friend Frau Brandt." + +"Oh?" questioned John. "What message?" + +"Frau Brandt has received from the owner of the Castle the privilege of +hearing Mass from the tribune; and she wished me to invite you in her +name hereafter to hear Mass from there with us. But I suppose, in view +of your 'lesson,' that is an invitation which you will decline?" The +glint of laughter shone brighter in her eyes, and her mouth had a tiny +pucker, amiably derisive. + +John looked at her, his blue eyes bold. + +"That is an invitation which I am terribly tempted to accept," he said, +in a voice of unconcealed emotion, of patent meaning; and beneath his +bold gaze, her dark eyes dropped, while I think a blush faintly swept +her cheeks. "And first of all," he added, "pray express to Frau Brandt +my grateful thanks for it--and let me thank you also for your kindness +in conveying it. If, in spite of my temptation, I _don't_ accept it, +that will be for a very special reason, and one quite unconnected with +my 'lesson.'" + +Maria Dolores probably knew her danger. She turned, and began to walk +backwards, towards the point where you can pass from the cloisters, +through the great porte-cochère, into the garden, and so on to the +pavilion beyond the clock. She probably knew her danger; but she was +human, but she was a woman. Besides, she had reached the porte-cochère, +and thus commanded a clear means of escape. So, coming to a standstill +here, "What is the very special reason?" she asked, in a low voice, +keeping her eyes from his. + +His were bolder than ever. Infinite admiration of her burned in them, +infinite delight in her, desire for her; at the same time a kind of +angry hopelessness darkened them, and a kind of bitter amusement, as of +one amused at his own sad plight. + +"I wish I were rich," he exclaimed, irritably, between his teeth. + +"Oh? Is _that_ the very special reason?" asked she, with two notes of +laughter. + +"No," said he, "but it has a connection with it. You see, I'm in love." + +"Yes," said she. "I remember your telling me so." + +"Well, I wish I were rich," said he. "Then I might pluck up courage to +ask the woman I love to be my wife." + +"Money isn't everything here below," said she. "I have your own word for +that." + +"What else counts," said he, "when you wish to ask a woman to marry +you?" + +"Oh, many things," said she. "Difference of rank, for example." + +"That wouldn't count with me," said the democratic fellow, handsomely. +"I shouldn't give two thoughts to differences of rank." + +Maria Dolores smiled--at her secret reflections, I suppose. + +"But poverty puts it out of all question," John moodily went on. "I +couldn't ask a woman to come and share with me an income of sixpence a +week. Especially as I have grounds for believing that she's in rather +affluent circumstances herself. Oh, I wish I were rich!" He repeated +this aspiration in a groan. + +"Poor, poor young man!" she commiserated him, while her eyes, which she +held perseveringly averted, were soft with sympathy and gay with mirth. +"When do you begin your gardening?" + +"Oh, don't mock me!" he cried, with an imploring gesture. "You know, +joking apart, that it's child's play for a man of my age, with no +profession and no special talent, to fancy he can turn to and earn +money. I might, if I made supernatural exertions, and if Fortune went +out of her way to favour me, add a maximum of another sixpence to my +weekly budget. No, there's never a hope for me on sea or land. I must +e'en bear it, though I cannot grin withal." + +"Ah, well," said Maria Dolores, to comfort him, "these attacks, I have +read, are often as short as they are sharp. Let us trust you'll soon +rally from this one. How long have they generally lasted in the past?" + +John's face grew dark with upbraiding; the sea-blue of his eyes, the +gold of his hair and beard, the pink of his complexion visibly grew +dark. + +"You are so needlessly unkind," he said, "that you don't deserve to hear +the true answer to your question." + +She studied the half-obliterated fresco on the wall beside her. + +"All the same," said he, "you _shall_ hear it. If falling in love were +my habit, no doubt I shouldn't take it so hard. But the simple truth, +though I am thirty years old, is that I have never before felt so much +as a heart-flutter for any woman. And, since you cite your reading, _I_ +have read that a fire which may merely singe the surface of green wood, +will entirely consume the dry." + +She continued to study the ancient painting. Her fingers were playing +with the ends of her lace veil. + +"Besides," he went on, "if I had been in love a dozen times, it wouldn't +signify. For I should have been in love with ordinary usual human +women. They're the only sort I ever met--till I met her. She's of a +totally different order--as distinct from them as ... What shall +I say? Oh, as unlike them as starfire is unlike dull clay. +Starfire--starfire--the wonderful, high, white-burning starfire of her +spirit, that's the thing that strikes you most in her. It shines through +her. It shines in her eyes, it shines in her hair, her adorable, soft, +dark, warm and fragrant hair; it shines in her very voice; it shines in +every word she utters, even in the unkindest." + +"Dear me! what an alarmingly refulgent person you depict!" laughed Maria +Dolores, her eyes still on the wall. + +"I have no gift for word-painting," said John; "though I doubt if the +words are yet invented that could fitly paint my lady. She grows in +beauty day by day. It's a literal fact--every fresh time I see her, she +is perceptibly more lovely than the last, more love-compelling in her +loveliness. But 'tis a thing unpaintable, indescribable, as +indescribable as the perfume of a rose. Oh, why haven't I five thousand +a year?" + +"You harp so persistently upon your desire for money," suggested Maria +Dolores, "one might infer she was a commodity, to be bought and sold. +You begin at the wrong end. What good would five or fifty thousand a +year do you, if you had not begun by winning her love? + +"No, I begin at the proper end, worse luck," John answered, glooming. +"For, without a decent income, I have no right even to try to win her +love. + +"And that being so," questioned Maria Dolores, "I hope you +conscientiously avoid her society, or, when you meet, make yourself +consistently disagreeable to her? + +"There's no need for such precautions," John replied. "There's no fear +for her. She regards me as a casual and passing acquaintance. So I make +myself no more disagreeable than I am by nature. And if I avoided her +society, (which I am far from doing), it would be not for her sake, but +for my own. For, though her society is to me a kind of anticipation of +the joys of Heaven, yet when I leave it and find myself alone, the +reaction is dreary in the superlative degree; and the fear, which +perpetually haunts me (for I know nothing of her plans), lest I shall +never see her again, is agonizing as a foretaste of--Heaven's antipode. +Oh, I love her!" + +He took, involuntarily I dare say, a step in her direction. She +retreated under the vaulting of the _porte-cochère_. + +"You seem," she commented, "to be getting a good deal of emotional +experience,--which doubtless some day you will find of value. Why not, +instead of gardener, embark as novelist or poet? Here is material you +could then turn to account." + +"Ah, there you are," he complained, piteously, "mocking me again. Ah, +well, if you must have your laugh, have it, and welcome. A man can learn +to take the bitter with the sweet." + +"To spare you that discomfort," said she, moving deeper into the +archway, while John's face fell, "I will bid you good-bye. I am to +report, then, that you decline my friend's invitation with thanks?" + +"With my most grateful thanks," he was able intensively to rejoin, in +spite of his dismay at the imminence of her departure. + +"And for a very special reason?" she harked back, now, suddenly, for +the first time since they had touched thin ice, giving him a glance. + +It was the fleetingest of fleeting glances, it was merry and ironic, but +there was something in it which brought a flame to his blue eyes. + +"For the very special reason," he answered, with vehemence, "that I fear +the presence near me of--" He held his breath for a second, the flame in +his eyes enveloping her; then, with an abrupt change of tone and mien, +he ended, "--of Frau Brandt might distract my attention from the +sermon." + +She laughed, and said, "Good-bye." + +"Good-bye," said John. And when she was halfway through the tunnel-like +passage, "I suppose you know you are leaving me to a day as barren as +the Desert of Sahara?" he called after her. + +"Oh, who can tell what a day may bring forth?" called she, but without +looking back. + +For a long while John's faculties were kept busy, trying to determine +whether that was a promise, a menace, or a mere word in the air. + + + + +III + + +"Rain before seven, clear before eleven," is as true, or as untrue, in +Lombardy as it is in other parts of the world. The rain had held up, and +now, in that spirited phrase of Corvo's, "here came my lord the Sun," +splendidly putting the clouds to flight, or chaining them, transfigured, +to his chariot-wheels; clothing the high snow-peaks in a roseate glory, +(that seemed somehow, I don't know why, to accent their solitude and +their remoteness); flooding the valley with ethereal amber; turning the +swollen Rampio to a river of fire while the nearer hillsides, the olive +woods, the trees in the Castle garden, glistened with a million million +crystals, and the petals of the flowers were crystal-tipped; while the +breath of the earth rose in long streamers of luminous incense, and the +sky gleamed with every tender, every brilliant, tint of blue, from the +blue of pale forgetmenots to the blue of larkspur. + +John, contemplating this spectacle, (and thinking of Maria Dolores? +revolving still her cryptic valediction?), all at once, as his eye +rested on the shimmer at the valley's end which he knew to be the lake, +lifted up his hand and clapped his brow. "By Jove," he muttered, "if I +wasn't within an ace of clean forgetting!" The sight of the lake had +fortunately put him in mind that he was engaged to-day to lunch with +Lady Blanchemain at Roccadoro. + +He found her ladyship, in a frock all concentric whirls of crisp white +ruffles, vigorously wielding a fan, and complaining of the heat. +(Indeed, as Annunziata had predicted, it had grown markedly warmer.) "I +shall fly away, if this continues; I shall fly straight to town, and set +my house in order for the season. When do _you_ come?" she asked, +smiling on him from her benign old eyes. + +"I don't come," answered John. "I rather like town in autumn and winter, +when it's too dark to see its ugliness, but save me from it in the clear +light of summer." + +"Fudge," said Lady Blanchemain. "London's the most beautiful capital in +Europe--it's grandiose. And it's the only place where there are any +people. + +"Yes," said John, "but, as at Nice and Homburg, too many of them are +English. And there's a liberal scattering, I've heard, of Jews?" + +"Oh, Jews are all right--when they aren't Jewy," said Lady Blanchemain, +with magnanimity. "I know some very nice ones. I was rather hoping you +would be a feature of my Sunday afternoons." + +"I'm not a society man," said John. "I've no aptitude myself for +patronizing or toadying, and I don't particularly enjoy being patronized +or toadied to." + +"Is that the beginning and end of social life in England?" Lady +Blanchemain inquired, delicately sarcastic. + +"As I have seen it, yes," asseverated John. "The beginning, end, and +middle of social life in England, as in Crim-Tartary, is worship of the +longest pigtail,--a fetichism sometimes grosser, sometimes subtler, +sometimes deliberate, often unconscious and instinctive. Every one you +meet is aware that his pigtail is either longer or shorter than yours, +and accordingly, more or less subtly, grossly, unconsciously or +deliberately, swaggers or bends the knee. It's a state of things I've +tried in vain to find diverting." + +"It's a state of things you'll find prevailing pretty well in all places +where the human species breeds," said Lady Blanchemain. "The only +difference will be a question of what constitutes the pigtail. And are +you, then, remaining at Sant' Alessina?" + +"For the present," answered John. + +"Until--?" she questioned. + +"Oh, well, until she sends me away, or leaves herself," said he, "and so +my fool's paradise achieves its inevitable end." + +Lady Blanchemain laughed--a long, quiet laugh of amused contentment. + +"Come in to luncheon," she said, putting her soft white hand upon his +arm, "and tell me all about it." And when they were established at her +table, a round table, gay with flowers, in a window at the far end of +the cool, terazza-paved, stucco-columned dining-room of the Hotel +Victoria, "Why do you call it a fool's paradise?" she asked. + +"Well, you see, I'm in love," said he. + +"You really are?" she doubted, with sprightliness, looking gleeful. + +"All too really," he assured her, in a sinking voice. + +"What an old witch I was!" mused she, with satisfaction. "Accept my +heart-felt felicitations." She beamed upon him. + +"I should prefer your condolences," said he, in a voice from the depths. + +"_Allons donc!_ Cheer up," laughed she, dallying with her bliss. "Men +have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for love." + +"I wonder," said John. "That is a statement, it seems to me, which would +be the better for some proving." + +"At all events," said she, "you, for one, are not dead yet." + +"No," admitted he; "though I could almost wish I was." + +"Do you mean to say she has definitely rejected you?" she demanded, +alarmed. + +"Fortune has spared her that necessity," said John. "I haven't asked +her, and I never shall. I haven't any money." + +"Pooh! Is that all?" scoffed her ladyship, relieved. "You have +prospects." + +"Remote ones--the remoter the better. I won't count on dead men's +shoes," said John. + +"What is it your little fortune-teller at the Castle calls you?" asked +Lady Blanchemain, shrewdly, her dark old eyebrows up. + +"She calls me _lucus a non lucendo_," was John's quick riposte; and the +lady laughed. + +But in a moment she pulled a straight face. "I seriously counsel you to +have more faith," she said. "Go home and ask her to marry you; and if +she accepts,--you'll see. Money will come. Besides, your rank and your +prospective rank are assets which you err in not adding to the balance. +Go home, and propose to her." + +"'Twould do no good," said John, dejectedly. "She regards me with +imperturbable indifference. I've made the fieriest avowals to her, and +she's never turned a hair." + +Lady Blanchemain looked bewildered. "You've made avowals--?" she +falteringly echoed. + +"I should rather think so," John affirmed. "Indirect ones, of course, +and I hope inoffensive, but fiery as live coals. In the third person, +you know. I've given her two and two; she has, you may be sure, enough +skill in mathematics to put 'em together." + +"And she never turned a hair?" the lady marvelled. + +"She jeered at me, she mocked me, she laughed and rode away," said he. + +"She's probably in love with you," said Lady Blanchemain. "If a woman +will listen, if a woman will laugh! If you don't propose to her now, +having ensnared her young affections, you'll be something worse than the +wicked nobleman of song and story." + +"Oh, well," John responded, conciliatory, "I dare say some of these days +a proposal will slip out when I least intend it. So I shall have done +the honourable thing--and I'm sure I can trust her to play fair and say +me nay." + +Lady Blanchemain slowly shook her head. "I'm glad you're not _my_ +lover," she devoutly murmured, plying her fan. + +"Oh, but I am," cried John, with a bow, and an admiring flash of the +eyes. + +Her soft old face lighted up; then it took on an expression of +resolution, and she set her strong old jaws. + +"In that case," she remarked, "you will have the less reluctance in +granting a favour I'm about to ask you." + +"What's the favour?" said John, in a tone of readiness. + +"I want you to buy a pig in a poke," said she. + +"Oh?" questioned he. + +"Yes," said she. "I want you to make me a promise blindfold. I want you +to promise in the dark that you will do something. What it is that +you're to do you're not to know till the time comes. Will you promise?" + +"Dearest lady," said the trustful young man, "I'm perfectly confident +that you would never ask me to do anything that I couldn't do with +profit to myself. Buy a pig in a poke? From you, without a moment's +hesitation. Of course I promise." + +"Bravo, bravo," applauded Lady Blanchemain, glowing at her easy triumph. +"In a few days you'll receive a letter. That will tell you what it is +you're pledged to. And now, to reward you, come with me to my +sitting-room, and I will make you a little present." + +When they had reached her sitting-room (dim and cool, with its +half-drawn blinds and the straw-coloured linen covers of its furniture), +she put into his hands a small case of shagreen, small and hard, and at +the edges white with age. + +"Go to the window and see what's in it," she said. + +And obeying, "By Jove, what a stunner!" he exclaimed. The case contained +a ring, a light circle of gold, set with a ruby, surrounded by a row of +diamonds,--for my part, I think the most beautiful ruby I have ever +seen. It was as big as a hazel-nut, or almost; it was cut, with +innumerable facets, in the shape of a heart; and it quivered and burned, +and flowed and rippled, liquidly, with the purest, limpidest red fire. + +"'Tis the spirit of a rose, distilled and crystallized," said Lady +Blanchemain. + +"'Tis a drop of liquid light," said John. "But why do you give it to me? +I can't wear it. I don't think I ought to accept it." + +"Nobody asks you to wear it," said Lady Blanchemain. "It's a woman's +ring, of course. But as for accepting it, you need have no scruples. +It's an old Blanchemain gem, that was in the family a hundred years +before I came into it. It's properly an heirloom, and you're the heir. +I give it to you for a purpose. Should you ever become engaged, I desire +you to placcit upon the finger of the adventurous woman." + + + + +IV + + +Under a gnarled old olive, by the river's brim, Annunziata sat on the +turf, head bowed, so that her curls fell in a tangle all about her +cheeks, and gazed fixedly into the green waters, the laughing, dancing, +purling waters, green, and, where the sun reached them, shot with seams +and cleavages of light, like fluorspar. In the sun-flecked, +shadow-dappled grass near by, violets tried to hide themselves, but were +betrayed by their truant sweetness. The waters purled, a light breeze +rustled the olive-leaves, and birds were singing loud and wild, as birds +will after rain. + +Maria Dolores, coming down the path that followed the river's windings, +stood for a minute, and watched her small friend without speaking. But +at last she called out, "_Ciao_, Annunziata. Are you dreaming dreams and +seeing visions?" + +Annunziata started and looked up. "Sh-h!" she whispered, with an +admonitory gesture. She stole a wary glance roundabout, and then spoke +as one fearful of being overheard. "I was listening to the music of +Divopan," she said. + +Maria Dolores, who had come closer, appeared at a loss. "The music +of--what?" she questioned. + +"Sh-h!" whispered Annunziata. "I would not dare to say it aloud. The +music of Divopan." + +"Divopan?" Maria Dolores puzzled, compliantly guarding her tone. "What +is that?" + +"Divo--Pan," said Annunziata, dividing the word in two, and always with +an air of excessive caution. + +But Maria Dolores helplessly shook her head. "I'm afraid I don't +understand. What is Divo--Pan?" + +"Don't you know what a _divo_ is?" asked Annunziata, her clear grey eyes +surprised. + +"Oh, a _divo?_" said Maria Dolores, getting a glimmer of light. "Ah, +yes, a divo is a saint, I think? + +"Not exactly," Annunziata discriminated, "but something like one. The +saints, you see, are always very good, and _divi_ are sometimes bad. +But they are powerful, like saints. They can do anything they wish. Divo +Pan is the divo who makes all the music that you hear out of doors,--the +music of the wind and the water and the bird-songs. But you must be +careful never to praise his music aloud, lest Divo Apollone should hear +you. He is the divo that makes all the music you hear on instruments--on +harps and violins and pianos. He is very jealous of Divo Pan, and if he +hears you praising him, will do something to you. You know what he did +to King Mida, don't you?" + +"What did he do?" asked Maria Dolores. + +Annunziata stole another wary glance about. + +"Once upon a time," she recounted, always in her lowest voice, "many +years ago, hundreds of years ago, the King of this country was named +Mida. And he loved very much the music of Divo Pan. He loved to sit by +the river here, and to listen to the music of the water, and of the +leaves, and of the birds. I love to do it too, and I think he was quite +right. But one day, in his house, there came a musician with a harp, and +began to play to him. And the King listened for a while, and then he +told the musician to stop. 'Your music is very good,' he said, 'but now +I am going into the fields and by the river, where I can hear a music I +like better.' But the musician with the harp was really Divo Apollone +himself; disguised. And this made him very angry and jealous. And to +punish King Mida he changed his ears to long hairy ears, like an ass's. +So, if you love the music of Divo Pan, you must be very careful not to +let Divo Apollone hear you praise it, or he will do something to you." + +And to drive home this application of her theme, she held up a warning +finger. + +Maria Dolores had listened, smiling. Now she gave a gay little laugh, +and then for a moment mused. "That is a very curious bit of history," +she said, in the end. "How ever did it come to your knowledge?" + +Annunziata shrugged. "Oh," she answered, "everybody knows that. I have +known it for years. My grandmother who lived in Milan told it to me. +Doesn't the water look cool and pleasant?" was her abrupt digression, as +she returned her gaze to the Rampio. "When it is hot like this, I +should like to lie down in the water, and go to sleep. Wouldn't you?" + +"I'm not so sure," said Maria Dolores. "I should rather fear I might be +drowned." + +"Oh, but that wouldn't hurt," said Annunziata, with security. "To be +drowned in such beautiful green water, among all those beams of light, +would be nice." + +"Perhaps you are not aware," said Maria Dolores, "that when people are +drowned they die?" + +"Oh, yes, I know that," said Annunziata. "But"--she raised calm pellucid +eyes--"wouldn't you like to die?" + +"Certainly not," said Maria Dolores, a shadow on her face. + +"I would," said Annunziata, stoutly. "It must be lovely to die." + +"Hush," Maria Dolores rebuked her, frowning. "You must not say such +things." + +"Why not say them, if you think them?" asked Annunziata. + +"You mustn't think them either," said Maria Dolores. + +"Oh, I can't help thinking them," said Annunziata, with a movement. "It +surely must be lovely to die and go to Heaven. If I were perfectly sure +I should go to Heaven, I would shut my eyes and die now. But I should +probably have to wait some time in Purgatory. And, of course, I might go +to Hell." + +Maria Dolores' face was full of trouble. "You must not talk like that," +she said. "You must not. It is wicked of you." + +"Then, if I am wicked, I _should_ go to Hell?" inquired Annunziata, +looking alertly up. + +Maria Dolores looked about her, looked across the river, down the +valley, as one in distress scanning the prospect for aid. "Of course you +would not," she said. "My dear child, can't we find something else to +talk of?" + +"Do you think I shall have a very long and hard Purgatory?" asked +Annunziata. + +Maria Dolores threw a despairing glance at the horizon. + +"No, no, dear," she answered uneasily. "You will have a very short and +gentle one. Anyhow, you'll not have to consider that for years to come. +Now shall we change the subject?" + +"Well," said Annunziata, with an air of deliberation, "if you are +perfectly sure I shall not go to Hell, and that my Purgatory will not +be long and hard, I think I will do what I said. I will lie down in the +water and go to sleep, and the water will drown me, and I shall die." + +Maria Dolores' face was terrified. "Annunziata!" she cried. "You don't +know what you are saying. You are cruel. You won't do anything of the +sort. You must give me your solemn word of honour that you won't do +anything of the sort. It would be a most dreadful sin. Come. Come with +me now, away from here, away from the sight of the river. You must never +come here alone again. Give me your hand, and come away." + +Annunziata got up, gave her hand, and moved off at Maria Dolores' side, +towards the Castle. "Of course," she said, "if I want to die, I don't +need to lie down in the water. I can die at any moment I wish, by just +shutting my eyes, and holding my breath, and telling my heart seven +times to stop beating. Heart, stop beating; heart, stop beating;--that +way, seven times." + +"For the love of Mercy," wailed poor Maria Dolores, almost writhing in +her misery.... Then, suddenly, she breathed a deep sigh of relief, and +fervently exclaimed, "Thank God." John was advancing towards them, down +the rugged pathway. + +"Do please come and help me with this perverse and maddening child," she +called to him, in English. "She's frightening me half out of my wits by +threatening to die. She even threatened to drown herself in the Rampio." + +"Children of her complexion can't die," said John, in Italian, (and +Annunziata pricked up her ears). "They can only turn into monkeys, and +then they have to live in the forests of Africa, where it is always +dark, and all the men and women are negro savages, and all the other +animals (except the mosquitos and the snakes) are lions and tigers. +Besides, if Annunziata were to turn into a monkey, she couldn't have the +sugared chestnuts that somebody or other has brought her from Roccadoro. +On the chest of drawers in my room there has mysteriously appeared a box +of sugared chestnuts. I thought they were for her, but they're not, +unless she will promise never to turn into a monkey." + +Annunziata's eyes had clouded. + +"Of course I won't turn into a monkey," she said, in accents at once of +disillusion and disdain. "I did not know there was any such danger. I +should hate to be a monkey." Then her eyes brightened again. "May I go +and get them now?" she asked, wistful and impatient. + +"Yes," said John; "be off with you." And she went running lightly up the +hill. + +He turned to Maria Dolores. Her face (clear-cut, with its dark hair, +against the red background of her sunshade) was white and drawn with +pain. But she smiled, rather wanly, as her gaze met his, and said, in a +weak voice, "Oh, I am so glad you came. I can't tell you how she was +frightening me." And all at once her eyes filled with tears. + +I needn't say whether John was moved, whether it was his impulse to take +her in his arms and dry her tears with kisses. He did actually, on that +impulse, give a perceptible start towards her, but then he restrained +himself. "The child ought to be whipped," he broke out angrily. "You +must not take her prattle so seriously." + +"But _she_ was so serious," said Maria Dolores. "Oh, when she +threatened to lie down in the river, and let herself be drowned--!" Her +voice failed her, as at the inexpressible. + +"No fear of that," said John. "The first touch of the cold water (and +icy-cold it is, a glacier-stream, you know) would bring her to her +senses. But come! You must not think of it any more. You have had a bad +shock, but no bones are broken, and now you must try to banish it all +from your mind." + +"What an unaccountable child she is!" said Maria Dolores. "Surely it is +unnatural and alarming for a child to have her head so teeming with +strange freaks and fancies. Oh, I pray God to grant that nothing may +happen to her." + +"The most serious evil that's likely to happen to her for the present," +said John, "will be an indigestion of marrons glacés." + +Maria Dolores' tears had gone now. She smiled. But afterwards she looked +grave again. "Oh, I wish I could get the dread of something happening to +her out of my heart. I wish she wasn't so pale and fragile-looking," she +said. Then there came a gleam in her eyes. "But you were going for a +walk, and I am detaining you." + +"The object of my walk has been accomplished," said John. + +"Oh?" questioned she. + +"I was walking in the hope, on the chance, that I might meet you," he +hardily explained. "It's such an age since I've seen you. Are you making +for the garden? I pray you to be kind, and let me go with you. I've been +an exile and a wanderer--I've been to Roccadoro." + +She had rebegun her ascension of the hill. The path was steep, as well +as rugged. Sometimes John had to help her over a hard bit. The touch of +her hand, soft and warm, and firm too, in his; the sense of her +closeness; the faint fragrance of her garments, of her hair,--these +things, you may be sure, went to his head, went to his heart. The garden +lay in a white blaze of sunshine, that seemed almost material, like an +incandescent fluid; but the entrance to the avenue was dark and +inviting. "Let us," he proposed, "go and sit on a marble bench under the +glossy leaves of the ilexes, in the deep, cool shade; and let's play +that it's a thousand years ago, and that you're a Queen (white Queen +Blanche, like a queen of lilies), and that I'm your minstrel-man." + +"What song will you sing me?" asked she gaily, as they took their places +on the marble bench. It was semicircular, with a high carved back, +(carved with the armorials of the Sforzas), and of course it was +lichen-stained, grey and blue and green, yellow and scarlet. + + "_White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies, + Fairer and dearer than dearest and fairest, + To hear me sing, if it her sweet will is,-- + Sing, minstrel-man, of thy love, an thou darest_," + +trolled John, in his light barytone, to a tune, I imagine, improvised +for the occasion. "But if it's a thousand years ago," he laughed, "that +song smacks too much perhaps of actuality, and I had best choose +another." + +Maria Dolores joined in his laugh. "I did not know you sang," she said. +"Let me hear the other." + +"A song," reflected he, "that I could sing with a good deal of feeling +and conviction, would be 'Give her but the least excuse to love me.'" + +Maria Dolores all at once looked sober. + +"Oughtn't you to be careful," she said, "to give her no excuse at all to +love you, if you are really resolved never to ask her to be your wife?" + +"That is exactly what I have given her," answered John, "no excuse at +all. I should sing in a spirit purely academic,--my song would be the +utterance of a pious but hopeless longing, of the moth's desire for the +star." + +"But she, I suppose, isn't a star," objected Maria Dolores. "She's +probably just a weak human woman. You may have given her excuses without +meaning to." There was the slightest quaver in her voice. + +John caught his breath; he turned upon her almost violently. But she was +facing away from him, down the avenue, so that he could not get her +eyes. + +"In that case," she said, "wouldn't you owe her something?" + +"I should owe myself a lifetime's penance with the discipline," John on +a solemn tone replied, hungrily looking at her cheek, at the little +tendrils of dark hair about her brow. "God knows what I should owe to +her." + +"You would owe it to her," said Maria Dolores, always facing away, "to +tell her your love straightforwardly, and to ask her to marry you." + +John thrilled, John ached. His blue eyes burned upon her. "What else do +you think I dream of, night and day? But how could I, with honour? You +know my poverty," he groaned. + +"But if she has enough, more than enough, for two?" softly urged Maria +Dolores. + +"Ah, that's the worst of it," cried he. "If we were equals in penury, if +she had nothing, then I might honourably ask her, and we could live on +herbs together in a garret, and I could keep her respect and my own. Oh, +garret-paradise! But to marry a woman who is rich, to live in luxury +with her, and to try to look unconscious while she pays the bills,--she +would despise me, I should abhor myself." + +"Why should she despise you?" asked Maria Dolores. "The possession of +wealth is a mere accident. If people are married and love each other, I +can't see that it matters an atom whether their money belonged in the +first place to the man or to the woman,--it would belong henceforward to +them both equally." + +"That is a very generous way of looking at it, but it is a woman's way. +No decent man could accept it," said John. + +"Up to a certain point," said Maria Dolores, slowly, "I understand your +scruples. I understand that a poor man might feel that he would not like +to make the advances, if the woman he loved was rich. But suppose the +woman loved him, and knew that he loved her, and knew that it was only +his poverty which held him back, then _she_ might make the advances. She +might put aside her pride, and go halfway to meet him, and to remove his +difficulties and embarrassments. If, after that, he still did not ask +her, I think his scruples would have become mere vanity,--I think it +would show that he cared more for his mere vanity than for her +happiness." + +Her voice died out. John could see that her lip quivered a little. His +throat was dry. The pulses were pounding in his temples. His brain was +all a confusion. He hardly knew what had befallen him, he hardly knew +what she had said. He only knew that there was a great ball of fire in +his breast, and that the pain of it was half an immeasurable joy. + +"God forgive me," the absurd and exaggerated stickler for the dignity of +his sex wildly cried. "God knows how I love her, how I care for her +happiness. But to go to her empty-handed,--but to put myself in the +position of being kept by a woman,--God knows how impossible it is." + +Maria Dolores stood up, still looking away from him. + +"Well, let us hope," she said, changing her tone to one of unconcerned +detachment, "that we have been discussing baseless suppositions. Let us +hope that her heart is quite untouched. And for both your sakes," she +concluded, her head in the air, "let us hope that you and she will never +meet again. Good-bye." + +She gave him a curt little nod, and walked lightly, rapidly up the +avenue. + +John's brain was all a confusion. He looked after her helplessly. He +only knew that there was a great ball of fire in his breast, and that +the pain of it was now unmixed. + + + + +V + + +Maria Dolores tripped into Frau Brandt's sitting-room, merrily singing a +snatch of song. + + "_Gardez vous d'être sévère + Quand on vous park d'amour_," + +she carolled. Then she stopped singing, and blithely laughed. + +Frau Brandt raised her good brown face from her knitting, and her good +brown eyes looked anxiously upwards, slantwise over her +tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles. + +"What is the matter now?" she asked. "What has happened to vex you now?" + +"To vex me!" cried Maria Dolores, in apparent astonishment. "Wasn't I +singing aloud from sheer exuberance of high spirits?" + +"No," said Frau Brandt, with a very positive shake of her white-capped +head. "You were singing to conceal your low spirits. What has +happened?" + +"Ah, well, then, if you know so much and must know all," said Maria +Dolores, "I've just proposed to the man I'm in love with, and been sent +about my business." + +"What do you mean?" asked Frau Brandt, phlegmatic. "What nonsense is +this?" + +"I mean my cobbler's son," Maria Dolores answered. "I, a Princess of the +Empire, humbly offered him, a cobbler's son, my hand, heart, and +fortune,--and the graceless man rejected them with scorn." + +"That is a likely story," said Frau Brandt, wagging her chin. Her blunt +brown fingers returned to their occupation. "I see your Serene Highness +offering her hand." + +"At all events, will you kindly tell Josephine to pack our boxes. +To-morrow we'll be flitting," her Serene Highness in a casual way +announced. + +"What say you?" cried Frau Brandt, dropping her knitting into her lap. + +"Yes--to Mischenau, to my brother," the Princess pursued. "Of course +you'll have to come with us, poor dear. You can't let me travel alone +with Josephine." + +"No," said Frau Brandt. "I will go with you." + +"And you can remain for my wedding," Maria Dolores added. "I am going +home to meet my brother's wishes, and to marry my second cousin, the +high and mighty Maximilian, Prince of Zelt-Zelt." + +"Herr Gott!" said Frau Brandt, glancing with devotion at the ceiling. + + + + +VI + + +John, wild-eyed, was still where she had left him, in the avenue, +savouring and resavouring his woe. "If only," he brooded, "she were of +one's own rank in the world, then her wealth might perhaps not be such +an absolutely hopeless impediment as it is. But to marry, as they say, +beneath one, and to marry money into the bargain,--that would be a +little too much like the fortune-hunter of tradition." He still sat +where she had left him, on the marble bench, disconsolate, when the +parroco approached hurriedly, from the direction of the house. + +"Signore," the parroco began, out of breath, "I offer a thousand excuses +for venturing to disturb you, but my niece has suddenly fallen ill. I am +going to the village to telephone for a doctor. My cook is away, for her +Sunday afternoon. Might I pray you to have the extreme kindness to stay +with the child till I return? I don't know what is the matter, but she +fainted, and now is delirious, and, I'm afraid, very ill indeed." + +"Good Heavens!" gasped John, forgetting everything else. "Of course, of +course." + +And he set off hotfoot for the presbytery. + + + + +PART SIXTH + + + + +I + + +I would rather not dwell upon the details of Annunziata's illness. By +the mercy of Providence, she got well in the end; but in the mean time +those details were sufficiently painful. John, for example, found it +more than painful to hear her cry out piteously, as she often would in +her delirium, that she did not wish to be turned into a monkey; he hung +his head and groaned, and cursed the malinspired moment which had given +that chimæra birth. However, he had his compensations. Maria Dolores, +whom he had thought never to see again, he saw every day. "Let us hope +that you and she may never meet again." In his despairing heart the +words became a refrain. But an hour later the news of trouble at the +presbytery had travelled to the pavilion, and she flew straight to +Annunziata's bedside. Ever since, (postponing those threatened nuptials +at Mischenau), she had shared with John, and the parroco, and Marcella +the cook, the labours of nurse. And though it was arranged that the men, +turn and turn about, should watch by night, and the women by day, John, +by coming early and leaving late, contrived to make a good part of his +vigil and of hers coincident. And the strange result is that now, +looking backwards upon that period of pain and dread, when from minute +to minute no one knew what awful change the next minute might +bring,--looking backwards, and seeing again the small bare room, +cell-like, with its whitewashed walls, its iron cot, its Crucifix, its +narrow window (through which wide miles of valley shone), and then the +little white face and the brown curls tossing on the pillow, and the +woman of his love sitting near to him, in the intimacy of a common care +and common duties,--the strange result is that John feels a glow in his +heart, as at the memory of a period of joy. + +"Oh, do not let them turn me into a monkey. Oh, Holy Mother, I am so +afraid. Oh, do not let them!" Annunziata cried, shuddering, and +shrinking deeper into bed, towards the wall. + +John hung his head and wrung his hands. "My God, my God!" he groaned. + +"You should not blame yourself," Maria Dolores said in a low voice, +while she bathed the child's forehead, and fanned her face. "Your +intention was good, you could not foresee what has happened, and it may +be for the best, after all,--it may strengthen her 'will to live,' which +is the great thing, the doctor says." + +She had spoken English, but Annunziata's next outcry was like a +response. + +"Oh, to live, to live--I want to live, to live Oh, let me live!" + +But at other times her wandering thoughts took quite a different turn. + +Gazing solemnly up into Maria Dolores' face, she said, "He does not even +know her name, though he fears it may be Smitti. I thought it was Maria +Dolores, but he fears it may be Smitti." + +John looked out of the window, pretending not to hear, and praying, I +expect, that Maria Dolores' eyes might be blinded and her counsel +darkened. At the same time, (Heaven having sent me a laughing hero), I +won't vouch that his shoulders didn't shake a little. + + + + +II + + +Apropos of their ignorance of each other's patronymics. ... One +afternoon Maria Dolores was taking the air at the open door of the +presbytery, when, to a mighty clattering of horses' hoofs, a big +high-swung barouche came sweeping into the court-yard, described a bold +half-circle, and abruptly drew up before her. In the barouche sat a big +old lady, a big soft, humorous-eyed old lady, in cool crêpe-de-chine, +cream-coloured, with beautiful white hair, a very gay light straw +bonnet, and a much befurbelowed lavender-hued sunshade. Coachman and +footman, bolt upright, stared straight before them, as rigid as if their +liveries were of papier-maché. The horses, with a full sense of what +they owed to appearances, fierily champed their bits, tossed their +manes, and pawed the paving-stones. The old lady smiled upon Maria +Dolores with a look of great friendliness and interest, softly bowed, +and wished her, in a fine, warm, old high-bred voice, "Good afternoon." + +Maria Dolores (feeling an instant liking, as well as curiosity and +admiration) smiled in her turn, and responded, "Good afternoon." + +"You enjoy a fine view from here," the old lady remarked, ducking her +sunshade in the direction of the valley. + +"A beautiful view," agreed Maria Dolores, following the sunshade with +her eyes. + +Those of the stranger had a gleam. "But don't you think, if the +unvarnished truth may be whispered, that it's becoming the merest trifle +too hot?" she suggested. + +Maria Dolores lightly laughed. "I think it is decidedly too hot," she +said. + +"I'm glad to find we're of the same opinion," declared the old lady, +fanning herself. "You can positively _see_ the heat vibrating there in +the distance. We children of the North should fly such weather. For my +part, I'm off to-morrow for England, where I can shiver through the +summer comfortably in my chimney-corner." + +Maria Dolores laughed out again. + +"So I've driven over from Roccadoro," the newcomer continued, "to have a +farewell look at a young man of my acquaintance who's staying here. I +dare say you may know him. He has blue eyes and a red beard, a +flattering manner and a pretty wit, and his name is Blanchemain." + +"Oh?" said Maria Dolores, her eyebrows going up. "Is that his name? You +mean the young Englishman who lives with the parroco?" + +The old lady's eyebrows, which were thick and dark, went up too. + +"Is it possible you didn't know his name?" was her surprised +ejaculation. Then she said, "I wonder whether he is anywhere about?" + +"I fancy he's asleep," said Maria Dolores. + +"Asleep? At this hour?" The dark eyebrows frowned their protest. "That +sounds like a sad slugabed." + +Maria Dolores looked serious. "He was up all night. We have a child ill +here, and he was up all night, watching." + +The stranger's grey eyes filled with concern and sympathy. "I hope, I'm +sure, it's not that pretty little girl, the niece of the parroco?" she +said. + +"Unhappily, it is," said Maria Dolores. "She has been very ill indeed." + +"I am extremely sorry to hear it, extremely sorry," the old lady +declared, with feeling. "If I can be of any sort of use--if I can send +anything--or in any way help--" Her eyes completed the offer. + +"Oh, thank you, thank you," replied Maria Dolores. "You are most kind, +but I don't think there is anything any one can do. Besides, she is on +the mend now, we hope. The doctor says the worst is probably over." + +"Well, thank God for that," exclaimed the visitor, with a will. She +considered for a moment, and then reverted to the previous question. "So +you did not know that my vivid young friend's name was Blanchemain?" + +"No," said Maria Dolores. + +"It is a good name--there's none better in England," averred the old +lady, with a nod of emphasis that set the wheat-ears in her bonnet +quivering. + +"Oh--?" said Maria Dolores, looking politely interested. + +"He's the nephew and heir of Lord Blanchemain of Ventmere," her +instructress went on. "That is one of our most ancient peerages." + +"Really?" said Maria Dolores. (What else did she say in her heart? Where +now was her cobbler's son?) + +"And I'm glad to be able to add that I'm his sort of connection--I'm the +widow of the late Lord Blanchemain." The lady paused; then, with that +smile of hers which we know, that smile which went as an advance-guard +to disarm resentment, "People of my age are allowed to be inquisitive," +she premised. "I have introduced myself to you--won't you introduce +yourself to me?" + +"My name is Maria Dolores of Zelt-Neuminster," answered the person +questioned, also smiling. + +The widow of the late Lord Blanchemain inwardly gasped, but she was +quick to suppress all outward symptoms of that circumstance. The +daughter of Eve in her gasped, but the practised old Englishwoman of the +world affably and imperturbably pronounced, with a gracious movement of +the head, "Ah, indeed? You are then, of course, a relation of the +Prince?" + +"I am the Prince's sister," said Maria Dolores. And, as if an +explanation of her presence was in order, she added, "I am here visiting +my old nurse and governess, to whom my brother has given a pavilion of +the Castle for her home." + +Lady Blanchemain fanned herself. "A miller's daughter!" she thought, +with a silent laugh at John's expense and her own. "I am very glad to +have made your acquaintance," she said, "and I hope this may not be our +last meeting. I'm afraid I ought now to be hastening back to Roccadoro. +I wonder whether you will have the kindness, when you see him, to convey +my parting benediction to Mr. Blanchemain. Oh, no, I would not let him +be wakened, not for worlds. Thank you. Good-bye." + +And with a great effect of majesty and importance, like a conscious +thing, her carriage rolled away. + + + + +III + + +"My romance is over, my April dream is ended," said the Princess, with +an air, perhaps a feint, of listless melancholy, to Frau Brandt. + +"What mean you?" asked Frau Brandt, unmoved. + +"My cobbler's son has disappeared--has vanished in a blaze of glory," +her Serene Highness explained, and laughed. + +"I don't understand," said Frau Brandt. "He has not left Sant' +Alessina?" + +"No, but he isn't a cobbler's son at all--he's merely been masquerading +as one--his name is not Brown, Jones, or Robinson--his name is the +high-sounding name of Blanchemain, and he's heir to an English peerage." + +"Ah, so? He is then noble?" Frau Brandt inferred, raising her eyes, with +satisfaction. + +"As noble as need be. An English peer is marriageable. So here's adieu +to my cottage in the air." + +"Here's good riddance to it," said Frau Brandt. + +That evening, at the hour of sunset, Maria Dolores met John in the +garden. + +"You had a visitor this afternoon," she announced. "A most inspiritingly +young old lady, as soft and white as a powder-puff, in a carriage that +was like a coach-and-four. Lady Blanchemain. She is leaving to-morrow +for England. She desired me to give you her farewell blessing." + +"It will be doubly precious to me by reason of the medium through which +it comes," said John, with his courtliest obeisance. + +There was a little pause, during which she looked at the western sky. +But presently, "Why did you tell me you had an uncle who was a farmer?" +she asked, beginning slowly to pace down the pathway. + +"Did I tell you that? I suppose I had a boastful fit upon me," John +replied. + +"But it very much misled me," said Maria Dolores. + +"Oh, it's perfectly true," said John. + +"You are the heir to a peerage," said Maria Dolores. + +John had a gesture. + +"There you are," he said; "and my uncle, the peer, spends much of his +time and most of his money breeding sheep and growing turnips. If that +isn't a farmer, I should like to know what is." + +"I hope you displayed less reticence regarding your station in the world +to that woman you were in love with," said she. + +"That woman I _was_ in love with?" John caught her up. "That woman I +_am_ in love with, please." + +"Oh? Are you still in love with her?" Maria Dolores wondered. "It is so +long since you have spoken of her, I thought your heart was healed." + +"If I have not spoken of her, it has been because I was under the +impression that you had tacitly forbidden me to do so," John informed +her. + +"So I had," she admitted. "But I find that there is such a thing--as +being too well obeyed." + +She brought out her last words, after the briefest possible suspension, +hurriedly, in a voice that quailed a little, as if in terror of its own +audacity. John, with tingling pulses, turned upon her. But she, +according to her habit at such times, refused him her eyes. He could +see, though, that her eyelashes trembled. + +"Oh," he cried, "I love her so much, I need her so, I suppose I shall +end by doing the dishonourable thing." + +"Did you ever tell her that you were Lord Blanchemain's heir?" she +asked. + +"I never thought of it. Why should I?" said John. + +"When you were bemoaning your poverty, as an obstacle to marriage, you +might have remembered that your birth counted for something. With us +Austrians, for example, birth counts for almost everything,--for +infinitely more than money." + +"I think," said John, as one impersonally generalizing, "that a +fortune-hunter with a tuft is the least admirable variety of that +animal. I wish you could see what beautiful little rose-white ears she +has, and the lovely way in which her dark hair droops about them." + +"How long ago was it," mused she, "that love first made people fancy +they saw beauties which had no real existence?" + +"Oh, the moment you see a thing, it acquires real existence," John +returned. "The act of seeing is an act of creation. The thing you see +has real existence on your retina and in your mind, if nowhere else, and +that is the realest sort of real existence." + +"Then she must thank you as the creator of her 'rose-white' ears," +laughed Maria Dolores. "I wonder whether that sunset has any real +existence, and whether it is really as splendid as it seems." + +The west had become a vast sea of gold, a pure and placid sea of +many-tinted gold, bounded and intersected and broken into innumerable +wide bays and narrow inlets by great cloud-promontories, purple and rose +and umber. Directly opposite, just above the crest-line of the hills, +hung the nearly full moon, pale as a mere phantom of itself. +And from somewhere in the boscage at the garden's end came a +lool-lool-lool-lioo-liô, deep and long-drawn, liquid and complaining, +which one knew to be the preliminary piping-up of Philomel. + +"If some things," said John, "derive their beauty from the eye of the +beholder, the beauty of other things is determined by the presence or +absence of the person you long to share all beautiful visions with. The +sky, the clouds, the whole air and earth, this evening, seem to me +beauty in its ultimate perfection." + +Maria Dolores softly laughed, softly, softly. And for a long time, by +the marble balustrade that guarded this particular terrace of the +garden, they stood in silence. The western gold burned to red, and more +sombre red; the cloud-promontories gloomed purpler; the pale moon +kindled, and shone like ice afire, with its intense cold brilliancy; the +olive woods against the sky lay black; a score of nightingales, near and +far, were calling and sobbing and exulting; and two human spirits +yearned with the mystery of love. + +"My income," said John, all at once, brusquely coming to earth, "is +exactly six hundred pounds a year. I suppose two people _could_ live on +that, though I'm dashed if I see how. Of course we couldn't live in +England, where that infernal future peerage would put us under a +thousand obligations; but I dare say we might find a garret here in +Italy. The question is, would she be willing, or have I any right to +ask her, to marry me, on the condition of leaving her own money +untouched, and living with me on mine? + +"Apropos of future peerages and things," said Maria Dolores, "do you +happen to know whether she has any rank of her own to keep up?" + +"I don't care twopence about her rank," said John. + +"Do you happen to know her name?" she asked. + +"I know what I wish her name was," John promptly answered. "I wish to +Heaven it was Blanchemain." + +Maria Dolores gazed, pensive, at the moon. "He does not even know her +name," she remarked, on a key of meditation, "though he fears," she +sadly shook her head, "he fears it may be Smitti." + +"Oh, I say!" cried John, wincing, with a kind of sorry giggle; and I +don't know whether he looked or felt the more sheepish. His face showed +every signal of humiliation, he tugged nervously at his beard, but his +eyes, in spite of him, his very blue blue eyes were full of vexed +amusement. + +The bell in the clock-tower struck eight. + +"There--it is your hour for going to Annunziata," said Maria Dolores. + +"You have not answered my question?" said John. + +"I will think about it," said she. + + + + +IV + + +Annunziata's delirium had passed, but in spite of all their efforts to +persuade her not to talk, talk she would. + +"This is the month of May, isn't it?" she asked, next morning. + +"Yes, dear one," said Maria Dolores, whose watch it was. + +"And that is the month of Mary. San Luca ought to hurry up and make me +well, so that I can keep flowers on the Lady Altar." + +"Then if you wish to get well quickly," said Maria Dolores, "you must +try not to talk,--nor even to think, if you can help it. You know the +doctor does not want you to talk." + +"All right. I won't talk. A going clock may be always wrong, but a +stopped clock is right twice a day. So stop your tongue, and avoid +folly. My uncle told me that. He never talks." + +"And now shall you and I imitate his example?" proposed Maria Dolores. +Her lips, compressed, were plainly the gaolers of a laugh. + +"Yes," said Annunziata. "But I can't help thinking of those poor +flowers. All May flowers are born to be put on the Lady Altar. Those +poor flowers are missing what they were born for. They must be very +sad." + +"This afternoon, every afternoon," Maria Dolores promised, "I will put +flowers on the Lady Altar. Now see if you can't shut your eyes, and rest +for a little while." + +"I once found a toad on the Lady Altar. What do you think he was there +for?" asked Annunziata. + +"I can't think, I'm sure," said Maria Dolores. + +"Well, when I first saw him I was angry, and I was going to get a broom +and sweep him away. But then I thought it must be very hard to be a +toad, and that you can't help being a toad if you are born one, and I +thought that perhaps that toad was there praying that he might be +changed from a toad to something else. So I didn't sweep him away. Have +you ever heard of the little Mass of Corruption that lay in a garden?" + +"No," said Maria Dolores. + +"Well," said Annunziata, "once upon a time a little Mass of Corruption +lay in a garden. But it did not know it was a Mass of Corruption, and it +did not wish to be a Mass of Corruption, and it never did any harm or +wished any harm to any one, but just lay there all day long, and thought +how beautiful the sky was, and how good and warm the sun, and how sweet +the flowers were and the bird-songs, and thanked God with all its heart +for having given it such a lovely place to lie in. Yet all the while, +you know, it couldn't help being what it was, a little Mass of +Corruption. And at the close of the day some people who were walking in +the garden saw it, and cried out, 'Oh, what a horrible little Mass of +Corruption!' and they called the gardener, and had it buried in the +earth. But the little Mass of Corruption, when it heard that it _was_ a +little Mass of Corruption, felt very, very sad, and it made a +supplication to Our Lady. 'I do not wish to be a Mass of Corruption,' it +said. 'Queen of Heaven, pray for me, that I may be purified, and made +clean, and not be a Mass of Corruption any longer, and that I may then +go back to the garden, out of this dark earth.' So Our Lady prayed for +it, and it was cleansed with water and purified, and--what do you think +the Little Mass of Corruption became? It became a rose--a red rose in +that very garden, just where they had buried it. From which we see--But +I don't quite remember what we see from it," she broke off the pain of +baffled effort on her brow. "My uncle could tell you that." + +Afterwards, for a few minutes, she was silent, lying quite still, with +her eyes on the ceiling. + +"Why do sunny lands produce dark people, and dark lands light people?" +she asked all at once. + +"Ah, don't begin to talk again, dear," Maria Dolores pleaded. "The +doctor will he coming soon now, and he will be angry if he finds that I +have let you talk." + +"Oh, I will tell him that it isn't your fault," said Annunziata. "I will +tell him that you didn't let me, but that I talked because it is so hard +to lie here and think, think, think, and not be allowed to say what you +are thinking. Prospero asked me that question about sunny lands a long +time ago. I've been thinking and thinking, but I can't think it out. +Have you a great deal of money? Are you very rich?" + +"Darling, won't you please not talk any more?" Maria Dolores implored +her. + +"I'll stop pretty soon," said Annunziata. "I think you are very rich. I +think, in spite of his saying her name is not Maria Dolores, that you +are the dark woman whom Prospero is to marry. He is to marry a dark +woman who will be very rich. But then he will also he very rich himself. +Is Austria a sunny land? England must be a dark land, for Prospero is +light. Let me see your left hand, please, and I will tell you whether +you are to marry a light man. + +"Hush!" said Maria Dolores, trying not to laugh. "That shall be some +other time." + +"Wouldn't you like to marry Prospero? I would," said Annunziata. + +"I think I hear the wheels of the doctor's gig," said Maria Dolores. +"Now we shall both be scolded." + +"But of course, if you do marry him, I can't," Annunziata pursued, +undaunted by this menace. "A man isn't allowed to have two +wives,--unless he is a king. He may have two sisters or two daughters, +but not two wives or two mothers. There was once a king named Salomone +who had a thousand wives, but even he had only one mother, I think. I +hope you will live at Sant' Alessina after your marriage. Will you?" + +Maria Dolores bit her lip and vouchsafed no answer; and again for a +minute or two Annunziata lay silent. But presently, "Have you ever waked +up in the middle of the night, and felt terribly frightened?" she asked. + +"Yes, dear, sometimes. I suppose every one has," said Maria Dolores. + +"Well, do you know why people feel so frightened when they wake like +that?" pursued the child. + +"No," said Maria Dolores. + +"I do," said Annunziata. "The middle of the night is the Devil's Noon. +Nobody is awake in the middle of the night except wicked people, like +thieves or roysterers, or people who are suffering. All people who are +good, and who are well and happy, are sound asleep. So it is the time +the Devil likes best, and he and all his evil spirits come to the earth +to enjoy the great pleasure of seeing people wicked or suffering. And +that is why we feel so frightened when we wake. The air all round us is +full of evil spirits, though we can't see them, and they are watching +us, to run and tell the Devil if we do anything wicked or suffer any +pain. But it is foolish of us to feel frightened, because our Guardian +Angels are always there too, and they are a hundred times stronger than +the evil spirits. Angels, you know, are very big, very much bigger than +men. Some of them are as tall as mountains, but even the quite small +ones are as tall as trees." + +"This time I really do hear wheels," said Maria Dolores, with an accent +of thanksgiving. + +And she rose to meet the doctor. + + + + +V + + +John sat in his room, absorbed in contemplation of a tiny lace-edged +pocket-handkerchief. He spread it out upon his knee, and laughed. He +crumpled it up in his palm, and pressed it to his face, and drank deep +of its faint perfume,--faint, but powerfully provocative of visions and +emotions. He had found it during the night on the floor of the +sick-room, and had captured and borne it away like a treasure. He spread +it out on his knee again, and was again about to laugh at its small size +and gauzy texture, when his eye was caught by something in its corner. +He held it nearer to the window. The thing that had caught his eye was a +cypher surmounted by a crown, embroidered so minutely as almost to call +for a magnifying glass. But without a glass he could see that the cypher +was composed of the initials M and D, and that the crown was not a +coronet, but a closed crown, of the pattern worn by mediatised princes. + +"What on earth can be the meaning of this?" he wondered, frowning, and +breathing quick. + +But he was stopped from further speculation for the moment by a knock at +the door. The postman entered with two letters, for one of which, as it +was registered, John had to sign. When he had tipped the postman and was +alone again, he put his registered letter on the dressing-table (with a +view to disciplining curiosity and exercising patience, possibly) and +turned his attention to the other. In a handsome, high old hand, that +somehow reminded him of the writer's voice, it ran as follows:-- + + "DEAR JOHN, + + "I was heart-broken not to see you when I drove over to say + good-bye this afternoon, but chance favoured me at least to the + extent of letting me see your miller's daughter, and you may + believe that I was glad of an opportunity to inspect her at close + quarters. My dear boy, she is no more a miller's daughter than you + are. Her beauty--there's _race_ in it. Her manner and carriage, + her voice, accent, her way of dressing, (I'd give a sovereign for + the name of her dressmaker), the fineness of her skin, her hair, + everything--there's race in 'em all, race and consciousness of + race, pride, dignity, distinction. These things don't come to pass + in a generation. I'm surprised at your lack of perspicacity. And + those blue eyes of yours look so sharp, too. But perhaps your wish + was father to your thought. You felt (well, and so to some extent + did I) that it would be more _romantic_. She's probably a very + great swell indeed, and I expect the Frau What's-her-name she's + staying with will turn out to be her old governess or nurse or + something. When those Austrians _can_ show quarterings, (of course + you must bar recent creations--they're generally named Cohen), they + can show them to some effect. They think nothing of thirty-two. All + of which, _au fond_, rather rejoices me, for if she really had been + a miller's daughter, it would have seemed a good deal like throwing + yourself away, and who knows what your rusty, crusty old uncle B. + might have said? I've long had a rod in pickle for _him_, and + t'other day I applied it. _Attendez_. + + "Don't forget the pig you purchased--so gallantly and confidingly. + I would not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments--your + pig will gobble 'em up. You should by this have received a + communication from my solicitors. Remember, you have pledged your + sacred promise. There must be no question of trying to shirk or + burke it. Remember that I am quite outrageously rich. I have no + children of my own, and no very near relatives, (and my distant + ones are intensely disagreeable), and I can't help looking upon the + heir of the Blanchemains as a kind of spiritual son. In your + position there's no such thing as having too much money. Take all + that comes, and never mind the quarter whence. They're Plymouth + Brethren, and send me tracts. + + "Good-bye now till August, if not before. For of course in August + you must come to me at Fring. Will you bring your bride? When and + where the wedding? I suppose they'll want it in Austria. Beware of + long engagements--or of too short ones. The autumn's the time,--the + only pretty ring-time. You see, you'll need some months for the + preparation of your trousseau. I love a man to be smart. Well, + good-bye. I was so sorry about that child's illness, but thankful + to hear she was mending. + + "Yours affectionately, + + "LINDA BLANCHEMAIN." + +And his registered letter, when at last he opened it, ran thus:-- + + "DEAR SIR:--Pursuant to instructions received from our client Lady + Blanchemain, we beg to hand you herewith our cheque for Seven + hundred and fifty pounds (£750 stg.), and to request the favour of + your receipt for the same, together with the address of your + bankers, that we may pay in quarterly a like sum to your account, + it being her ladyship's intention, immediately upon her return to + England, to effect a settlement upon yourself and heirs of £100,000 + funded in Bk. of Eng. stock. + + "We are further to have the pleasure to inform you that by the + terms of a will just prepared by us, and to be executed by Lady + Blanchemain at the earliest possible date, you are constituted her + residuary legatee. + + "With compliments and respectful congratulations, + + "We have the honour, dear Sir, to be, + + "Your obedient servants, + + "FARROW, BERNSCOT, AND TISDALE." + +And then there came another tap at the door, and it was the postman who +had returned, with a third letter which, like the true Italian postman +that he was, he had forgotten,--and I fancy, if it hadn't been for that +tip still warm in his pocket, the easy-going fellow would have allowed +it to stand over till to-morrow. He made, at any rate, a great virtue of +having discovered it and of having retraced his steps. + +The letter was written in black, angular, uncompromising characters, +that looked rather like sabre-thrusts and bayonets. It read:-- + + "DEAR JACK:--I have received the enclosure from Linda Lady + Blanchemain. She is an exceedingly impertinent and meddlesome old + woman. But she is right about the allowance. I don't know why I + never thought of it myself. I don't know why you never suggested + it. I extremely regret it. As next in succession, you are + certainly entitled to an annuity from the estate. I have to-day + remitted £500 to your bankers, and am instructing my agents to pay + in a like amount quarterly. + + "I hope I shall soon be seeing you at Ventmere. We are having a + grand lambing season, but there's a nasty spread of swine-fever, + and the whole country's papered with handbills. I got a goodish bit + of hunting down at Wilsborough during the winter. Now there's + nothing to do but play golf. I never could find any fun in shooting + rooks. + + "Your affectionate uncle, + + "B of V." + +And the enclosure:-- + + "Linda Lady Blanchemain presents her compliments to Lord + Blanchemain of Ventmere, and begs to apprise him that she has + lately had the pleasure of meeting his lordship's nephew John, and + has discovered to her amazement that his lordship makes him no + allowance. This situation, for the heir to the barony of + Blanchemain, is of course absurd, and must, Lady Blanchemain is + sure, be due entirely to an oversight on his lordship's part. She + ventures, therefore, with all respect, to bring it to his notice." + +So! Here sat a young man with plenty to think about; a young man, whose +income, yesterday a bare six hundred, had sprung up over night to +something near six thousand. Six thousand a year isn't opulence, if you +like, but a young man possessing it can hardly look upon himself as +quite empty-handed, either. This young man, however, had other things as +well to think of. What of that embroidered handkerchief? What of those +shrewd suspicions of Lady Blanchemain's? What of his miller's daughter? + +And there was another thing still. What of his proud old honest Spartan +of an unimaginative uncle? He thought of him, and "Oh, the poor old +boy," he cried. "Not for ten times the money would I have had the dear +old woman write to him like that. How hard it must have hit him!" + +"M, D, and a princely crown," he reflected. "I wish I had an Almanach de +Gotha." + + + + +VI + + +"Who was it said of some one that he dearly loved a lord?" Maria +Dolores, her chin in the air, asked of Frau Brandt. + +"I do not know," Frau Brandt replied, knitting. + +"Well, at least, you know whether it would be possible for a man and +wife to live luxuriously on sixpence a week. Would it?" pursued her +tease. + +"You are well aware that it would not," said Frau Brandt. + +"How about six hundred pounds a year?" + +"Six hundred pounds--?" Frau Brandt computed. "That would be six +thousand florins, no? It would depend upon their station in the world." + +"Well, suppose their station were about my station--and my lord's?" + +"You," said Frau Brandt, with a chuckle of contentment, swaying her +white-bonneted head. "You would need twice that for your dress alone." + +"One could dress more simply," said Maria Dolores. + +"No," said Frau Brandt, her good eyes beaming, "you must always dress in +the very finest that can be had." + +"But then," Maria Dolores asked with wistfulness, "what am I to do? For +six hundred pounds is the total of his income." + +"You have, unless I am mistaken, an income of your own," Frau Brandt +remarked. + +"Yes--but he won't let me use it," said Maria Dolores. + +"He? Who?" demanded Frau Brandt, bridling. "Who is there that dares to +say let or not let to you? + +"My future husband," said Maria Dolores. "He has peculiar ideas of +honour. He does not like the notion of marrying a woman who is richer +than himself. So he will marry me only on the condition that I send my +own fortune to be dropped in the middle of the sea." + +"What nonsense is this?" said Frau Brandt, composed. + +"No, it is the truth," said Maria Dolores, "the true truth. He is too +proud to live in luxury at his wife's expense." + +"I like a man making conditions, when it is a question of marrying you," +said Frau Brandt, with scorn. + +"So do I," said Maria Dolores, with heartiness. + +"Well, at any rate, I am glad to see that he is not after you for your +money," Frau Brandt reflected. + +"I suppose we shall have to dress in sackcloth and dine on lentils," +said Maria Dolores. + +"Of course you will tell him to take his conditions to the Old One," +said Frau Brandt. "It is out of the question for you to change the +manner of your life." + +"I feel indeed as if it were," admitted Maria Dolores. "But if he +insists?" + +"Then tell him to go to the Old One himself," was Frau Brandt's blunt +advice. + +Maria Dolores laughed. "It seems like an _impasse_," she said. "Who is +to break the news to my brother?" + +"We will wait until there is some news to break," the old woman amiably +grumbled. + +Again at the sunset hour Maria Dolores met him in the garden. He was +seated on one of their marble benches, amongst marble columns, +(rose-tinted by the western light, and casting long purple shadows), in +a vine-embowered pergola. He was leaning forward, legs crossed, brow +wrinkled, as one deep in thought. But of course at the sound of her +footstep he jumped up. + +"What mighty problem were you revolving?" she asked. "You looked like +Rembrandt's _philosophe en méditation_." + +"I was revolving the problem of human love," he answered. "I was +mutilating Browning. + + '_Was it something said, + Something done, + Was it touch of hand, + Turn of head?_' + +I was also thinking about you. I was wondering whether it would be my +cruel destiny not to see you this evening, and thinking of the first +time I ever saw you." + +"Oh," said she, lightly, "that morning among the olives,--when you +gathered the windflowers for me?" + +"No," said he. "That was the second time." + +"Indeed?" said she, surprised. She sat down on the marble bench. John +stood before her. + +"Yes," said he. "The first time was the day before. You were crossing +the garden--you were bending over the sun-dial--and I spied upon you +from a window of the _piano nobile_. Lady Blanchemain was there with me, +and she made a prediction." + +"What did she predict?" asked Maria Dolores, unsuspicious. + +"She predicted that I would fall--" But he dropped his sentence in the +middle. "She predicted what has happened." + +"Oh," murmured Maria Dolores, and looked at the horizon. By-and-by, +"That morning among the olives was the first time that I saw you--when +you dashed like a paladin to my assistance. I feel that I have never +sufficiently thanked you." + +"A paladin oddly panoplied," said John. "Tell me honestly, weren't you +in two minds whether or not to reward me with largesse? You had silver +in your hand." + +Maria Dolores laughed. I think she coloured a little. + +"Perhaps I was, for half a second," she confessed. "But your grand +manner soon put me in one mind." + +John also laughed. He took a turn backwards and forwards. "I have waked +in the dead of night, and grown hot and cold to remember the figure of +fun I was." + +"No," said Maria Dolores, to console him. "You weren't a figure of fun. +Your costume had the air of being an impromptu, but," she laughed, "your +native dignity shone through." + +"Thank you," said John, bowing. "The next time I saw you was that same +afternoon. You were with Annunziata in the avenue. I carried my vision +of you, like a melody, all the way to Roccadoro-and all the way home +again." + +"I had just made Annunziata's acquaintance," said Maria Dolores. + +"You had a white sunshade and a lilac frock," said John. "The next time +was that night in the moonlight. You were all in white, with a scarf of +white lace over your hair. You threw me a white rose from your +balcony--and I have carried that rose with me ever since." + +"I threw you a white rose?" doubted Maria Dolores, looking up, at fault. + +"Yes," said John. "Have you forgotten it?" + +"I certainly have," said she, with emphasis. + +"You threw me a smile that was like a white rose," said he. + +She laughed. + +"I think I just distantly acknowledged your bow," she said. + +"Well, some people's distant acknowledgments are like white roses," said +he. "I hope, at least, you remember what a glorious night it was, and +how the nightingales were singing?" + +"Yes," said she. "I remember that." + +"I have a fancy," he declared, "that it will be a more glorious night +still to-night, and that the nightingales will sing better than they +have ever sung before." + +Maria Dolores did not speak. + +"Do you happen," John asked, after a long silence, while they gazed at +the deepening colours in the west, "do you happen to possess such a +thing as a copy of the Almanach de Gotha?" + +"Yes," said she. + +"Really? I wonder whether you will lend it to me?" + +"I am sorry--it is in Vienna." And after an instant's pause, she +ventured, "What, if it isn't indiscreet to inquire, do you wish to look +up?" + +"I wish to look up a lady--a dream lady--a lady who walks in beauty like +the night of cloudless climes--and whose pocket-handkerchiefs are +embroidered with the initials M.D., in a cypher, under a princely +crown." + +"I should think," said Maria Dolores, considering, "that she would +probably be a member of one of the mediatised princely houses. But if +you have nothing more than her initials to go by, you would find it +difficult to trace her in the Almanach de Gotha." + +"No doubt," said John. "But to a man of spirit a difficulty is a +challenge." + +"Do you make a practice," asked she, "of appropriating people's +handkerchiefs?" + +"Certain people's--yes," unblushing, he promptly owned. + +"M.D. under a princely crown, I think you said?" she mused. "It occurs +to me that Maria Dolores of Zelt-Neuminster's pocket-handkerchiefs might +be so embroidered." + +"Ah?" said John. "Zelt-Neuminster? That would be a daughter of the man +who owns this Castle?" + +"No, she is a sister of the man who owns this Castle." + +"I understand," said John. "I wonder that the sister of the man who owns +this Castle never comes here to see how fine it is." + +"She has been here quite recently," said Maria Dolores. "She has been +here visiting her foster-mother, who lives in the pavilion beyond the +clock. She came to make a sort of retreat--to think something over." + +"Yes--?" questioned he. + +"Her brother is very anxious to marry her off. He is anxious that she +should marry her second cousin, the Prince of Zelt-Zelt. She came here +to make up her mind." + +"Has she made it up?" he asked. + +"I am not sure," said she. + +"Yet you seem to be deep in her confidence," said he. + +"Yes--but she is not quite sure herself." + +"Oh--?" said John. + +"She is one of those foolish women who dream of marriage as a high +romance." + +"Wise men," said John, "dream of it as the highest." + +She shook her head. + +"A marriage with her cousin would be an end to all romance for ever. She +was thinking a little while ago, I believe, of marrying a plain +commoner, the nephew of a farmer. That would have been indeed romantic. +Now, I hear, she is considering, a future member of your English House +of Lords." + +"Wouldn't even that be rather romantic--if a step down constitutes +romance?" John suggested. + +"Oh, a British peer is scarcely a step down," she returned. "Besides, +there are people who don't care--what is the expression?--twopence about +rank." + +"When I said that," John explained, "I had no inkling that her rank was +so exalted." + +"Did you think she was the daughter of a cobbler?" Maria Dolores +quickly, with some haughtiness, inquired. + +"I thought she was a daughter of the stars," John answered. + +"And you feared her name was Smitti," she said, haughtiness dissolving +in mirth. "I will never tell you what she feared that yours was." + +"See," said John, "how they are hanging the heavens with banners. It +must be in honour of some great impending event." + +Yesterday the west had been a sea. To-day it was a city, a vast grey and +violet city, with palaces and battlemented towers, and countless airy +spires and pinnacles; and here, there, everywhere, its walls were gay +with gold and crimson, as with drooping banners. + +"'Tis a city _en fête_," said John. "'Tis the city where marriages are +made. They must have one in hand." + +"Hark," said she, putting up a finger. "There are your nightingales +beginning." + +But the raised finger reminded him of something. "Have you a rooted +objection to rings?" he asked. + +"Why?" asked she. + +"I notice that you don't wear any." + +"Oh, sometimes I wear many," she said. "Then one has moods in which one +leaves them off." + +"I have a ring in my pocket which I think belongs to you," said he. + +"Really? I don't know that any of my rings are missing." + +"Here it is," said he. He produced the little old shagreen case he had +received from Lady Blanchemain, opened, and offered it. + +"It is a singularly beautiful ring," said she, her eyes admiring. "But +it doesn't belong to me." + +"I think it does," said he. "May I try it on your finger?" + +She put forth her right hand. + +"No--your left hand, please," he said. He dropped upon one knee before +her, and when the delicate white hand was surrendered, I imagine he made +of getting the ring upon the alliance finger a longer business by a good +deal than was necessary. "There," he said in the end, "you see. It looks +as if it had grown there. Of course it belongs to you." He still held +her hand, warm and firm and velvet-soft. I think in another second he +would have touched it with his lips. But she drew it away. + +She gazed into the depths of the heart-shaped ruby, tremulous with +liquid light, and smiled as at secret thoughts. + +"But I don't see," said John, getting to his feet, "how any man can ask +a Princess of the House of Zelt to marry him and live on six hundred +pounds a year." + +"She would have to modify her habits a good deal, that is very certain," +said Maria Dolores. + +"She would have to modify them utterly," said John. "Six hundred a year +is poverty even for a single man. For a married couple it would be +beggary. She would have to live like the wife of a petty employé. She +would have to travel second class and stay at fourth-rate hotels. She +would have to turn her old dresses and trim her own bonnets. She would +have to do without a maid. And all this means that she would have +virtually to renounce her caste, to give up the society of her equals, +who demand a certain scale of appearances, and to live among pariahs or +to live in isolation. Don't you think a man would be a monster of +selfishness to exact such sacrifices?" + +"Oh, some men have excessively far-fetched and morbid notions of +honour," said she. + +"Do you think the Princess, with all this brought to her attention, +would ever dream of consenting?" + +"Women in love are weak--they will consent to almost anything," said +she, her dark eyes smiling for an instant into his. + +Why didn't he take her in his arms? Hope deferred maketh the heart sick, +but to defer the consummation of a joy assured (observes the Persian +poet) giveth the heart a peculiar sweet excitement. + +"Well," said John. "I'm glad to think she is weak; but I'll never ask my +wife to consent to anything so unpleasant. A Princess and a future +peeress, living on six hundred pounds a year! It's unheard of." + +She looked at him, puzzled, incredulous. + +"Oh--? Can you possibly mean--that you will--take back your condition?" + +"Yes," said he, humbly. "Who am I to make conditions?" + +"You will let her spend as much of her own money as she likes?" she +wondered, wide-eyed. + +"As a lover of thrift, I shall deprecate extravagance," said John. "But +as a submissive husband, I shall let her do in all things as her fancy +dictates." + +"Well," marvelled she, "here is a surprise--here is a volte-face +indeed." + +And she looked at the city in the sky, and appeared to turn things over. + +John was mysteriously chuckling. + +"Haven't you your opinion," he asked, "of men who eat their words and +put their scruples in their pockets?" + +"I don't understand," said she, looking wild. "There is, of course, some +joke." + +"There is a joke, indeed," said he; "the joke is that I'm ten times +richer than I told you I was." + +She started back, and fixed him with a glance. + +"Then all that about your being poor was only humbug?" There was +reproach in her voice, I'm not sure there wasn't disappointment. + +"No," said he, "it was the exact and literal truth. But I have come into +a modest competency over-night." + +"I don't understand," said she. + +"My own part in the story is a sufficiently inglorious one," said he. +"I'm the benefactee. Lady Blanchemain and my uncle have put their heads +together, and endowed me. I feel rather small at letting them, but it +enables me to look my affianced boldly in the money-eye." + +"Oh? You are affianced? Already?" she asked gaily. + +"No--not unless you are," gaily answered John. + +She looked down at her ring. + + + + +VII + + +The quiet-coloured end of evening smiled fainter, fainter. The aerial +city, its cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces, had crumbled into +ruins, and stars twinkled among their shattered and darkened walls. The +moon burned icily above the eastern hills. The nightingales (or John was +no true prophet) sang better than they had ever sung before, while bats, +hither, thither, flew in startling zig-zags, as if waltzing to the +music. And all the air was sweet with the breath of dew-wet roses. + +The clock struck eight. + +"There--you must go," said Maria Dolores. + +"Go? Where to?" asked John, feigning vagueness. + +"This is no subject for jest," said she, feigning severity. + +"I can't go yet--I can't leave you yet," said he. "Besides, it is an +education in æsthetics to watch the moonlight on these marble columns, +and the pale shadows of the vine-leaves." + +"Well, then," said she, "stay you here and pursue your education. I will +go in your place. For Marcella Cuciniera must be relieved." She rose, +and moved towards the darkling front of the Castle. + +"Hang education! I'll go with you," said John, following. + +"I shall only stop a moment, to see how she is," said Maria Dolores. +"Then I must hurry home, to get my packing begun." + +"Your packing?" faltered John. + +"To-morrow morning Frau Brandt and I are leaving for Austria--for +Schloss Mischenau, where my brother lives." + +"Good Lord!" said John. "Ah, well, I suppose it is what they would call +the proper course," he admitted with gloomy resignation. "But think how +dreadfully you'll be missed--by Annunziata." + +"Annunziata is so much better, I can easily be spared," said Maria +Dolores; "and anyhow--'tis needs must. I think you will probably soon +receive a letter from my brother, asking you to visit him. Mischenau is +a place worth seeing, in its northern style. And, in his northern style, +my brother is a man worth meeting. I counsel you to go." + +"I shall certainly go," said John. "I shall linger here at Sant' +Alessina like a soul in durance, counting the hours till my release. I +shall be particularly glad to meet your brother, as I have matters of +importance to arrange with him." + +"Until then," said she, smiling, "I think we must do with those--matters +of importance"--her voice quavered on the word--"what is it that the +Pope sometimes does with Cardinals?" + +"Yes," moodily consented John, "I suppose we must. But oh me, what a +dreary, blank, stale, and unprofitable desolation this garden will +become,--and at every turn the ghost of some past joy!" + +Annunziata looked up with eyes that seemed omniscient. + +"I was thinking about you," she greeted them. + +"About which of us?" asked John. + +"About both of you. I always now, since a long while, think of you both +together. I think Maria Dolores is the dark woman whom Prospero is to +marry." + +John laughed. Maria Dolores looked out of the window. + +"And I was thinking," Annunziata went on, "how strange it was that if +you hadn't both at the same time just happened to come to Sant' +Alessina, you might have lived and died and never have known each +other." + +"Perish that thought," laughed John. "But I have sometimes thought it +myself." + +"And then," Annunziata rounded out her tale, "I thought that perhaps you +had not just happened--that probably you had been led." + +"That is a thing I haven't a doubt of," John with energy affirmed. + +"You look as if you were very glad about something--both of you," said +Annunziata, those omniscient eyes of hers studying their faces. "What is +it that you are both so glad of?" + +"We are so glad to find you feeling so well," answered Maria Dolores. + +But Annunziata shook her head, as one who knew better. "No--that is not +the only thing. You are glad of something else besides." + +"There's no taking you in," said John. "But we are under bonds to treat +that Something Else as the Pope sometimes treats Princes of the Church." + +"He gives them red hats," said Annunziata. + +"I shall give this thing a crown of myrtle," said John. + +"You sometimes say things that sound as if they hadn't any sense," +Annunziata informed him, with patient indulgence, nodding at the +ceiling. + +Maria Dolores leaned over the bed, and kissed Annunziata's brow. "Good +night, carina," she murmured. + +Annunziata put up her little white arms, and encircled Maria Dolores' +neck. Then she kissed her four times--on the brow, on the chin, on the +left cheek, on the right. "That is a cross of kisses," she explained. +"It is the way my mother used to kiss me. It means may the four Angels +of Peace, Grace, Holiness, and Wisdom watch over your sleep." + +But early next morning, John being still on duty, Maria Dolores came +back,--booted and spurred for her journey, in tailor-made tweeds, with a +little felt toque and a veil: a costume of which Annunziata's eyes were +quick to catch the suggestion. + +"Why are you dressed like that?" she asked, uneasily. "I never saw you +dressed like that before. You look as if you were going away somewhere." + +"I have got to go away--I have got to go to my home, in Austria. I have +come to bid you good-bye," Maria Dolores answered. + +Annunziata's eyes were dark with pain. "Oh," she said, in a voice of +deep dismay. + +"We shan't be separated long, though," Maria Dolores promised. "I have +asked your uncle to lend you to me. As soon as you are strong enough to +travel, you are coming to Austria to pay me a long visit. Then I will +come back with you to Sant' Alessina. And then--well, wherever I go you +will always go with me. For of course I can never live happily again +without you." + +"One moment, please," put in John. "Here is a small difficulty. I can +never live happily without her, either. I also have asked her uncle to +lend her to me. And wherever _I_ go, she is always to go with me. How +are we to adjust our rival claims?" + +Annunziata's eyes lighted up. + +"Oh, that will be easy enough," she pointed out. "You will have to go +everywhere together." + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of My Friend Prospero, by Henry Harland + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14682 *** diff --git a/14682-h/14682-h.htm b/14682-h/14682-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1941c90 --- /dev/null +++ b/14682-h/14682-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5488 @@ +<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> +<head> +<meta name="generator" content= +"HTML Tidy for Windows (vers 1st February 2004), see www.w3.org" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of My Friend Prospero, by Henry +Harland.</title> + +<style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + .linenum {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */ + .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right;} /* page numbers */ + .sidenote {width: 20%; padding-bottom: .5em; padding-top: .5em; + padding-left: .5em; padding-right: .5em; margin-left: 1em; + float: right; clear: right; margin-top: 1em; + font-size: smaller; background: #eeeeee; border: dashed 1px;} + + .bb {border-bottom: solid 2px;} + .bl {border-left: solid 2px;} + .bt {border-top: solid 2px;} + .br {border-right: solid 2px;} + .bbox {border: solid 2px;} + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + .figleft {float: left; clear: left; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: + 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .figright {float: right; clear: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + .footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + .footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + .fnanchor {vertical-align: super; font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span {display: block; margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ +</style> +</head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14682 ***</div> + +<div> +<h1>MY FRIEND<br /> +PROSPERO</h1> +</div> +<h2>By HENRY HARLAND</h2> +<h4><i>Author of</i></h4> +<h4>THE CARDINAL'S SNUFF-BOX.</h4> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div> +<h3>JOHN LANE: THE BODLEY HEAD<br /> +<br /> +LONDON & NEW YORK. MDCCCCIV</h3> +</div> +<h5>1903</h5> +<div class="center"><a href="#PART_FIRST"><b>PART +FIRST</b></a><br /> +<a href="#PART_SECOND"><b>PART SECOND</b></a><br /> +<a href="#PART_THIRD"><b>PART THIRD</b></a><br /> +<a href="#PART_FOURTH"><b>PART FOURTH</b></a><br /> +<a href="#PART_FIFTH"><b>PART FIFTH</b></a><br /> +<a href="#PART_SIXTH"><b>PART SIXTH</b></a></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PART_FIRST" id="PART_FIRST"></a>PART FIRST</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>My Friend Prospero</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>I</h2> +<p>The coachman drew up his horses before the castle gateway, where +their hoofs beat a sort of fanfare on the stone pavement; and the +footman, letting himself smartly down, pulled, with a peremptory +gesture that was just not quite a swagger, the bronze hand at the +end of the dangling bell-cord.</p> +<p>Seated alone in her great high-swung barouche, in the sweet +April weather, Lady Blanchemain gave the interval that followed to +a consideration of the landscape: first, sleeping in shadowy +stillness, the formal Italian garden, its terraced lawns and +metrical parterres, its straight dark avenues of ilex, its +cypresses, fountains, statues, balustrades; and then, laughing in +the breeze and the sun, the wild Italian valley, a forest of +blossoming fruit-trees, with the river winding and glinting in its +midst, with olive-clad hills blue-grey at either side, and beyond +the hills, peering over their shoulders, the snow-peaks of +mountains, crisp against the sky, and in the level distance the +hazy shimmer of the lake.</p> +<p>"It is lovely," she exclaimed, fervently, in a whisper, +"lovely.—And only a generation of blind-worms," was her +after-thought, "could discern in it the slightest resemblance to +the drop-scene of a theatre."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>II</h2> +<p>Big, humorous, emotional, imperious, but, above all, interested +and sociable Lady Blanchemain: do you know her, I wonder? Her +billowy white hair? Her handsome soft old face, with its smooth +skin, and the good strong bony structure underneath? Her beautiful +old grey eyes, full of tenderness and shrewdness, of curiosity, +irony, indulgence, overarched and emphasized by regular black +eyebrows? Her pretty little plump pink-white hands, (like two +little elderly Cupids), with their shining panoply of rings? And +her luxurious, courageous, high-hearted manner of dressing? The +light colours and jaunty fashion of her gowns? Her laces, ruffles, +embroideries? Her gay little bonnets? Her gems? Linda Baroness +Blanchemain, of Fring Place, Sussex; Belmore Gardens, Kensington; +and Villa Antonina, San Remo: big, merry, sociable, sentimental, +worldly-wise, impetuous Linda Blanchemain: do you know her? If you +do, I am sure you love her and rejoice in her; and enough is said. +If you don't, I beg leave to present and to commend her.</p> +<p>I spoke, by the bye, of her "old" face, her "old" eyes. She is, +to be sure, in so far as mere numbers of years tell, an old woman. +But I once heard her throw out, in the heat of conversation, the +phrase, "a young old thing like me;" and I thought she touched a +truth.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>III</h2> +<p>Well, then, the footman, in his masterful way, pulled the +bell-cord; Lady Blanchemain contemplated the landscape, and had her +opinion of a generation that could liken it to the drop-scene of a +theatre; and in due process of things the bell was answered.</p> +<p>It was answered by a man in a costume that struck my humorous +old friend as pleasing: a sallow little man whose otherwise quite +featureless suit of tweeds was embellished by scarlet worsted +shoulder-knots. With lack-lustre eyes, from behind the plexus of +the grille, he rather stolidly regarded the imposing British +equipage, and waited to be addressed.</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain addressed him in the language of Pistoja. Might +one, she inquired, with her air of high affability, in her +distinguished old voice, might one visit the castle?—a +question purely of convention, for she had not come hither without +an assurance from her guide-book.</p> +<p>Shoulder-knots, however,—either to flaunt his attainments, +or because indeed Pistoiese (what though the polyglot races of +Italy have agreed upon it as a lingua franca) offered the greater +difficulties to his Lombardian tongue,—replied in French.</p> +<p>"I do not think so, Madame," was his reply, in a French +sufficiently heavy and stiff-jointed, enforced by a dubious +oscillation of the head.</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain's black eyebrows shot upwards, marking her +surprise; then drew together, marking her determination.</p> +<p>"But of course one can—it's in the guide-book," she +insisted, and held up the red-bound volume.</p> +<p>The sceptic gave a shrug, as one who disclaimed responsibility +and declined discussion.</p> +<p>"Me, I do not think so. But patience! I will go and ask," he +said; and, turning his back, faded from sight in the depths of the +dark tunnel-like porte-cochère.</p> +<p>Vexed, perplexed, Lady Blanchemain fidgeted a little. To have +taken this long drive for nothing!—sweet though the weather +was, fair though the valley: but she was not a person who could let +the means excuse the end. She neither liked nor was accustomed to +see her enterprises balked,—to see doors remain closed in her +face. Doors indeed had a habit of flying open at her approach. +Besides, the fellow's manner,—his initial stare and silence, +his tone when he spoke, his shrug, his exhortation to patience, and +something too in the conduct of his back as he +departed,—hadn't it lacked I don't know what of becoming +deference? to satisfy her amour-propre, at any rate, that the +mistake, if there was a mistake, sprang from no malapprehension of +her own, she looked up chapter and verse. Yes, there the assurance +stood, circumstantial, in all the convincingness of the sturdy, +small black type:—</p> +<p>"From Roccadoro a charming excursion may be made, up the +beautiful Val Rampio, to the mediæval village of Sant' +Alessina (7 miles), with its magnificent castle, in fine grounds, +formerly a seat of the Sforzas, now belonging to the Prince of +Zelt-Neuminster, and containing the celebrated Zelt-Neuminster +collection of paintings. Incorporated in the castle buildings, a +noticeable peculiarity, are the parish church and presbytery. +Accessible daily, except Monday, from 10 to 4; attendant 1 fr."</p> +<p>So then! To-day was Wednesday, the hour between two and three. +So—! Her amour-propre triumphed, but I fancy her vexation +mounted....</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>IV</h2> +<p>"I beg your pardon. It's disgraceful you should have been made +to wait. The porter is an idiot. You wish, of course, to see the +house—?"</p> +<p>The English words, on a key of spontaneous apology, with a very +zealous inflection of concern—yet, at the same time, with a +kind of entirely respectful and amiable abruptness, as of one +hailing a familiar friend,—were pronounced in a breath by a +brisk, cheerful, unmistakably English voice.</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain, whose attention had still been on the +incriminated page, looked quickly up, and (English voice and +spontaneous apology notwithstanding) I won't vouch that the answer +at the tip of her impulsive tongue mightn't have proved a hasty +one—but the speaker's appearance gave her pause: the +appearance of the tall, smiling, unmistakably English young man, by +whom Shoulder-knots had returned accompanied, and who now, having +pushed the grille ajar and issued forth, stood, placing himself +with a tentative obeisance at her service, beside the carriage: he +was so clearly, first of all—what, if it hadn't been for her +preoccupation, his voice, tone, accent would have warned her to +expect—so visibly a gentleman; and then, with the even pink +of his complexion, his yellowish hair and beard, his alert, +friendly, very blue blue eyes—with his very blue blue +flannels too, and his brick-red knitted tie—he was so vivid +and so unusual.</p> +<p>His appearance gave her a pause; and in the result she in her +turn almost apologized.</p> +<p>"This wretched book," she explained, pathetically bringing +forward her <i>pièce justificative</i>, "said that it was +open to the public."</p> +<p>The vivid young man hastened to put her in the right.</p> +<p>"It is—it <i>is</i>," he eagerly affirmed. "Only," he +added, with a vaguely rueful modulation, and always with that +amiable abruptness, as a man very much at his ease, while his blue +eyes whimsically brightened, "only the blessed public never +comes—we're so off the beaten path. And I suppose one mustn't +expect a Scioccone"—his voice swelled on the word, and he +cast sidelong a scathing glance at his summoner—"to cope with +unprecedented situations. Will you allow me to help you out?"</p> +<p>"Ah," thought Lady Blanchemain, "Eton," his tone and accent now +nicely appraised by an experienced ear. "Eton—yes; and +probably—h'm? Probably Balliol," her experience led her +further to surmise. But what—with her insatiable curiosity +about people, she had of course immediately begun to +wonder—what was an Eton and Balliol man doing, apparently in +a position of authority, at this remote Italian castle?</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>V</h2> +<p>He helped her out, very gracefully, very gallantly; and under +his guidance she made the tour of the vast building: its greater +court and lesser court; its cloisters, with their faded frescoes, +and their marvellous outlook, northwards, upon the Alps; its +immense rotunda, springing to the open dome, where the sky was like +an inset plaque of turquoise; its "staircase of honour," guarded, +in an ascending file, by statues of men in armour; and then, on the +<i>piano nobile</i>, its endless chain of big, empty, silent, +splendid state apartments, with their pavements of gleaming marble, +in many-coloured patterns, their painted and gilded ceilings, +tapestried walls, carved wood and moulded stucco, their pictures, +pictures, pictures, and their atmosphere of stately desolation, +their memories of another age, their reminders of the power and +pomp of people who had long been ghosts.</p> +<p>He was tall (with that insatiable curiosity of hers, she was of +course continuously studying him), tall and broad-shouldered, but +not a bit rigid or inflexible—of a figure indeed +conspicuously supple, suave in its quick movements, soft in its +energetic lines, a figure that could with equal thoroughness be +lazy in repose and vehement in action. His yellow hair was thick +and fine, and if it hadn't been cropped so close would have curled +a little. His beard, in small crinkly spirals, did actually curl, +and toward the edge its yellow burned to red. And his blue eyes +were so very very blue, and so very keen, and so very frank and +pleasant—"They are like sailors' eyes," thought Lady +Blanchemain, who had a sentiment for sailors. He carried his head +well thrown back, as a man who was perfectly sure of himself and +perfectly unselfconscious; and thus unconsciously he drew attention +to the vigorous sweep of his profile, the decisive angles of his +brow and nose. His voice was brisk and cheerful and masculine; and +that abruptness with which he spoke—which seemed, as it were, +to imply a previous acquaintance—was so tempered by manifest +good breeding and so coloured by manifest good will, that it became +a positive part and parcel of what one liked in him. It was the +abruptness of a man very much at his ease, very much a man of the +world, yet it was somehow, in its essence, boyish. It expressed +freshness, sincerity, conviction, a boyish wholesale surrender of +himself to the business of the moment; it expressed, perhaps above +all, a boyish thorough good understanding with his interlocutor. +"It amounts," thought his present interlocutrice, "to a kind of +infinitely sublimated bluffness."</p> +<p>And then she fell to examining his clothes: his loose, soft, +very blue blue flannels, with vague stripes of darker blue; his +soft shirt, with its rolling collar; his red tie, knitted of soft +silk, and tied in a loose sailor's-knot. She liked his clothes, and +she liked the way he wore them. They suited him. They were loose +and comfortable and unconventional, but they were beautifully fresh +and well cared for, and showed him, if indifferent to the +fashion-plate of the season, meticulous in a fashion of his own. +"It's hard to imagine him dressed otherwise," she said, and +instantly had a vision of him dressed for dinner.</p> +<p>But what—what—what was he doing at Castel Sant' +Alessina?</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>VI</h2> +<p>Meanwhile he plainly knew a tremendous lot about Italian art. +Lady Blanchemain herself knew a good deal, and could recognize a +pundit. He illumined their progress by a running fire of exposition +and commentary, learned and discerning, to which she encouragingly +listened, and, as occasion required, amiably responded. But +Boltraffios, Bernardino Luinis, even a putative Giorgione, could +not divert her mind from its human problem. What was he doing at +Castel Sant' Alessina, the property, according to her guide-book, +of an Austrian prince? What was his status here, apparently (bar +servants) in solitary occupation? Was he its tenant? He couldn't, +surely, this well-dressed, high-bred, cultivated young compatriot, +he couldn't be a mere employé, a steward or curator? No: +probably a tenant. Antecedently indeed it might seem unlikely that +a young Englishman should become the tenant of an establishment so +huge and so sequestered; but was it conceivable that this +particular young Englishman should be a mere employé? And +was there any other alternative? She hearkened for a word, a note, +that might throw light; but of such notes, such words, a young +man's conversation, in the circumstances, would perhaps naturally +yield a meagre crop.</p> +<p>"You mustn't let me tire you," he said presently, as one who had +forgotten and suddenly remembered that looking at pictures is +exhausting work. "Won't you sit here and rest a little?"</p> +<p>They were in a smaller room than any they had previously +traversed, an octagonal room, which a single lofty window filled +with sunshine.</p> +<p>"Oh, thank you," said Lady Blanchemain, and seated herself on +the circular divan in the centre of the polished terrazza floor. +She wasn't really tired in the least, the indefatigable old +sight-seer; but a respite from picture-gazing would enable her to +turn the talk. She put up her mother-of-pearl lorgnon, and glanced +round the walls; then, lowering it, she frankly raised her eyes, +full of curiosity and kindness, to her companion's.</p> +<p>"It's a surprise, and a delightful one," she remarked, "having +pushed so far afield in a foreign land, to be met by the good +offices of a fellow-countryman—it's so nice of you to be +English."</p> +<p>And her eyes softly changed, their curiosity being veiled by a +kind of humorous content.</p> +<p>The young man's face, from its altitude of six-feet-something, +beamed responsively down upon her.</p> +<p>"Oh," he laughed, "you mustn't give me too much credit. To be +English nowadays is so ingloriously easy—since foreign lands +have become merely the wider suburbs of London."</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain's eyes lighted approvingly. Afterwards she +looked half serious.</p> +<p>"True," she discriminated, "London has spread pretty well over +the whole of Europe; but England, thanks be to goodness, still +remains mercifully small."</p> +<p>"Yes," agreed the young man, though with a lilt of dubiety, and +a frown of excogitation, as if he weren't sure that he had quite +caught her drift.</p> +<p>"The mercy of it is," she smilingly pointed out, "that English +folk, decent ones, have no need to fight shy of each other when +they meet as strangers. We all know more or less about each other +by hearsay, or about each other's people; and we're all pretty sure +to have some common acquaintances. The smallness of England makes +for sociability and confidence."</p> +<p>"It ought to, one would think," the young man admitted. "But +does it, in fact? It had somehow got stuck in my head that English +folk, meeting as strangers, were rather apt to glare. We're most of +us in such a funk, you see, lest, if we treat a stranger with +civility, he should turn out not to be a duke."</p> +<p>"Oh," cried Lady Blanchemain, with merriment, "you forget that I +said <i>decent</i>. I meant, of course, folk who <i>are</i> dukes. +We're all dukes—or bagmen."</p> +<p>The young man chuckled; but in a minute he pulled a long face, +and made big, ominous eyes.</p> +<p>"I feel I ought to warn you," he said in a portentous voice, +"that some of us are mere marquises—of the house of +Carabas."</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain, her whole expansive person, simmered with +enjoyment.</p> +<p>"Bless you," she cried, "those are the ducalest, for +marquises—of the house of Carabas—are men of dash and +spirit, born to bear everything before them, and to marry the +King's daughter."</p> +<p>With that, she had a moment of abstraction. Again, her eyeglass +up, she glanced round the walls—hung, in this octagonal room, +with dim-coloured portraits of women, all in wonderful toilets, +with wonderful hair and head-gear, all wonderfully young and +pleased with things, and all four centuries dead. They caused her a +little feeling of uneasiness, they were so dead and silent, and yet +somehow, in their fixed postures, with their unblinking eyes, their +unvarying smiles, so—as it seemed to her—so watchful, +so intent; and it was a relief to turn from them to the window, to +the picture framed by the window of warm, breathing, heedless +nature. But all the while, in her interior mind, she was busy with +the man before her. "He looks," she considered, "tall as he is, and +with his radiant blondeur—with the gold in his hair and +beard, and the sea-blue in his eyes—he looks like a hero out +of some old Norse saga. He looks like-what's his name?—like +Odin. I must really compel him to explain himself."</p> +<p>It very well may be, meantime, that he was reciprocally busy +with her, taking her in, admiring her, this big, jolly, comely, +high-mannered old woman, all in soft silks and drooping laces, who +had driven into his solitude from Heaven knew where, and was quite +unquestionably Someone, Heaven knew who.</p> +<p>She had a moment of abstraction; but now, emerging from it, she +used her eyeglass as a pointer, and indicatively swept the circle +of painted eavesdroppers.</p> +<p>"They make one feel like their grandmother, their youth is so +flagrant," she sighed, "these grandmothers of the Quattrocento. Ah, +well, we can only be old once, and we should take advantage of the +privileges of age while we have 'em. Old people, I am thankful to +say, are allowed, amongst other things, to be inquisitive. I'm +brazenly so. Now, if one of our common acquaintances were at +hand—for with England still mercifully small, we're sure to +possess a dozen, you and I—what do you think is the question +I should ask him?—I should ask him," she avowed, with a +pretty effect of hesitation, and a smile that went as an +advance-guard to disarm resentment, "to tell me who you are, and +all about you—and to introduce you to me."</p> +<p>"Oh," cried the young man, laughing. He laughed for a second or +two. In the end, pleasantly, with a bow, "My name," he said, "if +you can possibly care to know, is Blanchemain."</p> +<p>His visitor caught her breath. She sat up straight, and gazed +hard at him.</p> +<p>"Blanchemain?" she gasped.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>VII</h2> +<p>There were, to be sure, reasons and to spare why the name should +make her sit up straight. Her curiosity had turned the key, and lo, +with a click, here was an entirely changed, immensely complicated, +intensely poignant situation. But our excitable old friend was an +Englishwoman: dissimulation would be her second nature; you could +trust her to pull the wool over your eyes with a fleet and +practised hand. Instinctively, furthermore, she would seek to +extract from such a situation all the fun it promised. Taken off +her guard, for the span of ten heart-beats she sat up straight and +stared; but with the eleventh her attitude relaxed. She had +regained her outward nonchalance, and resolved upon her system of +fence.</p> +<p>"Ah," she said, on a tone judiciously compounded of feminine +artlessness and of forthright British candour, and with a play of +the eyebrows that attributed her momentary suscitation to the +workings of memory, "of course—Blanchemain. The Sussex +Blanchemains. I expect there's only one family of the name?"</p> +<p>"I've never heard of another," assented the young man.</p> +<p>"The Ventmere Blanchemains," she pursued pensively. "Lord +Blanchemain of Ventmere is your titled head?"</p> +<p>"Exactly," said he.</p> +<p>"I knew the late Lord Blanchemain—I knew him fairly well," +she mentioned, always with a certain pensiveness.</p> +<p>"Oh—?" said he, politely interested.</p> +<p>"Yes," said she. "But I've never met his successor. The two were +not, I believe, on speaking terms. Of course,"—and her +forthright British candour carried her trippingly over the delicate +ground,—"it's common knowledge that the family is divided +against itself—hostile branches—a Protestant branch and +a Catholic. The present lord, if I've got it right, is a Catholic, +and the late lord's distant cousin?"</p> +<p>"You've got it quite right," the young man assured her, with a +nod, and a little laugh. "They had the same +great-great-grandfather. The last few lords have been Protestants, +but in our branch the family have never forsaken the old +religion."</p> +<p>"I know," said she. "And wasn't it—I've heard the story, +but I'm a bit hazy about it—wasn't it owing to your—is +'recusancy' the word?—that you lost the title? Wasn't there +some sort of sharp practice at your expense in the last +century?"</p> +<p>The young man had another little laugh.</p> +<p>"Oh, nothing," he answered, "that wasn't very much the fashion. +The late lord's great-grandfather denounced his elder brother as a +Papist and a Jacobite—nothing more than that. It was after +the 'Forty-five. So the cadet took the title and estates. But with +the death of the late lord, a dozen years or so ago, the younger +line became extinct, and the title reverted."</p> +<p>"I see," said my lady. She knitted her eyebrows, computing. +After an instant, "General Blanchemain," she resumed, "as the +present lord was called for the best part of his life, is a +bachelor. You will be one of his nephews?" She raised her eyes +inquiringly.</p> +<p>"The son of his brother Philip," said the young man.</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain sat up straight again.</p> +<p>"But then," she cried, forgetting to conceal her perturbation, +"then you're the heir. Philip Blanchemain had but one son, and was +the General's immediate junior. You're John Blanchemain—John +Francis Joseph Mary. You're the heir."</p> +<p>The young man smiled—at her eagerness, perhaps.</p> +<p>"The heir-presumptive—I suppose I am," he said.</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain leaned back and gently tittered.</p> +<p>"See how I know my Peerage!" she exclaimed. Then, looking grave, +"You're heir to an uncommonly good old title," she informed +him.</p> +<p>"I hope it may be many a long day before I'm anything else," +said he.</p> +<p>"Your uncle is an old man," she suggestively threw out.</p> +<p>"Oh, not so very old," he submitted. "Only seventy, or +thereabouts, and younger in many respects than I am. I hope he'll +live for ever."</p> +<p>"Hum!" said she, and appeared to fall a-musing. Absently, as it +seemed, and slowly, she was pulling off her gloves.</p> +<p>"Feuds in families," she said, in a minute, "are bad things. Why +don't you make it up?"</p> +<p>The young man waved his hand, a pantomimic +<i>non-possumus</i>.</p> +<p>"There's no one left to make it up with—the others are all +dead."</p> +<p>"Oh?" she wondered, her eyebrows elevated, whilst automatically +her fingers continued to operate upon her gloves. "I thought the +last lord left a widow. I seem to have heard of a <i>Lady</i> +Blanchemain somewhere."</p> +<p>The young man gave still another of his little laughs.</p> +<p>"Linda Lady Blanchemain?" he said. "Yes, one hears a lot of her. +A highly original character, by all accounts. One hears of her +everywhere."</p> +<p>Linda Lady Blanchemain's lip began to quiver; but she got it +under control.</p> +<p>"Well?" she questioned—eyes fixing his, and brimming with +a kind of humorous defiance, as if to say, "Think me an impertinent +old meddler if you will, and do your worst,"—"Why don't you +make it up with <i>her</i>?"</p> +<p>But he didn't seem to mind the meddling in the least. He stood +at ease, and plausibly put his case.</p> +<p>"Why don't I? Or why doesn't my uncle? My uncle is a +temperamental conservative, a devotee to his traditions—the +sort of man who will never do anything that hasn't been the +constant habit of his forebears. He would no more dream of healing +a well-established family feud than of selling the family plate. +And I—well, surely, it would never be for me to make the +advances."</p> +<p>"No, you're right," acknowledged Lady Blanchemain. "The advances +should come from her. But people have such a fatal way—even +without being temperamental conservatives—of leaving things +as they find them. Besides, never having seen you, she couldn't +know how nice you are. All the same, I'll confess, if you insist +upon it, that she ought to be ashamed of herself. Come—let's +make it up."</p> +<p>She rose, a great soft glowing vision of benignancy, and held +out her hand, now gloveless, her pretty little smooth plump right +hand, with its twinkling rings.</p> +<p>"Oh!" cried the astonished young man, the astonished, amused, +moved, wondering, and entirely won young man, his sea-blue eyes +wide open, and a hundred lights of pleasure and surprise dancing in +them.</p> +<p>The benignant vision floated towards him, and he took the little +white hand in his long lean brown one.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>VIII</h2> +<p>When the first stress of their emotion had in some degree spent +itself Lady Blanchemain, returning to her place on the ottoman, +bade John sit down beside her.</p> +<p>"Now," she said, genially imperative, whilst all manner of +kindly and admiring interest shone in her face, "there are exactly +nine million and ninety-nine questions that you'll be obliged to +answer before I've done with you. But to begin, you must clear up +at once a mystery that's been troubling me ever since you dashed to +my rescue at the gate. What in the name of Reason is the cause of +your residence in this ultramundane stronghold?"</p> +<p>John—convict me of damnable iteration if you must: Heaven +has sent me a laughing hero—John laughed.</p> +<p>"Oh," he said, "there are several causes—there are exactly +nine million and ninety-eight."</p> +<p>"Name," commanded Lady Blanchemain, "the first and the +last."</p> +<p>"Well," obeyed he, pondering, "I should think the first, the +last, and perhaps the chief intermediate, would be—the whole +blessed thing." And his arm described a circle which comprehended +the castle and all within it, and the countryside without.</p> +<p>"It has a pleasant site, I'll not deny," said Lady Blanchemain. +"But don't you find it a trifle far away? And a bit up-hill? I'm +staying at the Victoria at Roccadoro, and it took me an hour and a +half to drive here."</p> +<p>"But since," said John, with a flattering glance, "since you +<i>are</i> here, I have no further reason to deplore its +farawayness. So few places are far away, in these times and +climes," he added, on a note of melancholy, as one to whom all +climes and times were known.</p> +<p>"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain, matter-of-fact. "Have you been +here long?"</p> +<p>"Let me see," John answered. "To-day is the 23rd of April. I +arrived here—I offer the fact for what it may be +worth—on the Feast of All Fools."</p> +<p>"<i>Absit omen</i>," cried she. "And you intend to stay?"</p> +<p>"Oh, I'm at least wise enough not to fetter myself with +intentions," answered John.</p> +<p>She looked about, calculating, estimating.</p> +<p>"I suppose it costs you the very eyes of your head?" she +asked.</p> +<p>John giggled.</p> +<p>"Guess what it costs—I give it to you in a thousand."</p> +<p>She continued her survey, brought it to a period.</p> +<p>"A billion a week," she said, with finality. John exulted.</p> +<p>"It costs me," he told her, "six francs fifty a day—wine +included."</p> +<p>"What!" cried she, mistrusting her ears.</p> +<p>"Yes," said he.</p> +<p>"Fudge!" said she, not to be caught with chaff.</p> +<p>"It sounds like a traveller's tale, I know; but that's so often +the bother with the truth," said he. "Truth is under no obligation +to be <i>vraisemblable</i>. I'm here <i>en pension</i>."</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain sniffed.</p> +<p>"Does the Prince of Zelt-Neuminster take in boarders?" she +inquired, her nose in the air.</p> +<p>"Not exactly," said John. "But the Parroco of Sant' Alessina +does. I board at the presbytery."</p> +<p>"Oh," said Lady Blanchemain, beginning to see light, while her +eyebrows went up, went down. "You board at the presbytery?"</p> +<p>"For six francs fifty a day—wine included," chuckled +John.</p> +<p>"Wine, and apparently the unhindered enjoyment of—the +whole blessed thing," supplemented she, with a reminder of his +comprehensive gesture.</p> +<p>"Yes—the run of the house and garden, the freedom of the +hills and valley."</p> +<p>"I understand," she said, and was mute for a space, readjusting +her impressions. "I had supposed," she went on at last, "from the +handsome way in which you snubbed that creature in shoulder-knots, +and proceeded to do the honours of the place, that you were little +less than its proprietor."</p> +<p>"Well, and so I could almost feel I am," laughed John. "I'm +alone here—there's none my sway to dispute. And as for the +creature in shoulder-knots, what becomes of the rights of man or +the bases of civil society, if you can't snub a creature whom you +regularly tip? For five francs a week the creature in +shoulder-knots cleans my boots (indifferent well), brushes my +clothes, runs my errands (indifferent slow),—and swallows my +snubs as if they were polenta."</p> +<p>"And tries to shoo intrusive trippers from your +threshold—and gets an extra plateful for his pains," laughed +the lady. "Where," she asked, "does the Prince of Zelt-Neuminster +keep himself?"</p> +<p>"In Vienna, I believe. Anyhow, at a respectful distance. The +parroco, who is also his sort of intendant, tells me he practically +never comes to Sant' Alessina."</p> +<p>"Good easy man," quoth she. "Yes, I certainly supposed you were +his tenant-in-fee, at the least. You have an air." And her bob of +the head complimented him upon it.</p> +<p>"Oh, we Marquises of Carabas!" cried John, with a flourish.</p> +<p>She regarded him doubtfully.</p> +<p>"Wouldn't you find yourself in a slightly difficult position, if +the Prince or his family should suddenly turn up?" she +suggested.</p> +<p>"I? Why?" asked John, his blue eyes blank.</p> +<p>"A young man boarding with the parroco for six francs a +day—" she began.</p> +<p>"Six francs fifty, please," he gently interposed.</p> +<p>"Make it seven if you like," her ladyship largely conceded. +"Wouldn't your position be slightly false? Would they quite realize +who you were?"</p> +<p>"What could that possibly matter? wondered John, eyes blanker +still.</p> +<p>"I could conceive occasions in which it might matter furiously," +said she. "Foreigners can't with half an eye distinguish amongst +us, as we ourselves can; and Austrians have such oddly exalted +notions. You wouldn't like to be mistaken for Mr. Snooks?"</p> +<p>"I don't know," John reflected, vistas opening before him. "It +might be rather a lark."</p> +<p>"Whrrr!" said Lady Blanchemain, fanning herself with her +pocket-handkerchief. Then she eyed him suspiciously. "You're hiding +the nine million other causes up your sleeve. It isn't merely the +'whole blessed thing' that's keeping an eaglet of your feather +alone in an improbable nest like this—it's some one +particular thing. In my time," she sighed, "it would have been a +woman."</p> +<p>"And no wonder," riposted John, with a flowery bow.</p> +<p>"You're very good—but you confuse the issue," said she. +"In my time the world was young and romantic. In this age of prose +and prudence—<i>is</i> it a woman?"</p> +<p>"The world is still, is always, young and romantic," said John, +sententious. "I can't admit that an age of prose and prudence is +possible. The poetry of earth is never dead, and no more is its +folly. The world is always romantic, if you have the three gifts +needful to make it so."</p> +<p>"<i>Is</i> it a woman?" repeated Lady Blanchemain.</p> +<p>"And the three gifts are," said he, "Faith, and the sense of +Beauty, and the sense of Humour."</p> +<p>"And I should have thought, an attractive member of the opposite +sex," said she. "<i>Is</i> it a woman?"</p> +<p>"Well," he at last replied, appearing to take counsel with +himself, "I don't know why I should forbid myself the relief of +owning up to you that in a sense it is."</p> +<p>"Hurray!" cried she, moving in her seat, agog, as one who +scented her pet diversion. "A love affair! I'll be your confidante. +Tell me all about it."</p> +<p>"Yes, in a sense, a love affair," he confessed.</p> +<p>"Good—excellent," she approved. "But—but what do you +mean by 'in a sense'?"</p> +<p>"Ah," said he, darkly nodding, "I mean whole worlds by +that."</p> +<p>"I don't understand," said she, her face prepared to fall.</p> +<p>"It isn't one woman—it's a score, a century, of the dear +things," he announced.</p> +<p>Her face fell. "Oh—?" she faltered.</p> +<p>"It's a love affair with a type," he explained.</p> +<p>She frowned upon him. "A love affair with a type—?"</p> +<p>"Yes," said he.</p> +<p>She shook her head. "I give you up. In one breath you speak like +a Mohammedan, in the next like—I don't know what."</p> +<p>"With these," said John, his band stretched towards the wall. +"With the type of the Quattrocento."</p> +<p>He got upon his feet, and moved from picture to picture; and a +fire, half indeed of mischief; but half it may be of real +enthusiasm, glimmered in his eyes.</p> +<p>"With these lost ladies of old years; these soft-coloured +shadows, that were once rosy flesh; these proud, humble, innocent, +subtle, brave, shy, pious, pleasure-loving women of the long ago. +With them; with their hair and eyes and jewels, their tip-tilted, +scornful, witty little noses, their 'throats so round and lips so +red,' their splendid raiment; with their mirth, pathos, passion, +kindness and cruelty, their infinite variety, their undying youth. +Ah, the pity of it! Their undying youth—and they so +irrevocably dead. Peace be to their souls! See," he suddenly +declaimed, laughing, "how the sun, the very sun in heaven, is +contending with me, as to which of us shall do them the greater +homage, the sun that once looked on their living forms, and +remembers—see how he lights memorial lamps about them," for +the sun, reflected from the polished floor, threw a sheen upon the +ancient canvases, and burned bright in the bosses of the frames. +"Give me these," he wound up, "a book or two, and a jug of the +parroco's 'included wine'—my wilderness is paradise +enow."</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain's eyes, as she listened, had become deep wells +of disappointment, then gushing fountains of reproach.</p> +<p>"Oh, you villain!" she groaned, when he had ended, shaking her +pretty fist. "So to have raised my expectations, and so to dash +them!—Do you <i>really</i> mean," still clinging to a shred +of hope, she pleaded, "really, really mean that there's no—no +actual woman?"</p> +<p>"I'm sorry," said John, "but I'm afraid I really, really +do."</p> +<p>"And you're not—not really in love with any one?"</p> +<p>"No—not really," he said, with a mien that feigned +contrition.</p> +<p>"But at your age—how old are you?" she broke off to +demand.</p> +<p>"Somewhere between twenty-nine and thirty, I believe," he +laughed.</p> +<p>"And in such a romantic environment, and not on account of a +woman! It's downright unnatural," she declared. "It's flat treason +against the kingly state of youth."</p> +<p>"I'm awfully sorry," said John. "Yet, after all, what's the good +of repining? Nothing could happen even if there were a woman."</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain looked alarmed.</p> +<p>"Nothing could happen? What do you mean? You're not +<i>married</i>? If you are, it must be secretly, for you're put +down as single in Burke."</p> +<p>"To the best of my knowledge," John reassured her, laughing, +"Burke is right. And I prayerfully trust he may never have occasion +to revise his statement."</p> +<p>"For mercy's sake," cried she, "don't tell me you're a +woman-hater!"</p> +<p>"That's just the point," said he. "I'm an adorer of the +sex."</p> +<p>"Well, then?" questioned she, at a loss. "How can you +'prayerfully' wish to remain a bachelor? Besides, aren't you heir +to a peerage? What of the succession?"</p> +<p>"That's just the point," he perversely argued. "And you know +there are plenty of cousins."</p> +<p>"Just the point! just the point!" fretted Lady Blanchemain. +"What's just the point? Just the point that you aren't a +woman-hater?—just the point that you're heir to a peerage? +You talk like Tom o' Bedlam."</p> +<p>"Well, you see," expounded John, unruffled, "as an adorer of the +sex, and heir to a peerage, I shouldn't want to marry a woman +unless I could support her in what they call a manner becoming her +rank—and I couldn't."</p> +<p>"Couldn't?" the lady scoffed. "I should like to know why +not?"</p> +<p>"I'm too—if you will allow me to clothe my thought in +somewhat homely language—too beastly poor."</p> +<p>"<i>You—poor?</i>" ejaculated Lady Blanchemain, falling +back.</p> +<p>"Ay—but honest," asseverated John, to calm her fears.</p> +<p>She couldn't help smiling, though she resolutely frowned.</p> +<p>"Be serious," she enjoined him. "Doesn't your uncle make you a +suitable allowance?"</p> +<p>"I should deceive you," answered John, "if I said he made me an +<i>un</i>suitable one. He makes me, to put it in round numbers, +exactly no allowance whatsoever."</p> +<p>"The—old—curmudgeon!" cried Lady Blanchemain, +astounded, and fiercely scanning her words.</p> +<p>"No," returned John, soothingly, "he isn't a curmudgeon. But +he's a very peculiar man. He's a Spartan, and he lacks imagination. +It has simply never entered his head that I could <i>need</i> an +allowance. And, if you come to that, I can't say that I positively +do. I have a tiny patrimony—threepence a week, or +so—enough for my humble necessities, though scarcely perhaps +enough to support the state of a future peeress. No, my uncle isn't +a curmudgeon; he's a very fine old boy, of whom I'm immensely +proud, and though I've yet to see the colour of his money, we're +quite the best of friends. At any rate, you'll agree that it would +be the deuce to pay if I were to fall in love.</p> +<p>"Ffff," breathed Lady Blanchemain, fanning. "What did I say of +an age of prose and prudence? Yet you don't <i>look</i> +cold-blooded. What does money matter? <i>Dominus providebit</i>. Go +read Browning. What's 'the true end, sole and single' that we're +here for? Besides, have you never heard that there are such things +as marriageable heiresses in the world?"</p> +<p>"Oh, yes, I've heard that," John cheerfully assented. "But don't +they almost always squint or something? I've heard, too, that there +are such things as tufted fortune-hunters, but theirs is a career +that requires a special vocation, and I'm afraid I haven't got +it."</p> +<p>"Then you're no true Marquis of Carabas," the lady took him +smartly up.</p> +<p>"You've found me out—I'm only a <i>faux-marquis</i>," he +laughed.</p> +<p>"Thrrr!" breathed Lady Blanchemain, and for a little while +appeared lost in thought. By-and-by she got up and went to the +window, and stood looking out. "I never saw a lovelier landscape," +she said, musingly. "With the grey hills, and the snow-peaks, and +the brilliant sky, with the golden light and the purple shadows, +and the cypresses and olives, with the river gleaming below there +amongst the peach-blossoms, and—isn't that a blackcap singing +in the mimosa? It only needs a pair of lovers to be +perfect—it <i>cries</i> for a pair of lovers. And instead of +them, I find—what? A hermit and celibate. Look here. Make a +clean breast of it. <i>Are</i> you cold-blooded?" she asked from +over her shoulder.</p> +<p>John merely giggled.</p> +<p>"It would serve you right," said she, truculently, "if some one +were to rub your eyes with love-in-idleness, to make you dote upon +the next live creature that you see."</p> +<p>John merely chuckled.</p> +<p>"I'll tell you what," she proceeded, "I'm a bit of an old witch, +and I'll risk a soothword. As there isn't already a woman, there'll +shortly be one—my thumbs prick. The stage is set, the scene +is too appropriate, the play's inevitable. It was never in the will +of Providence that a youth of your complexion should pass the +springtime in a spot all teeming with romance like this, and miss a +love adventure. A castle in a garden, a flowering valley, and the +Italian sky—the Italian sun and moon! Your portraits of these +smiling dead women too, if you like, to keep your imagination +working. And blackcaps singing in the mimosa. No, no. The lady of +the piece is waiting in the wings—my thumbs prick. Give her +but the least excuse, she'll enter, and ... Good Heavens, my +prophetic soul!" she suddenly, with a sort of catch in her throat, +broke off.</p> +<p>She turned and faced him, cheeks flushed, eyes flashing.</p> +<p>"Oh, you hypocrite! You monstrous fibber!" she cried, on a tone +of jubilation, looking daggers.</p> +<p>"Why? What's up? What's the matter?" asked John, at fault.</p> +<p>"How <i>could</i> you have humbugged me so?" she wailed, in +delight, reverting to the window. "Anyhow, she's charming. She's +made for the part. I couldn't pray for a more promising +heroine."</p> +<p>"She? Who?" asked he, crossing to her side.</p> +<p>"Who? Fie, you slyboots!" she crowed with glee.</p> +<p>"Ah, I see," said John.</p> +<p>For, below them, in the garden, just beyond the mimosa (all +powdered with fresh gold) where the blackcap was singing, stood a +woman.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>IX</h2> +<p>She stood in the path, beside a sun-dial, from which she +appeared to be taking the time of day, a crumbling ancient thing of +grey stone, green and brown with mosses; and she was smiling +pleasantly to herself the while, all unaware of the couple who +watched her from above. She wore a light-coloured garden-frock, and +was bare-headed, as one belonging to the place. She was +young—two or three and twenty, by her aspect: young, slender, +of an excellent height, and, I hope you would have agreed, a +beautiful countenance. She studied the sun-dial, and smiled; and +what with her dark eyes and softly chiselled features, the pale +rose in her cheeks and the deeper rose of her mouth, with her hair +too, almost black in shadow, but where the sun touched it turning +to sombre red,—yes, I think you would have agreed that she +was beautiful. Lady Blanchemain, at any rate, found her so.</p> +<p>"She's quite lovely," she declared. "Her face is +exquisite—so sensitive, so spiritual; so distinguished, so +aristocratic. And so <i>clever</i>," she added, after a +suspension.</p> +<p>"Mm!" said John, his forehead wrinkled, as if something were +puzzling him.</p> +<p>"She has a figure—she holds herself well," said Lady +Blanchemain.</p> +<p>"Mm!" said John.</p> +<p>"I suppose," said she, "you're too much a mere man to be able to +appreciate her frock? It's the work of a dressmaker who knows her +business. And that lilac muslin (that's so fashionable now) really +does, in the open air, with the country for background, show to +immense advantage. Come—out with it. Tell me all about her. +Who <i>is</i> she?"</p> +<p>"That's just what I'm up a tree to think," said John. "I can't +imagine. How long has she been there? From what direction did she +come?"</p> +<p>"Don't try to hoodwink me any longer," remonstrated the lady, +unbelieving.</p> +<p>"I've never in my life set eyes on her before," he solemnly +averred.</p> +<p>She scrutinized him sharply.</p> +<p>"Hand on heart?" she doubted.</p> +<p>And he, supporting her scrutiny without flinching, answered, +"Hand on heart."</p> +<p>"Well, then," concluded she, with a laugh, "it looks as if I +were even more of an old witch than I boasted—and my thumbs +pricked to some purpose. Here's the lady of the piece already +arrived. There, she's going away. How well she walks! Have after +her—have after her quick, and begin your courtship."</p> +<p>The smiling young woman, her lilac dress softly bright in the +sun, was moving slowly down the garden path, towards the cloisters; +and now she entered them, and disappeared. But John, instead of +"having after her," remained at his counsellor's side, and +watched.</p> +<p>"She came from that low doorway, beyond there at the right, +where the two cypresses are; and she came at the very climax of my +vaticination," said her ladyship. "Without a hat, you'll hardly +dispute it's probable she's staying in the house."</p> +<p>"No—it certainly would seem so," said John. "I'm all up a +tree."</p> +<p>"The garden looks rather dreary and empty, now that she has +left, doesn't it?" she asked. "Yet it looked jolly enough before +her advent. And see—the lizards (there are four of them, +aren't there?) that whisked away from the dial at her approach, +have come back. Well, <i>your</i> work's cut out. I suppose it +wouldn't be possible for you to give a poor woman a dish of +tea?"</p> +<p>"I was on the very point of proposing it," said John. "May I +conduct you to my quarters?"</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PART_SECOND" id="PART_SECOND"></a>PART SECOND</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>I</h2> +<p>Rather early next morning John was walking among the olives. He +had gone (straight from his bed, and in perhaps the least +considered of toilets: an old frieze ulster, ornamented with big +buttons of mother-of-pearl, a pair of Turkish slippers, a +bathing-towel over his shoulder, and for head-covering just his +uncombed native thatch) he had gone for a swim, some half a mile +upstream, to a place he knew where the Rampio—the madcap +Rampio, all shallows and rapids—rests for a moment in a pool, +wide and deep, translucent, inviting, and, as you perceive when you +have made your plunge, of a most assertive chill. Now he was on his +leisurely way home, to the presbytery and what passed there for +breakfast.</p> +<p>The hill-side rose from the river's bank in a series of +irregular terraces, upheld by rough stone walls. The gnarled old +trees bent towards each other and away like dwarfs and crook-backs +dancing a fantastic minuet; and in the grass beneath them, where +the sun shot his fiery darts and cast his net of shadows, Chloris +had scattered innumerable wildflowers: hyacinths, the colour of the +sky; violets, that threaded the air for yards about with their +sentiment-provoking fragrance; tulips, red and yellow; sometimes a +tall, imperial iris; here and there little white nodding companies +of jonquils. Here and there, too, the dusty-green reaches were +pointed by the dark spire of a cypress, alone, in a kind of +glooming isolation; here and there a blossoming peach or almond, +gaily pink, sent an inexpressible little thrill of gladness to +one's heart. The air was sweetened by many incense-breathing things +besides the violets,—by moss and bark, the dew-laden grass, +the moist brown earth; and it was quick with music: bees droned, +leaves whispered, birds called, sang, gossiped, disputed, and the +Rampio played a crystal accompaniment.</p> +<p>John swung onwards at ease, while lizards, with tails that +seemed extravagantly long, fled from before his feet, terrible to +them, no doubt, as an army with banners, for his Turkish slippers, +though not in their pristine youth, were of scarlet leather +embroidered in a rich device with gold. And presently (an +experience unusual at that hour in the olive wood) he became aware +of a human voice.</p> +<p>"Ohé! My good men, there! Will you be so kind as to +gather me some of those anemones? Here is a lira for your +pains."</p> +<p>It was a feminine voice; it was youthful and melodious; it was +finished, polished, delicately modulated. And its inflection was at +once confident and gracious,—clearly the speaker took it for +granted that she would receive attention, and she implied her +thanks abundantly beforehand. It was a voice that evoked in the +imagination a charming picture of fresh, young, confident, and +gracious womanhood.</p> +<p>"Hello!" said John to himself. "Who is there in this part of the +world with a voice like that?"</p> +<p>And he felt it would not be surprising if on glancing round he +should behold—as, in fact, he did—the stranger of +yesterday, the Unknown of the garden.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>II</h2> +<p>She stood on one of the higher terraces, (a very charming +picture indeed, bright and erect, in the warm shadow of the +olives), and was calling down to a couple of peasants at work on +the other side of the stream. Between the thumb and forefinger of +an ungloved fair right hand, she held up a silver lira.</p> +<p>Anemones, said she! Near to where the men were working, by the +river's brink, there was a space of level ground, perhaps a hundred +feet long, and tapering from half that breadth to a point. And this +was simply crimson and purple with a countless host of +anemones.</p> +<p>She called to the men, and one seeing and hearing her would have +thought they must abandon everything, and spring to do her bidding. +But they didn't. Pausing only long enough to give her a phlegmatic +stare, as if in doubt whether conceivably she could have the +impertinence to be addressing <i>them</i>, and vouchsafing not a +word, each went calmly on with his employment;—very, very +calmly, <i>piano</i>, <i>piano</i>, gently, languidly, filling +small baskets with fallen olives, and emptying them upon outspread +canvas sheets. There are, and more's the pity, two types of Italian +peasant. There's the old type, which we knew in our youth, and +happily it still survives in some numbers,—the peasant who, +for all his rags and tatters, has manners that will often put one's +own to shame, and, with a <i>simpatia</i> like second-sight, is +before one's wishes, in his eagerness to serve and please. And +there is the new type, which we know to our disgust, and unhappily +it multiplies like vermin,—the peasant who has lent his ear +to the social democrat, and, his heart envenomed by class hatred, +meets your civility with black glances and the behaviour of a churl +in the sulks.</p> +<p>So, though her voice was sweet to hear, and though, standing +there in the warm penumbra of the olive orchard, tall and erect and +graceful, in her bright frock, she made a charming picture, and +though she offered a silver lira as a prize, the men merely stared +at her churlishly, and went on with their work—languidly, +sluggishly, as men who deemed the necessity to work an outrage, and +weren't going to condone it by working with anything like a +will.</p> +<p>Now, John Blanchemain, as I have previously mentioned, was an +unselfconscious sort of fellow. In his unselfconsciousness, +forgetting several trifles that might properly have weighed with +him, (forgetting the tarnished gorgeousness of his Turkish slippers +for example, and his towzled head, and the bathing-towel that +flowed like a piece of classic drapery from his shoulder), obeying +impulse and instinct, he flung himself into the breach.</p> +<p>"Brutes," he muttered between his teeth. Then, in his easiest +man-of-the-worldy accents, "If you can wait two minutes," he called +aloud to her. And therewith he went scrambling down the terraces +and picked his way from stone to stone across the shallows, to the +field of anemones, where their satiny petals, like crisping +wavelets, all a-ripple in the moving air, shimmered with constantly +changing lights. And in a twinkling he had gathered a great armful, +and was clambering back.</p> +<p>"I beg of you," he said, in his abrupt fashion, holding them out +to her, and slightly bowing, with that nothing-doubting assurance +of his, while his blue eyes (to put her entirely at her ease) +smiled, frank and friendly and serene, into her dark ones.</p> +<p>But hers seemed troubled. She looked at the flowers, she looked +at John, I think she even looked at her lira. Her eyes seemed +undecided.</p> +<p>"Do pray take them," said he, still smiling, still frank and +assured, but as if a little puzzled, a little amused, by her +hesitation, and more airily a man-of-the-world than ever, his tone +one of high detachment, to spare her any possible feeling of +personal obligation, and to place his performance in the light of a +matter of course,—as if indeed he had done nothing more than +pick up and return, say, a handkerchief she might have dropped. +"You were right," he owned to his thought of Lady Blanchemain; "she +is beautiful." Here, at close quarters with her, one's perception +of her beauty became acute,—here, under the grey old trees, +in the leafy dimness, alone with her, at two paces from her, where +the birds sang and the violets gave forth their fragrant breath. He +saw that her eyes were beautiful (soft and deep and luminous, +despite their trouble), and her low white brow, and the dark masses +of her hair, under her garden-hat, and the rose in her cheeks, and +the red-rose of her mouth. And he saw and felt the beauty and the +vitality of her strong young body.</p> +<p>But meanwhile she had stretched forth, rather timidly, that +ungloved fair hand of hers, and taken the flowers.</p> +<p>"You are very good, I am sure. Thank you very much," she said, +rather faintly, with a grave little inclination of the head.</p> +<p>John, always with magnificent assurance, put up his hand, to +doff a man-of-the-worldy hat, and bow himself away;—and it +encountered his bare locks, bare, and still wet from recent +ducking. Whereupon, suddenly, the trifles he had forgotten were +remembered, and at last (in the formula of the criminologist) "he +realized his position:" hatless and uncombed, with the +bathing-towel slung from his shoulder, in that weather-beaten old +frieze coat with its ridiculous buttons, in those awful Turkish +slippers,—offering, with his grand manner, flowers to a woman +he didn't know, and smiling, to put her at her ease! His pink face +burned to a livelier pink, his ears went hot, his heart went cold. +The bow he finally accomplished was the blighted bud of the bow he +had projected; and, as the earth didn't, of its charity, open and +engulf him, he hastened as best he could, and with a painful sense +of slinking, to remove his crestfallen person from her range of +view.</p> +<p>When these unselfconscious fellows are startled into +selfconsciousness, I fancy they take it hard. I don't know how long +it was before John had done heaping silent curses, silent but +savage, upon himself; his luck, his "beastly officiousness," upon +the whole afflicting incident: curses that he couldn't help +diversifying now and then with a catch of splenetic laughter, as a +vision of the figure he had cut would recurrently</p> +<div class="blockquot">"—<i>flash upon that inward eye<br /> +Which is the bliss of solitude</i>."</div> +<p>"Oh, you <i>ape!</i>" he groaned. "Rigged out like Pudding Jack, +and, with your ineffable simagrees, offering a strange woman +flowers!"</p> +<p>If <i>she</i> had only laughed, had only smiled, it wouldn't +have been so bad, it would have shown that she understood. "But +through it all," he writhed to recollect, "she was as solemn as a +mourner. I suppose she was shocked—perhaps she was +frightened—very likely she took me for a tramp. I wonder she +didn't crown my beatitude by giving me her lira. These foreigners +do so lack certain discernments."</p> +<p>And with that rather an odd detail came back to him. <i>Was</i> +she a foreigner? For it came vaguely back that he, impulsive and +unthinking, had spoken to her throughout in English. "And +anyhow,"—this came distinctly back,—"it was certainly +in English that she thanked me."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>III</h2> +<p>What passed for breakfast at the presbytery was the usual +Continental evasion of that repast,—bread and coffee, +despatched in your apartment. But at noon the household met to +dine.</p> +<p>The dining-room, on the ground floor, long and low, with a +vaulted ceiling, whitewashed, and a pavement of worn red tiles, was +a clean, bare room, that (pervaded by a curious, dry, not +unpleasant odour) seemed actually to smell of bareness, as well as +of cleanliness. There was a table, there was a dresser, there were +a few unpainted deal chairs, rush-bottomed (exactly like the chairs +in the church, in all Italian churches), and there was absolutely +nothing else, save a great black and white Crucifix attached to the +wall. But, by way of compensation, its windows opened southwards, +flooding it with sunshine, and commanding the wonderful perspective +of the valley,—the blue-grey hills, the snow-peaks, the +blossoming low-lands, and the far-away opalescence that you knew to +be the lake.</p> +<p>At noon the parroco, his niece Annunziata, and his boarder met +to dine.</p> +<p>The parroco was a short, stout, florid, black-haired, +hawk-nosed, fierce-looking, still youngish man, if five-and-forty +may be reckoned youngish, with a pair of thin lips and powerful +jaws which, for purposes of speech, he never opened if he could +help it. Never,—till Sunday came: when, mounting the pulpit, +he opened them indeed, and his pent-up utterance burst forth in a +perfect torrent of a sermon, a wild gush of words, shouted at the +topmost stress of a remarkably lusty voice, arresting for a minute +or two by reason of the sheer physical energy it represented, and +then for a long half hour exquisitely tiresome. But on week-days he +maintained a prodigious silence, and this (as, though +fierce-looking, he wasn't in the least really fierce) it would +often be John's malicious study to tempt him to break. Besides, +to-day, John was honestly concerned with the pursuit of +knowledge.</p> +<p>Accordingly, grace being said, "You never told me," he began, +assuming a mien of intelligent interest, "that the castle was +haunted." He looked at the Napoleonic profile of Don Ambrogio, but +from the tail of his eye he kept a watch as well upon Annunziata, +and he saw that that wise little maiden became attentive.</p> +<p>"No," said Don Ambrogio, between two spoonfuls of soup.</p> +<p>"You will conceive my astonishment, then," continued John, +urbanely, "when I discovered that it was."</p> +<p>"It isn't," said Don Ambrogio. He gave himself diligently to the +business of the hour; his spoon flew backwards and forwards like a +shuttle. His napkin, tucked into his Roman collar, protected his +bosom, an effective white cuirass.</p> +<p>"Oh? Not the castle?" questioned John. "Only the garden? And the +olive wood? True, on reflection, I've never seen it in the +house."</p> +<p>"Nothing here is haunted," said the parroco. He made a signal to +Annunziata, who rose to change the plates. Her big eyes were +alight, her serious little face was alert; but she would never +dream of speaking in the presence of her uncle. Marcella, the cook, +brought in the inevitable veal.</p> +<p>"Oh, for that," insisted John, courteous but firm, "I beg your +pardon. I myself have seen it on two occasions; and, lest you +should fancy it a subjective illusion, I may tell you that it was +yesterday seen simultaneously by another."</p> +<p>"It? It? What is <i>it</i>?" asked the parroco, his beaked and +ensanguined visage fiercer-looking than ever, as he fell upon the +inevitable veal with a somewhat dull carving-knife.</p> +<p>"Ah," said John, "now you make me regret that I haven't a talent +for word-painting. It's the form of a woman, a young woman, tall, +slender, in some pale diaphanous garment, that appears here, +appears there, remaining distinctly visible for some minutes, and +then disappears. No, it isn't a subjective illusion. And it isn't, +either," the unscrupulous creature added, after a pause, raising +his voice, and speaking with emphasis, as if to repel the +insinuation, while the darkness of disenchantment swept the face of +Annunziata, "it isn't, either, as some imaginative people might too +hastily conclude, a wraith, a phantom, an insubstantial vapour. +It's a real material form, that lives and breathes, and even, if +driven to it, speaks. There's nothing supernatural about +it,—unless, indeed, we take the transcendental view that +Nature herself is supernatural. I was wondering, Don Ambrogio, +whether, without violating a confidence, you could tell me whose +form it is?"</p> +<p>"Nossignore," said Don Ambrogio, economizing his breath.</p> +<p>"Ah," sighed John, nodding resignedly, "I feared as much. +Divining that I would institute inquiries, she has stolen a march +upon me, and pledged you to secrecy."</p> +<p>"Nossignore," disavowed Don Ambrogio, raising eyes the sincerity +of which there could be no suspecting.</p> +<p>John's face took on an expression of aggrieved surprise.</p> +<p>"But then why won't you tell me?"</p> +<p>"I cannot tell you because I do not know," said Don +Ambrogio.</p> +<p>"Oh, I see," said John. "And yet," he argued meditatively, +"that's hard to conceive. I don't for a moment mean that I doubt +it—but it's hard to conceive, like the atomic theory, and +some of the articles of religion. (I hear, by-the-by, that the +scientists are throwing the atomic theory over. Oh, fickle +scientists! Oh, shifting sands of science!) Surely there can't be +many such tall slender forms, in diaphanous garments, appearing and +disappearing here and there in your parish? And one would suppose, +antecedently, that you'd know them all."</p> +<p>"A peasant, a villager," said Don Ambrogio.</p> +<p>"I put it to you as an observer of life," said John, "do +peasants, do villagers, wear diaphanous garments?"</p> +<p>"A visitor, a sight-seer, from some place on the lake," said Don +Ambrogio.</p> +<p>"I put it to you as a student of probabilities," said John, +"would a visitor, would a sight-seer, from some place on the lake, +walk in the garden of the castle without a hat? And would she +appear at Sant' Alessina on two days in succession?"</p> +<p>But Don Ambrogio had finished his veal, and when he had finished +his veal he always left the table, first twice devoutly making the +sign of the Cross, and then with a bow to John, pronouncing the +formula, "You will graciously permit? My affairs call me. A +thousand regrets." To-day he slightly amplified that formula. "A +thousand regrets," he said, "and as many excuses for my inability +to afford the information desired."</p> +<p>After his departure, John turned to Annunziata, where, in her +grey cotton pinafore, her lips parted, her big eyes two lively +points of interrogation, she sat opposite to him, impatient to take +up the theme.</p> +<p>"Well, Mistress Wisdom!" he saluted her, smiling, and waving his +hand. "It is a good and wholesome thing for the young to witness +the discomfiture of the wicked. Your uncle retreats with flying +colours. He made, to be sure, a slender dinner, but that's his +daily habit. If you have tears to shed, shed them for me. I have +made none at all."</p> +<p>From points of interrogation, Annunziata's eyes changed to +abysses of wonder, and, big as they were, seemed to grow measurably +bigger.</p> +<p>"You have made no dinner?" she protested, in that strangely deep +voice of hers, with its effect of immense solemnity.</p> +<p>"No, poor dear," said John, with pathos, "no, I have made no +dinner."</p> +<p>"But you have eaten a great deal," exclaimed Annunziata, +frowning, nonplussed. "And you are still eating."</p> +<p>"Quite so," responded John, "though I think it's perhaps the +merest trifle unhandsome of you to fling it in my face. I have +eaten a great deal, and I am still eating. That is what I come to +table for. In an orderly life like mine there is a place for +everything. I come to table to eat, just as I go to bed to sleep +and to church to say my prayers. Would you have me sleep at table, +eat in church, and say my prayers in bed? Eating, however, has +nothing to do with the case. I spoke of dining—I said I had +not dined. Now you shall be the judge. The question is, can a +Christian man dine twice on the same day? Answer me that."</p> +<p>"Oh, no," answered Annunziata, her pale face very sober, and she +lengthened out her vowels in deprecation of the idea. "At least, it +would be gluttony if he did."</p> +<p>"There you are," cried John. "And gluttony is not the +undeadliest of the Seven Deadly Sins. So, then, unless you would +have me guilty of the deadly sin of gluttony, you must agree that I +have not dined. For I am going to dine this evening. I am going to +dine at the Hotel Victoria at Roccadoro. I am going to dine with a +lady. I am going to dine in all the pomp and circumstance of my +dress-suit, with a white tie and pumps. And you yourself have said +it, a Christian man may not, without guilt of gluttony, dine twice +on the same day. Therefore it is the height of uncharitableness, +it's a deliberate imputation of sin, to contend that I have dined +already."</p> +<p>Annunziata followed his reasoning thoughtfully, and then gravely +set him right.</p> +<p>"No," she said, with a drop of the eyelids and a quick little +shake of the head, "you do not understand. I will explain." Her +eyes were wide open again, and bright with zeal for his +instruction. "You have dined already. That is a certain truth, +because this meal is dinner, and you have eaten it. But to-night +you are going to a dinner of ceremony—and that is different. +A dinner of ceremony does not count. It is the same as a supper. My +uncle himself once went to a dinner of ceremony at Bergamo. No, it +will not be gluttony for you to go to a dinner of ceremony."</p> +<p>"You speak like a little pope," said John, with enthusiasm. "In +matters of Faith and Morals I believe you are infallible. If you +could guess the load you have lifted from my conscience!" And he +pushed a hearty ouf.</p> +<p>"I am glad," said Annunziata. And then she attempted to hark +back. Curiosity again lighting her eyes, "This form that you have +seen in the garden—" she began.</p> +<p>"Don't try to change the subject," John interrupted. "Let us +cultivate sequence in our ideas. What I am labouring with hammer +and tongs to drag from you is the exact date at which, somewhere +between the years of our salvation 1387 and 1455, you sat for your +portrait to the beatified painter Giovanni of Fiesole. Now, be a +duck, and make a clean breast of it."</p> +<p>Annunziata's eyes clouded. A kind of scorn, a kind of pity, and +a kind of patient longanimity looked from them.</p> +<p>"That is folly," she said, on the deepest of her deep notes, +with a succession of slow, reflective, side-wise nods.</p> +<p>"Folly—?" repeated John, surprised, but bland. "Oh? +Really?"</p> +<p>"Sit for my portrait between the years 1387 and 1455,—how +could I?" scoffed Annunziata.</p> +<p>"Why? What was to prevent you?" innocently questioned he.</p> +<p>"<i>Ma come!</i> I was not yet alive," said she.</p> +<p>John looked at her with startled eyes, and spoke with +animation.</p> +<p>"Weren't you? Word of honour? Are you sure? How do you know? +Have you any definite recollection that you weren't? Can you +clearly recall the period in question, and then, reviewing it in +detail, positively attest that you were dead? For there's no third +choice. A person must either be alive or dead. And how, if you +weren't alive, how ever did it come to pass that there should be a +perfect portrait of you from Giovanni's brush in the Convent of +Saint Mark at Florence? Your grave little white face, and your wise +little big eyes, and your eager little inquisitive profile, and +your curls flowing about your shoulders, and your pinafore that's +so like a peplum,—there they all are, precisely as I see them +before me now. And how was Giovanni able to do them if you weren't +alive? Perhaps you were pre-mortally alive in Heaven? Giovanni's +cell, as is well known, had a window that opened straight into +Heaven. Perhaps he saw you through that window, and painted you +without your knowing it. The name they give your portrait, +by-the-by, would rather seem to confirm that theory. What do you +think they call it? They call it an <i>un angiolo</i>. I've got a +copy of it in England. When you come to London to visit the Queen +I'll show it to you."</p> +<p>Annunziata gave her flowing curls a toss.</p> +<p>"The form of the young woman which you have seen in the +garden—" she began anew.</p> +<p>"Ah," said John, "observe how differently the big fish and the +little fish will be affected by the same bait."</p> +<p>"When you first spoke of it," said she, "I thought you had seen +a holy apparition."</p> +<p>"Yes," said he. "That was because I couched my communication in +language designedly misleading. I employed the terminology of +ghost-lore. I said 'haunted' and 'appear,' and things like that. +And you were very properly and naturally deceived. I confidently +expected that you would be. No, it is not given to world-stained +and world-worn old men like me to see holy apparitions."</p> +<p>"Old men? You are not an old man," said Annunziata.</p> +<p>"Oh? Not? What am I, then?" said John.</p> +<p>"You are a middle-aged man," said she.</p> +<p>"Thank you, Golden Tongue," said he, with a bow.</p> +<p>"And you are sure that it was merely a real person?" she +pursued.</p> +<p>"No," said he. "I am too profoundly imbued with the basic +principles of metaphysics ever to be sure of the objective reality +of phenomena. I can only swear to my impression. My impression was +and is that it was merely a real person."</p> +<p>"Then," said Annunziata, with decision, "it must be the person +who is visiting the Signora Brandi."</p> +<p>"The Signora Brandi?" repeated John. "What a nice name! Who is +the Signora Brandi?"</p> +<p>"She is an Austrian," said Annunziata.</p> +<p>"Oh—?" said John.</p> +<p>"She lives in the pavilion beyond the clock-tower," said +Annunziata.</p> +<p>"I wasn't aware," said John, "that the pavilion beyond the +clock-tower was inhabited. I wasn't aware that any part of this +castle was inhabited, except the porter's lodge and the part that +we inhabit. Why have I been left till now in this state of outer +darkness?"</p> +<p>"The Signora Brandi has been absent," said Annunziata. "She has +been in her own country—in Austria. But the other day she +returned. And with her came a person to visit her. That is the +person whose form you have seen in the garden."</p> +<p>"How do you know it wasn't the form of the Signora Brandi +herself?" John said.</p> +<p>"Oh, no," said Annunziata. "The Signora Brandi is not young. She +is old. She is as old as—"</p> +<p>"Methuselah? Sin? The hills?" suggested John, Annunziata having +paused to think.</p> +<p>"No," said Annunziata, repudiating the suggestion with force. +"No one is so old as Methuselah. She is as old as—well, my +uncle."</p> +<p>"I see," said John. "Yes, it's all highly mysterious."</p> +<p>"Mysterious?" said Annunziata.</p> +<p>"I should think so," asseverated he. "Cryptic, enigmatic, +esoteric to the last degree. To begin with, how does the Signora +Brandi, being an Austrian, come by so characteristically +un-Austrian a name? Is that mysterious? And in the next place, why +does an Austrian Signora Brandi so far forget what is due to her +nationality as to live, not in Austria, but in Lombardy? +And—as if that were not enough—at Castel Sant' +Alessina? And—as if that were not more than enough—in +the pavilion beyond the clock? Come, come! Mysterious!"</p> +<p>"You are living in Lombardy, you are living at Castel Sant' +Alessina, yourself," said Annunziata.</p> +<p>"I hardly think so," said John. "You can scarcely with precision +call this living—this is rather what purists call sojourning. +But even were it otherwise, there's all the difference in the world +between my case and the Signora Brandi's. I am middle-aged and +foolish, but she is as old as your uncle. Don't you see the +mysterious significance of that coincidence? And I haven't a young +woman visiting me. <i>Who is the young woman?</i> Is that a +mystery? My sweet child, we tread among mysteries. We are at the +centre of a coil of mysteries. <i>Who is the young woman?</i> And +how—consider well upon this—how does it happen that the +young woman speaks English? Mysterious, indeed!"</p> +<p>He rose, and bowed, with ceremony.</p> +<p>"But we burn daylight. I must not detain you longer. Suffer me +to imprint upon your hand of velvet a token of my high regard."</p> +<p>And taking Annunziata's frail little white hand, he bent low to +kiss it; and though his blue eyes were full of laughter, I think +that behind the laughter there was a great deal of real fondness +and admiration.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>IV</h2> +<p>Half-way down the long straight avenue of ilex-trees that led +from the castle to the principal entrance of the garden, +Annunziata, in her pale-grey pinafore (that was so like a peplum), +with her hair waving about her shoulders, was curled up in the +corner of a marble bench, gazing with great intentness at a white +flower that lay in her lap. It was the warmest and the peacefullest +moment of the afternoon. The sun shone steadily; not a leaf +stirred, not a shadow wavered; and the intermittent piping of a +blackbird, somewhere in the green world overhead, seemed merely to +give a kind of joyous rhythm to the silence.</p> +<p>"Mercy upon me! Who ever saw so young a maiden so deeply lost in +thought!" exclaimed a voice.</p> +<p>Annunziata, her reverie thus disturbed, raised a pair of +questioning eyes.</p> +<p>A lady was standing before her, smiling down upon her, a lady in +a frock of lilac-coloured muslin, with a white sunshade.</p> +<p>Annunziata, who, when she liked, could be the very pink of +formal politeness, rose, dropped a courtesy, and said: "Buon +giorno, Signorina."</p> +<p>"Buon giorno," responded the smiling lady. "Buon +giorno—and a penny for your thoughts. But I'm sure you could +never, never tell what it was you were thinking so hard about."</p> +<p>"Scusi," said Annunziata. "I was trying to think of the name of +this flower." She stooped and picked up the flower, which had +slipped from her lap to the ground when she rose. Then she held it +at arm's length, for inspection.</p> +<p>"Oh?" asked the lady, smiling at the flower, as she had smiled +at its possessor. "Isn't it a narcissus?"</p> +<p>"Yes," said Annunziata. "It is a narcissus. But I was trying to +think of its particular name."</p> +<p>The lady looked as if she did not quite understand. "Its +particular name?"</p> +<p>"It is a narcissus," explained Annunziata, "just as I am a girl. +But it must also have its particular name, just as I have mine. It +is a soul doing its Purgatory—a very good soul. If you are +very good, then, when you die, you do your Purgatory as a flower. +But it is not such an easy Purgatory—oh, no. For look: the +flower is beautiful, but it is blind, and cannot see; and it is +fragrant, but it cannot smell; and people admire it and praise it, +but it is deaf, and cannot hear. It can only wait, wait, wait, and +think of God. But it is a short Purgatory. A few days, and the +flower will fade, and the soul will be released. I think this +flower's name is Cecilia, it is so white."</p> +<p>The smile in the lady's eyes had brightened, as she listened; +and now she gave a little laugh, a little, light, musical, pleased +and friendly laugh.</p> +<p>"Yes," she said. "I have sometimes wondered myself whether +flowers might not be the Purgatory of very good souls. I am glad to +learn from you that it is true. And yes, I should think that this +flower's name was sure to be Cecilia. Cecilia suits it perfectly. +What, if one may ask, is <i>your</i> particular name?"</p> +<p>"Mariannunziata," said its bearer, not to make two bites of a +cherry.</p> +<p>The lady's eyes grew round. "Dear me! A little short name like +that?" she marvelled.</p> +<p>"No," returned Annunziata, with dignity. "My name in full is +longer. My name in full is Giuliana Falconieri Maria Annunziata +Casalone. Is that not long enough?"</p> +<p>"Yes," the lady admitted, "that is just long enough." And she +laughed again.</p> +<p>"What is <i>your</i> name?" inquired Annunziata.</p> +<p>"My name is Maria Dolores," the lady answered. "You see, we are +both named Maria."</p> +<p>"Of course," said Annunziata. "All Christians should be named +Maria."</p> +<p>"So they should," agreed the lady. "Do you ever tell people how +old you are?"</p> +<p>"Yes," said Annunziata, "if they wish to know. Why not?"</p> +<p>The smile in the lady's eyes shone brighter than ever. "Do you +think you could be persuaded to tell me?"</p> +<p>"With pleasure," said Annunziata. "I am eleven years and five +months. And you?"</p> +<p>"I am just twice as old. I am twenty-two years and ten months. +So, when you are fifty, how old shall I be?"</p> +<p>"No," said Annunziata, shaking her head. "That trick has been +tried with me before. My friend Prospero has tried it with me. You +hope I will say that you will be a hundred. But it is not so. When +I am fifty, you will be sixty-one, going on sixty-two."</p> +<p>Still again the lady laughed, apparently with great +amusement.</p> +<p>"What a little bundle of wisdom you are!" she exclaimed.</p> +<p>"Yes. My friend Prospero also says that I am wise," answered +Annunziata. "I like to see you laugh," she mentioned, looking +critically at the face above her. "You have beautiful teeth, they +are so white and shining, and so small, and your lips are so +red."</p> +<p>"Oh," said the lady, laughing more merrily than ever. "Then you +must be very entertaining, and I will laugh a great deal."</p> +<p>Still looking critically at the lady's face, "Are you not," +demanded Annunziata, "the person who has come to visit the Signora +Brandi?"</p> +<p>"Signora Brandi?" The lady considered. "Yes, I suppose I must +be. At any rate, I am the person who has come to visit Frau +Brandt."</p> +<p>"Frao Branta? We call her Signora Brandi here," said Annunziata. +"Are you related to her?"</p> +<p>"No," said the lady, who always seemed inclined to laugh, though +Annunziata had no consciousness of being very entertaining. "I am +not related to her. I am only her friend."</p> +<p>"She is an Austrian," said Annunziata. "This castle belongs to +Austrians. Once upon a time, very long ago, before I was born, all +this country belonged to Austrians. Are you, too, an Austrian?"</p> +<p>"Yes." The lady nodded. "I, too, am an Austrian."</p> +<p>"And yet," remarked Annunziata, "you speak Italian just as I +do."</p> +<p>"It is very good of you to say so," laughed the lady.</p> +<p>"No—it is the truth," said Annunziata.</p> +<p>"But is it not good to tell the truth?" the lady asked.</p> +<p>"No," said Annunziata. "It is only a duty." And again she shook +her head, slowly, darkly, with an effect of philosophic melancholy. +"That is very strange and very hard," she pointed out. "If you do +not do that which is your duty, it is bad, and you are punished. +But if you do do it, that is not good,—it is only what you +ought to do, and you are not rewarded." And she fetched her breath +in the saddest of sad little sighs. Then, briskly covering her +cheerfulness, "And you speak English, besides," she said.</p> +<p>"Oh?" wondered the lady. "Are you a clairvoyante? How do you +know that I speak English?"</p> +<p>"My friend Prospero told me so," said Annunziata.</p> +<p>"Your friend Prospero?" the lady repeated. "You quote your +friend Prospero very often. Who is your friend Prospero?"</p> +<p>"He is a signore," said Annunziata. "He has seen you, he has +seen your form, in the garden and in the olive wood."</p> +<p>"Oh," said the lady.</p> +<p>"And I suppose he must have heard you speak English," Annunziata +added. "He lives at the presbytery."</p> +<p>"And where, by-the-by, do <i>you</i> live?" asked the lady.</p> +<p>"I live at the presbytery too," said Annunziata. "I am the niece +of the parroco. I am the orphan of his only brother. My friend +Prospero lives with us as a boarder. He is English."</p> +<p>"Indeed?" said the lady. "Prospero is a very odd name for an +Englishman."</p> +<p>"Prospero is not his name," said Annunziata. "His name is Gian. +That is English for Giovanni."</p> +<p>"But why, then," the lady puzzled, "do you call him +Prospero?"</p> +<p>"Prospero is a name I have given him," explained Annunziata. +"One day I told his fortune. I can tell fortunes—with +olive-stones, with playing-cards, or from the lines of the hand. I +will tell you yours, if you wish. Well, one day, I told Prospero's, +and everything came out so prosperously for him, I have called him +Prospero ever since. He will be rich, though he is poor; and he +will marry a dark woman, who will also be rich; and they will have +many, many children, and live in peace to the end of their lives. +But there!" Annunziata cried out suddenly, with excitement, waving +the hand that held her narcissus. "There is my friend Prospero now, +coming in the gig."</p> +<p>Down the avenue, sure enough, a gig was coming, a sufficiently +shabby, ancient gig, drawn, however, at a very decent pace by a +very decent-looking horse, and driven by John Blanchemain.</p> +<p>"<i>Ciao</i>, Prospero!" called Annunziata, as he passed.</p> +<p>And John took off his hat, a modish Panama, and bowed and smiled +to her and to the lady. And one adept in reading the meaning of +smiles might have read three or four separate meanings in that +smile of his. It seemed to say to Annunziata, "Ah, you rogue! So +already you have waylaid her, and made her acquaintance." To the +lady: "I congratulate you upon your companion. Isn't she a +diverting little monkey?" To himself: "And I congratulate +<i>you</i>, my dear, upon being clothed and in your right mind, and +upon having a proper hat to make your bow with." And to the +universe at large "By Jove, she <i>is</i> good-looking. Standing +there before that marble bench, in the cool green light, under the +great ilexes, with her lilac frock and her white sunshade, and +Annunziata all in grey beside her,—what a subject for a +painting, if only there were any painters who knew how to +paint!"</p> +<p>"He is going to a dinner at Roccadoro," said Annunziata, while +John's back grew small and smaller in the distance. "Did you see, +he had a portmanteau under the seat? He is going to a dinner of +ceremony, and he will have his costume of ceremony in the +portmaneau. I wonder what he will bring back with him for me. When +he goes to Roccadoro he always brings something back for me. Last +time it was a box of chocolate cigars. I should like to see him in +his costume of ceremony. Wouldn't you?"</p> +<p>But the lady merely laughed. And then, taking Annunziata's chin +in her hand, she looked down into her big clear eyes, and said, "I +must be off now, to join Signora Brandi. But I cannot leave without +telling you how glad I am to have met you, and what pleasure I have +derived from your conversation. I hope we shall meet often. +Good-bye."</p> +<p>"Good-bye, Signorina," said Annunziata, becoming formally polite +again. "I shall always be at your service." And she dropped another +courtesy. "If you will come to see me at the presbytery," she +hospitably added, "I will show you my tame kid."</p> +<p>"You are all that is most kind," responded the lady, and went +off smiling towards the castle.</p> +<p>Annunziata curled herself up in her old corner of the marble +bench, and appeared to relapse into profound thought.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>V</h2> +<p>A curious little intimate inward glow, a sense, somewhere deep +down in his consciousness, of elation and well-being, accompanied +John all the way to Roccadoro, mingling with and sweetening +whatever thoughts or perceptions occupied his immediate attention. +This was a "soul-state" that he knew of old, and he had no +difficulty in referring it to its cause. It was the glow and the +elation which he was fortunate enough always to experience when his +eye had been fed with a fresh impression of beauty; and he knew +that he owed it to-day to the glimpse he had had, in the cool light +under the ilexes, of a slender figure in lilac and a tiny figure in +grey, beside a soft-complexioned old marble bench in the midst of a +shadowy, sunny, brown and green Italian garden.</p> +<p>The drive to Roccadoro from Sant' Alessina is a pleasant drive. +The road follows for the most part the windings of the Rampio, so +that you are seldom out of sight of its gleaming waters, and the +brawl of it, now louder, now less loud, is perpetually in your +ears. To right and left you have the tender pink of blossoming +almonds, with sometimes the scarlet flame of a pomegranate; and +then the blue-grey hills, mantled in a kind of transparent +cloth-of-gold, a gauze of gold, woven of haze and sunshine; and +then, rosy white, with pale violet shadows, the snow-peaks, cut +like cameos upon the brilliant azure of the sky. And sometimes, of +course, you rattle through a village, with its crumbling, stained, +and faded yellow-stuccoed houses, its dazzling white canvas +awnings, its church and campanile, and its life that seems to pass +entirely in the street: men in their shirt sleeves, lounging, +smoking, spitting (else the land were not Italy!), or perhaps +playing cards at a table under the leafless bush of the wine-shop; +women gossiping over their needlework, or, gathered in sociable +knots, combing and binding up their sleek black hair; children +sprawling in the kindly dirt; the priest, biretta on head, nose in +breviary, drifting slowly upon some priestly errand, and "getting +through his office;" and the immemorial goatherd, bare-legged, in a +tattered sugar-loaf hat, followed by his flock, with their queer +anxious faces, blowing upon his Pan's-pipes (shrill strains, in +minor mode and plagal scale, a music older than Theocritus), or +stopping, jealously watched by the customer's avid Italian eyes, to +milk "<i>per due centesimi</i>"—say, a farthing's +worth—into an outstretched, close-clutched jug. Sometimes the +almond orchards give place to vineyards, or to maize fields, or to +dusky groves of walnut, or to plantations of scrubby oak where lean +black pigs forage for the delectable acorn. Sometimes the valley +narrows to a ravine, and signs of cultivation disappear, and the +voice of the Rampio swells to a roar, and you become aware, between +the hills that rise gloomy and almost sheer beside you, of a great +solitude: a solitude that is intensified rather than diminished by +the sight of some lonely—infinitely lonely—grange, +perched far aloft, at a height that seems out of reach of the +world. What possible manner of human beings, you wonder, can +inhabit there, and what possible dreary manner of existence can +they lead? But even in the most solitary places you are welcomed +and sped on by a chorus of bird-songs. The hillsides resound with +bird-songs continuously for the whole seven miles,—and +continuously, at this season, for the whole four-and-twenty hours. +Blackbirds, thrushes, blackcaps, goldfinches, chaffinches, sing +from the first peep of dawn till the last trace of daylight has +died out, and then the nightingales begin and keep it up till dawn +again. And everywhere the soft air is aromatic with a faint scent +of rosemary, for rosemary grows everywhere under the trees. And +everywhere you have the purity and brilliancy and yet restraint of +colour, and the crisp economy of line, which give the Italian +landscape its look of having been designed by a conscious +artist.</p> +<p>In and through his enjoyment of all these pleasantnesses, John +felt that agreeable glow which he owed to his glimpse of the woman +in the garden; and when at last he reached the Hotel Victoria, and, +having dressed, found himself alone for a few moments with Lady +Blanchemain, in the dim and cool sitting-room where she awaited her +guests, he hastened to let her know that he shared her own opinion +of the woman's charms.</p> +<p>"Your beauty decidedly <i>is</i> a beauty," he declared. "I wish +you could have seen her as I saw her an hour ago, with a white +sunshade, against a background of ilexes. It's a thousand pities +that painting should be a forgotten art."</p> +<p>But Lady Blanchemain (magnificent in purple velvet, with +diamonds round her throat and in her hair) didn't seem +interested.</p> +<p>"Do you know," she said, "I made yesterday one of the most +ridiculous blunders of my life. It's been preying upon my mind ever +since. I generally have pretty trustworthy perceptions, and perhaps +this is a symptom of failing powers. I told myself positively that +you were an Eton and Balliol man. It never occurred to me till I +was halfway home that, as a Papist, you'd be nothing of the +sort."</p> +<p>"No," said John; "I'm afraid I'm Edgbaston and Paris. The way +her hair grows low about her brow, and swoops upwards and backwards +in a sort of tidal wave, and breaks loose in little curling +tendrils,—it's absolutely lyrical. And the smile at the +bottom of her eyes is exactly like silent music. And her mouth is a +couplet in praise of love, with two red lips for rhymes. And her +chin is a perfect epithalamium of a chin. And then her figure! And +then her lilac frock! Oh, it's a thousand, thousand pities that +painting should he a forgotten art."</p> +<p>"What, the same lilac frock?" said Lady Blanchemain, absently. +"Yet you certainly have the Eton voice," she mused. "And if I don't +pay you the doubtful compliment of saying that you have the Balliol +manner, you have at least a kind of subtilized reminiscence of +it."</p> +<p>"I must keep a guard upon myself," said John. "She's visiting an +Austrian woman who lives in a remote wing of the castle,—the +pavilion beyond the clock, in fact,—an Austrian woman of the +exhilarating name of Brandi."</p> +<p>"I'm rather in luck for my dinner to-night," said Lady +Blanchemain. "I've got Agnes Scope, the niece of the Duke of +Wexmouth. She arrived here this morning with her aunt, Lady Louisa. +Of course I'm putting you next to her. As, besides being an +extremely nice girl and an heiress, she's an ardent pervert to +Romanism,—well, a word to the wise."</p> +<p>"Yes, I know her," said John. "We don't get on a bit. She moves +on far too high a plane for a groundling like me. She's +intellectual and earnest, and my ignorance and light-mindedness +wound her to the quick. She'll end, as I've told her to her face, +by writing books,—serious novels, probably,—which +she'll illuminate with beautiful irrelevant quotations from +Browning and Cardinal Newman."</p> +<p>"Bother," said Lady Blanchemain. "You're perverse."</p> +<p>"Besides," said John, "she's engaged."</p> +<p>"Engaged—?" faltered Lady Blanchemain.</p> +<p>"Yes—to an intellectual and earnest man, named +Blake—Bernard Blake—a grandson of the famous Blake of +Cambridge."</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain fixed him with darkening eyes.</p> +<p>"Are you sure?" she pleaded.</p> +<p>"I saw it officially stated in the <i>Morning Post</i>," was +John's relentless answer.</p> +<p>"What a nuisance," said Lady Blanchemain, fanning. Her fan was +of amber tortoise-shell, with white ostrich feathers, and the end +sticks bore her cypher and coronet in gold.</p> +<p>"What a jolly fan," said John.</p> +<p>"Well, well," said Lady Blanchemain, reconciling herself. Then, +after an instant of pensiveness, "So you're already laid low by her +beauty. But you haven't found out yet who she is?"</p> +<p>"Who who is?" said John, looking all at sea.</p> +<p>"Tut. Don't tease. Your woman at the castle."</p> +<p>"My woman at the castle appeared to leave you cold," he +complained. "I arrived full of her, and you wouldn't listen."</p> +<p>"So you're already in love with her?" said Lady Blanchemain.</p> +<p>"No—not yet," said he. "As yet I merely recognize in her +admirable material for a painting, and regret that such material +should go begging for the lack of a painter. But by this time +to-morrow—who can tell?"</p> +<p>"Have you found out who she is?" asked Lady Blanchemain.</p> +<p>"No—not yet," said he. "As yet I've merely found out that +she's visiting an Austrian Signora Brandi, who lives (I can't think +why) in the pavilion beyond the clock. But by this time to-morrow!" +His gesture spoke volumes of prospective information.</p> +<p>"She looked like a gentlewoman," reflected his friend.</p> +<p>"For all the world," said he.</p> +<p>"Yet, if she's an Austrian—" She paused and pondered.</p> +<p>"Why? What's the difficulty?" said he.</p> +<p>"To know whether she is <i>born</i>," said Lady Blanchemain. +"Among Austrians, unless you're born, you're impossible, you're +nowhere. Brandi doesn't sound born, does it? We mustn't let you +become enamoured of her if she isn't born."</p> +<p>"Brandi sounds tremendously <i>un</i>born," assented John. "And +if like visits like, Signora Brandi's visitor will probably be +unborn too. But to me that would rather add an +attraction,—provided she's <i>bred</i>. I'm not an Austrian. +I'm a Briton and a democrat. I feel it is my destiny, if ever I am +to become enamoured at all, to become enamoured of the daughter of +a miller,—of a rising miller, who has given his daughter +advantages. 'Brèd, not Born: or the Lady of the +Mill'—that shall be the title of my humble heart-history. If +this woman could prove to me that she was the daughter of a miller, +I'm not sure I shouldn't become enamoured of her on the spot. Well, +I shall know to-morrow. By this time to-morrow I shall possess her +entire <i>dossier</i>. It may interest you to learn that I am +employing a detective to investigate her."</p> +<p>"A detective? What do you mean?" said Lady Blanchemain.</p> +<p>"A private detective, a female detective, whom, the next time +you come to Sant' Alessina, I'll introduce to you," said John.</p> +<p>"What on earth do you mean?" said Lady Blanchemain.</p> +<p>"The most amusing, the most adorable little detective unhung," +said he. "People are all love and laughter whenever they look at +her. She'll worm its inmost secrets from my sphinx's heart."</p> +<p>"What pleasure can you take in practising upon a poor old woman +who only by a sort of fluke isn't your grandmother?" said she.</p> +<p>"Lady Louisa FitzStephen, Miss Scope," said her servant, opening +the door.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>VI</h2> +<p>The nightingales sang him home, and the moon lighted him, the +liquid moon of April and Italy. As he approached the castle, +through the purple and silver garden, amid the mysterious sweet +odours of the night, he glanced up vaguely at the pavilion beyond +the clock. He glanced up vaguely, but next second he was no longer +vague.</p> +<p>There, on a low-hung balcony, not ten feet above him, full in +the moonlight, stood a figure in white—all in white, with a +scarf of white lace thrown over her dark hair. The nightingales +sang and sobbed, the moon rained its amethystine fire upon the +earth, the earth gave forth its mysterious sweet night odours, and +she stood there motionless, and breathed and gazed and +listened.</p> +<p>But at the sound of wheels in the avenue, she turned slightly, +and looked down. Her face was fair and delicate and pure in the +moonlight, and her eyes shone darkly bright.</p> +<p>She turned, and looked down, and her eyes met John's.</p> +<p>"Given the hour and the place, I wonder whether I ought to bow," +he thought.</p> +<p>Before he could make up his mind, however, his hand had +automatically raised his hat.</p> +<p>She inclined her head in acknowledgment, and something softly +changed in her face.</p> +<p>"She smiled!" he said, and caught his breath, with a kind of +astonished exultancy.</p> +<p>That soft change in her face came and went and came again +through all his dreams.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PART_THIRD" id="PART_THIRD"></a>PART THIRD</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>I</h2> +<p>"Good morning, Prospero," said Annunziata.</p> +<p>"Good morning, Wide-awake," responded John.</p> +<p>He was in the octagonal room on the <i>piano nobile</i> of the +castle, where his lost ladies of old years smiled on him from their +frames. He had heard an approaching patter of feet on the pavement +of the room beyond; and then Annunziata's little grey figure, white +face, and big grave eyes, had appeared, one picture the more, in +the vast carved and gilded doorway.</p> +<p>"I have been looking everywhere for you," she said, +plaintive.</p> +<p>"Poor sweetheart," he commiserated her. "And can't you find +me?"</p> +<p>"I couldn't," said Annunziata, bearing on the tense. "But I have +found you <i>now</i>."</p> +<p>"Oh? Have you? Where?" asked he.</p> +<p>"<i>Where?</i>" cried she, with a disdainful movement. "But +<i>here</i>, of course."</p> +<p>"I wouldn't be too cocksure of that," he cautioned her. +"<i>Here</i> is a mighty evasive bird. For, suppose we were +elsewhere, then <i>there</i> would be here, and here would be +somewhere else."</p> +<p>"No," said Annunziata, with resolution. "Where a person is, that +is always <i>here</i>."</p> +<p>"You speak as if a person carried his here with him, like his +hat," said John.</p> +<p>"Yes, that is how it is," said Annunziata, nodding.</p> +<p>"You have a remarkably solid little head,—for all its +curls, there's no confusing it," said he. "Well, have you your +report, drawn up, signed, sealed, sworn to before a Commissioner +for Oaths, and ready to be delivered?"</p> +<p>"My report—?" questioned Annunziata, with a glance.</p> +<p>"About the Form," said John. "I caught you yesterday red-handed +in the fact of pumping it."</p> +<p>"Yes," said Annunziata. "Her name is Maria Dolores."</p> +<p>"A most becoming name," said he.</p> +<p>"She is very nice," said Annunziata.</p> +<p>"She looks very nice," said he.</p> +<p>"She is twenty-two years and ten months old," continued his +informant.</p> +<p>"Fancy. As middle-aged as that," commented he.</p> +<p>"Yes. She is an Austrian."</p> +<p>"Ah."</p> +<p>"And as I told you, she is visiting the Signora Brandi. Only, +she calls her Frao Branta."</p> +<p>"Frao Branta?" John turned the name on his tongue. "Branta? +Branta?" What familiar German name, at the back of his memory, did +it half evoke? Suddenly he had a flash. "Can you possibly mean Frau +Brandt?"</p> +<p>Annunziata gave a gesture of affirmation.</p> +<p>"Yes, that is it," she said. "You sound it just as she did!"</p> +<p>"I see," said John. "And Brandt, if there are degrees of +unbirth, is even more furiously unborn than Brandi."</p> +<p>"Unborn—?" said Annunziata, frowning.</p> +<p>"Not noble—not of the aristocracy," John explained.</p> +<p>"Very few people are noble," said Annunziata.</p> +<p>"All the more reason, then, why you and I should be thankful +that we are," said he.</p> +<p>"You and I?" she expostulated, with a shrug of her little grey +shoulders. "<i>Machè!</i> We are not noble."</p> +<p>"Aren't we? How do you know?" asked John. "Anyhow," he +impressively moralized, "we can try to be."</p> +<p>"No," said she, with conclusiveness, with fatalism. "It is no +good trying. Either you are noble or simple,—God makes you +so,—you cannot help it. If I were noble, I should be a +contessina. If you were noble, you would be a gransignore.</p> +<p>"And my unassuming appearance assures you that I'm not?" said +he, smiling.</p> +<p>"If you were a gransignore," she instructed him, "you would +never be such friends with me—you would be too proud."</p> +<p>John laughed.</p> +<p>"You judge people by the company they keep. Well, I will apply +the same principle of judgment to your gossip, Maria Dolores. +By-the-by," he broke off to inquire, "what is her Pagan name?"</p> +<p>"Her Pagan name? What is that?" asked Annunziata.</p> +<p>"Maria Dolores, I take it, is her Christian name, come by in +Holy Baptism," said John. "But I suppose she will have a Pagan +name, come by in the way of the flesh, to round it off +with,—just as, for instance, a certain flame of mine, whose +image, when I die, they'll find engraved upon my heart, has the +Pagan name of Casalone."</p> +<p>Annunziata looked up, surprised. "Casalone? That is my name," +she said.</p> +<p>"Yes," said John. "Yours will be the image."</p> +<p>Annunziata gave her head a toss. "Maria Dolores did not tell me +her Pagan name," she said.</p> +<p>"At any rate," said he, "to judge by the company she keeps, we +may safely classify her as unborn. She is probably the daughter of +a miller,—of a miller (to judge also a little by the frocks +she wears) in rather a large way of business, who (to judge finally +by her cultivated voice, her knowledge of languages, and her +generally distinguished air) has spared no expense in the matter of +her education. I shouldn't wonder a bit if she could even play the +piano."</p> +<p>"No," agreed Annunziata, "that is very likely. But +why"—she tilted upwards her inquisitive little +profile—"why should you think she is the daughter of a +miller?"</p> +<p>"Miller," said John, "I use as a generic term. Her father may be +a lexicographer or a dry-salter, a designer of dirigible balloons +or a manufacturer of air-pumps; he may even be a person of +independent means, who lives in a big, new, stuccoed villa in the +suburbs of Vienna, and devotes his leisure to the propagation of +orchids: yet all the while a miller. By miller I mean a member of +the Bourgeoisie: a man who, though he be well to do, well educated, +well bred, does not bear coat-armour, and is therefore to be +regarded by those who do with their noses in the +air,—especially in Austria. Among Austrians, unless you bear +coat-armour, you're impossible, you're nowhere. We mustn't let you +become enamoured of her if she doesn't bear coat-armour."</p> +<p>Annunziata's eyes, during this divagation, had wandered to the +window, the tall window with its view of the terraced garden, where +the mimosa bloomed and the blackcaps carolled. Now she turned them +slowly upon John, and he saw from their expression that at last she +was coming to what for her (as he had known all along) was the real +preoccupation of the moment. They were immensely serious, intensely +concerned, and at the same time, in their farther recesses, you +felt a kind of fluttering shyness, as if <i>I dare not</i> were +hanging upon <i>I would</i>.</p> +<p>"Tell me," she began, on a deep note, a deep coaxing note.... +Then <i>I dare not</i> got the better, and she held back.... Then +<i>I would</i> took his courage in both hands, and she plunged. +"What have you brought for me from Roccadoro?" And after one glance +of half-bashful, all-impassioned supplication, she let her eyes +drop, and stood before him suspensive, as one awaiting the word of +destiny.</p> +<p>John's "radiant blondeur," his yellow beard, pink face, and +sea-blue eyes, lighted up, more radiant still, with subcutaneous +laughter.</p> +<p>"The shops were shut," he said. "I arrived after closing +time."</p> +<p>But something in his tone rendered this grim announcement +nugatory. Annunziata drew a long breath, and looked up again. "You +have brought me something, all the same," she declared with +conviction; and eagerly, eyes gleaming, "What is it? What is it?" +she besought him.</p> +<p>John laughed. "You are quite right," he said. "If one can't buy, +beg, or borrow, in this world, one can generally steal."</p> +<p>Annunziata drew away, regarded him with misgiving. "Oh, no; you +would never steal," she protested.</p> +<p>"I'm not so sure—for one I loved," said he. "What would +you have liked me to bring you?"</p> +<p>Annunziata thought. "I liked those chocolate cigars," she said, +her face soft with reminiscence of delight.</p> +<p>"Ah, but we mustn't have it <i>toujours perdrix</i>," said John. +"Do you, by any chance, like marchpane?"</p> +<p>"Marchpane?—I adore it," she answered, in an outburst of +emotion.</p> +<p>"You have your human weaknesses, after all," John laughed. +"Well, I stole a pocketful of marchpane."</p> +<p>Annunziata drew away again, her little white forehead furrowed. +"Stole?" she repeated, reluctant to believe.</p> +<p>"Yes," said he, brazenly, nodding his head.</p> +<p>"Oh, that was very wrong," said Annunziata, sadly shaking +hers.</p> +<p>"No," said he. "Because, in the first place, it's a matter of +proverbial wisdom that stolen marchpane's sweetest. And, in the +next place, I stole it quite openly, under the eye of the person it +belonged to, and she made no effort to defend her property. Seeing +which, I even went so far as to explain to her <i>why</i> I was +stealing it. 'There's a young limb o' mischief with a sweet tooth +at Sant' Alessina,' I explained, 'who regularly levies blackmail +upon me. I'm stealing this for her.' And then the lady I was +stealing from told me I might steal as much as ever I thought +good."</p> +<p>"Oh-h-h," said Annunziata, a long-drawn <i>Oh</i> of relief. +"Then you didn't steal it—she <i>gave</i> it to you."</p> +<p>"Well," said John, "if casuistry like that can ease your +conscience—if you feel that you can conscientiously receive +it—" And he allowed his inflection to complete the +sentence.</p> +<p>"Give it to me," said Annunziata, holding out her hands, and +dancing up and down in glee and in impatience.</p> +<p>"Nenni-dà," said John. "Not till after dinner. I'm not +going to be a party to the spoiling of a fair, young, healthy +appetite."</p> +<p>Pain wrote itself upon Annunziata's brow. "Oh," she grieved, +"must I wait till after dinner?"</p> +<p>"Yes," said John.</p> +<p>For a breathing-space she struggled. "Would it be bad of me," +she asked, "if I begged for just a <i>little</i> now?"</p> +<p>"Yes," said John, "bad and bootless. You'd find me as unyielding +as adamant."</p> +<p>"Ah, well," sighed Annunziata, a deep and tremulous sigh. "Then +I will wait."</p> +<p>And, like a true philosopher, she proceeded to occupy her mind +with a fresh interest. She looked round the room, she looked out of +the window. "Why do you stay here? It is much pleasanter in the +garden," she remarked.</p> +<p>"I came here to seek for consolation. To-day began for me with a +tragic misadventure," John replied.</p> +<p>Annunziata's eyes grew big, compassionating him, and, at the +same time, bespeaking a lively curiosity.</p> +<p>"Poor Prospero," she gently murmured. "What was it?" on tip-toe +she demanded.</p> +<p>"Well," he said, "when I rose, to go for my morning swim, I made +an elaborate toilet, because I hoped to meet a certain person whom, +for reasons connected with my dignity, I wished to impress. But it +was love's labour lost. The certain person is an ornament of the +uncertain sex, and didn't turn up. So, to console myself, I came +here."</p> +<p>Annunziata looked round the room again. "What is there here that +can console you?"</p> +<p>"These," said John. His hand swept the pictured walls.</p> +<p>"The paintings?" said she, following his gesture. "How can they +console you?"</p> +<p>"They're so well painted," said he, fondly studying the +soft-coloured canvases. "Besides, these ladies are dead. I like +dead ladies."</p> +<p>Annunziata looked critically at the pictures, and then at him +with solemn meaning. "They are very pretty—but they are not +dead," she pronounced in her deepest voice.</p> +<p>"Not dead?" echoed John, astonished. "Aren't they?"</p> +<p>"No," said she, with a slow shake of the head.</p> +<p>"Dear me," said he. "And, when they're alone here and no one's +looking, do you think they come down from their frames and dance? +It must be a sight worth seeing."</p> +<p>"No," said Annunziata. "These are only their pictures. They +cannot come down from their frames. But the ladies themselves are +not dead. Some of them are still in Purgatory, perhaps. We should +pray for them." She made, in parenthesis as it were, a pious sign +of the Cross. "Some are perhaps already in Heaven. We should ask +their prayers. And others are perhaps in Hell," she pursued, +inexorable theologian that she was. "But none of them is dead. No +one is dead. There's no such thing as being dead."</p> +<p>"But then," puzzled John, "what is it that people mean when they +talk of Death?"</p> +<p>"I will tell you," said Annunziata, her eyes heavy with thought. +"Listen, and I will tell you." She seated herself on the big round +ottoman, and raised her face to his. "Have you ever been at a +pantomime?" she asked.</p> +<p>"Yes," said John, wondering what could possibly be coming.</p> +<p>"Have you been at the pantomime," she continued earnestly, "when +there was what they call a transformation-scene?"</p> +<p>"Yes," said John.</p> +<p>"Well," said she, "last winter I was taken to the pantomime at +Bergamo, and I saw a transformation-scene. You ask me, what is +Death? It is exactly like a transformation-scene. At the pantomime +the scene was just like the world. There were trees, and houses, +and people, common people, like any one. Then suddenly click! Oh, +it was wonderful. Everything was changed. The trees had leaves of +gold and silver, and the houses were like fairy palaces, and there +were strange lights, red and blue, and there were great garlands of +the most beautiful flowers, and the people were like angels, with +gems and shining clothes. Well, you understand, at first we had +only seen one side of the scene;—then click! everything was +turned round, and we saw the other side. That is like life and +death. Always, while we are alive, we can see only one side of +things. But there is the other side, the under side. Never, so long +as we are alive, we can never, never see it. But when we +die,—click! It is a transformation-scene. Everything is +turned round, and we see the other side. Oh, it will be very +different, it will be wonderful. That is what they call Death."</p> +<p>It was John's turn to be grave. It was some time before he +spoke. He looked down at her, with a kind of grave laughter in his +eyes, admiring, considering. What could he say? ... What he did +say, at last, was simply, "Thank you, my dear."</p> +<p>Annunziata jumped up.</p> +<p>"Oh, come," she urged. "Let's go into the garden. It is so much +nicer there than here. There are lots of cockchafers. +Besides"—she held out as an additional inducement—"we +might meet Maria Dolores."</p> +<p>"No," said John. "Though the cockchafers are a temptation, I +will stop here. But go you to the garden, by all means. And if you +do meet Maria Dolores, tell her what you have just told me. I think +she would like to hear it."</p> +<p>"All right," consented Annunziata, moving towards the door. +"I'll see you at dinner. You won't forget the marchpane?"</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>II</h2> +<p>John was in a state of mind that perplexed and rather annoyed +him. Until the day before yesterday, his detachment here at Sant' +Alessina from ordinary human society, the absence of people more or +less of his own sort, had been one of the elements of his situation +which he had positively, consciously, rejoiced in,—had been +an appreciable part of what he had summarized to Lady Blanchemain +as "the whole blessed thing." He had his castle, his pictures, his +garden, he had the hills and valley, the birds, the flowers, the +clouds, the sun, he had the Rampio, he had Annunziata, he even had +Annunziata's uncle; and with all this he had a sense of having +stepped out of a world that he knew by heart, that he knew to +satiety, a world that was stale and stuffy and threadbare, with its +gilt rubbed off and its colours tarnished, into a world where +everything was fresh and undiscovered and full of savour, a great +cool blue and green world that from minute to minute opened up new +perspectives, made new promises, brought to pass new surprises. And +this sense, in some strange way, included Time as well as space. It +was as if he had entered a new region of Time, as if he had escaped +from the moving current of Time into a stationary moment. Alone +here, where modern things or thoughts had never penetrated, alone +with the earth and the sky, the mediæval castle, the dead +ladies, with Annunziata, and the parroco, and the parroco's Masses +and Benedictions—to-day, he would please himself by fancying, +might be a yesterday of long ago that had somehow dropped out of +the calendar and remained, a fragment of the Past that had been +forgotten and left over. The presence of a person of his own sort, +a fellow citizen of his own period, wearing its clothes, speaking +its speech, would have broken the charm, would have seemed as +undesirable and as inappropriate as the introduction of an English +meadow into the Italian landscape.</p> +<p>Yet now such a person had come, and behold, her presence, so far +from breaking the charm, merged with and intensified +it,—supplied indeed the one feature needed to perfect it. A +person of his own sort? The expression is convenient. A fellow +citizen, certainly, of his period, wearing its clothes, speaking +its speech. But a person, happily, not of his own sex, a woman, a +beautiful woman; and what her presence supplied to the poetry of +Sant' Alessina, making it complete, was, if you like, the Eternal +Feminine. As supplied already by the painted women on the walls +about him, this force had been static; as supplied by a woman who +lived and breathed, it became dynamic. That was all very well; if +he could have let it rest at that, if he could have confined his +interest in her, his feeling about her, to the plane of pure +æsthetics, he would have had nothing to complain of. But the +mischief was that he couldn't. The thing that perplexed and annoyed +him,—and humiliated him too, in some measure,—was a +craving that had sprung up over-night, and was now strong and +constant, to get into personal touch with her, to make her +acquaintance, to talk with her; to find out a little what manner of +soul she had, to establish some sort of human relation with her. It +wasn't in the least as yet a sentimental craving; or, if it was, +John at any rate didn't know it. In its essence, perhaps, it was +little more than curiosity. But it was disturbing, upsetting, it +destroyed the peace and the harmonious leisure of his day. It +perplexed him, it was outside his habits, it was unreasonable. "Not +unreasonable to think it might be fun to talk to a pretty woman," +he discriminated, "but unreasonable to yearn to talk to her as if +your life hung in the balance." And in some measure, too, it +humiliated him: it was a confession of weakness, of insufficiency +to himself, of dependence for his contentment upon another. He +tried to stifle it; he tried to fix his mind on subjects that would +lead far from it. Every subject, all subjects, subjects the most +discrepant, seemed to possess one common property, that of leading +straight back to it. Then he said, "Well, if you can't stifle it, +yield to it. Go down into the garden—hunt her up—boldly +engage her in conversation." Assurance was the note of the man; but +when he pictured himself in the act of "boldly engaging her in +conversation," his assurance oozed away, and he was conscious of a +thrice-humiliating shyness. Why? What <i>was</i> there in the woman +that should turn a brave man shy?</p> +<p>However, the stars were working for him. That afternoon, coming +home from a stroll among the olives, he met her face to face at the +gate of the garden, whither she had arrived from the direction of +the village. Having made his bow, which she accepted with a smile, +he could do no less than open the gate for her; and as their ways +must thence lie together, up the long ilex-shaded avenue to the +castle, it would be an awkward affectation not to speak. And yet +(he ground his teeth at having to admit it) his heart had begun to +pound so violently, (not from emotion, he told himself,—from +a mere ridiculous sort of nervous excitement: what <i>was</i> there +in the woman that should excite a sane man like that?) he was +afraid to trust his voice, lest it should quaver and betray him. +But fortunately this pounding of the heart lasted only a few +seconds. The short business of getting the gate open, and of +closing it afterwards, gave it time to pass. So that now, as they +set forwards towards the house, he was able to look her in the eye, +and to observe, with impressiveness, that it was a fine day.</p> +<p>She had accepted his bow with a smile, amiable and +unembarrassed; and at this, in quite the most unembarrassed manner, +smiling again,—perhaps with just the faintest, just the +gentlest shade of irony, and with just the slightest quizzical +upward tremor of the eyebrows,—"Isn't it a day rather typical +of the land and season?" she inquired.</p> +<p>It was the first step that had cost. John's assurance was coming +swiftly back. Her own air of perfect ease in the circumstances very +likely accelerated it. "Yes," he answered her. "But surely that +isn't a reason for begrudging it a word of praise?"</p> +<p>By this he was lucky enough to provoke a laugh, a little light +gay trill, sudden and brief like three notes on a flute.</p> +<p>"No," she admitted. "You are right. The day deserves the best we +can say of it."</p> +<p>"Her voice," thought John, availing himself of a phrase that had +struck him in a book he had lately read, "her voice is like ivory +and white velvet." And the touch, never so light, of a foreign +accent with which she spoke, rendered her English piquant and +pretty,—gave to each syllable a crisp little clean-cut +outline. They sauntered on for a minute or two in silence, with +half the width of the road-way between them, the shaded road-way, +where the earth showed purple through a thin green veil of mosses, +and where irregular shafts of sunlight, here and there, turned +purple and green to red and gold. The warm air, woven of +garden-fragrances, hung round them palpable, like some infinitely +subtile fabric. And of course blackbirds were calling, blackcaps +and thrushes singing, in all the leafy galleries overhead. A fine +day indeed, mused John, and indeed worthy of the best that they +could say. His nervousness, his excitement, had entirely left him, +his assurance had come completely back; and with it had come a +curious deep satisfaction, a feeling that for the moment at any +rate the world left nothing to be wished for, that the cup of his +desire was full. He didn't even, now that he might do so, wish to +talk to her. To walk with her was enough,—to enjoy her +companionship in silence. Yes, that was it—companionship. He +caught at the word. "That is what I have been unconsciously needing +all along. I flattered myself that I was luxuriating in the very +absence of it. But man is a gregarious animal, and I was deceived." +So he could refer the effect of her propinquity to the mere +gregarious instinct, not suspecting that a more powerful instinct +was already awake. Anyhow, his sense of that propinquity,—his +consciousness of her, gracefully moving beside him in the sweet +weather, while her summery garments fluttered, and some strange, +faint, elusive perfume was shaken from them,—filled him with +a satisfaction that for the moment seemed ultimate. He had no wish +to talk. Their progress side by side was a conversation without +words. They were getting to know each other, they were breaking the +ice. Each step they took was as good as a spoken sentence, was a +mutual experience, drawing them closer, helping to an +understanding. They walked slowly, as by a tacit agreement.</p> +<p>Silence, however, couldn't in the nature of things last for +ever. It was she who presently broke it.</p> +<p>"I owe you," she said, in her ivory voice, with her clean-cut +enunciation, "a debt of thanks." And still again she smiled, as she +looked over towards him, her dark eyes glowing, her dark hair +richly drooping, in the shadow of a big hat of wine-coloured +straw.</p> +<p>John's eyes were at a loss. "Oh—?" he wondered.</p> +<p>"For a pleasure given me by our friend Annunziata," she +explained. "This morning she told me a most interesting parable +about Death. And she mentioned that it was you who had suggested to +her to tell it me."</p> +<p>"Oh," said John, laughing, while the pink of his skin deepened a +shade. "She mentioned that, did she? I'm glad if you don't feel +that I took a good deal upon myself. But she had just told the same +parable to me, and it seemed a pity it shouldn't have a larger +audience."</p> +<p>Then, after a few more paces taken again in silence, "What a +marvellous little person she is, Annunziata!" said Maria +Dolores.</p> +<p>"She's to a marvellous degree the right product of her milieu," +said John.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores did not speak, but her eyes questioned, "Yes? How +do you mean?"</p> +<p>"I mean that she's a true child of the presbytery," he replied, +"and at the same time a true child of this Italy, where Paganism +has never perfectly died. She has been carefully instructed in her +catechism, and she has fed upon pious legends, she has breathed an +ecclesiastical atmosphere, until the things of the Church have +become a part of her very bone. She sees everything in relation to +them, translates everything in terms of them. But at the same time +odd streaks of Paganism survive in her. They survive a +little—don't they?—in all Italians. Wherever she goes +her eye reads omens. She will cast your fortune for you with +olive-stones. The woods are peopled for her by fauns and dryads. +When she takes her walks abroad, I've no doubt, she catches +glimpses of Proteus rising from the lake, and hears old Triton blow +his wreathed horn."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores looked interested.</p> +<p>"Yes," she said, slowly, thoughtfully, and meditated for an +interval. By-and-by, "You know," she recommenced, "she's a sort of +little person about whom one can't help feeling rather frightened." +And her eyes looked to his for sympathetic understanding.</p> +<p>But his were interrogative. "No? Why should one feel frightened +about her?"</p> +<p>"Oh," said Maria Dolores, with a movement, "it isn't exactly +easy to tell why. One's fears are vague. But—well, for one +thing, she thinks so much about Death. Death and what comes +after,—they interest her so much. It doesn't seem natural, it +makes one uneasy. And then she's so delicate-looking. Sometimes +she's almost transparent. In every way she is too serious. She uses +her mind too much, and her body too little. She ought to have more +of the gaiety of childhood, she ought to have other children to +romp with. She's too much like a disembodied spirit. It all alarms +one."</p> +<p>John, as she spoke, frowned, pondering. When she had done, his +frown cleared, he shook his head.</p> +<p>"I don't think it need," he said. "Her delicacy, her frailness, +have never struck me as indicating weakness,—they seem simply +the proper physical accompaniments of her crystalline little +soul,—she's made of a fine and delicate clay. She thinks +about Death, it is true, but not in a morbid way,—and that's +a part of her ecclesiastical tradition; and she thinks quite as +much about life,—she thinks about everything. I agree with +you, it's a pity she has no other children. But she isn't by any +means deficient in the instincts of childhood. She can enjoy a +chocolate cigar, for instance, as well as another; and as for +marchpane, I have her own word that she adores it."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores gave another light trill of laughter.</p> +<p>"Yes, I'm aware of her passion for marchpane. She confided it to +me this morning. And as, in reply to her questions, I admitted that +I rather liked it myself, she very generously offered to bring me +some this afternoon,—which, to be sure, an hour ago, she +did."</p> +<p>She laughed again, and John laughed too.</p> +<p>"All the same" she insisted, "I can't help that feeling of +uneasiness about her. Sometimes, when I look at her, I can almost +see her wings. What will be her future, if she grows up? One would +rather not think of her as married to some poor Italian, and having +to give herself to the prosaic sort of existence that would +mean."</p> +<p>"The sordid sort of existence," augmented John. "No, one would +decidedly rather not. But she will never marry. She will enter +religion. Her uncle has it all planned out. He destines her for the +Servites."</p> +<p>"Oh? The Servites—the Mantellate? I am glad of that," +exclaimed Maria Dolores. "It is a most beautiful order. They have +an especial devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows."</p> +<p>"Yes," said John, and remembered it was for Our Lady of Sorrows +that she who spoke was named.</p> +<p>Slow though their march had been, by this time they had come to +the end of the avenue, and were in the wide circular sweep before +the castle. They stopped here, and stood looking off over the +garden, with its sombre cypresses and bright beds of geranium, down +upon the valley, dim and luminous in a mist of gold. Great, heavy, +fantastic-shaped clouds, pearl-white with pearl-grey shadows, piled +themselves up against the scintillant dark blue of the sky. In and +out among the rose-trees near at hand, where the sun was hottest, +heavily flew, with a loud bourdonnement, the cockchafers promised +by Annunziata,—big, blundering, clumsy, the scorn of their +light-winged and business-like competitors, the bees. Lizards lay +immobile as lizards cast in bronze, only their little glittering, +watchful pin-heads of eyes giving sign of life. And of course the +blackcaps never for a moment left off singing.</p> +<p>They stood side by side, within a yard of each other, in silent +contemplation of these things, during I don't know how many long +and, for John, delicious seconds. Yes, he owned it to himself; it +was delicious to feel her standing there beside him, in silent +communion with him, contemplating the same things, enjoying the +same pleasantnesses. Companionship—companionship: it was what +he had been unconsciously needing all along! ... At last she +turned, and, withdrawing her eyes lingeringly from the landscape, +looked into his, with a smile. She did not speak, but her smile +said, just as explicitly as her lips could have done, "What a scene +of beauty!"</p> +<p>And John responded aloud, with fervour, "Indeed, indeed it +is."</p> +<p>"And so romantic," she added. "It is like a scene out of some +old high musical romance."</p> +<p>"The most romantic scene I know," said he. "All my life I have +thought so."</p> +<p>"Oh?" said she, looking surprise. "Have you known it all your +life?"</p> +<p>"Well,—very nearly," said he, with half a laugh. "I saw it +first when I was ten. Then for long years I lost it,—and only +recovered it, by accident, a month ago."</p> +<p>Her face showed her interest. "Oh? How was that? How did it +happen?"</p> +<p>"When I was ten," John recounted, half laughing again, "I was +travelling with my father, and, among the many places we visited, +one seemed to me a very vision of romance made real. A vast and +stately castle, in a garden, in a valley, with splendid halls and +chambers, and countless beautiful pictures of women. All my life I +remembered it, dreamed of it, longed to see it again. But I hadn't +a notion where it was, save vaguely that it was somewhere in Italy; +and, my poor father being dead, there was no one I could ask. Then, +wandering in these parts a month ago, I stumbled upon it, and +recognized it. Though shrunken a good deal in size, to be sure, it +was still recognizable, and as romantic as ever."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores listened pensively. When he had reached his +period, her eyes lighted up. "What a charming adventure!" she said. +"And so, for you, besides its general romance, the place has a +personal one, all your own. I, too, have known it for long years, +but only from photographs. I suppose I should never have seen the +real thing, except for a friend of mine coming to live here."</p> +<p>"I wonder," said John, "that the people who own it never live +here."</p> +<p>"The Prince of Zelt-Neuminster?" said she. "No,—he doesn't +like the Italian Government. Since Lombardy passed from Austria to +Italy, the family have entirely given up staying at Sant' +Alessina."</p> +<p>"In those circumstances," said John, "practical-minded people, I +should think, would get rid of the place."</p> +<p>"Oh," said she, laughing, "the Prince, in some ways, is +practical-minded enough. He has this great collection of Italian +paintings, which, by Italian law, he mayn't remove from Italian +soil; and if he were to get rid of Sant' Alessina, where could he +house them? In other ways, though, he is perhaps not so practical. +He is one of those Utopians who believe that the present Kingdom of +Italy must perforce before long make shipwreck; and I think he +holds on to Sant' Alessina in the dream of coming here in triumph, +and grandly celebrating that event."</p> +<p>"I see," said John, nodding. "That is a beautiful ideal."</p> +<p>"Good-bye," said she, flashing a last quick smile into his eyes; +and she moved away, down a garden path, towards the pavilion beyond +the clock.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>III</h2> +<p>And now, I should have imagined, for a single session, (and that +an initial one), he had had enough. I should have expected him to +spend the remainder of his day, a full man, in thankful +tranquillity, in agreeable retrospective rumination. But no. +Indulgence, it soon appeared, had but whetted his appetite. After a +quarter-hour of walking about the garden, during which his jumble +of sensations and impressions,—her soft-glowing eyes, her +soft-drooping hair, under her wine-red hat; her slender figure, in +its fluttering summery muslin, and the faint, faint perfume (like a +far-away memory of rose-leaves) that hovered near her; her smile, +and the curves, when she smiled, of her rose-red lips, and the +gleam of her snow-white teeth; her laugh, her voice, her ivory +voice; her pretty crisp-cut English; her appreciation of +Annunziata, her disquieting presentiments concerning her; and his +deep satisfaction in her propinquity, her "companionship;" and the +long shaded fragrant avenue, and the bird-songs, and the gentle +weather,—after a quarter-hour of anything but thankful +tranquillity, a quarter-hour of unaccountable excitement and +exaltation, during which his jumble of impressions and sensations +settled themselves, from ebullition, into some sort of quiescence, +he began to grow restlessly aware that, so far from having had +enough, he had had just a sufficient taste to make him hunger +keenly for more and more. It was ridiculous, but he couldn't help +it. And as there seemed no manner of likelihood that his hunger +would soon be fed, it was trying. At the best, he could not +reasonably hope to see her again before to-morrow; and even +then—? What ghost of a reason had he to hope that even then +he could renew their conversation? He had owed that to-day to the +bare hazard of their ways lying together. To-morrow, very likely, +at the best, he might get a bow and a smile. Very likely it might +be days before he should again have anything approaching a real +talk with her. And what—a new consideration, that struck a +sudden terror to his soul—what if her visit to Frau Brandt +was to be a short one? What if to-morrow even, she were to depart? +"Her very ease in talking with me, a stranger, may quite well have +been due to the fact that she knew she would never see me again," +he argued. ... So he was working himself into a fine state of +despondency, and the world was rapidly being resolved into dust and +ashes, when Heaven sent him a diversion. Nay, indeed, Heaven sent +him two diversions.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>IV</h2> +<p>There was a sound of wheels on gravel, of horses' hoofs on +stone, and Lady Blanchemain's great high-swung barouche, rolling +superbly forth from the avenue, drew up before the Castle, Lady +Blanchemain herself, big and soft and sumptuous in silks and laces, +under a much-befurbelowed, much-befringed, lavender-hued silk +sunshade, occupying the seat of honour. John hastened across the +garden, hat in hand, to welcome her.</p> +<p>"Jump in," she commanded, with a smile, and an imperious sweep +of the arm. "I have come to take you for a drive."</p> +<p>The footman (proud man) held open the door, and John jumped in. +But just as the footman (with an air) had closed the door behind +him, and before the coachman had touched up his horses, there came +a rhythm of running footsteps, and the voice of Annunziata called, +insistently, "Prospero! Prospero!" Then, all out of breath, her +pale cheeks pink, her curls in disarray, Annunziata arrived beside +the carriage, and, no wise abashed by that magnificent equipage, +nor by the magnificent old lady throning in it, (no wise abashed, +but, from the roundness of her eyes, a good deal surprised and +vastly curious), she explained, gasping, "A telegram," and held up +to John a straw-coloured envelope.</p> +<p>"Thank you," said he, taking it, and waving a friendly hand. +"But you should not run so fast," he admonished her, with +concern.</p> +<p>Whereupon the carriage drove off, Annunziata standing and +watching, always round-eyed, till it was out of sight.</p> +<p>"What an interesting-looking child!" said Lady Blanchemain.</p> +<p>"Yes," said John. "I should have liked to introduce her to +you."</p> +<p>"Who is she?" asked the lady.</p> +<p>"She's the private detective I told you of. She's my affinity. +She's the young limb o' mischief for whom I ravaged your stores of +marchpane. She's the niece of the parroco."</p> +<p>"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain. "Why does she call you—what +was it?—Prospero?"</p> +<p>"She's an optimist. She's a bird of good omen," answered John. +"She's satisfied herself, by consulting an oracle, that Fortune has +favours up her sleeve for me. She encouragingly anticipates them by +calling me Prospero before the fact."</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain softly laughed. "That's very nice of her, and +very wise. Aren't you going to read your telegram?"</p> +<p>"I didn't know whether you'd permit," said John.</p> +<p>"Oh pray," said she, with a gesture.</p> +<p>The carriage by this time had left the garden, and the coachman +had turned his horses' heads northwards, away from the lake, +towards the Alps, where their snowy summits, attenuated by the sun +and the distance and the blue air, looked like vapours rising into +the sky.</p> +<p>John tore open his envelope, read, frowned, and uttered a +half-stifled ejaculation,—something that sounded rather like +"I say!" and vaguely like "By Jove!"</p> +<p>"No bad news, I hope?" inquired the lady, sympathetic, and +trying to speak as if she didn't know what curiosity meant.</p> +<p>"Excellent news, on the contrary," said John, "but a bolt from +the blue." And he offered her the paper.</p> +<p>"Am on my way to Rome," she read aloud. "Could I come to you for +a day? Winthorpe, Hotel Cavour, Milan."—"Winthorpe?" She +pursed her lips, as one tasting something. "I don't know the name. +Who is he? What's his County?" she demanded,—she, who carried +the County Families in her head.</p> +<p>John chuckled. "He hasn't got a County—he's only an +American," he said, pronouncing that genial British formula with +intention.</p> +<p>"Oh," sighed Lady Blanchemain, her expectations dashed; and +drawing in her skirts, she sank a little deeper into her +corner.</p> +<p>"He hasn't got a County," repeated John. "But he's far and away +the greatest swell I know."</p> +<p>"A swell? An American?" Lady Blanchemain pressed down her lips, +and gave a movement to her shoulders.</p> +<p>"An aristocrat, a patrician," said John.</p> +<p>"Fudge!" said Lady Blanchemain. "Americans and +Australians—they're anything you like, but they're never +that."</p> +<p>John laughed. "I adore," he said, "our light and airy British +way of tarring Americans and Australians with the same +brush,—the descendants of transported convicts and the +descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers!"</p> +<p>"Is your Winthorpe man a descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers?" +asked Lady Blanchemain, dryly.</p> +<p>"Indeed he is," said John. "He's descended from ten separate +individuals who made the first voyage in the <i>Mayflower</i>. And +he holds, by-the-by, intact, the lands that were ceded to his +family by the Indians the year after. That ought to recommend him +to your Ladyship,—an unbroken tenure of nearly three hundred +years."</p> +<p>"Old acres," her ladyship admitted, cautiously, "always make for +respectability."</p> +<p>"Besides," John carelessly threw out, "he's a baronet."</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain sat up. "A baronet?" she said. "An +American?"</p> +<p>"Alas, yes," said John, "a mere American. And one of the +earliest creations,—by James the First, no less. His patent +dates from 1612. But he doesn't use the title. He regards it, he +pretends, as merged in a higher dignity."</p> +<p>"What higher dignity?" asked the lady, frowning.</p> +<p>"That of an American citizen, he says," chuckled John.</p> +<p>"Brrr!" she breathed, impatient.</p> +<p>"And moreover," John gaily continued, "besides being descended +from the Pilgrim Fathers, he's descended in other lines from half +the peerage of Seventeenth Century England. And to top up with, if +you please, he's descended from Alfred the Great. He's only an +American, but he can show a clear descent bang down from Alfred the +Great! I think the most exquisite, the most subtle and delicate +pleasure I have ever experienced has been to see English people, +people of yesterday, cheerfully patronizing him."</p> +<p>"You've enlarged my sphere of knowledge," said Lady Blanchemain, +grimly. "I had never known that there was blood in America. Does +this prodigious personage talk through his nose?"</p> +<p>"Worse luck, no," said John. "I wish he did—a +little—just enough to smack of his soil, to possess local +colour. No, he talks for all the world like you or me,—which +exposes him to compliments in England. 'An American? Really?' our +tactful people cry, when he avows his nationality 'Upon my word, I +should never have suspected it.'"</p> +<p>"I suppose, with all the rest, he's rich?" asked Lady +Blanchemain.</p> +<p>"Immensely," assented John. "Speaking of Fortune and her +favours, she's withheld none from him."</p> +<p>"Then he's good-looking, too?"</p> +<p>"He looks like a Man," said John.</p> +<p>"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain, moving. "If <i>I</i> had received +a wire from a creature of such proportions, I've a feeling I'd +answer it."</p> +<p>"I've a very similar feeling myself," laughed John. "When we +turn back, if you think your coachman can be persuaded to stop at +the telegraph office in the village, I'll give my feeling +effect."</p> +<p>"I think we might turn back now," said Lady Blanchemain. "It's +getting rather gloomy here." She looked round, with a little +shudder, and then gave the necessary order. The valley had narrowed +to what was scarcely more than a defile between two dark and rugged +hillsides, —pine-covered hillsides that shut out the sun, +smiting the air with chill and shadow, and turning the Rampio, +whose brawl seemed somehow to increase the chill, turning the +sparkling, sportive Rampio to the colour of slate. "It puts one in +mind of brigands," she said, with another little shudder. But +though the air was chilly, it was wonderfully, keenly fragrant with +the incense of the pines.</p> +<p>"Well," she asked, when they were facing homewards, "and your +woman? What of her?"</p> +<p>"Nothing," said John. "Or, anyhow, very little." (It would be +extremely pleasant, he felt suddenly, to talk of her; but at the +same time he felt an extreme reluctance to let his pleasure be +seen.)</p> +<p>"But your private detective?" said Lady Blanchemain. "Weren't +her investigations fruitful?"</p> +<p>"Not very," said he. "She learnt little beyond her name and +age."</p> +<p>"And what <i>is</i> her name?" asked the lady.</p> +<p>"Her name is Maria Dolores," answered John, (and he experienced +a secret joy, strange to him, in pronouncing it).</p> +<p>"Maria Dolores?" said Lady Blanchemain, (and he experienced a +secret joy in hearing it). "Maria Dolores—what?"</p> +<p>"My detective didn't discover her Pagan name," said John.</p> +<p>"So that you are still in doubt whether she's the daughter of a +miller?" Lady Blanchemain raised her eyebrows.</p> +<p>"Oh, no: I think she's a miller's daughter safely enough," said +he. "But she's an elaborately chiselled and highly polished one. +Her voice is like ivory and white velvet; and to hear her speak +English is a revelation of the hidden beauties of that +language."</p> +<p>"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain, eyeing him. "So you've advanced to +the point of talking with her?"</p> +<p>"Well," answered John, weighing his words, "I don't know whether +I can quite say that. But accident threw us together for a minute +or two this afternoon, and we could scarcely do less, in civility, +than exchange the time of day."</p> +<p>"And are you in love with her?" asked Lady Blanchemain.</p> +<p>"I wonder," said he. "What do <i>you</i> think? Is it possible +for a man to be in love with a woman he's seen only half a dozen +times all told, and spoken with never longer than a minute or two +at a stretch?"</p> +<p>"<i>Was</i> it only a minute or two—<i>really</i>?" asked +Lady Blanchemain, wooing his confidence with a glance.</p> +<p>"No," said John. "It was probably ten minutes, possibly fifteen. +But they passed so quickly, it's really nearer the truth to +describe them as one or two."</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain shifted her sunshade, and screwed herself half +round, so as to face him, her soft old eyes full of smiling +scrutiny and suspicion.</p> +<p>"I never can tell whether or not you're serious," she +complained. "If you <i>are</i> serious,—well, <i>à +quand le mariage</i>?"</p> +<p>"The marriage?" cried John. "How could I marry her? Such a +thing's out of all question.</p> +<p>"Why?" asked she.</p> +<p>"A miller's daughter!" said John. "Would you have me marry the +daughter of a miller?"</p> +<p>"You said yourself yesterday—" the lady reminded him.</p> +<p>"Ah, yes," said he. "But night brings counsel."</p> +<p>"If she's well educated," said Lady Blanchemain, "if she's +well-bred, what does it matter about her father? Though a nobody in +Austria, where nothing counts but quarterings, he's probably what +we'd call a gentleman in England. Suppose he's a barrister? Or the +editor of a newspaper? Or—"</p> +<p>She paused, thoughtful-eyed, to think of respectable +professions. At last she gave up the effort.</p> +<p>"Well, anything decent," she concluded, "so long as he had +plenty of money."</p> +<p>"Ah," said John, sadly, and with perhaps mock humility. "If he +had plenty of money, he'd never consent to his daughter marrying a +son of poverty like me."</p> +<p>"Pooh! For a title?" cried Lady Blanchemain. "Besides, you have +prospects. Isn't your name Prospero?"</p> +<p>"I have precious little faith in oracles," said John.</p> +<p>"I advise you to have more," said Lady Blanchemain, with a smile +that seemed occult.</p> +<p>And now her carriage entered the village, and she put him down +at the telegraph office.</p> +<p>"Don't wait," said John. "The walk from here to the Castle is +nothing, and it would take you out of your way."</p> +<p>"Well, good-bye, then," said she. "And cultivate more faith in +oracles—when they're auspicious."</p> +<p>Alone, she drew from some recondite fold of her many draperies a +letter, an unsealed letter, which she opened, spread out, and +proceeded to read. It was a long letter in her ladyship's own +handsome, high-bred, old-fashioned handwriting; and it was +addressed to Messrs. Farrow, Bernscot, and Tisdale, Solicitors, +Lincoln's Inn Fields, London. She read it twice through, and at +last (with a smile that seemed occult) restored it to its envelope. +"Stop at the Post Office," she said to her coachman, as they +entered Roccadoro; and to her footman, giving him the letter, "Have +that registered, please."</p> +<p>Annunziata lay in wait for John in the garden. She ran up, and +seized him by the arm. Then, skipping beside him, as he walked on, +"Who was she? Where did she come from? Where did she take you? Whom +was the telegram from?" she demanded in a breath, nestling her +curls against his coat-sleeve.</p> +<p>"<i>Piano, piano</i>," remonstrated John. "One question at a +time. Now, begin again."</p> +<p>"Whom was the telegram from?" she obeyed, beginning at the +end.</p> +<p>"Ah," said he, "the telegram was from <i>my</i> friend Prospero. +He's coming here to-morrow. We must ask your uncle whether he can +give him a bed."</p> +<p>"And the old lady?" pursued Annunziata. "Who was she?"</p> +<p>"The old lady was my fairy godmother," said John, building +better than he knew.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PART_FOURTH" id="PART_FOURTH"></a>PART FOURTH</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>I</h2> +<p>Pacing together backwards and forwards, as they talked, John and +his friend Winthorpe presented a striking and perhaps interesting +contrast. John was tall, but Winthorpe seemed a good deal +taller—though, (trifles in these matters looming so large), +had actual measurements been taken, I dare say half an inch would +have covered the difference. John was lean and sinewy, but rounded +off at the joints, and of a pliant carriage, so that it never +occurred to you to think of him as <i>thin</i>. Winthorpe's spare +figure, spare and angular, with its greater height, held +unswervingly to the plane of the perpendicular, appeared absolutely +to be constructed of nothing but bone and tendon. John's head, with +its yellow hair, its curly beard verging towards red, its pink +skin, and blue eyes full of laughter, might have served a painter +as a model for the head of Mirth. Winthorpe's,—with brown +hair cropped close, and showing the white of the scalp; +clean-shaven, but of a steely tint where the razor had passed; with +a marked jaw-bone and a salient square chin; with a high-bridged +determined nose, and a white forehead rising vertical over thick +black eyebrows, and rather deep-set grey eyes,—well, clap a +steeple-crowned hat upon it, and you could have posed him for one +of his own Puritan ancestors. The very clothes of the men carried +on their unlikeness,—John's loose blue flannels and red +sailor's knot, careless-seeming, but smart in their effect, and +showing him careful in a fashion of his own; Winthorpe's black tie +and dark tweeds, as correct as Savile Row could turn them out, yet +somehow, by the way he wore them, proclaiming him immediately a man +who never gave two thoughts to his dress. If, however, Winthorpe's +face was the face of a Puritan, it was the face of a Puritan with a +sense of humour—the lines about the mouth were clearly the +footprints of smiles. It seemed the face of a sensitive Puritan, as +well, and (maugre that high-bridged nose) of a gentle—the +light in his clear grey eyes was a kindly and gentle light. After +all, Governor Bradford, as his writings show,—though he tried +hard, perhaps, not to let them show it—was a Puritan with a +sense of humour; John Alden and Priscilla were surely sensitive and +gentle: and Winthorpe was descended from Governor Bradford, and +from John Alden and Priscilla. The two friends walked backwards and +forwards in the great open space before the Castle, and talked. +They had not met for nearly two years, and had plenty to talk +about.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>II</h2> +<p>Seated at one of the open windows of the pavilion beyond the +clock, Maria Dolores (in a pale green confection of I know not what +airy, filmy tissue) looked down, and somewhat vaguely watched +them,—herself concealed by the netted curtain, which, +according to Italian usage, was hung across the casement, to +mitigate the heat and shut out insects. She watched them at first +vaguely, and only from time to time, for the rest going on with +some needlework she had in her lap. But by-and-by she dropped her +needlework altogether, and her watching became continuous and +absorbed.</p> +<p>"What a singular-looking man!" she thought, studying Winthorpe. +"What an ascetic-looking man! He looks like an early Christian +martyr. He looks like a priest. I believe he <i>is</i> a priest. +English priests," she remembered, "when they travel, often dress as +laymen. Yes, he is a priest, and a terribly austere one—I +shouldn't like to go to him for confession. But in spite of his +austerity, he seems to be extraordinarily happy about something +just at present. That light in his eyes,—it is almost a light +of ecstasy. It is a light I have never seen in any eyes, save those +of priests and nuns."</p> +<p>Winthorpe, while that "almost ecstatic" light shone in his eyes, +had been speaking.</p> +<p>Now, as he paused, John, with a glance of gay astonishment, +halted, and turned so as to face him. John's lips moved, and it was +perfectly plain that he was exclaiming, delightedly, "Really? +<i>Really</i>?"</p> +<p>Winthorpe joyously nodded: whereupon John held out both hands, +got hold of his friend's, and, his pink face jubilant, shook them +with tremendous heartiness.</p> +<p>"The priest has received advancement—he is probably to be +made a bishop," inferred Maria Dolores; "and Signor Prospero is +congratulating him."</p> +<p>The men resumed their walk; but for quite a minute John kept his +hand on Winthorpe's shoulder, and again and again gently patted it, +murmuring, "I am so glad, so immensely glad." Maria Dolores was +quite sure that this was what he murmured, for, though no word +could reach her, John's beaming face spoke louder than his +voice.</p> +<p>At last John let his hand drop, and, eyebrows raised a little, +asked a question.</p> +<p>"But how did it happen? But tell me all about it," was what he +seemed to say.</p> +<p>And Winthorpe (always with something of that ecstatic light in +his eyes) proceeded to answer. But it was a longish story, and +lasted through half a dozen of their forward and backward +ambulations. Apparently, furthermore, it was a story which, as it +developed, became less and less agreeable to the mind of John; for +his face, at first all awake with interest, all aglow with +pleasure, gradually sobered, gradually darkened, took on a frown, +expressed dissent, expressed disapprobation, till, finally, with an +impatient movement, he interrupted, and began—speaking +rapidly, heatedly—to protest, to remonstrate.</p> +<p>"Ah," thought Maria Dolores, "the priest is to be made a bishop, +sure enough,—but a missionary bishop. It isn't for nothing +that he looks like an early Christian martyr. He is going to some +outlandish, savage part of the world, where he will be murdered by +the natives, or die of fever or loneliness. He is a man who has +listened to the Counsels of Perfection. But his unascetic friend +Prospero (one would say June remonstrating with December) can't +bring himself to like it."</p> +<p>John remonstrated, protested, argued. Winthorpe, calmly, +smilingly, restated his purpose and his motives. John pleaded, +implored, appealed (so the watcher read his gesture) to earth, to +heaven. Winthorpe took his arm, and calmly, smilingly, tried to +soothe, tried to convince him. John drew his arm free, and, +employing it to add force and persuasiveness to his speech, renewed +his arguments, pointed out how unnecessary, inhuman, impossible the +whole thing was. "It's monstrous. It's against all nature. There's +no <i>reason</i> in it. What does it <i>rhyme</i> with? It's +wilfully going out of your way to seek, to create, wretchedness. My +mind simply refuses to accept it." It was as if Maria Dolores could +hear the words. But Winthorpe, calm and smiling, would not be +moved. John shook his head, muttered, shrugged his shoulders, threw +up his hands, muttered again. "Was ever such pig-headed obstinacy! +Was ever such arbitrary, voluntary blindness! I give you up, for a +perverse, a triple-pated madman!" And so, John muttering and +frowning, Winthorpe serenely smiling, reiterating, they passed +round the corner of the Castle buildings, and were lost to Maria +Dolores' view.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>III</h2> +<p>That afternoon, seated on the moss, under a tall eucalyptus tree +near to Frau Brandt's pavilion, Maria Dolores received a visit from +Annunziata.</p> +<p>Annunziata's pale little face was paler, her big grave eyes were +graver, even than their wont. She nodded her head, slowly, +portentously; and her glance was heavy with significance.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores smiled. "What is the matter?" she cheerfully +inquired.</p> +<p>"Ah," sighed Annunziata, deeply, with another portentous +head-shake, "I wish I knew."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores laughed. "Sit down," she suggested, making room +beside her on the moss, "and try to think."</p> +<p>Annunziata sat down, curled herself up. "Something has happened +to Prospero," she said, <i>de profundis</i>.</p> +<p>"Oh?" asked Maria Dolores. "What?" She seemed heartlessly +cheerful, and even rather amused.</p> +<p>"Ah," sighed Annunziata, "that is what I wish I knew. He has had +a friend to pass the day with him."</p> +<p>"Yes?" said Maria Dolores. "I expect I saw his friend walking +with him this morning?"</p> +<p>"<i>Già</i>," said Annunziata. "They have been walking +about all day. <i>His</i> friend Prospero he calls him. But he +doesn't look very prosperous. He looks like a slate-pencil. He is +long and thin, and dark and cold, and hard, just like a +slate-pencil. He would not stay the night, though we had a bed +prepared for him. He is going to Rome, and Prospero has driven him +to the railway station at Cortello. I hate him," wound up +Annunziata, simply.</p> +<p>"Mercy!" exclaimed Maria Dolores, opening her eyes. "Why do you +hate him?"</p> +<p>"Because he must have said or done something very unkind to +Prospero," answered Annunziata. "Oh, you should see him. He is so +sad—so sad and so angry. He keeps scowling, and shaking his +head, and saying things in English, which I cannot understand, but +I am sure they are sad things and angry things. And he would not +eat any dinner,—no, not that much," (Annunziata measured off +an inch on her finger), "he who always eats a great +deal,—<i>eh, ma molto, molto</i>," and, separating her hands, +she measured off something like twenty inches in the air.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores couldn't help laughing a little at this. But +afterwards she said, on a key consolatory, "Ah, well, he has gone +away now, so let us hope your friend Prospero will promptly recover +his accustomed appetite."</p> +<p>"Yes," said Annunziata, "I hope so. But oh, that old +slate-pencil man, how I hate him! I would like +to—<i>uhhh!</i>" She clenched her little white fist, and +shook it, threateningly, vehemently, while her eyes fiercely +flashed. ... Next instant, however, her mien entirely changed. Like +a light extinguished, all the fierceness went out of her face, +making way for what seemed pain and terror. "There," she cried, +pain and terror in her voice, "I have offended God. Oh, I am so +sorry, so sorry. My sin, my sin, my sin," she murmured, bowing her +head, and thrice striking her breast.</p> +<p>"I take back every word I said. I do not hate him. I would not +hurt him—I would not even stick a pin in him—if I had +him at my mercy. No—I would do anything I could to help him. +I would give him anything I had that he could want. I would give +him my coral rosary. I would give him"—she hesitated, +struggled, and at last, drawing a deep breath, gritting her teeth, +in supreme renunciation—"yes, I would give him my tame kid," +she forced herself to pronounce, with a kind of desperate firmness. +"But see," she wailed, her little white brow a mesh of painful +wrinkles, "it is all no good. God is still angry. Oh, what shall I +do?" And, to the surprise and distress of Maria Dolores, she burst +into a sudden passion of tears, sobbing, sobbing, with that +abandonment of grief which only children know.</p> +<p>"My dear, my dear," exclaimed Maria Dolores, drawing her to her. +"My dearest, you mustn't cry like that. Dear little Annunziata. +What is it? Why do you cry so, dear one? Answer me. Tell me."</p> +<p>But Annunziata only buried her face in Maria Dolores' sleeve, +and moaned, while long, tremulous convulsions shook her frail +little body. Maria Dolores put both arms about her, hugged her +close, and laid her cheek upon her hair.</p> +<p>"Darling Annunziata, don't cry. Why should you cry so, dearest? +God is not angry with you. Why should you think that God is angry +with you? God loves you, darling. Everyone loves you. There, +there—dearest—don't cry. Sweet one, dear one."</p> +<p>Transitions, with Annunziata, were sometimes inexplicably rapid. +All at once her sobbing ceased; she looked up, and smiled, smiled +radiantly, from a face that was wet and glistening with tears. +"Thanks be to God," she piously exulted; "God is not angry any +more."</p> +<p>"Of course He isn't," said Maria Dolores, tightening her hug, +and touching Annunziata's curls lightly with her lips. "But He was +never angry. What made you think that God was angry?"</p> +<p>Annunziata's big eyes widened. "Didn't you notice?" she asked, +in a hushed voice, amazed.</p> +<p>"No," wondered Maria Dolores. "What was there to notice?"</p> +<p>"He made them draw a cloud over the sun," Annunziata whispered. +"Didn't you notice that when I said I would like to—when I +said what I said about that friend of Prospero's—just then +they drew a cloud across the sun? That is a sign that God is angry. +The sun, you know, is the window in Heaven through which God looks +down on the world, and through which the light of Heaven shines on +the world. And when the window is open, we feel happy and thankful, +and wish to sing and laugh. But when we have done something to make +God angry with us, then He sends angels to draw clouds over the +window, so that we may be shut out of His sight, and the light of +Heaven may be shut off from us. And then we are lonely and cold, +and we could quarrel with anything, even with the pigs. God wishes +to show us how bad it would be always to be shut off from His +sight. But now they have drawn the cloud away, so God is not angry +any more. I made a good act of contrition, and He has forgiven +me."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores smiled, but under her smile there was a look of +seriousness, a look of concern.</p> +<p>"My dear," she said smiling, and looking concerned, "you should +try to control your vivid little imagination. If every time a cloud +crosses the sun, you are going to assume the responsibility for it, +and to fancy that you have offended God, I'm afraid you'll have +rather an agitated life."</p> +<p>"Oh, no; not <i>every</i> time," exclaimed Annunziata, and she +was manifestly on the point of making a fine distinction, when +abruptly the current of her ideas was diverted. "Sh-h! There comes +Prospero," she cried, starting up. "I can see the top of his white +hat above the rhododendron bushes. He has driven his friend to +Cortello, and come home. I must run away, or he will see that I've +been crying. Don't tell him," she begged, putting her finger on her +lips; and she set off running, towards the presbytery, just as John +stepped forth from behind the long hedge of rhododendrons.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>IV</h2> +<p>John stepped forth from behind the rhododendrons, with a kind of +devil-may-care, loose, aimless gait, the brim of his Panama pulled +brigandishly down over one ear, his hands in the pockets of his +coat, his head bent, his brow creased, his eyes sombre, every line +and fibre of his person advertising him the prey of morose disgust. +But when he saw Maria Dolores, he hastily straightened up, +unpocketed his hands, took off his hat (giving it a flap that set +the brim at a less truculent angle), and smiled. And when, the +instant after, he caught sight of the flying form of Annunziata, +his smile turned into a glance of wonder.</p> +<p>"What is the matter with Annunziata? Why is she running with all +her legs like that?" he asked.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores had the tiniest catch of laughter. "She is running +away from you," she answered.</p> +<p>"From <i>me</i>?" marvelled John. "<i>Je suis donc un foudre de +guerre?</i> What on earth is she running away from me for?"</p> +<p>Maria Dolores smiled mysteriously.</p> +<p>"Ah," she said, "she asked me not to tell you. I am in the +delicate position of confidante."</p> +<p>"And therefore I hope you'll tell me with the less reluctance," +said John, urbanely unprincipled. "A confidante always betrays her +confidence to some one,—that's the part of the game that +makes it worth while."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores' smile deepened.</p> +<p>"In that pale green frock, on that bank of dark-green moss, with +her complexion and her hair,—by Jove, how stunning she is!" +thought John, in a commotion.</p> +<p>"Well," she said, "Annunziata ran away because she didn't want +you to see that she'd been crying."</p> +<p>John raised his eyebrows, the blue eyes under them becoming +expressive of dismay.</p> +<p>"Crying?" he echoed. "The poor little kiddie! What had she been +crying about!"</p> +<p>"That is a long story, and involves some of her peculiar +theological tenets," said Maria Dolores. "But, in a single word, +about your friend."</p> +<p>John's eyebrows descended to their normal level, and drew +together.</p> +<p>"Crying about my friend? What friend?" he puzzled.</p> +<p>"Your friend the priest—the man who has been passing the +day here with you," explained Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>John gave a start, threw back his head, and eyed her with +astonishment.</p> +<p>"That is extraordinary," he exclaimed.</p> +<p>"What?" asked she, lightly glancing up.</p> +<p>"That you should call him my friend the priest," said John, +wagging a bewildered head.</p> +<p>"Why? Isn't he a priest? He has all the air of one," said Maria +Dolores.</p> +<p>"No; he's an American millionaire," said John, succinctly.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores moved in her place, and laughed.</p> +<p>"Dear me!" she said, "I did strike wide of the mark. An American +millionaire should cultivate a less deceptive appearance. With that +thin, shaven face of his, and that look of an early Christian +martyr in his eyes, and the dark clothes he wears, wherever he goes +he's sure to be mistaken for a priest."</p> +<p>"Yes," said John, with a kind of grimness; "that's what's +extraordinary. He comes of a long line of bigoted Protestants, he's +a reincarnation of some of his stern old Puritan forebears, and you +find that he looks like their pet abomination, a Romish priest. +Well, you have a prophetic eye."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores gazed up inquiringly. "A prophetic eye?" she +questioned.</p> +<p>"I merely mean," said John, with thaumaturgic airiness, "that +the man is on his way to Rome to study for the priesthood." And he +gave a thaumaturgic toss to his bearded chin.</p> +<p>"Oh!" cried Maria Dolores, and leaned back against her +eucalyptus tree, and laughed again.</p> +<p>John, however, dejectedly shook his head, and gloomed.</p> +<p>"Laugh if you will," he said, "though it seems to me as far as +possible from a laughing matter, and I think Annunziata chose the +better part when she cried."</p> +<p>"I beg your pardon," said Maria Dolores, perhaps a trifle +stiffly. "I was only laughing at the coincidence of my having +supposed him to be a priest, and then learning that, though he +isn't, he is going to become one. I was not laughing at the fact +itself. Nor was it," she added, her stiffness leaving her, and a +little glimmer of amusement taking its place, "that fact which made +Annunziata cry."</p> +<p>"I dare say not," responded John, "seeing that she couldn't +possibly have known it. But it might well have done so. It's enough +to bring tears to the eyes of a brazen image." He angrily jerked +his shoulders.</p> +<p>"What?" cried Maria Dolores, surprised, rebukeful. "That a man +is to become a holy priest?"</p> +<p>"Oh, no," said John. "That fact alone, detached from special +circumstances, might be a subject for rejoicing. But the fact that +this particular man, <i>in</i> his special circumstances, is to +become a priest—well, I simply have no words to express my +feeling." He threw out his arms, in a gesture of despair. "I'm +simply sick with rage and pity. I could gnash my teeth and rend my +garments."</p> +<p>"Mercy!" cried Maria Dolores, stirring. "What are the special +circumstances?"</p> +<p>"Oh, it's a grisly history," said John. "It's a tale of the +wanton, ruthless, needless, purposeless sacrifice of two lives. +It's his old black icy Puritan blood. Winthorpe—that's his +name—had for years been a freethinker, far too intellectual +and enlightened, and that sort of thing, you know, to believe any +such old wives' tale as the Christian Religion. He and I used to +have arguments, tremendous ones, in which, of course, neither in +the least shook the other. Darwin and Spencer, with a dash of his +native Emerson, were religion enough for him. Then this morning he +arrived here, and said, 'Congratulate me. A month ago I was +received into the Church.'"</p> +<p>Maria Dolores looked up, animated, her dark eyes sparkling.</p> +<p>"How splendid!" she said.</p> +<p>"Yes," agreed John, "so I thought. 'Congratulate me,' he said. I +should think I did congratulate him,—with all my heart and +soul. But then, naturally, I asked him how it had happened, what +had brought it to pass."</p> +<p>"Yes—?" prompted Maria Dolores, as he paused.</p> +<p>"Well," said John, his face hardening, "he thereupon proceeded +to tell me in his quiet way, with his cool voice (it's like +smooth-flowing cold water), absolutely the most inhuman story I +have ever had to keep my patience and listen to."</p> +<p>"What was the story?" asked Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"If you can credit such inhumanity, it was this," answered John. +"It seems that he fell in love—with a girl in Boston, where +he lives. And what's more, and worse, the girl fell in love with +him. So there they were, engaged. But she was a Catholic, and his +state of unbelief was a cause of great grief to her. So she pleaded +with him, and persuaded, till, merely to comfort her, and without +the faintest suspicion that his scepticism could be weakened, he +promised to give the Catholic position a thorough reconsideration, +to read certain books, and to put himself under instruction with a +priest: which he did. Which he did, if you please, with the result, +to his own unutterable surprise, that one fine day he woke up and +discovered that he'd been convinced, that he <i>believed</i>."</p> +<p>"Yes?" said Maria Dolores, eagerly. "Yes—? And then? And +the girl?"</p> +<p>"Ah," said John, with a groan, "the girl That's the pity of it. +That's where his black old Puritan blood comes in. Blood? It isn't +blood—it's some fluid form of stone—it's flint +dissolved in vinegar. The girl! Mind you, she loved him, they were +engaged to be married. Well, he went to her, and said, 'I have been +converted. I believe in the Christian religion—your religion. +But I can't believe a thing like that, and go on living as I lived +when I didn't believe it,—go on living as if it weren't true, +or didn't matter. It does matter—it matters +supremely—it's the only thing in the world that matters. I +can't believe it, and <i>marry</i>—marry, and live in +tranquil indifference to it. No, I must put aside the thought of +marriage, the thought of personal happiness. I must sell all I have +and give it to the poor, take up my cross and follow Him. I am +going to Rome to study for the priesthood.' Imagine," groaned John, +stretching out his hands, "<i>imagine</i> talking like that to a +woman you are supposed to love, to a woman who loves you." And he +wrathfully ground his heel into the earth.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores looked serious.</p> +<p>"After all, he had to obey his conscience," she said. "After +all, he was logical, he was consistent."</p> +<p>"Oh, his conscience! Oh, consistency!" cried John, with an +intolerant fling of the body. "At bottom it's nothing better than +common self-indulgence, as I took the liberty of telling him to his +face. It's the ardour of the convert, acting upon that acid +solution of flint which takes the place of blood in his veins, and +causing sour puritanical impulses, which (like any other +voluptuary) he immediately gives way to. It's nothing better than +unbridled passion. Conscience, indeed! Where was his conscience +when it came to <i>her</i>? Think of that poor girl—that poor +pale girl—who <i>loved</i> him. Oh, Mother of Mercy!"</p> +<p>He moved impatiently three steps to the left, three steps to the +right, beating the palm of one hand with the back of the other.</p> +<p>"What did she do? How did she take it?" asked Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"What she ought to have done," said John, between his teeth, +"was to scratch his eyes out. What she did do, as he informed me +with a seraphic countenance, was not merely to approve of +everything he said, but to determine to do likewise. So, while he's +on his way to Rome, to get himself tonsured and becassocked, she's +scrubbing the floors of an Ursuline convent, as a novice. And there +are two lives spoiled." He shrugged his shoulders.</p> +<p>"Oh, no, no," contended Maria Dolores, earnestly, shaking her +head, "not spoiled. On the contrary. It is sad, in a way, if you +like, but it is very beautiful, it is heroic. Their love must have +been a very beautiful love, that could lead them to such +self-sacrifice. Two lives given to God."</p> +<p>"Can't people give their lives to God without ceasing to +<i>live</i>?" cried John. "If marriage is a sacrament, how can they +better give their lives to God than by living sanely and sweetly in +Christian marriage? But these people withdraw from life, renounce +life, shirk and evade the life that God had prepared for them and +was demanding of them. It's as bad as suicide. Besides, it implies +such a totally perverted view of religion. Religion surely is given +to us to help us to <i>live</i>, to show us <i>how</i> to live, to +enable us to meet the difficulties, emergencies, responsibilities +of life. But these people look upon their religion as a mandate to +turn their backs on the responsibilities of life, and scuttle away. +And as for <i>love</i>! Well, she no doubt did love, poor lady. But +Winthorpe! No. When a man loves he doesn't send his love into a +convent, and go to Rome to get himself becassocked." He gave his +head a nod of finality.</p> +<p>"That, I fancy, is a question of temperament," said Maria +Dolores. "Your friend has the ascetic temperament. And it does not +by any means follow that he loves less because he resigns his love. +What you call an inhuman story seems to me a wonderfully noble one. +I saw your friend this morning, when he and you were walking +together, and I said to myself, 'That man looks as if he had +listened to the Counsels of Perfection. His vocation shines through +him.' I think you should reconcile yourself to his accepting +it."</p> +<p>"Well," said John, on the tone of a man ready to change the +subject, "I owe him at least one good mark. His account of his +'heart-state' led me to examine my own, and I discovered that I am +in love myself,—which is a useful thing to know."</p> +<p>"Oh?" said Maria Dolores, with a little effect of reserve.</p> +<p>"Yes," said John, nothing daunted, "though unlike his, mine is +an unreciprocated flame, and unavowed."</p> +<p>"Ah?" said Maria Dolores, reserved indeed, but not without an +undertone of sympathy.</p> +<p>"Yes," said John, playing with fire, and finding therein a heady +mixture of fearfulness and joy. "The woman I love doesn't dream I +love her, and dreams still less of loving me,—for which +blessed circumstance may Heaven make me truly thankful."</p> +<p>The sentiment sounding unlikely, Maria Dolores raised doubtful +eyes. They shone into John's; his drank their light; and something +violent happened in his bosom.</p> +<p>"Oh—?" she said.</p> +<p>"Yes," said he, thinking what adorable little hands she had, as +they lay loosely clasped in her lap, thinking how warm they would +be, and fragrant; thinking too what fun it was, this playing with +fire, how perilous and exciting, and how egotistical he must seem +to her, and how nothing on earth should prevent him from continuing +the play. "Yes," he said, "it's a circumstance to be thankful for, +because, like Winthorpe himself, though for different reasons, I'm +unable to contemplate marriage." His voice sank sorrowfully, and he +made a sorrowful movement.</p> +<p>"Oh—?" said Maria Dolores, her sympathy becoming more +explicit.</p> +<p>"Winthorpe's too beastly puritanical—and I'm too beastly +poor," said he.</p> +<p>"Oh," she murmured. Her eyes softened; her sympathy deepened to +compassion.</p> +<p>"She must certainly put me down as the most complacent egotist +in two hemispheres, so to regale her with unsolicited information +about myself," thought John; "but surely it would need six +hemispheres to produce another pair of eyes as beautiful as +hers."—"Yes," he said, "I should be 'looking up' if I asked +even a beggar-maid to marry me."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores' beautiful eyes became thoughtful as well as +compassionate.</p> +<p>"But men who are poor work and earn money," she said, on the +tone that young women adopt when the spirit moves them to preach to +young men. And when the spirit does move them to that, things may +be looked upon as having advanced an appreciable distance, the ball +may be looked upon as rolling.</p> +<p>"So I've heard," said John, his head in the clouds. "It must be +dull business."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores dimly smiled. "Do <i>you</i> do no work?" she +asked.</p> +<p>"I've never had time," said John. "I've been too busy enjoying +life."</p> +<p>"Oh," said Maria Dolores, with the intonation of reproach.</p> +<p>"Yes," said he, "enjoying the Humour, the Romance, the Beauty of +it,—and combine the three together, make a chord of 'em, you +get the Divinity. Or, to take a lower plane, the world's a stage, +and life's the drama. I could never leave off watching and +listening long enough to do any work."</p> +<p>"But do you not wish to play a part in the drama, to be one of +the actors?" asked his gentle homilist. "Have you no ambition?"</p> +<p>"Not an atom," he easily confessed. "The part of spectator seems +to me by far the pleasantest. To sit in the stalls and watch the +incredible jumble-show, the reason-defying topsy-turvydom of it, +the gorgeous, squalid, tearful, and mirthful pageantry, the +reckless inconsequences, the flagrant impossibilities; to watch the +Devil ramping up and down like a hungry lion, and to hear the +young-eyed cherubim choiring from the skies: what better +entertainment could the heart of man desire?"</p> +<p>"But are we here merely to be entertained?" she sweetly +preached, while John's blue eyes somewhat mischievously laughed, +and he felt it hard that he couldn't stop her rose-red mouth with +kisses. "Aren't we here to be, as the old-fashioned phrase goes, of +use in the world? Besides, now that you are in love, surely you +will never sit down weakly, and say, 'I am too poor to marry,' and +so give up your love,—like your friend Winthorpe indeed, but +for ignoble instead of noble motives. Surely you will set to work +with determination, and earn money, and make it possible to marry. +Or else your love must be a very poor affair." And her adorable +little hands, as they lay ("like white lilies," thought John) upon +the pale-green fabric of her gown, unclasped themselves, opened +wide for an instant, showing the faint pink of their palms, then +lightly again interlaced their fingers.</p> +<p>He laughed. "You are delicious," he said to her fervently, in +silence. "My love is all right," he said aloud. "I love her as much +as it is humanly possible to love. I love her with passion, with +tenderness; with worship, with longing; I love her with wonder; I +love her with sighs, with laughter. I love her with all I have and +with all I am. And I owe one to Winthorpe for having unwittingly +opened my eyes to my condition. But earning money? I've a notion +it's difficult. What could I do?"</p> +<p>"Have you no profession?" she asked.</p> +<p>"Not the ghost of one," said he, with nonchalance.</p> +<p>"But is there no profession that appeals to you—for which +you feel that you might have a taste?" Her dark eyes were very +earnest.</p> +<p>"Not the ghost of one," said he, dissembling his amusement. +"Professions—don't they all more or less involve sitting shut +up in stuffy offices, among pigeon-holes full of dusty and futile +papers, doing tiresome tasks for the greater glory of other people, +like a slave in the hold of a galley? No, if I'm to work, I must +work at something that will keep me above decks—something +that will keep me out of doors, in touch with the air and the +earth. I might become an agricultural labourer,—but that's +not very munificently paid; or a farmer,—but that would +require perhaps more capital than I could command, and anyhow the +profits are uncertain. I've an uncle who's a bit of a farmer, and +year in, year out, I believe he makes a loss. 'Well, what's left? +... Ah, a gardener. I don't think I should half mind being a +gardener."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores looked as if she weren't sure whether or not to +take him seriously.</p> +<p>"A gardener? That's not very munificently paid either, is it?" +she suggested, trying her ground.</p> +<p>"Alas, I fear not," sighed John. Then he made a grave face. "But +would you have me entirely mercenary? Money isn't everything here +below."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores smiled. She saw that for the moment at least he +was not to be taken seriously.</p> +<p>"True," she agreed, "though it ran in my mind that to earn +money, so that you might marry, was your only motive for going to +work at all."</p> +<p>"I had forgotten that," said the light-minded fellow. "I was +thinking of occupations that would keep one in touch with the +earth. A gardener's occupation keeps him constantly in the +charmingest possible sort of touch with her, and the most +intimate."</p> +<p>"Do they call the earth <i>her</i> in English?" asked Maria +Dolores. "I thought they said <i>it</i>."</p> +<p>"I'm afraid, for the greater part, they do," answered John. "But +it's barbarous of them, it's unfilial. Our brown old +mother,—fancy begrudging her the credit of her sex! Our brown +and green old mother; our kindly, bounteous mother; our radiant, +our queenly mother, old, and yet perennially, radiantly young. Look +at her now," he cried, circling the garden with his arm, and +pointing to the farther landscape, "look at her, shining in her +robes of pearl and gold, shining and smiling,—one would say a +bride arrayed for the altar. Such is her infinite variety. Her +infinite variety, her infinite abundance, the fragrance and the +sweetness of her,—oh, I could fall upon my face and worship +her, like a Pagan of Eld. The earth and all that grows and lives +upon her, the blossoming tree, the singing bird,—I could +build temples to her."</p> +<p>"And the crawling snake?" put in Maria Dolores, a gleam at the +bottom of her eyes.</p> +<p>"The crawling snake," quickly retorted John, "serves a most +useful purpose. He establishes the <i>raison d'être</i> of +man. Man and his heel are here to crush the serpent's head."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores leaned back, softly laughing.</p> +<p>"Your infatuation for the earth is so great," she said, +"mightn't your lady-love, if she suspected it, be jealous?"</p> +<p>"No," said John, "it is the earth that might be jealous, for, +until I saw my lady-love, she was the undivided mistress of my +heart. For the rest, my lady-love enjoys, upon this point, my +entire confidence. I have kept nothing from her."</p> +<p>"That is well," approved Maria Dolores. "And the sky and the +sea," still softly laughing, she asked, "have they no place in your +affections?</p> +<p>"The sky is her tiring-maiden, and I love the sky for that," +said John. "'Tis the sky that clothes her in her many-coloured +raiment, and holds the light whereby her beauty is made manifest. +And the sea is a jewel that she bears upon her bosom,—a +magical jewel, whence, with the sky's aid, she draws the soft rain +that is her scent and her cosmetic. 'Fragrant the fertile earth +after soft showers.' Do you know, I could almost forgive the dour +and detestable Milton everything for the sake of those seven words. +They show that in the sense of smell he had at least one attribute +of humanity."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores' dark eyes were quizzical.</p> +<p>"The dour and detestable Milton?" she exclaimed. "Poor Milton! +What has he done to merit such anathema?</p> +<p>"It isn't what he has done, but what he was," said John. "That +he was dour nobody will deny, dour and sour and inhuman. Ask those +unfortunate, long-suffering daughters of his, if you doubt it. +<i>They</i> could tell you stories. But he was worse. He was a +scribe and a Pharisee, a pragmatical, self-righteous, canting old +scribe and Pharisee. And he was worse still, and still worse yet. +He was—what seems to me to-day the worstest thing +unhung—he was a Puritan. Like Winthorpe's, his blood was +black and icy and vinegarish. Like Winthorpe—But there. I +mustn't abuse Winthorpe any more, and I must try to forgive Milton. +Milton wrote seven good words, and Winthorpe unwittingly opened a +lover's eyes to his condition."</p> +<p>He paused, and smiled down upon her, and his newly opened (and +very blue) blue eyes said much. Her eyes were dreaming on the +landscape, where it shone in pearl and gold. However, as she gave +no sign of finding his conversation wearisome, he took heart, and +continued.</p> +<p>"For when he told me how he had put his love away, never again +to see her, and how at that moment she would be scrubbing floors +(or taking the discipline, perhaps?) in a convent of Ursulines, +suddenly, and without any action of the will on my part, there rose +before me the vision of a certain woman;—a woman I knew a +little, admired immensely, very much liked, but didn't for an +instant suppose I was seriously in love with. And involuntarily, +with the vision of her before me, I asked myself whether, +<i>mutatis mutandis</i>, I could have done as he had, and in a +flash I saw that I could not,—that not for the wealth of +Ormus and of Ind could I or would I give her up, if once I had her. +So, by that token, and by the uncommon wrath with which his tale +inflamed me," John, with a rhetorical flourish, perorated, "I +discovered that I loved." And again his eyes said much.</p> +<p>Hers were still on the prospect.</p> +<p>"Yet if you only know her a little, how can you love her?" she +asked, in a musing voice.</p> +<p>"Did I say I only know her a little?" asked John. "I know her a +great deal. I know her through and through. I know that she is pure +gold, pure crystal; that she is made of all music, all light, all +sweetness, and of all shadow and silence and mystery too, as women +should be. I know that earth holds naught above her. I do not care +to employ superlatives, so, to put it in the form of an +understatement, I know that she is simply and absolutely perfect. +If you could see her! If you could see her eyes, her deep-glowing, +witty, humorous, mischievous, innocent eyes, with the soul that +burns in them, the passion that sleeps. If you could see the black +soft masses of her hair, and her white brow, and the pale-rose of +her cheeks, and the red-rose of her lovely smiling mouth. If you +could see her figure, slender and strong, and the grace and pride +of her carriage,—the carriage of an imperial princess. If you +could see her hands,—they lie in her lap like languid lilies. +And her voice,—'tis the colour of her mouth and the glow of +her eyes made audible. And if you could whisper to yourself her +melodious and thrice adorable name. I know her a great deal. When I +said that I only knew her a little, I meant it in the sense that +she only knows me a little,—which after all, alas, for +practical purposes comes to the same thing."</p> +<p>He had spoken with emphasis, with fervour, his pink face +animated and full of intention. Maria Dolores kept her soft-glowing +eyes resolutely away from him, but I think the soul that burned in +them (if not the passion that slept) was vaguely troubled. <i>Qui +pane d'amour</i>—how does the French proverb run? Did she +vaguely feel perhaps that the seas they were sailing were perilous? +Anyhow, as John saw with sinking heart, she was at the point of +putting an end to their present conjunction,—she was +preparing to rise. He would have given worlds to offer a helping +hand, but (however rich in worlds) he was, for the occasion, poor +in courage. When love comes in at the door, assurance as like as +not will fly out of the window. So she rose unaided.</p> +<p>"Let us hope," she said, giving him a glance in which he +perceived an under-gleam as of not unfriendly mockery, "that she +will soon come to know you better."</p> +<p>"Heaven forbid!" cried he, with a fine simulation of alarm. "It +is upon her ignorance of my true character that I base such faint +hopes as I possess of some day winning her esteem."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores laughed, nodded, and lightly moved away.</p> +<p>"My son," said John to himself, "you steered precious close to +the wind. You had best be careful."</p> +<p>And then he was conscious of a sudden change in things. The +garden smiled about him, the valley below laughed in the breeze, +the blackcaps sang, the many windows of the Castle glistened in the +sun; but their beauty and their pleasantness had departed, had +retired with her into the long, low, white-walled, red-roofed +pavilion. He was conscious of a sudden change in things, and of a +sudden acute and bitter depression within himself.</p> +<p>"These are great larks," he said; "great larks while they +last,—but what's the good of them in the end? What do they +lead to? What's the good of coquetting with blisses that can't be +yours?" And he breathed a prodigious sigh. "When shall I see her +again?" he asked, and thereupon was seized by his old +terror—his terror of yesterday, though it seemed to him a +terror he had known all his life—lest he should never see her +again. "She's only a visitor. What's to prevent her leaving this +very night?"</p> +<p>The imagination was intolerable. He entered the Castle court, +and climbed the staircase of honour, and rambled through the long +suites of great empty rooms, empty of everything save the memory of +the past and the portraits of the dead, there, if he might, for a +time at least, to lose himself and to forget her.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>V</h2> +<p>"Who is the young man you have been talking with so long?" asked +Frau Brandt, as Maria Dolores came into her sitting-room, a vast, +square, bare room, with a marble floor and a painted ceiling, with +Venetian blinds to shelter it from the sun, and a bitter-sweet +smell, as of rosemary or I know not what other aromatic herb, upon +its cool air.</p> +<p>"Oh? You saw us?" said Maria Dolores, answering the question +with question.</p> +<p>"Him I have seen many times—every day for a week at +least," said Frau Brandt. "But I never before saw you talking with +him. Who is he?" She was a small, brown, square-built, +black-haired, homely-featured old woman, in a big, round starched +white cap and a flowing black silk gown. She sat in an uncushioned +oaken armchair by the window, with some white knitting in her bony, +blunt-fingered brown hands, and tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles on +her nose. But the spectacles couldn't hide the goodness or the +soundness or the sweetness that looked forth from her motherly old +honest brown eyes.</p> +<p>"He is a young man who lives <i>en pension</i> at the +presbytery," said Maria Dolores, "a young Englishman."</p> +<p>"So?" said Frau Brandt. "What is his name?"</p> +<p>"I don't know," said Maria Dolores, with disengagement real or +feigned. "His Christian name, I believe, is John."</p> +<p>"But his family name?" persisted Frau Brandt.</p> +<p>"It is probably Brown, Jones, or Robinson," said Maria Dolores. +"Or it may even be Black, Smith, or Johnson. Most Englishmen are +named one or the other."</p> +<p>"So?" said Frau Brandt. "But is it prudent or seemly for you to +talk familiarly with a young man whose name is unknown to you?"</p> +<p>"Why not?" asked Maria Dolores, raising her eyebrows, as if +surprised. "He seems a very harmless young man. I don't think he +will eat me. And he is English,—and I like English people. +And he is intelligent,—his conversation amuses me. And he has +nice easy, impetuous manners,—so different from the formality +and restraint of Austrian young men. What can his name matter?"</p> +<p>"But"—Frau Brandt looked up impressively over her +spectacles, and her voice was charged with gravity, for she was +about to ask a question to the Teutonic mind of quite supreme +importance—"but is he noble?" It was to her what—nay, +more than what—the question, "Is he respectable?" would have +been to an Englishwoman.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores laughed.</p> +<p>"Oh, no," she said. "At least I have every reason to believe +not, and I devoutly hope not. He belongs I expect to what they call +in England the middle class. He has an uncle who is a farmer."</p> +<p>Frau Brandt's good old brown eyes showed her profoundly shocked, +and expressed profound reprehension.</p> +<p>"But you were speaking with him familiarly—you were +speaking with him almost as an equal," she pronounced in bated +accents, in accents of consternation.</p> +<p>Again Maria Dolores laughed.</p> +<p>"True," she assented gaily, "and that is exactly what I couldn't +do if he <i>were</i> noble. Then I should have to remember our +respective positions. But where the difference of rank is so great, +one can talk familiarly without fear. <i>Ça n'engage +à rien</i>."</p> +<p>Frau Brandt nodded her head, for full half a minute, with many +meanings; she nodded it now up and down, and now shook it +sidewise.</p> +<p>"I do not like it," she said, at last. "Your brother would not +like it. It is not becoming. Well, thanks be to Heaven, he is only +English."</p> +<p>"Oh, of course," agreed Maria Dolores, "if he were Austrian, it +would be entirely different."</p> +<p>"But is it fair to the young man himself?" pursued Frau Brandt. +"Is he aware that he is hobanobbing with a Serene Highness? You +treat him as an equal. What if he should fall in love with +you?"</p> +<p>"What indeed! But he won't," laughed Maria Dolores, possibly +with a mental reservation.</p> +<p>"Who can tell?" said Frau Brandt. "His eyes, when he looked at +you, had an expression. But there is a greater danger still. You +are both at the dangerous age. He is good-looking. What if your +heart should become interested in him?"</p> +<p>"Oh, in that case," answered Maria Dolores, lightly, her chin a +little in the air, "I should marry him—if he asked me."</p> +<p>"What!" cried Frau Brandt, half rising from her chair.</p> +<p>"Yes," said Maria Dolores, cheerfully unexcited. "He is a man of +breeding and education, even if he isn't noble. If I loved a man, I +shouldn't give one thought to his birth. I'm tired of all our +Austrian insistence upon birth, upon birth and quarterings and +precedencies. If ever I love, I shall love some one just for what +he is, for what God has made him, and for nothing else. It wouldn't +matter if his father were a cobbler—if I loved him, I'd marry +him." Her chin higher in the air, she had every appearance of +meaning what she said.</p> +<p>Frau Brandt had sunk back in her chair, and was nodding her +white-capped old head again.</p> +<p>"Oh, my child, my child," she grieved. "Will you never rid your +fancy of these high-flown, unpractical, romantic whimsies? It all +comes of reading poetry." She herself, good woman, read little but +her prayers.</p> +<p>"Oh, my dear true Heart," responded Maria Dolores, laughing. She +crossed the room, and placed her hand affectionately upon Frau +Brandt's shoulder. "My dearest old Nurse! Do not distress yourself. +This is not yet a question of actuality. Let us not cry before we +are hurt." And she stooped, and kissed her nurse's brown old +brow.</p> +<p>But afterwards she stood looking with great pensiveness out of +the window, stood so for a long while; and I fancy there was a +softer glow than ever in her soft-glowing eyes, and perhaps a +livelier rose in her pale-rose cheeks.</p> +<p>"What are you thinking so deeply about?" Frau Brandt asked +by-and-by.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores woke with a little start, and turned from the +window, and laughed again.</p> +<p>"Oh, thinking about my cobbler's son, of course," she said.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>VI</h2> +<p>Annunziata, seeking him to announce that supper was ready, found +John, seated in his chamber of dead ladies, his arms folded, his +legs crossed, his eyes fixed, a frown upon his prone brow; his +spirit apparently rapt in a brown study.</p> +<p>"Eh! Prospero!" she called.</p> +<p>Whereat he came to himself glanced up, glanced round, changed +his posture, and finally, rising, blew his preoccupations from him +in a deep, deep sigh.</p> +<p>"Oh, what a sigh!" marvelled Annunziata, making big eyes. "What +are you sighing so hard for?"</p> +<p>John looked at her, and smiled.</p> +<p>"Sighing for my miller's daughter, my dear," he said.</p> +<p>And, as he followed her to the presbytery, he sang softly to +himself—</p> +<div class="blockquot"><i>"It is the miller's daughter,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And she is grown so dear, so +dear,</span><br /> +That I would be the jewel<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That trembles in her +ear."</span></i></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PART_FIFTH" id="PART_FIFTH"></a>PART FIFTH</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>I</h2> +<p>It was Sunday. It was early morning. It was raining,—a +fine quiet, determined rain, that blurred the lower reaches of the +valley, and entirely hid the mountain-tops, so that one found it +hard not to doubt a little whether they were still there. Near at +hand the garden was as if a thin web of silver had been cast over +it, pale and dim, where wet surfaces reflected the diffused +daylight. And just across the Rampio, on the olive-clad hillside +that rose abruptly from its brink, rather an interesting process +was taking place,—the fabrication of clouds, no less. The +hillside, with its rondure of blue-grey foliage, would lie for a +moment quite bare and clear; then, at some high point, a mist would +begin to form, would appear indeed to issue from the earth, as +smoke from a subterranean fire, white smoke with pearly shadows; +would thicken and spread out; would draw together and rise in an +irregular spiral column, curling, swaying, poising, as if uncertain +what to do next; and at last, all at once making up its mind, (how +like a younker or a prodigal!), would go sailing away, straggling +away, amorphous, on a puff of wind, leaving the hillside clear +again;—till, presently, the process would recommence <i>da +capo</i>.</p> +<p>John and Annunziata, seated together on a marble bench in the +shelter of the great cloister, with its faded frescoes, at the +north-eastern extremity of the castle buildings, had been watching +this element-play for some minutes in silence. But by-and-by +Annunziata spoke.</p> +<p>"What makes the cloud come out of the hill like that?" she +asked, her eyes anxiously questioning his. "I have seen it happen +many times, but I could never understand it. There cannot be a fire +underneath?"</p> +<p>"If <i>you</i> can't understand it, Mistress Wisdom," responded +John, smiling on her, "you surely mustn't expect a featherpate like +me to. Between ourselves, I don't believe any one can really +understand it, though there's a variety of the human species called +scientists who might pretend they could. It's all a part of that +great scheme of miracles by which God's world goes on, Nature, +which nobody can really understand in the very least. All that the +chaps called scientists can really do is to observe and more or +less give names to the miracles. They can't explain 'em."</p> +<p>"It is great pleasure to watch such things," said Annunziata. +"It is a great blessing to be allowed to see a miracle performed +with your own eyes."</p> +<p>"So it is," agreed John. "And if you keep your eyes well open, +there's not a minute of the livelong day when you mayn't see +one."</p> +<p>"It is very strange," said Annunziata, "but when the sun shines, +then I love the sunny weather, and am glad that it does not rain. +Yet when it does rain, then I find that I love the rain too, that I +love it just as much as the sun,—it is so fresh, it smells so +good, the raindrops are so pretty, and they make such a pretty +sound where they fall, and the grey light is so pleasant."</p> +<p>"Our loves," said John, "are always very strange. Love is the +rummest miracle of them all. It is even more difficult to account +for than the formation of clouds on the hillside."</p> +<p>"We love the things that give us pleasure," said Annunziata.</p> +<p>"And the people, sometimes, who give us pain," said John.</p> +<p>"We love the people, first of all, who are related to us," said +Annunziata, "and then the people we see a great deal of—just +as I love, first of all, my uncle, and then you and Marcella the +cook."</p> +<p>"Who brings in the inevitable veal," said John. "Thank you, +Honeymouth." He bowed and laughed, while Annunziata's grave eyes +wondered what he was laughing at. "But it isn't every one," he +pointed out, "who has your solid and well-balanced little +head-piece. It isn't every one who keeps his love so neatly +docketed, or so sanely submitted to the sway of reason. Some of us +love first of all people who aren't related to us in the remotest +degree, and people we've seen hardly anything of and know next to +nothing about."</p> +<p>Annunziata deprecatingly shook her head.</p> +<p>"It is foolish to love people we know nothing about," she +declared, in her deep voice, and looked a very sage delivering +judgment.</p> +<p>"True enough," said John. "But what would you have? Some of us +are born to folly, as the sparks fly upward. You see, there's a +mighty difference between love and love. There's the love which is +affection, there's the love which is cupboard-love, and there's the +love which is just simply love-love and nothing else. The first, as +you have truly observed, has its roots in consanguinity or +association, the second in a lively hope of future comfits, and +either is sufficiently explicable. But the third has its roots +apparently in mere haphazard and causelessness, and isn't +explicable by any means whatsoever, and yet is far and away the +violentest of the three. It falls as the lightning from the clouds, +and strikes whom it will. Though I mix my metaphors fearlessly, +like a man, I trust, with your feminine intuition, you follow +me?"</p> +<p>"No," said Annunziata, without compunction, her eyes on the +distance. "I don't know what you mean."</p> +<p>"Thank Heaven you don't, pray Heaven you never may," said her +inconsequential friend. "For love-love is a plague. You meet a +person, for example, in a garden. You know nothing whatever about +her, not even her name, though you fear it may be Schmidt. You meet +her not more than half a dozen times all told. And suddenly one +morning you wake up to discover that she has become to you the +person of first importance in the world. She is practically a total +stranger to you, she's of a different nationality, a different +rank, yet she's infinitely the most precious and important person +in the world. When you're absent from her you can do nothing but +think of her, gloating with throes of aromatic pain over the memory +of your last meeting with her, longing with soul-hunger for your +next. The merest flutter of her gown, modulation of her voice, +glance of her eye, will throw your heart into a palpitation. You +look in the direction of the house that she inhabits, and you feel +the emotions of a Peri looking at the gate of Eden. And it gives +you the strangest sort of strange joy to talk about her, though of +course you take pains to talk about her in veiled terms, obliquely, +so that your listener shan't guess <i>whom</i> you are talking +about. In short, she is the be-all and the end-all of your +existence,—and you don't even know her name, though you fear +it may be Schmidt."</p> +<p>He lolled back at ease on the marble bench, and twirled his +yellow-red moustaches, fancy free.</p> +<p>"But you do know her name," said Annunziata, simply, in her +deepest voice, holding him with a gaze, lucent and serious, that +seemed almost reproachful. "Her name is Maria Dolores."</p> +<p>The thing was tolerably unexpected. What wonder if it put my +hero out of countenance? His attitude grew rigid, his pink skin +three shades pinker; his blue eyes stared at her, startled. So for +a second; then he relaxed, and laughed, laughed long and heartily, +perhaps a little despitefully too, at his own expense. ... But he +must try, if he might, to repair the mischief.</p> +<p>"My poor child," he said, resting his hand on her curls, and +gently smoothing them. "You are what the French call an <i>enfant +terrible</i>. You are what the English call a deuced sharp little +pickle. And I must try, if I can, without actually lying, to +persuade you that you are utterly mistaken, utterly and absolutely +mistaken,"—he raised his voice, for greater +convincingness,—"and that her name is nothing distantly +resembling the name that you have spoken, and that in fact her name +is Mrs. Harris, and that in fine there is no such person, and that +I was merely talking hypothetically, in abstractions; I must draw a +herring across the trail, I must raise a dust, and throw a lot of +it into your amazingly clear-sighted little eyes. Now, is it +definitely impressed upon you that her name is <i>not</i>—the +thrice-adorable name you mentioned?"</p> +<p>"I thought it was," answered Annunziata. "I am sorry it is not." +And then she dismissed the subject. "See, it is raining harder. See +how the rain comes down in long strings of beads,—see how it +is like a network of long strings of glass beads falling through +the air. When the rain comes down like that, it means that after +the rain stops it will be very hot. To-morrow it will be very +hot."</p> +<p>The bell in the clock-tower tolled out seven solemn strokes; +then the lighter-toned and nimbler-tongued bell of the church began +to ring.</p> +<p>"Come," peremptorily said Annunziata, jumping up. "Mass."</p> +<p>She held out her hand, took John's, and, like a mother, led the +meek and unquestioning young man to his duties.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>II</h2> +<p>Of course there are no such heretical inventions as pews in the +parish church of Sant' Alessina. You sit upon orthodox +rush-bottomed chairs, you kneel upon orthodox bare stones. But at +the Epistle side of the altar, at an elevation of perhaps a yard +from the pavement, there is a recess in the wall, enclosed by a +marble balustrade, and hung with faded red curtains, which looks, +I'm afraid, a good deal like a private box at a theatre, and is in +fact the tribune reserved for the masters of the Castle. (In former +days those masters were the Sforzas. So, from this tribune, the +members of that race of iron and blood, of fierceness and of guile, +have assisted at the mystical sacrifice of the Lamb of God!) +Heretofore, during John's residence at the presbytery, the tribune +had stood vacant. To-day it was occupied by Maria Dolores and Frau +Brandt. Maria Dolores, instead of wearing a hat, had adopted the +ancient and beautiful use of draping a long veil of black lace over +her dark hair.</p> +<p>John knelt in the middle of the church, in the thick of the +ragged, dirty, unsavoury villagers. When Mass was over, he returned +to the cloisters, and there, face to face, he met the lady of his +dreams.</p> +<p>She graciously inclined her head.</p> +<p>"Good morning," she said, smiling, in a voice that seemed to him +full of morning freshness.</p> +<p>"Good morning," he responded, wondering whether she could hear +the tremor of his heart. "Though, in honest truth, it's rather a +bad morning, isn't it?" he submitted, posing his head at an angle, +dubious and reflective, that seemed to raise the question to a +level of philosophic import.</p> +<p>"Oh, with these cloisters, one shouldn't complain," said she, +glancing indicatively round. "One can still be out of doors, and +yet not get the wetting one deserves. And the view is so fine, and +these faded old frescoes are so droll."</p> +<p>"Yes," said he, his wits, for the instant, in a state of +suspended animation. "The view is fine, the frescoes are +droll."</p> +<p>She looked as if she were thinking about something.</p> +<p>"Don't you find it," she asked, after a moment, with the +slightest bepuzzled drawing together of her eyebrows, "a trifle +unpleasant, hearing Mass from where you do?"</p> +<p>John looked blank.</p> +<p>"Unpleasant? No. Why?" he asked.</p> +<p>"I should think it might be disagreeable to be hemmed in and +elbowed by those extraordinarily ragged and dirty people," she +explained. "It's a pity they shouldn't clean themselves up a little +before coming to church."</p> +<p>"Ah, yes," he assented, "a little cleaning up wouldn't hurt +them; that's very certain. But," he set forth, in extenuation, +"it's not the custom of the country, and the fact that it isn't has +its good significance, as well as its bad. It's one of the many +signs of how genuinely democratic and popular the Church is in +Italy,—as it ought to be everywhere. It is here essentially +the Church of the people, the Church of the poor. It is the one +place where the poorest man, in all his rags, and with the soil of +his work upon him, feels perfectly at ease, perfectly at home, +perfectly equal to the richest. It is the one place where a reeking +market-woman, with her basket on her arm, will feel at liberty to +take her place beside the great lady, in her furs and velvets, and +even to ask her, with a nudge, to move up and make room. That is as +it should be, isn't it?"</p> +<p>"No doubt, no doubt," agreed Maria Dolores, beginning to pace +backwards and forwards over the lichen-stained marble pavement, +(stained as by the hand of an artist, in wavy veins of yellow or +pale-green, with here and there little rosettes of scarlet), while +John kept beside her. "All the same, I should not like to kneel +quite in the very heart of the crowd, as you do."</p> +<p>"You are a delicate and sensitive woman," he reminded her. "I am +a man, and a moderately tough one. However, I must admit that until +rather recently I had exactly your feeling. But I got a lesson." He +broke off and gave a vague little laugh, vaguely rueful, as at a +not altogether pleasant reminiscence.</p> +<p>"What was the lesson?" she asked.</p> +<p>"Well," said he, "if you care to know, it was this. The first +time that I attended Mass here, desiring to avoid the people, I +sought out a far corner of the church, behind a pillar, where there +was no one. But as soon as I had got myself well established there, +up hobbled a deformed and lame old man, and plumped himself down +beside me, so close that our coat-sleeves touched. I think he was +the most repulsive-looking old man I have ever seen; he was +certainly the dirtiest, the grimiest, and his rags were +extravagantly foul. I will spare you a more circumstantial +portrait. And all through Mass I was sick with disgust and sore +with resentment. Why should he come and rub his coat-sleeve against +mine, when there was room in plenty for him elsewhere? The next +time I went to church, I chose a different corner, as remote as +might be from my former one; but again, no sooner was I well +installed, than, lo and behold, the same unspeakable old man limped +up and knelt with me, cheek by jowl. And so, if you can believe it, +the next time, and so the next. It didn't matter where I placed +myself, there he was sure to place himself too. You will suppose +that, apart from my annoyance, I was vastly perplexed. Why should +he pursue me so? Who was he? What was he after? And for +enlightenment I addressed myself to Annunziata. 'Who is the hideous +old man who always kneels beside me?' I asked her. She had not +noticed any one kneeling beside me, she said; she had noticed, on +the contrary, that I always knelt alone, at a distance. 'Well,' +said I, 'keep your eyes open to-day, and you will see the man I +mean.' So we went to Mass, and sure enough, no sooner had I found a +secluded place, than my old friend appeared and joined me, dirtier +and more hideous and if possible more deformed than ever.</p> +<p>"Yes?" said Maria Dolores, with interest, as he paused.</p> +<p>"When we came out of church, I asked Annunziata who he was," +continued John. "And she said that though she had kept her eyes +open, according to my injunction, she had failed to see any one +kneeling beside me—that, on the contrary, she had seen me," +he concluded, with an insouciance that was plainly assumed for its +dramatic value, "kneeling alone, at a distance from every one."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores' face was white. She frowned her +mystification.</p> +<p>"What!" she exclaimed, in a half-frightened voice.</p> +<p>"That is precisely the ejaculation that fell from my own lips at +the time," said John. "Then I gave her a minute description of the +old man, in all his ugliness. And then she administered my lesson +to me."</p> +<p>"Yes? What was it?" questioned Maria Dolores, her interest +acute.</p> +<p>"Speaking in that oracular vein of hers, her eyes very big, her +face very grave, she assured me that my horrible old man had no +objective existence. She informed me cheerfully and calmly that he +was an image of my own soul, as it appeared, corrupted and aged and +deformed by the sins of a lifetime, to God and to the Saints. And +she added that he was sent to punish me for my pride in thinking +myself different to the common people, and in seeking to hold +myself aloof. Since then," John brought his anecdote to a term, "I +have always knelt in the body of the church, and I have never again +seen my Doppelgänger."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores was silent for a little. They had come to the +southern end of the cloisters, where the buttresses of the Castle +walls, all shaggy-mantled in a green overgrowth of creepers, fall +precipitously away, down the steep face of a natural cliff. They +stopped here, and stood looking off. The rain had held up, though +the valley was still misty with its vapours. Whiffs of velvety air, +warm and sweet, blew in their faces, lightly stirred the dark hair +about her brow, and, catching the flowery edge of her black lace +mantilla, set it fluttering.</p> +<p>"That is a very good story," she said, by-and-by, with a sober +glance, behind which there was the glint of laughter. "In view of +it, however, I suppose there will be no use in my delivering a +message I am charged with for you from my friend Frau Brandt."</p> +<p>"Oh?" questioned John. "What message?"</p> +<p>"Frau Brandt has received from the owner of the Castle the +privilege of hearing Mass from the tribune; and she wished me to +invite you in her name hereafter to hear Mass from there with us. +But I suppose, in view of your 'lesson,' that is an invitation +which you will decline?" The glint of laughter shone brighter in +her eyes, and her mouth had a tiny pucker, amiably derisive.</p> +<p>John looked at her, his blue eyes bold.</p> +<p>"That is an invitation which I am terribly tempted to accept," +he said, in a voice of unconcealed emotion, of patent meaning; and +beneath his bold gaze, her dark eyes dropped, while I think a blush +faintly swept her cheeks. "And first of all," he added, "pray +express to Frau Brandt my grateful thanks for it—and let me +thank you also for your kindness in conveying it. If, in spite of +my temptation, I <i>don't</i> accept it, that will be for a very +special reason, and one quite unconnected with my 'lesson.'"</p> +<p>Maria Dolores probably knew her danger. She turned, and began to +walk backwards, towards the point where you can pass from the +cloisters, through the great porte-cochère, into the garden, +and so on to the pavilion beyond the clock. She probably knew her +danger; but she was human, but she was a woman. Besides, she had +reached the porte-cochère, and thus commanded a clear means +of escape. So, coming to a standstill here, "What is the very +special reason?" she asked, in a low voice, keeping her eyes from +his.</p> +<p>His were bolder than ever. Infinite admiration of her burned in +them, infinite delight in her, desire for her; at the same time a +kind of angry hopelessness darkened them, and a kind of bitter +amusement, as of one amused at his own sad plight.</p> +<p>"I wish I were rich," he exclaimed, irritably, between his +teeth.</p> +<p>"Oh? Is <i>that</i> the very special reason?" asked she, with +two notes of laughter.</p> +<p>"No," said he, "but it has a connection with it. You see, I'm in +love."</p> +<p>"Yes," said she. "I remember your telling me so."</p> +<p>"Well, I wish I were rich," said he. "Then I might pluck up +courage to ask the woman I love to be my wife."</p> +<p>"Money isn't everything here below," said she. "I have your own +word for that."</p> +<p>"What else counts," said he, "when you wish to ask a woman to +marry you?"</p> +<p>"Oh, many things," said she. "Difference of rank, for +example."</p> +<p>"That wouldn't count with me," said the democratic fellow, +handsomely. "I shouldn't give two thoughts to differences of +rank."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores smiled—at her secret reflections, I +suppose.</p> +<p>"But poverty puts it out of all question," John moodily went on. +"I couldn't ask a woman to come and share with me an income of +sixpence a week. Especially as I have grounds for believing that +she's in rather affluent circumstances herself. Oh, I wish I were +rich!" He repeated this aspiration in a groan.</p> +<p>"Poor, poor young man!" she commiserated him, while her eyes, +which she held perseveringly averted, were soft with sympathy and +gay with mirth. "When do you begin your gardening?"</p> +<p>"Oh, don't mock me!" he cried, with an imploring gesture. "You +know, joking apart, that it's child's play for a man of my age, +with no profession and no special talent, to fancy he can turn to +and earn money. I might, if I made supernatural exertions, and if +Fortune went out of her way to favour me, add a maximum of another +sixpence to my weekly budget. No, there's never a hope for me on +sea or land. I must e'en bear it, though I cannot grin withal."</p> +<p>"Ah, well," said Maria Dolores, to comfort him, "these attacks, +I have read, are often as short as they are sharp. Let us trust +you'll soon rally from this one. How long have they generally +lasted in the past?"</p> +<p>John's face grew dark with upbraiding; the sea-blue of his eyes, +the gold of his hair and beard, the pink of his complexion visibly +grew dark.</p> +<p>"You are so needlessly unkind," he said, "that you don't deserve +to hear the true answer to your question."</p> +<p>She studied the half-obliterated fresco on the wall beside +her.</p> +<p>"All the same," said he, "you <i>shall</i> hear it. If falling +in love were my habit, no doubt I shouldn't take it so hard. But +the simple truth, though I am thirty years old, is that I have +never before felt so much as a heart-flutter for any woman. And, +since you cite your reading, <i>I</i> have read that a fire which +may merely singe the surface of green wood, will entirely consume +the dry."</p> +<p>She continued to study the ancient painting. Her fingers were +playing with the ends of her lace veil.</p> +<p>"Besides," he went on, "if I had been in love a dozen times, it +wouldn't signify. For I should have been in love with ordinary +usual human women. They're the only sort I ever met—till I +met her. She's of a totally different order—as distinct from +them as ... What shall I say? Oh, as unlike them as starfire is +unlike dull clay. Starfire—starfire—the wonderful, +high, white-burning starfire of her spirit, that's the thing that +strikes you most in her. It shines through her. It shines in her +eyes, it shines in her hair, her adorable, soft, dark, warm and +fragrant hair; it shines in her very voice; it shines in every word +she utters, even in the unkindest."</p> +<p>"Dear me! what an alarmingly refulgent person you depict!" +laughed Maria Dolores, her eyes still on the wall.</p> +<p>"I have no gift for word-painting," said John; "though I doubt +if the words are yet invented that could fitly paint my lady. She +grows in beauty day by day. It's a literal fact—every fresh +time I see her, she is perceptibly more lovely than the last, more +love-compelling in her loveliness. But 'tis a thing unpaintable, +indescribable, as indescribable as the perfume of a rose. Oh, why +haven't I five thousand a year?"</p> +<p>"You harp so persistently upon your desire for money," suggested +Maria Dolores, "one might infer she was a commodity, to be bought +and sold. You begin at the wrong end. What good would five or fifty +thousand a year do you, if you had not begun by winning her +love?</p> +<p>"No, I begin at the proper end, worse luck," John answered, +glooming. "For, without a decent income, I have no right even to +try to win her love.</p> +<p>"And that being so," questioned Maria Dolores, "I hope you +conscientiously avoid her society, or, when you meet, make yourself +consistently disagreeable to her?</p> +<p>"There's no need for such precautions," John replied. "There's +no fear for her. She regards me as a casual and passing +acquaintance. So I make myself no more disagreeable than I am by +nature. And if I avoided her society, (which I am far from doing), +it would be not for her sake, but for my own. For, though her +society is to me a kind of anticipation of the joys of Heaven, yet +when I leave it and find myself alone, the reaction is dreary in +the superlative degree; and the fear, which perpetually haunts me +(for I know nothing of her plans), lest I shall never see her +again, is agonizing as a foretaste of—Heaven's antipode. Oh, +I love her!"</p> +<p>He took, involuntarily I dare say, a step in her direction. She +retreated under the vaulting of the +<i>porte-cochère</i>.</p> +<p>"You seem," she commented, "to be getting a good deal of +emotional experience,—which doubtless some day you will find +of value. Why not, instead of gardener, embark as novelist or poet? +Here is material you could then turn to account."</p> +<p>"Ah, there you are," he complained, piteously, "mocking me +again. Ah, well, if you must have your laugh, have it, and welcome. +A man can learn to take the bitter with the sweet."</p> +<p>"To spare you that discomfort," said she, moving deeper into the +archway, while John's face fell, "I will bid you good-bye. I am to +report, then, that you decline my friend's invitation with +thanks?"</p> +<p>"With my most grateful thanks," he was able intensively to +rejoin, in spite of his dismay at the imminence of her +departure.</p> +<p>"And for a very special reason?" she harked back, now, suddenly, +for the first time since they had touched thin ice, giving him a +glance.</p> +<p>It was the fleetingest of fleeting glances, it was merry and +ironic, but there was something in it which brought a flame to his +blue eyes.</p> +<p>"For the very special reason," he answered, with vehemence, +"that I fear the presence near me of—" He held his breath for +a second, the flame in his eyes enveloping her; then, with an +abrupt change of tone and mien, he ended, "—of Frau Brandt +might distract my attention from the sermon."</p> +<p>She laughed, and said, "Good-bye."</p> +<p>"Good-bye," said John. And when she was halfway through the +tunnel-like passage, "I suppose you know you are leaving me to a +day as barren as the Desert of Sahara?" he called after her.</p> +<p>"Oh, who can tell what a day may bring forth?" called she, but +without looking back.</p> +<p>For a long while John's faculties were kept busy, trying to +determine whether that was a promise, a menace, or a mere word in +the air.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>III</h2> +<p>"Rain before seven, clear before eleven," is as true, or as +untrue, in Lombardy as it is in other parts of the world. The rain +had held up, and now, in that spirited phrase of Corvo's, "here +came my lord the Sun," splendidly putting the clouds to flight, or +chaining them, transfigured, to his chariot-wheels; clothing the +high snow-peaks in a roseate glory, (that seemed somehow, I don't +know why, to accent their solitude and their remoteness); flooding +the valley with ethereal amber; turning the swollen Rampio to a +river of fire while the nearer hillsides, the olive woods, the +trees in the Castle garden, glistened with a million million +crystals, and the petals of the flowers were crystal-tipped; while +the breath of the earth rose in long streamers of luminous incense, +and the sky gleamed with every tender, every brilliant, tint of +blue, from the blue of pale forgetmenots to the blue of +larkspur.</p> +<p>John, contemplating this spectacle, (and thinking of Maria +Dolores? revolving still her cryptic valediction?), all at once, as +his eye rested on the shimmer at the valley's end which he knew to +be the lake, lifted up his hand and clapped his brow. "By Jove," he +muttered, "if I wasn't within an ace of clean forgetting!" The +sight of the lake had fortunately put him in mind that he was +engaged to-day to lunch with Lady Blanchemain at Roccadoro.</p> +<p>He found her ladyship, in a frock all concentric whirls of crisp +white ruffles, vigorously wielding a fan, and complaining of the +heat. (Indeed, as Annunziata had predicted, it had grown markedly +warmer.) "I shall fly away, if this continues; I shall fly straight +to town, and set my house in order for the season. When do +<i>you</i> come?" she asked, smiling on him from her benign old +eyes.</p> +<p>"I don't come," answered John. "I rather like town in autumn and +winter, when it's too dark to see its ugliness, but save me from it +in the clear light of summer."</p> +<p>"Fudge," said Lady Blanchemain. "London's the most beautiful +capital in Europe—it's grandiose. And it's the only place +where there are any people.</p> +<p>"Yes," said John, "but, as at Nice and Homburg, too many of them +are English. And there's a liberal scattering, I've heard, of +Jews?"</p> +<p>"Oh, Jews are all right—when they aren't Jewy," said Lady +Blanchemain, with magnanimity. "I know some very nice ones. I was +rather hoping you would be a feature of my Sunday afternoons."</p> +<p>"I'm not a society man," said John. "I've no aptitude myself for +patronizing or toadying, and I don't particularly enjoy being +patronized or toadied to."</p> +<p>"Is that the beginning and end of social life in England?" Lady +Blanchemain inquired, delicately sarcastic.</p> +<p>"As I have seen it, yes," asseverated John. "The beginning, end, +and middle of social life in England, as in Crim-Tartary, is +worship of the longest pigtail,—a fetichism sometimes +grosser, sometimes subtler, sometimes deliberate, often unconscious +and instinctive. Every one you meet is aware that his pigtail is +either longer or shorter than yours, and accordingly, more or less +subtly, grossly, unconsciously or deliberately, swaggers or bends +the knee. It's a state of things I've tried in vain to find +diverting."</p> +<p>"It's a state of things you'll find prevailing pretty well in +all places where the human species breeds," said Lady Blanchemain. +"The only difference will be a question of what constitutes the +pigtail. And are you, then, remaining at Sant' Alessina?"</p> +<p>"For the present," answered John.</p> +<p>"Until—?" she questioned.</p> +<p>"Oh, well, until she sends me away, or leaves herself," said he, +"and so my fool's paradise achieves its inevitable end."</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain laughed—a long, quiet laugh of amused +contentment.</p> +<p>"Come in to luncheon," she said, putting her soft white hand +upon his arm, "and tell me all about it." And when they were +established at her table, a round table, gay with flowers, in a +window at the far end of the cool, terazza-paved, stucco-columned +dining-room of the Hotel Victoria, "Why do you call it a fool's +paradise?" she asked.</p> +<p>"Well, you see, I'm in love," said he.</p> +<p>"You really are?" she doubted, with sprightliness, looking +gleeful.</p> +<p>"All too really," he assured her, in a sinking voice.</p> +<p>"What an old witch I was!" mused she, with satisfaction. "Accept +my heart-felt felicitations." She beamed upon him.</p> +<p>"I should prefer your condolences," said he, in a voice from the +depths.</p> +<p>"<i>Allons donc!</i> Cheer up," laughed she, dallying with her +bliss. "Men have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for +love."</p> +<p>"I wonder," said John. "That is a statement, it seems to me, +which would be the better for some proving."</p> +<p>"At all events," said she, "you, for one, are not dead yet."</p> +<p>"No," admitted he; "though I could almost wish I was."</p> +<p>"Do you mean to say she has definitely rejected you?" she +demanded, alarmed.</p> +<p>"Fortune has spared her that necessity," said John. "I haven't +asked her, and I never shall. I haven't any money."</p> +<p>"Pooh! Is that all?" scoffed her ladyship, relieved. "You have +prospects."</p> +<p>"Remote ones—the remoter the better. I won't count on dead +men's shoes," said John.</p> +<p>"What is it your little fortune-teller at the Castle calls you?" +asked Lady Blanchemain, shrewdly, her dark old eyebrows up.</p> +<p>"She calls me <i>lucus a non lucendo</i>," was John's quick +riposte; and the lady laughed.</p> +<p>But in a moment she pulled a straight face. "I seriously counsel +you to have more faith," she said. "Go home and ask her to marry +you; and if she accepts,—you'll see. Money will come. +Besides, your rank and your prospective rank are assets which you +err in not adding to the balance. Go home, and propose to her."</p> +<p>"'Twould do no good," said John, dejectedly. "She regards me +with imperturbable indifference. I've made the fieriest avowals to +her, and she's never turned a hair."</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain looked bewildered. "You've made +avowals—?" she falteringly echoed.</p> +<p>"I should rather think so," John affirmed. "Indirect ones, of +course, and I hope inoffensive, but fiery as live coals. In the +third person, you know. I've given her two and two; she has, you +may be sure, enough skill in mathematics to put 'em together."</p> +<p>"And she never turned a hair?" the lady marvelled.</p> +<p>"She jeered at me, she mocked me, she laughed and rode away," +said he.</p> +<p>"She's probably in love with you," said Lady Blanchemain. "If a +woman will listen, if a woman will laugh! If you don't propose to +her now, having ensnared her young affections, you'll be something +worse than the wicked nobleman of song and story."</p> +<p>"Oh, well," John responded, conciliatory, "I dare say some of +these days a proposal will slip out when I least intend it. So I +shall have done the honourable thing—and I'm sure I can trust +her to play fair and say me nay."</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain slowly shook her head. "I'm glad you're not +<i>my</i> lover," she devoutly murmured, plying her fan.</p> +<p>"Oh, but I am," cried John, with a bow, and an admiring flash of +the eyes.</p> +<p>Her soft old face lighted up; then it took on an expression of +resolution, and she set her strong old jaws.</p> +<p>"In that case," she remarked, "you will have the less reluctance +in granting a favour I'm about to ask you."</p> +<p>"What's the favour?" said John, in a tone of readiness.</p> +<p>"I want you to buy a pig in a poke," said she.</p> +<p>"Oh?" questioned he.</p> +<p>"Yes," said she. "I want you to make me a promise blindfold. I +want you to promise in the dark that you will do something. What it +is that you're to do you're not to know till the time comes. Will +you promise?"</p> +<p>"Dearest lady," said the trustful young man, "I'm perfectly +confident that you would never ask me to do anything that I +couldn't do with profit to myself. Buy a pig in a poke? From you, +without a moment's hesitation. Of course I promise."</p> +<p>"Bravo, bravo," applauded Lady Blanchemain, glowing at her easy +triumph. "In a few days you'll receive a letter. That will tell you +what it is you're pledged to. And now, to reward you, come with me +to my sitting-room, and I will make you a little present."</p> +<p>When they had reached her sitting-room (dim and cool, with its +half-drawn blinds and the straw-coloured linen covers of its +furniture), she put into his hands a small case of shagreen, small +and hard, and at the edges white with age.</p> +<p>"Go to the window and see what's in it," she said.</p> +<p>And obeying, "By Jove, what a stunner!" he exclaimed. The case +contained a ring, a light circle of gold, set with a ruby, +surrounded by a row of diamonds,—for my part, I think the +most beautiful ruby I have ever seen. It was as big as a hazel-nut, +or almost; it was cut, with innumerable facets, in the shape of a +heart; and it quivered and burned, and flowed and rippled, +liquidly, with the purest, limpidest red fire.</p> +<p>"'Tis the spirit of a rose, distilled and crystallized," said +Lady Blanchemain.</p> +<p>"'Tis a drop of liquid light," said John. "But why do you give +it to me? I can't wear it. I don't think I ought to accept it."</p> +<p>"Nobody asks you to wear it," said Lady Blanchemain. "It's a +woman's ring, of course. But as for accepting it, you need have no +scruples. It's an old Blanchemain gem, that was in the family a +hundred years before I came into it. It's properly an heirloom, and +you're the heir. I give it to you for a purpose. Should you ever +become engaged, I desire you to placcit upon the finger of the +adventurous woman."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>IV</h2> +<p>Under a gnarled old olive, by the river's brim, Annunziata sat +on the turf, head bowed, so that her curls fell in a tangle all +about her cheeks, and gazed fixedly into the green waters, the +laughing, dancing, purling waters, green, and, where the sun +reached them, shot with seams and cleavages of light, like +fluorspar. In the sun-flecked, shadow-dappled grass near by, +violets tried to hide themselves, but were betrayed by their truant +sweetness. The waters purled, a light breeze rustled the +olive-leaves, and birds were singing loud and wild, as birds will +after rain.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores, coming down the path that followed the river's +windings, stood for a minute, and watched her small friend without +speaking. But at last she called out, "<i>Ciao</i>, Annunziata. Are +you dreaming dreams and seeing visions?"</p> +<p>Annunziata started and looked up. "Sh-h!" she whispered, with an +admonitory gesture. She stole a wary glance roundabout, and then +spoke as one fearful of being overheard. "I was listening to the +music of Divopan," she said.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores, who had come closer, appeared at a loss. "The +music of—what?" she questioned.</p> +<p>"Sh-h!" whispered Annunziata. "I would not dare to say it aloud. +The music of Divopan."</p> +<p>"Divopan?" Maria Dolores puzzled, compliantly guarding her tone. +"What is that?"</p> +<p>"Divo—Pan," said Annunziata, dividing the word in two, and +always with an air of excessive caution.</p> +<p>But Maria Dolores helplessly shook her head. "I'm afraid I don't +understand. What is Divo—Pan?"</p> +<p>"Don't you know what a <i>divo</i> is?" asked Annunziata, her +clear grey eyes surprised.</p> +<p>"Oh, a <i>divo?</i>" said Maria Dolores, getting a glimmer of +light. "Ah, yes, a divo is a saint, I think?</p> +<p>"Not exactly," Annunziata discriminated, "but something like +one. The saints, you see, are always very good, and <i>divi</i> are +sometimes bad. But they are powerful, like saints. They can do +anything they wish. Divo Pan is the divo who makes all the music +that you hear out of doors,—the music of the wind and the +water and the bird-songs. But you must be careful never to praise +his music aloud, lest Divo Apollone should hear you. He is the divo +that makes all the music you hear on instruments—on harps and +violins and pianos. He is very jealous of Divo Pan, and if he hears +you praising him, will do something to you. You know what he did to +King Mida, don't you?"</p> +<p>"What did he do?" asked Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>Annunziata stole another wary glance about.</p> +<p>"Once upon a time," she recounted, always in her lowest voice, +"many years ago, hundreds of years ago, the King of this country +was named Mida. And he loved very much the music of Divo Pan. He +loved to sit by the river here, and to listen to the music of the +water, and of the leaves, and of the birds. I love to do it too, +and I think he was quite right. But one day, in his house, there +came a musician with a harp, and began to play to him. And the King +listened for a while, and then he told the musician to stop. 'Your +music is very good,' he said, 'but now I am going into the fields +and by the river, where I can hear a music I like better.' But the +musician with the harp was really Divo Apollone himself; disguised. +And this made him very angry and jealous. And to punish King Mida +he changed his ears to long hairy ears, like an ass's. So, if you +love the music of Divo Pan, you must be very careful not to let +Divo Apollone hear you praise it, or he will do something to +you."</p> +<p>And to drive home this application of her theme, she held up a +warning finger.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores had listened, smiling. Now she gave a gay little +laugh, and then for a moment mused. "That is a very curious bit of +history," she said, in the end. "How ever did it come to your +knowledge?"</p> +<p>Annunziata shrugged. "Oh," she answered, "everybody knows that. +I have known it for years. My grandmother who lived in Milan told +it to me. Doesn't the water look cool and pleasant?" was her abrupt +digression, as she returned her gaze to the Rampio. "When it is hot +like this, I should like to lie down in the water, and go to sleep. +Wouldn't you?"</p> +<p>"I'm not so sure," said Maria Dolores. "I should rather fear I +might be drowned."</p> +<p>"Oh, but that wouldn't hurt," said Annunziata, with security. +"To be drowned in such beautiful green water, among all those beams +of light, would be nice."</p> +<p>"Perhaps you are not aware," said Maria Dolores, "that when +people are drowned they die?"</p> +<p>"Oh, yes, I know that," said Annunziata. "But"—she raised +calm pellucid eyes—"wouldn't you like to die?"</p> +<p>"Certainly not," said Maria Dolores, a shadow on her face.</p> +<p>"I would," said Annunziata, stoutly. "It must be lovely to +die."</p> +<p>"Hush," Maria Dolores rebuked her, frowning. "You must not say +such things."</p> +<p>"Why not say them, if you think them?" asked Annunziata.</p> +<p>"You mustn't think them either," said Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"Oh, I can't help thinking them," said Annunziata, with a +movement. "It surely must be lovely to die and go to Heaven. If I +were perfectly sure I should go to Heaven, I would shut my eyes and +die now. But I should probably have to wait some time in Purgatory. +And, of course, I might go to Hell."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores' face was full of trouble. "You must not talk like +that," she said. "You must not. It is wicked of you."</p> +<p>"Then, if I am wicked, I <i>should</i> go to Hell?" inquired +Annunziata, looking alertly up.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores looked about her, looked across the river, down +the valley, as one in distress scanning the prospect for aid. "Of +course you would not," she said. "My dear child, can't we find +something else to talk of?"</p> +<p>"Do you think I shall have a very long and hard Purgatory?" +asked Annunziata.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores threw a despairing glance at the horizon.</p> +<p>"No, no, dear," she answered uneasily. "You will have a very +short and gentle one. Anyhow, you'll not have to consider that for +years to come. Now shall we change the subject?"</p> +<p>"Well," said Annunziata, with an air of deliberation, "if you +are perfectly sure I shall not go to Hell, and that my Purgatory +will not be long and hard, I think I will do what I said. I will +lie down in the water and go to sleep, and the water will drown me, +and I shall die."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores' face was terrified. "Annunziata!" she cried. "You +don't know what you are saying. You are cruel. You won't do +anything of the sort. You must give me your solemn word of honour +that you won't do anything of the sort. It would be a most dreadful +sin. Come. Come with me now, away from here, away from the sight of +the river. You must never come here alone again. Give me your hand, +and come away."</p> +<p>Annunziata got up, gave her hand, and moved off at Maria +Dolores' side, towards the Castle. "Of course," she said, "if I +want to die, I don't need to lie down in the water. I can die at +any moment I wish, by just shutting my eyes, and holding my breath, +and telling my heart seven times to stop beating. Heart, stop +beating; heart, stop beating;—that way, seven times."</p> +<p>"For the love of Mercy," wailed poor Maria Dolores, almost +writhing in her misery.... Then, suddenly, she breathed a deep sigh +of relief, and fervently exclaimed, "Thank God." John was advancing +towards them, down the rugged pathway.</p> +<p>"Do please come and help me with this perverse and maddening +child," she called to him, in English. "She's frightening me half +out of my wits by threatening to die. She even threatened to drown +herself in the Rampio."</p> +<p>"Children of her complexion can't die," said John, in Italian, +(and Annunziata pricked up her ears). "They can only turn into +monkeys, and then they have to live in the forests of Africa, where +it is always dark, and all the men and women are negro savages, and +all the other animals (except the mosquitos and the snakes) are +lions and tigers. Besides, if Annunziata were to turn into a +monkey, she couldn't have the sugared chestnuts that somebody or +other has brought her from Roccadoro. On the chest of drawers in my +room there has mysteriously appeared a box of sugared chestnuts. I +thought they were for her, but they're not, unless she will promise +never to turn into a monkey."</p> +<p>Annunziata's eyes had clouded.</p> +<p>"Of course I won't turn into a monkey," she said, in accents at +once of disillusion and disdain. "I did not know there was any such +danger. I should hate to be a monkey." Then her eyes brightened +again. "May I go and get them now?" she asked, wistful and +impatient.</p> +<p>"Yes," said John; "be off with you." And she went running +lightly up the hill.</p> +<p>He turned to Maria Dolores. Her face (clear-cut, with its dark +hair, against the red background of her sunshade) was white and +drawn with pain. But she smiled, rather wanly, as her gaze met his, +and said, in a weak voice, "Oh, I am so glad you came. I can't tell +you how she was frightening me." And all at once her eyes filled +with tears.</p> +<p>I needn't say whether John was moved, whether it was his impulse +to take her in his arms and dry her tears with kisses. He did +actually, on that impulse, give a perceptible start towards her, +but then he restrained himself. "The child ought to be whipped," he +broke out angrily. "You must not take her prattle so +seriously."</p> +<p>"But <i>she</i> was so serious," said Maria Dolores. "Oh, when +she threatened to lie down in the river, and let herself be +drowned—!" Her voice failed her, as at the inexpressible.</p> +<p>"No fear of that," said John. "The first touch of the cold water +(and icy-cold it is, a glacier-stream, you know) would bring her to +her senses. But come! You must not think of it any more. You have +had a bad shock, but no bones are broken, and now you must try to +banish it all from your mind."</p> +<p>"What an unaccountable child she is!" said Maria Dolores. +"Surely it is unnatural and alarming for a child to have her head +so teeming with strange freaks and fancies. Oh, I pray God to grant +that nothing may happen to her."</p> +<p>"The most serious evil that's likely to happen to her for the +present," said John, "will be an indigestion of marrons +glacés."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores' tears had gone now. She smiled. But afterwards +she looked grave again. "Oh, I wish I could get the dread of +something happening to her out of my heart. I wish she wasn't so +pale and fragile-looking," she said. Then there came a gleam in her +eyes. "But you were going for a walk, and I am detaining you."</p> +<p>"The object of my walk has been accomplished," said John.</p> +<p>"Oh?" questioned she.</p> +<p>"I was walking in the hope, on the chance, that I might meet +you," he hardily explained. "It's such an age since I've seen you. +Are you making for the garden? I pray you to be kind, and let me go +with you. I've been an exile and a wanderer—I've been to +Roccadoro."</p> +<p>She had rebegun her ascension of the hill. The path was steep, +as well as rugged. Sometimes John had to help her over a hard bit. +The touch of her hand, soft and warm, and firm too, in his; the +sense of her closeness; the faint fragrance of her garments, of her +hair,—these things, you may be sure, went to his head, went +to his heart. The garden lay in a white blaze of sunshine, that +seemed almost material, like an incandescent fluid; but the +entrance to the avenue was dark and inviting. "Let us," he +proposed, "go and sit on a marble bench under the glossy leaves of +the ilexes, in the deep, cool shade; and let's play that it's a +thousand years ago, and that you're a Queen (white Queen Blanche, +like a queen of lilies), and that I'm your minstrel-man."</p> +<p>"What song will you sing me?" asked she gaily, as they took +their places on the marble bench. It was semicircular, with a high +carved back, (carved with the armorials of the Sforzas), and of +course it was lichen-stained, grey and blue and green, yellow and +scarlet.</p> +<div class="blockquot">"<i>White Queen Blanche, like a queen of +lilies,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fairer and dearer than dearest and +fairest,</span><br /> +To hear me sing, if it her sweet will is,—<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sing, minstrel-man, of thy love, an +thou darest,"</span></i></div> +<p>trolled John, in his light barytone, to a tune, I imagine, +improvised for the occasion. "But if it's a thousand years ago," he +laughed, "that song smacks too much perhaps of actuality, and I had +best choose another."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores joined in his laugh. "I did not know you sang," +she said. "Let me hear the other."</p> +<p>"A song," reflected he, "that I could sing with a good deal of +feeling and conviction, would be 'Give her but the least excuse to +love me.'"</p> +<p>Maria Dolores all at once looked sober.</p> +<p>"Oughtn't you to be careful," she said, "to give her no excuse +at all to love you, if you are really resolved never to ask her to +be your wife?"</p> +<p>"That is exactly what I have given her," answered John, "no +excuse at all. I should sing in a spirit purely academic,—my +song would be the utterance of a pious but hopeless longing, of the +moth's desire for the star."</p> +<p>"But she, I suppose, isn't a star," objected Maria Dolores. +"She's probably just a weak human woman. You may have given her +excuses without meaning to." There was the slightest quaver in her +voice.</p> +<p>John caught his breath; he turned upon her almost violently. But +she was facing away from him, down the avenue, so that he could not +get her eyes.</p> +<p>"In that case," she said, "wouldn't you owe her something?"</p> +<p>"I should owe myself a lifetime's penance with the discipline," +John on a solemn tone replied, hungrily looking at her cheek, at +the little tendrils of dark hair about her brow. "God knows what I +should owe to her."</p> +<p>"You would owe it to her," said Maria Dolores, always facing +away, "to tell her your love straightforwardly, and to ask her to +marry you."</p> +<p>John thrilled, John ached. His blue eyes burned upon her. "What +else do you think I dream of, night and day? But how could I, with +honour? You know my poverty," he groaned.</p> +<p>"But if she has enough, more than enough, for two?" softly urged +Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"Ah, that's the worst of it," cried he. "If we were equals in +penury, if she had nothing, then I might honourably ask her, and we +could live on herbs together in a garret, and I could keep her +respect and my own. Oh, garret-paradise! But to marry a woman who +is rich, to live in luxury with her, and to try to look unconscious +while she pays the bills,—she would despise me, I should +abhor myself."</p> +<p>"Why should she despise you?" asked Maria Dolores. "The +possession of wealth is a mere accident. If people are married and +love each other, I can't see that it matters an atom whether their +money belonged in the first place to the man or to the +woman,—it would belong henceforward to them both +equally."</p> +<p>"That is a very generous way of looking at it, but it is a +woman's way. No decent man could accept it," said John.</p> +<p>"Up to a certain point," said Maria Dolores, slowly, "I +understand your scruples. I understand that a poor man might feel +that he would not like to make the advances, if the woman he loved +was rich. But suppose the woman loved him, and knew that he loved +her, and knew that it was only his poverty which held him back, +then <i>she</i> might make the advances. She might put aside her +pride, and go halfway to meet him, and to remove his difficulties +and embarrassments. If, after that, he still did not ask her, I +think his scruples would have become mere vanity,—I think it +would show that he cared more for his mere vanity than for her +happiness."</p> +<p>Her voice died out. John could see that her lip quivered a +little. His throat was dry. The pulses were pounding in his +temples. His brain was all a confusion. He hardly knew what had +befallen him, he hardly knew what she had said. He only knew that +there was a great ball of fire in his breast, and that the pain of +it was half an immeasurable joy.</p> +<p>"God forgive me," the absurd and exaggerated stickler for the +dignity of his sex wildly cried. "God knows how I love her, how I +care for her happiness. But to go to her empty-handed,—but to +put myself in the position of being kept by a woman,—God +knows how impossible it is."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores stood up, still looking away from him.</p> +<p>"Well, let us hope," she said, changing her tone to one of +unconcerned detachment, "that we have been discussing baseless +suppositions. Let us hope that her heart is quite untouched. And +for both your sakes," she concluded, her head in the air, "let us +hope that you and she will never meet again. Good-bye."</p> +<p>She gave him a curt little nod, and walked lightly, rapidly up +the avenue.</p> +<p>John's brain was all a confusion. He looked after her +helplessly. He only knew that there was a great ball of fire in his +breast, and that the pain of it was now unmixed.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>V</h2> +<p>Maria Dolores tripped into Frau Brandt's sitting-room, merrily +singing a snatch of song.</p> +<div class="blockquot">"<i>Gardez vous d'être +sévère<br /> +Quand on vous park d'amour</i>,"</div> +<p>she carolled. Then she stopped singing, and blithely +laughed.</p> +<p>Frau Brandt raised her good brown face from her knitting, and +her good brown eyes looked anxiously upwards, slantwise over her +tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles.</p> +<p>"What is the matter now?" she asked. "What has happened to vex +you now?"</p> +<p>"To vex me!" cried Maria Dolores, in apparent astonishment. +"Wasn't I singing aloud from sheer exuberance of high spirits?"</p> +<p>"No," said Frau Brandt, with a very positive shake of her +white-capped head. "You were singing to conceal your low spirits. +What has happened?"</p> +<p>"Ah, well, then, if you know so much and must know all," said +Maria Dolores, "I've just proposed to the man I'm in love with, and +been sent about my business."</p> +<p>"What do you mean?" asked Frau Brandt, phlegmatic. "What +nonsense is this?"</p> +<p>"I mean my cobbler's son," Maria Dolores answered. "I, a +Princess of the Empire, humbly offered him, a cobbler's son, my +hand, heart, and fortune,—and the graceless man rejected them +with scorn."</p> +<p>"That is a likely story," said Frau Brandt, wagging her chin. +Her blunt brown fingers returned to their occupation. "I see your +Serene Highness offering her hand."</p> +<p>"At all events, will you kindly tell Josephine to pack our +boxes. To-morrow we'll be flitting," her Serene Highness in a +casual way announced.</p> +<p>"What say you?" cried Frau Brandt, dropping her knitting into +her lap.</p> +<p>"Yes—to Mischenau, to my brother," the Princess pursued. +"Of course you'll have to come with us, poor dear. You can't let me +travel alone with Josephine."</p> +<p>"No," said Frau Brandt. "I will go with you."</p> +<p>"And you can remain for my wedding," Maria Dolores added. "I am +going home to meet my brother's wishes, and to marry my second +cousin, the high and mighty Maximilian, Prince of Zelt-Zelt."</p> +<p>"Herr Gott!" said Frau Brandt, glancing with devotion at the +ceiling.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>VI</h2> +<p>John, wild-eyed, was still where she had left him, in the +avenue, savouring and resavouring his woe. "If only," he brooded, +"she were of one's own rank in the world, then her wealth might +perhaps not be such an absolutely hopeless impediment as it is. But +to marry, as they say, beneath one, and to marry money into the +bargain,—that would be a little too much like the +fortune-hunter of tradition." He still sat where she had left him, +on the marble bench, disconsolate, when the parroco approached +hurriedly, from the direction of the house.</p> +<p>"Signore," the parroco began, out of breath, "I offer a thousand +excuses for venturing to disturb you, but my niece has suddenly +fallen ill. I am going to the village to telephone for a doctor. My +cook is away, for her Sunday afternoon. Might I pray you to have +the extreme kindness to stay with the child till I return? I don't +know what is the matter, but she fainted, and now is delirious, +and, I'm afraid, very ill indeed."</p> +<p>"Good Heavens!" gasped John, forgetting everything else. "Of +course, of course."</p> +<p>And he set off hotfoot for the presbytery.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PART_SIXTH" id="PART_SIXTH"></a>PART SIXTH</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>I</h2> +<p>I would rather not dwell upon the details of Annunziata's +illness. By the mercy of Providence, she got well in the end; but +in the mean time those details were sufficiently painful. John, for +example, found it more than painful to hear her cry out piteously, +as she often would in her delirium, that she did not wish to be +turned into a monkey; he hung his head and groaned, and cursed the +malinspired moment which had given that chimæra birth. +However, he had his compensations. Maria Dolores, whom he had +thought never to see again, he saw every day. "Let us hope that you +and she may never meet again." In his despairing heart the words +became a refrain. But an hour later the news of trouble at the +presbytery had travelled to the pavilion, and she flew straight to +Annunziata's bedside. Ever since, (postponing those threatened +nuptials at Mischenau), she had shared with John, and the parroco, +and Marcella the cook, the labours of nurse. And though it was +arranged that the men, turn and turn about, should watch by night, +and the women by day, John, by coming early and leaving late, +contrived to make a good part of his vigil and of hers coincident. +And the strange result is that now, looking backwards upon that +period of pain and dread, when from minute to minute no one knew +what awful change the next minute might bring,—looking +backwards, and seeing again the small bare room, cell-like, with +its whitewashed walls, its iron cot, its Crucifix, its narrow +window (through which wide miles of valley shone), and then the +little white face and the brown curls tossing on the pillow, and +the woman of his love sitting near to him, in the intimacy of a +common care and common duties,—the strange result is that +John feels a glow in his heart, as at the memory of a period of +joy.</p> +<p>"Oh, do not let them turn me into a monkey. Oh, Holy Mother, I +am so afraid. Oh, do not let them!" Annunziata cried, shuddering, +and shrinking deeper into bed, towards the wall.</p> +<p>John hung his head and wrung his hands. "My God, my God!" he +groaned.</p> +<p>"You should not blame yourself," Maria Dolores said in a low +voice, while she bathed the child's forehead, and fanned her face. +"Your intention was good, you could not foresee what has happened, +and it may be for the best, after all,—it may strengthen her +'will to live,' which is the great thing, the doctor says."</p> +<p>She had spoken English, but Annunziata's next outcry was like a +response.</p> +<p>"Oh, to live, to live—I want to live, to live Oh, let me +live!"</p> +<p>But at other times her wandering thoughts took quite a different +turn.</p> +<p>Gazing solemnly up into Maria Dolores' face, she said, "He does +not even know her name, though he fears it may be Smitti. I thought +it was Maria Dolores, but he fears it may be Smitti."</p> +<p>John looked out of the window, pretending not to hear, and +praying, I expect, that Maria Dolores' eyes might be blinded and +her counsel darkened. At the same time, (Heaven having sent me a +laughing hero), I won't vouch that his shoulders didn't shake a +little.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>II</h2> +<p>Apropos of their ignorance of each other's patronymics. ... One +afternoon Maria Dolores was taking the air at the open door of the +presbytery, when, to a mighty clattering of horses' hoofs, a big +high-swung barouche came sweeping into the court-yard, described a +bold half-circle, and abruptly drew up before her. In the barouche +sat a big old lady, a big soft, humorous-eyed old lady, in cool +crêpe-de-chine, cream-coloured, with beautiful white hair, a +very gay light straw bonnet, and a much befurbelowed lavender-hued +sunshade. Coachman and footman, bolt upright, stared straight +before them, as rigid as if their liveries were of +papier-maché. The horses, with a full sense of what they +owed to appearances, fierily champed their bits, tossed their +manes, and pawed the paving-stones. The old lady smiled upon Maria +Dolores with a look of great friendliness and interest, softly +bowed, and wished her, in a fine, warm, old high-bred voice, "Good +afternoon."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores (feeling an instant liking, as well as curiosity +and admiration) smiled in her turn, and responded, "Good +afternoon."</p> +<p>"You enjoy a fine view from here," the old lady remarked, +ducking her sunshade in the direction of the valley.</p> +<p>"A beautiful view," agreed Maria Dolores, following the sunshade +with her eyes.</p> +<p>Those of the stranger had a gleam. "But don't you think, if the +unvarnished truth may be whispered, that it's becoming the merest +trifle too hot?" she suggested.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores lightly laughed. "I think it is decidedly too +hot," she said.</p> +<p>"I'm glad to find we're of the same opinion," declared the old +lady, fanning herself. "You can positively <i>see</i> the heat +vibrating there in the distance. We children of the North should +fly such weather. For my part, I'm off to-morrow for England, where +I can shiver through the summer comfortably in my +chimney-corner."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores laughed out again.</p> +<p>"So I've driven over from Roccadoro," the newcomer continued, +"to have a farewell look at a young man of my acquaintance who's +staying here. I dare say you may know him. He has blue eyes and a +red beard, a flattering manner and a pretty wit, and his name is +Blanchemain."</p> +<p>"Oh?" said Maria Dolores, her eyebrows going up. "Is that his +name? You mean the young Englishman who lives with the +parroco?"</p> +<p>The old lady's eyebrows, which were thick and dark, went up +too.</p> +<p>"Is it possible you didn't know his name?" was her surprised +ejaculation. Then she said, "I wonder whether he is anywhere +about?"</p> +<p>"I fancy he's asleep," said Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"Asleep? At this hour?" The dark eyebrows frowned their protest. +"That sounds like a sad slugabed."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores looked serious. "He was up all night. We have a +child ill here, and he was up all night, watching."</p> +<p>The stranger's grey eyes filled with concern and sympathy. "I +hope, I'm sure, it's not that pretty little girl, the niece of the +parroco?" she said.</p> +<p>"Unhappily, it is," said Maria Dolores. "She has been very ill +indeed."</p> +<p>"I am extremely sorry to hear it, extremely sorry," the old lady +declared, with feeling. "If I can be of any sort of use—if I +can send anything—or in any way help—" Her eyes +completed the offer.</p> +<p>"Oh, thank you, thank you," replied Maria Dolores. "You are most +kind, but I don't think there is anything any one can do. Besides, +she is on the mend now, we hope. The doctor says the worst is +probably over."</p> +<p>"Well, thank God for that," exclaimed the visitor, with a will. +She considered for a moment, and then reverted to the previous +question. "So you did not know that my vivid young friend's name +was Blanchemain?"</p> +<p>"No," said Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"It is a good name—there's none better in England," +averred the old lady, with a nod of emphasis that set the +wheat-ears in her bonnet quivering.</p> +<p>"Oh—?" said Maria Dolores, looking politely +interested.</p> +<p>"He's the nephew and heir of Lord Blanchemain of Ventmere," her +instructress went on. "That is one of our most ancient +peerages."</p> +<p>"Really?" said Maria Dolores. (What else did she say in her +heart? Where now was her cobbler's son?)</p> +<p>"And I'm glad to be able to add that I'm his sort of +connection—I'm the widow of the late Lord Blanchemain." The +lady paused; then, with that smile of hers which we know, that +smile which went as an advance-guard to disarm resentment, "People +of my age are allowed to be inquisitive," she premised. "I have +introduced myself to you—won't you introduce yourself to +me?"</p> +<p>"My name is Maria Dolores of Zelt-Neuminster," answered the +person questioned, also smiling.</p> +<p>The widow of the late Lord Blanchemain inwardly gasped, but she +was quick to suppress all outward symptoms of that circumstance. +The daughter of Eve in her gasped, but the practised old +Englishwoman of the world affably and imperturbably pronounced, +with a gracious movement of the head, "Ah, indeed? You are then, of +course, a relation of the Prince?"</p> +<p>"I am the Prince's sister," said Maria Dolores. And, as if an +explanation of her presence was in order, she added, "I am here +visiting my old nurse and governess, to whom my brother has given a +pavilion of the Castle for her home."</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain fanned herself. "A miller's daughter!" she +thought, with a silent laugh at John's expense and her own. "I am +very glad to have made your acquaintance," she said, "and I hope +this may not be our last meeting. I'm afraid I ought now to be +hastening back to Roccadoro. I wonder whether you will have the +kindness, when you see him, to convey my parting benediction to Mr. +Blanchemain. Oh, no, I would not let him be wakened, not for +worlds. Thank you. Good-bye."</p> +<p>And with a great effect of majesty and importance, like a +conscious thing, her carriage rolled away.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>III</h2> +<p>"My romance is over, my April dream is ended," said the +Princess, with an air, perhaps a feint, of listless melancholy, to +Frau Brandt.</p> +<p>"What mean you?" asked Frau Brandt, unmoved.</p> +<p>"My cobbler's son has disappeared—has vanished in a blaze +of glory," her Serene Highness explained, and laughed.</p> +<p>"I don't understand," said Frau Brandt. "He has not left Sant' +Alessina?"</p> +<p>"No, but he isn't a cobbler's son at all—he's merely been +masquerading as one—his name is not Brown, Jones, or +Robinson—his name is the high-sounding name of Blanchemain, +and he's heir to an English peerage."</p> +<p>"Ah, so? He is then noble?" Frau Brandt inferred, raising her +eyes, with satisfaction.</p> +<p>"As noble as need be. An English peer is marriageable. So here's +adieu to my cottage in the air."</p> +<p>"Here's good riddance to it," said Frau Brandt.</p> +<p>That evening, at the hour of sunset, Maria Dolores met John in +the garden.</p> +<p>"You had a visitor this afternoon," she announced. "A most +inspiritingly young old lady, as soft and white as a powder-puff, +in a carriage that was like a coach-and-four. Lady Blanchemain. She +is leaving to-morrow for England. She desired me to give you her +farewell blessing."</p> +<p>"It will be doubly precious to me by reason of the medium +through which it comes," said John, with his courtliest +obeisance.</p> +<p>There was a little pause, during which she looked at the western +sky. But presently, "Why did you tell me you had an uncle who was a +farmer?" she asked, beginning slowly to pace down the pathway.</p> +<p>"Did I tell you that? I suppose I had a boastful fit upon me," +John replied.</p> +<p>"But it very much misled me," said Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"Oh, it's perfectly true," said John.</p> +<p>"You are the heir to a peerage," said Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>John had a gesture.</p> +<p>"There you are," he said; "and my uncle, the peer, spends much +of his time and most of his money breeding sheep and growing +turnips. If that isn't a farmer, I should like to know what +is."</p> +<p>"I hope you displayed less reticence regarding your station in +the world to that woman you were in love with," said she.</p> +<p>"That woman I <i>was</i> in love with?" John caught her up. +"That woman I <i>am</i> in love with, please."</p> +<p>"Oh? Are you still in love with her?" Maria Dolores wondered. +"It is so long since you have spoken of her, I thought your heart +was healed."</p> +<p>"If I have not spoken of her, it has been because I was under +the impression that you had tacitly forbidden me to do so," John +informed her.</p> +<p>"So I had," she admitted. "But I find that there is such a +thing—as being too well obeyed."</p> +<p>She brought out her last words, after the briefest possible +suspension, hurriedly, in a voice that quailed a little, as if in +terror of its own audacity. John, with tingling pulses, turned upon +her. But she, according to her habit at such times, refused him her +eyes. He could see, though, that her eyelashes trembled.</p> +<p>"Oh," he cried, "I love her so much, I need her so, I suppose I +shall end by doing the dishonourable thing."</p> +<p>"Did you ever tell her that you were Lord Blanchemain's heir?" +she asked.</p> +<p>"I never thought of it. Why should I?" said John.</p> +<p>"When you were bemoaning your poverty, as an obstacle to +marriage, you might have remembered that your birth counted for +something. With us Austrians, for example, birth counts for almost +everything,—for infinitely more than money."</p> +<p>"I think," said John, as one impersonally generalizing, "that a +fortune-hunter with a tuft is the least admirable variety of that +animal. I wish you could see what beautiful little rose-white ears +she has, and the lovely way in which her dark hair droops about +them."</p> +<p>"How long ago was it," mused she, "that love first made people +fancy they saw beauties which had no real existence?"</p> +<p>"Oh, the moment you see a thing, it acquires real existence," +John returned. "The act of seeing is an act of creation. The thing +you see has real existence on your retina and in your mind, if +nowhere else, and that is the realest sort of real existence."</p> +<p>"Then she must thank you as the creator of her 'rose-white' +ears," laughed Maria Dolores. "I wonder whether that sunset has any +real existence, and whether it is really as splendid as it +seems."</p> +<p>The west had become a vast sea of gold, a pure and placid sea of +many-tinted gold, bounded and intersected and broken into +innumerable wide bays and narrow inlets by great +cloud-promontories, purple and rose and umber. Directly opposite, +just above the crest-line of the hills, hung the nearly full moon, +pale as a mere phantom of itself. And from somewhere in the boscage +at the garden's end came a lool-lool-lool-lioo-liô, deep and +long-drawn, liquid and complaining, which one knew to be the +preliminary piping-up of Philomel.</p> +<p>"If some things," said John, "derive their beauty from the eye +of the beholder, the beauty of other things is determined by the +presence or absence of the person you long to share all beautiful +visions with. The sky, the clouds, the whole air and earth, this +evening, seem to me beauty in its ultimate perfection."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores softly laughed, softly, softly. And for a long +time, by the marble balustrade that guarded this particular terrace +of the garden, they stood in silence. The western gold burned to +red, and more sombre red; the cloud-promontories gloomed purpler; +the pale moon kindled, and shone like ice afire, with its intense +cold brilliancy; the olive woods against the sky lay black; a score +of nightingales, near and far, were calling and sobbing and +exulting; and two human spirits yearned with the mystery of +love.</p> +<p>"My income," said John, all at once, brusquely coming to earth, +"is exactly six hundred pounds a year. I suppose two people +<i>could</i> live on that, though I'm dashed if I see how. Of +course we couldn't live in England, where that infernal future +peerage would put us under a thousand obligations; but I dare say +we might find a garret here in Italy. The question is, would she be +willing, or have I any right to ask her, to marry me, on the +condition of leaving her own money untouched, and living with me on +mine?</p> +<p>"Apropos of future peerages and things," said Maria Dolores, "do +you happen to know whether she has any rank of her own to keep +up?"</p> +<p>"I don't care twopence about her rank," said John.</p> +<p>"Do you happen to know her name?" she asked.</p> +<p>"I know what I wish her name was," John promptly answered. "I +wish to Heaven it was Blanchemain."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores gazed, pensive, at the moon. "He does not even +know her name," she remarked, on a key of meditation, "though he +fears," she sadly shook her head, "he fears it may be Smitti."</p> +<p>"Oh, I say!" cried John, wincing, with a kind of sorry giggle; +and I don't know whether he looked or felt the more sheepish. His +face showed every signal of humiliation, he tugged nervously at his +beard, but his eyes, in spite of him, his very blue blue eyes were +full of vexed amusement.</p> +<p>The bell in the clock-tower struck eight.</p> +<p>"There—it is your hour for going to Annunziata," said +Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"You have not answered my question?" said John.</p> +<p>"I will think about it," said she.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>IV</h2> +<p>Annunziata's delirium had passed, but in spite of all their +efforts to persuade her not to talk, talk she would.</p> +<p>"This is the month of May, isn't it?" she asked, next +morning.</p> +<p>"Yes, dear one," said Maria Dolores, whose watch it was.</p> +<p>"And that is the month of Mary. San Luca ought to hurry up and +make me well, so that I can keep flowers on the Lady Altar."</p> +<p>"Then if you wish to get well quickly," said Maria Dolores, "you +must try not to talk,—nor even to think, if you can help it. +You know the doctor does not want you to talk."</p> +<p>"All right. I won't talk. A going clock may be always wrong, but +a stopped clock is right twice a day. So stop your tongue, and +avoid folly. My uncle told me that. He never talks."</p> +<p>"And now shall you and I imitate his example?" proposed Maria +Dolores. Her lips, compressed, were plainly the gaolers of a +laugh.</p> +<p>"Yes," said Annunziata. "But I can't help thinking of those poor +flowers. All May flowers are born to be put on the Lady Altar. +Those poor flowers are missing what they were born for. They must +be very sad."</p> +<p>"This afternoon, every afternoon," Maria Dolores promised, "I +will put flowers on the Lady Altar. Now see if you can't shut your +eyes, and rest for a little while."</p> +<p>"I once found a toad on the Lady Altar. What do you think he was +there for?" asked Annunziata.</p> +<p>"I can't think, I'm sure," said Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"Well, when I first saw him I was angry, and I was going to get +a broom and sweep him away. But then I thought it must be very hard +to be a toad, and that you can't help being a toad if you are born +one, and I thought that perhaps that toad was there praying that he +might be changed from a toad to something else. So I didn't sweep +him away. Have you ever heard of the little Mass of Corruption that +lay in a garden?"</p> +<p>"No," said Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"Well," said Annunziata, "once upon a time a little Mass of +Corruption lay in a garden. But it did not know it was a Mass of +Corruption, and it did not wish to be a Mass of Corruption, and it +never did any harm or wished any harm to any one, but just lay +there all day long, and thought how beautiful the sky was, and how +good and warm the sun, and how sweet the flowers were and the +bird-songs, and thanked God with all its heart for having given it +such a lovely place to lie in. Yet all the while, you know, it +couldn't help being what it was, a little Mass of Corruption. And +at the close of the day some people who were walking in the garden +saw it, and cried out, 'Oh, what a horrible little Mass of +Corruption!' and they called the gardener, and had it buried in the +earth. But the little Mass of Corruption, when it heard that it +<i>was</i> a little Mass of Corruption, felt very, very sad, and it +made a supplication to Our Lady. 'I do not wish to be a Mass of +Corruption,' it said. 'Queen of Heaven, pray for me, that I may be +purified, and made clean, and not be a Mass of Corruption any +longer, and that I may then go back to the garden, out of this dark +earth.' So Our Lady prayed for it, and it was cleansed with water +and purified, and—what do you think the Little Mass of +Corruption became? It became a rose—a red rose in that very +garden, just where they had buried it. From which we see—But +I don't quite remember what we see from it," she broke off the pain +of baffled effort on her brow. "My uncle could tell you that."</p> +<p>Afterwards, for a few minutes, she was silent, lying quite +still, with her eyes on the ceiling.</p> +<p>"Why do sunny lands produce dark people, and dark lands light +people?" she asked all at once.</p> +<p>"Ah, don't begin to talk again, dear," Maria Dolores pleaded. +"The doctor will he coming soon now, and he will be angry if he +finds that I have let you talk."</p> +<p>"Oh, I will tell him that it isn't your fault," said Annunziata. +"I will tell him that you didn't let me, but that I talked because +it is so hard to lie here and think, think, think, and not be +allowed to say what you are thinking. Prospero asked me that +question about sunny lands a long time ago. I've been thinking and +thinking, but I can't think it out. Have you a great deal of money? +Are you very rich?"</p> +<p>"Darling, won't you please not talk any more?" Maria Dolores +implored her.</p> +<p>"I'll stop pretty soon," said Annunziata. "I think you are very +rich. I think, in spite of his saying her name is not Maria +Dolores, that you are the dark woman whom Prospero is to marry. He +is to marry a dark woman who will be very rich. But then he will +also he very rich himself. Is Austria a sunny land? England must be +a dark land, for Prospero is light. Let me see your left hand, +please, and I will tell you whether you are to marry a light +man.</p> +<p>"Hush!" said Maria Dolores, trying not to laugh. "That shall be +some other time."</p> +<p>"Wouldn't you like to marry Prospero? I would," said +Annunziata.</p> +<p>"I think I hear the wheels of the doctor's gig," said Maria +Dolores. "Now we shall both be scolded."</p> +<p>"But of course, if you do marry him, I can't," Annunziata +pursued, undaunted by this menace. "A man isn't allowed to have two +wives,—unless he is a king. He may have two sisters or two +daughters, but not two wives or two mothers. There was once a king +named Salomone who had a thousand wives, but even he had only one +mother, I think. I hope you will live at Sant' Alessina after your +marriage. Will you?"</p> +<p>Maria Dolores bit her lip and vouchsafed no answer; and again +for a minute or two Annunziata lay silent. But presently, "Have you +ever waked up in the middle of the night, and felt terribly +frightened?" she asked.</p> +<p>"Yes, dear, sometimes. I suppose every one has," said Maria +Dolores.</p> +<p>"Well, do you know why people feel so frightened when they wake +like that?" pursued the child.</p> +<p>"No," said Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"I do," said Annunziata. "The middle of the night is the Devil's +Noon. Nobody is awake in the middle of the night except wicked +people, like thieves or roysterers, or people who are suffering. +All people who are good, and who are well and happy, are sound +asleep. So it is the time the Devil likes best, and he and all his +evil spirits come to the earth to enjoy the great pleasure of +seeing people wicked or suffering. And that is why we feel so +frightened when we wake. The air all round us is full of evil +spirits, though we can't see them, and they are watching us, to run +and tell the Devil if we do anything wicked or suffer any pain. But +it is foolish of us to feel frightened, because our Guardian Angels +are always there too, and they are a hundred times stronger than +the evil spirits. Angels, you know, are very big, very much bigger +than men. Some of them are as tall as mountains, but even the quite +small ones are as tall as trees."</p> +<p>"This time I really do hear wheels," said Maria Dolores, with an +accent of thanksgiving.</p> +<p>And she rose to meet the doctor.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>V</h2> +<p>John sat in his room, absorbed in contemplation of a tiny +lace-edged pocket-handkerchief. He spread it out upon his knee, and +laughed. He crumpled it up in his palm, and pressed it to his face, +and drank deep of its faint perfume,—faint, but powerfully +provocative of visions and emotions. He had found it during the +night on the floor of the sick-room, and had captured and borne it +away like a treasure. He spread it out on his knee again, and was +again about to laugh at its small size and gauzy texture, when his +eye was caught by something in its corner. He held it nearer to the +window. The thing that had caught his eye was a cypher surmounted +by a crown, embroidered so minutely as almost to call for a +magnifying glass. But without a glass he could see that the cypher +was composed of the initials M and D, and that the crown was not a +coronet, but a closed crown, of the pattern worn by mediatised +princes.</p> +<p>"What on earth can be the meaning of this?" he wondered, +frowning, and breathing quick.</p> +<p>But he was stopped from further speculation for the moment by a +knock at the door. The postman entered with two letters, for one of +which, as it was registered, John had to sign. When he had tipped +the postman and was alone again, he put his registered letter on +the dressing-table (with a view to disciplining curiosity and +exercising patience, possibly) and turned his attention to the +other. In a handsome, high old hand, that somehow reminded him of +the writer's voice, it ran as follows:—</p> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>"DEAR JOHN,</p> +<br /> +<p>"I was heart-broken not to see you when I drove over to say +good-bye this afternoon, but chance favoured me at least to the +extent of letting me see your miller's daughter, and you may +believe that I was glad of an opportunity to inspect her at close +quarters. My dear boy, she is no more a miller's daughter than you +are. Her beauty—there's <i>race</i> in it. Her manner and +carriage, her voice, accent, her way of dressing, (I'd give a +sovereign for the name of her dressmaker), the fineness of her +skin, her hair, everything—there's race in 'em all, race and +consciousness of race, pride, dignity, distinction. These things +don't come to pass in a generation. I'm surprised at your lack of +perspicacity. And those blue eyes of yours look so sharp, too. But +perhaps your wish was father to your thought. You felt (well, and +so to some extent did I) that it would be more <i>romantic</i>. +She's probably a very great swell indeed, and I expect the Frau +What's-her-name she's staying with will turn out to be her old +governess or nurse or something. When those Austrians <i>can</i> +show quarterings, (of course you must bar recent +creations—they're generally named Cohen), they can show them +to some effect. They think nothing of thirty-two. All of which, +<i>au fond</i>, rather rejoices me, for if she really had been a +miller's daughter, it would have seemed a good deal like throwing +yourself away, and who knows what your rusty, crusty old uncle B. +might have said? I've long had a rod in pickle for <i>him</i>, and +t'other day I applied it. <i>Attendez</i>.</p> +<p>"Don't forget the pig you purchased—so gallantly and +confidingly. I would not to the marriage of true minds admit +impediments—your pig will gobble 'em up. You should by this +have received a communication from my solicitors. Remember, you +have pledged your sacred promise. There must be no question of +trying to shirk or burke it. Remember that I am quite outrageously +rich. I have no children of my own, and no very near relatives, +(and my distant ones are intensely disagreeable), and I can't help +looking upon the heir of the Blanchemains as a kind of spiritual +son. In your position there's no such thing as having too much +money. Take all that comes, and never mind the quarter whence. +They're Plymouth Brethren, and send me tracts.</p> +<p>"Good-bye now till August, if not before. For of course in +August you must come to me at Fring. Will you bring your bride? +When and where the wedding? I suppose they'll want it in Austria. +Beware of long engagements—or of too short ones. The autumn's +the time,—the only pretty ring-time. You see, you'll need +some months for the preparation of your trousseau. I love a man to +be smart. Well, good-bye. I was so sorry about that child's +illness, but thankful to hear she was mending.</p> +<p>"Yours affectionately,</p> +<p>"LINDA BLANCHEMAIN."</p> +</div> +<p>And his registered letter, when at last he opened it, ran +thus:—</p> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>"DEAR SIR:—Pursuant to instructions received from our +client Lady Blanchemain, we beg to hand you herewith our cheque for +Seven hundred and fifty pounds (£750 stg.), and to request +the favour of your receipt for the same, together with the address +of your bankers, that we may pay in quarterly a like sum to your +account, it being her ladyship's intention, immediately upon her +return to England, to effect a settlement upon yourself and heirs +of £100,000 funded in Bk. of Eng. stock.</p> +<p>"We are further to have the pleasure to inform you that by the +terms of a will just prepared by us, and to be executed by Lady +Blanchemain at the earliest possible date, you are constituted her +residuary legatee.</p> +<p>"With compliments and respectful congratulations,</p> +<p>"We have the honour, dear Sir, to be,</p> +<p>"Your obedient servants,</p> +<p>"FARROW, BERNSCOT, AND TISDALE."</p> +</div> +<p>And then there came another tap at the door, and it was the +postman who had returned, with a third letter which, like the true +Italian postman that he was, he had forgotten,—and I fancy, +if it hadn't been for that tip still warm in his pocket, the +easy-going fellow would have allowed it to stand over till +to-morrow. He made, at any rate, a great virtue of having +discovered it and of having retraced his steps.</p> +<p>The letter was written in black, angular, uncompromising +characters, that looked rather like sabre-thrusts and bayonets. It +read:—</p> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>"DEAR JACK:—I have received the enclosure from Linda Lady +Blanchemain. She is an exceedingly impertinent and meddlesome old +woman. But she is right about the allowance. I don't know why I +never thought of it myself. I don't know why you never suggested +it. I extremely regret it. As next in succession, you are certainly +entitled to an annuity from the estate. I have to-day remitted +£500 to your bankers, and am instructing my agents to pay in +a like amount quarterly.</p> +<p>"I hope I shall soon be seeing you at Ventmere. We are having a +grand lambing season, but there's a nasty spread of swine-fever, +and the whole country's papered with handbills. I got a goodish bit +of hunting down at Wilsborough during the winter. Now there's +nothing to do but play golf. I never could find any fun in shooting +rooks.</p> +<p>"Your affectionate uncle,</p> +<p>"B of V."</p> +</div> +<p>And the enclosure:—</p> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>"Linda Lady Blanchemain presents her compliments to Lord +Blanchemain of Ventmere, and begs to apprise him that she has +lately had the pleasure of meeting his lordship's nephew John, and +has discovered to her amazement that his lordship makes him no +allowance. This situation, for the heir to the barony of +Blanchemain, is of course absurd, and must, Lady Blanchemain is +sure, be due entirely to an oversight on his lordship's part. She +ventures, therefore, with all respect, to bring it to his +notice."</p> +</div> +<p>So! Here sat a young man with plenty to think about; a young +man, whose income, yesterday a bare six hundred, had sprung up over +night to something near six thousand. Six thousand a year isn't +opulence, if you like, but a young man possessing it can hardly +look upon himself as quite empty-handed, either. This young man, +however, had other things as well to think of. What of that +embroidered handkerchief? What of those shrewd suspicions of Lady +Blanchemain's? What of his miller's daughter?</p> +<p>And there was another thing still. What of his proud old honest +Spartan of an unimaginative uncle? He thought of him, and "Oh, the +poor old boy," he cried. "Not for ten times the money would I have +had the dear old woman write to him like that. How hard it must +have hit him!"</p> +<p>"M, D, and a princely crown," he reflected. "I wish I had an +Almanach de Gotha."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>VI</h2> +<p>"Who was it said of some one that he dearly loved a lord?" Maria +Dolores, her chin in the air, asked of Frau Brandt.</p> +<p>"I do not know," Frau Brandt replied, knitting.</p> +<p>"Well, at least, you know whether it would be possible for a man +and wife to live luxuriously on sixpence a week. Would it?" pursued +her tease.</p> +<p>"You are well aware that it would not," said Frau Brandt.</p> +<p>"How about six hundred pounds a year?"</p> +<p>"Six hundred pounds—?" Frau Brandt computed. "That would +be six thousand florins, no? It would depend upon their station in +the world."</p> +<p>"Well, suppose their station were about my station—and my +lord's?"</p> +<p>"You," said Frau Brandt, with a chuckle of contentment, swaying +her white-bonneted head. "You would need twice that for your dress +alone."</p> +<p>"One could dress more simply," said Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"No," said Frau Brandt, her good eyes beaming, "you must always +dress in the very finest that can be had."</p> +<p>"But then," Maria Dolores asked with wistfulness, "what am I to +do? For six hundred pounds is the total of his income."</p> +<p>"You have, unless I am mistaken, an income of your own," Frau +Brandt remarked.</p> +<p>"Yes—but he won't let me use it," said Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"He? Who?" demanded Frau Brandt, bridling. "Who is there that +dares to say let or not let to you?</p> +<p>"My future husband," said Maria Dolores. "He has peculiar ideas +of honour. He does not like the notion of marrying a woman who is +richer than himself. So he will marry me only on the condition that +I send my own fortune to be dropped in the middle of the sea."</p> +<p>"What nonsense is this?" said Frau Brandt, composed.</p> +<p>"No, it is the truth," said Maria Dolores, "the true truth. He +is too proud to live in luxury at his wife's expense."</p> +<p>"I like a man making conditions, when it is a question of +marrying you," said Frau Brandt, with scorn.</p> +<p>"So do I," said Maria Dolores, with heartiness.</p> +<p>"Well, at any rate, I am glad to see that he is not after you +for your money," Frau Brandt reflected.</p> +<p>"I suppose we shall have to dress in sackcloth and dine on +lentils," said Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"Of course you will tell him to take his conditions to the Old +One," said Frau Brandt. "It is out of the question for you to +change the manner of your life."</p> +<p>"I feel indeed as if it were," admitted Maria Dolores. "But if +he insists?"</p> +<p>"Then tell him to go to the Old One himself," was Frau Brandt's +blunt advice.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores laughed. "It seems like an <i>impasse</i>," she +said. "Who is to break the news to my brother?"</p> +<p>"We will wait until there is some news to break," the old woman +amiably grumbled.</p> +<p>Again at the sunset hour Maria Dolores met him in the garden. He +was seated on one of their marble benches, amongst marble columns, +(rose-tinted by the western light, and casting long purple +shadows), in a vine-embowered pergola. He was leaning forward, legs +crossed, brow wrinkled, as one deep in thought. But of course at +the sound of her footstep he jumped up.</p> +<p>"What mighty problem were you revolving?" she asked. "You looked +like Rembrandt's <i>philosophe en méditation</i>."</p> +<p>"I was revolving the problem of human love," he answered. "I was +mutilating Browning.</p> +<div class="blockquot">'<i>Was it something said,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Something done,</span><br /> +Was it touch of hand,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Turn of head?'</span></i></div> +<p>I was also thinking about you. I was wondering whether it would +be my cruel destiny not to see you this evening, and thinking of +the first time I ever saw you."</p> +<p>"Oh," said she, lightly, "that morning among the +olives,—when you gathered the windflowers for me?"</p> +<p>"No," said he. "That was the second time."</p> +<p>"Indeed?" said she, surprised. She sat down on the marble bench. +John stood before her.</p> +<p>"Yes," said he. "The first time was the day before. You were +crossing the garden—you were bending over the +sun-dial—and I spied upon you from a window of the <i>piano +nobile</i>. Lady Blanchemain was there with me, and she made a +prediction."</p> +<p>"What did she predict?" asked Maria Dolores, unsuspicious.</p> +<p>"She predicted that I would fall—" But he dropped his +sentence in the middle. "She predicted what has happened."</p> +<p>"Oh," murmured Maria Dolores, and looked at the horizon. +By-and-by, "That morning among the olives was the first time that I +saw you—when you dashed like a paladin to my assistance. I +feel that I have never sufficiently thanked you."</p> +<p>"A paladin oddly panoplied," said John. "Tell me honestly, +weren't you in two minds whether or not to reward me with largesse? +You had silver in your hand."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores laughed. I think she coloured a little.</p> +<p>"Perhaps I was, for half a second," she confessed. "But your +grand manner soon put me in one mind."</p> +<p>John also laughed. He took a turn backwards and forwards. "I +have waked in the dead of night, and grown hot and cold to remember +the figure of fun I was."</p> +<p>"No," said Maria Dolores, to console him. "You weren't a figure +of fun. Your costume had the air of being an impromptu, but," she +laughed, "your native dignity shone through."</p> +<p>"Thank you," said John, bowing. "The next time I saw you was +that same afternoon. You were with Annunziata in the avenue. I +carried my vision of you, like a melody, all the way to +Roccadoro-and all the way home again."</p> +<p>"I had just made Annunziata's acquaintance," said Maria +Dolores.</p> +<p>"You had a white sunshade and a lilac frock," said John. "The +next time was that night in the moonlight. You were all in white, +with a scarf of white lace over your hair. You threw me a white +rose from your balcony—and I have carried that rose with me +ever since."</p> +<p>"I threw you a white rose?" doubted Maria Dolores, looking up, +at fault.</p> +<p>"Yes," said John. "Have you forgotten it?"</p> +<p>"I certainly have," said she, with emphasis.</p> +<p>"You threw me a smile that was like a white rose," said he.</p> +<p>She laughed.</p> +<p>"I think I just distantly acknowledged your bow," she said.</p> +<p>"Well, some people's distant acknowledgments are like white +roses," said he. "I hope, at least, you remember what a glorious +night it was, and how the nightingales were singing?"</p> +<p>"Yes," said she. "I remember that."</p> +<p>"I have a fancy," he declared, "that it will be a more glorious +night still to-night, and that the nightingales will sing better +than they have ever sung before."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores did not speak.</p> +<p>"Do you happen," John asked, after a long silence, while they +gazed at the deepening colours in the west, "do you happen to +possess such a thing as a copy of the Almanach de Gotha?"</p> +<p>"Yes," said she.</p> +<p>"Really? I wonder whether you will lend it to me?"</p> +<p>"I am sorry—it is in Vienna." And after an instant's +pause, she ventured, "What, if it isn't indiscreet to inquire, do +you wish to look up?"</p> +<p>"I wish to look up a lady—a dream lady—a lady who +walks in beauty like the night of cloudless climes—and whose +pocket-handkerchiefs are embroidered with the initials M.D., in a +cypher, under a princely crown."</p> +<p>"I should think," said Maria Dolores, considering, "that she +would probably be a member of one of the mediatised princely +houses. But if you have nothing more than her initials to go by, +you would find it difficult to trace her in the Almanach de +Gotha."</p> +<p>"No doubt," said John. "But to a man of spirit a difficulty is a +challenge."</p> +<p>"Do you make a practice," asked she, "of appropriating people's +handkerchiefs?"</p> +<p>"Certain people's—yes," unblushing, he promptly owned.</p> +<p>"M.D. under a princely crown, I think you said?" she mused. "It +occurs to me that Maria Dolores of Zelt-Neuminster's +pocket-handkerchiefs might be so embroidered."</p> +<p>"Ah?" said John. "Zelt-Neuminster? That would be a daughter of +the man who owns this Castle?"</p> +<p>"No, she is a sister of the man who owns this Castle."</p> +<p>"I understand," said John. "I wonder that the sister of the man +who owns this Castle never comes here to see how fine it is."</p> +<p>"She has been here quite recently," said Maria Dolores. "She has +been here visiting her foster-mother, who lives in the pavilion +beyond the clock. She came to make a sort of retreat—to think +something over."</p> +<p>"Yes—?" questioned he.</p> +<p>"Her brother is very anxious to marry her off. He is anxious +that she should marry her second cousin, the Prince of Zelt-Zelt. +She came here to make up her mind."</p> +<p>"Has she made it up?" he asked.</p> +<p>"I am not sure," said she.</p> +<p>"Yet you seem to be deep in her confidence," said he.</p> +<p>"Yes—but she is not quite sure herself."</p> +<p>"Oh—?" said John.</p> +<p>"She is one of those foolish women who dream of marriage as a +high romance."</p> +<p>"Wise men," said John, "dream of it as the highest."</p> +<p>She shook her head.</p> +<p>"A marriage with her cousin would be an end to all romance for +ever. She was thinking a little while ago, I believe, of marrying a +plain commoner, the nephew of a farmer. That would have been indeed +romantic. Now, I hear, she is considering, a future member of your +English House of Lords."</p> +<p>"Wouldn't even that be rather romantic—if a step down +constitutes romance?" John suggested.</p> +<p>"Oh, a British peer is scarcely a step down," she returned. +"Besides, there are people who don't care—what is the +expression?—twopence about rank."</p> +<p>"When I said that," John explained, "I had no inkling that her +rank was so exalted."</p> +<p>"Did you think she was the daughter of a cobbler?" Maria Dolores +quickly, with some haughtiness, inquired.</p> +<p>"I thought she was a daughter of the stars," John answered.</p> +<p>"And you feared her name was Smitti," she said, haughtiness +dissolving in mirth. "I will never tell you what she feared that +yours was."</p> +<p>"See," said John, "how they are hanging the heavens with +banners. It must be in honour of some great impending event."</p> +<p>Yesterday the west had been a sea. To-day it was a city, a vast +grey and violet city, with palaces and battlemented towers, and +countless airy spires and pinnacles; and here, there, everywhere, +its walls were gay with gold and crimson, as with drooping +banners.</p> +<p>"'Tis a city <i>en fête</i>," said John. "'Tis the city +where marriages are made. They must have one in hand."</p> +<p>"Hark," said she, putting up a finger. "There are your +nightingales beginning."</p> +<p>But the raised finger reminded him of something. "Have you a +rooted objection to rings?" he asked.</p> +<p>"Why?" asked she.</p> +<p>"I notice that you don't wear any."</p> +<p>"Oh, sometimes I wear many," she said. "Then one has moods in +which one leaves them off."</p> +<p>"I have a ring in my pocket which I think belongs to you," said +he.</p> +<p>"Really? I don't know that any of my rings are missing."</p> +<p>"Here it is," said he. He produced the little old shagreen case +he had received from Lady Blanchemain, opened, and offered it.</p> +<p>"It is a singularly beautiful ring," said she, her eyes +admiring. "But it doesn't belong to me."</p> +<p>"I think it does," said he. "May I try it on your finger?"</p> +<p>She put forth her right hand.</p> +<p>"No—your left hand, please," he said. He dropped upon one +knee before her, and when the delicate white hand was surrendered, +I imagine he made of getting the ring upon the alliance finger a +longer business by a good deal than was necessary. "There," he said +in the end, "you see. It looks as if it had grown there. Of course +it belongs to you." He still held her hand, warm and firm and +velvet-soft. I think in another second he would have touched it +with his lips. But she drew it away.</p> +<p>She gazed into the depths of the heart-shaped ruby, tremulous +with liquid light, and smiled as at secret thoughts.</p> +<p>"But I don't see," said John, getting to his feet, "how any man +can ask a Princess of the House of Zelt to marry him and live on +six hundred pounds a year."</p> +<p>"She would have to modify her habits a good deal, that is very +certain," said Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"She would have to modify them utterly," said John. "Six hundred +a year is poverty even for a single man. For a married couple it +would be beggary. She would have to live like the wife of a petty +employé. She would have to travel second class and stay at +fourth-rate hotels. She would have to turn her old dresses and trim +her own bonnets. She would have to do without a maid. And all this +means that she would have virtually to renounce her caste, to give +up the society of her equals, who demand a certain scale of +appearances, and to live among pariahs or to live in isolation. +Don't you think a man would be a monster of selfishness to exact +such sacrifices?"</p> +<p>"Oh, some men have excessively far-fetched and morbid notions of +honour," said she.</p> +<p>"Do you think the Princess, with all this brought to her +attention, would ever dream of consenting?"</p> +<p>"Women in love are weak—they will consent to almost +anything," said she, her dark eyes smiling for an instant into +his.</p> +<p>Why didn't he take her in his arms? Hope deferred maketh the +heart sick, but to defer the consummation of a joy assured +(observes the Persian poet) giveth the heart a peculiar sweet +excitement.</p> +<p>"Well," said John. "I'm glad to think she is weak; but I'll +never ask my wife to consent to anything so unpleasant. A Princess +and a future peeress, living on six hundred pounds a year! It's +unheard of."</p> +<p>She looked at him, puzzled, incredulous.</p> +<p>"Oh—? Can you possibly mean—that you will—take +back your condition?"</p> +<p>"Yes," said he, humbly. "Who am I to make conditions?"</p> +<p>"You will let her spend as much of her own money as she likes?" +she wondered, wide-eyed.</p> +<p>"As a lover of thrift, I shall deprecate extravagance," said +John. "But as a submissive husband, I shall let her do in all +things as her fancy dictates."</p> +<p>"Well," marvelled she, "here is a surprise—here is a +volte-face indeed."</p> +<p>And she looked at the city in the sky, and appeared to turn +things over.</p> +<p>John was mysteriously chuckling.</p> +<p>"Haven't you your opinion," he asked, "of men who eat their +words and put their scruples in their pockets?"</p> +<p>"I don't understand," said she, looking wild. "There is, of +course, some joke."</p> +<p>"There is a joke, indeed," said he; "the joke is that I'm ten +times richer than I told you I was."</p> +<p>She started back, and fixed him with a glance.</p> +<p>"Then all that about your being poor was only humbug?" There was +reproach in her voice, I'm not sure there wasn't +disappointment.</p> +<p>"No," said he, "it was the exact and literal truth. But I have +come into a modest competency over-night."</p> +<p>"I don't understand," said she.</p> +<p>"My own part in the story is a sufficiently inglorious one," +said he. "I'm the benefactee. Lady Blanchemain and my uncle have +put their heads together, and endowed me. I feel rather small at +letting them, but it enables me to look my affianced boldly in the +money-eye."</p> +<p>"Oh? You are affianced? Already?" she asked gaily.</p> +<p>"No—not unless you are," gaily answered John.</p> +<p>She looked down at her ring.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>VII</h2> +<p>The quiet-coloured end of evening smiled fainter, fainter. The +aerial city, its cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces, had +crumbled into ruins, and stars twinkled among their shattered and +darkened walls. The moon burned icily above the eastern hills. The +nightingales (or John was no true prophet) sang better than they +had ever sung before, while bats, hither, thither, flew in +startling zig-zags, as if waltzing to the music. And all the air +was sweet with the breath of dew-wet roses.</p> +<p>The clock struck eight.</p> +<p>"There—you must go," said Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"Go? Where to?" asked John, feigning vagueness.</p> +<p>"This is no subject for jest," said she, feigning severity.</p> +<p>"I can't go yet—I can't leave you yet," said he. "Besides, +it is an education in æsthetics to watch the moonlight on +these marble columns, and the pale shadows of the vine-leaves."</p> +<p>"Well, then," said she, "stay you here and pursue your +education. I will go in your place. For Marcella Cuciniera must be +relieved." She rose, and moved towards the darkling front of the +Castle.</p> +<p>"Hang education! I'll go with you," said John, following.</p> +<p>"I shall only stop a moment, to see how she is," said Maria +Dolores. "Then I must hurry home, to get my packing begun."</p> +<p>"Your packing?" faltered John.</p> +<p>"To-morrow morning Frau Brandt and I are leaving for +Austria—for Schloss Mischenau, where my brother lives."</p> +<p>"Good Lord!" said John. "Ah, well, I suppose it is what they +would call the proper course," he admitted with gloomy resignation. +"But think how dreadfully you'll be missed—by +Annunziata."</p> +<p>"Annunziata is so much better, I can easily be spared," said +Maria Dolores; "and anyhow—'tis needs must. I think you will +probably soon receive a letter from my brother, asking you to visit +him. Mischenau is a place worth seeing, in its northern style. And, +in his northern style, my brother is a man worth meeting. I counsel +you to go."</p> +<p>"I shall certainly go," said John. "I shall linger here at Sant' +Alessina like a soul in durance, counting the hours till my +release. I shall be particularly glad to meet your brother, as I +have matters of importance to arrange with him."</p> +<p>"Until then," said she, smiling, "I think we must do with +those—matters of importance"—her voice quavered on the +word—"what is it that the Pope sometimes does with +Cardinals?"</p> +<p>"Yes," moodily consented John, "I suppose we must. But oh me, +what a dreary, blank, stale, and unprofitable desolation this +garden will become,—and at every turn the ghost of some past +joy!"</p> +<p>Annunziata looked up with eyes that seemed omniscient.</p> +<p>"I was thinking about you," she greeted them.</p> +<p>"About which of us?" asked John.</p> +<p>"About both of you. I always now, since a long while, think of +you both together. I think Maria Dolores is the dark woman whom +Prospero is to marry."</p> +<p>John laughed. Maria Dolores looked out of the window.</p> +<p>"And I was thinking," Annunziata went on, "how strange it was +that if you hadn't both at the same time just happened to come to +Sant' Alessina, you might have lived and died and never have known +each other."</p> +<p>"Perish that thought," laughed John. "But I have sometimes +thought it myself."</p> +<p>"And then," Annunziata rounded out her tale, "I thought that +perhaps you had not just happened—that probably you had been +led."</p> +<p>"That is a thing I haven't a doubt of," John with energy +affirmed.</p> +<p>"You look as if you were very glad about something—both of +you," said Annunziata, those omniscient eyes of hers studying their +faces. "What is it that you are both so glad of?"</p> +<p>"We are so glad to find you feeling so well," answered Maria +Dolores.</p> +<p>But Annunziata shook her head, as one who knew better. +"No—that is not the only thing. You are glad of something +else besides."</p> +<p>"There's no taking you in," said John. "But we are under bonds +to treat that Something Else as the Pope sometimes treats Princes +of the Church."</p> +<p>"He gives them red hats," said Annunziata.</p> +<p>"I shall give this thing a crown of myrtle," said John.</p> +<p>"You sometimes say things that sound as if they hadn't any +sense," Annunziata informed him, with patient indulgence, nodding +at the ceiling.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores leaned over the bed, and kissed Annunziata's brow. +"Good night, carina," she murmured.</p> +<p>Annunziata put up her little white arms, and encircled Maria +Dolores' neck. Then she kissed her four times—on the brow, on +the chin, on the left cheek, on the right. "That is a cross of +kisses," she explained. "It is the way my mother used to kiss me. +It means may the four Angels of Peace, Grace, Holiness, and Wisdom +watch over your sleep."</p> +<p>But early next morning, John being still on duty, Maria Dolores +came back,—booted and spurred for her journey, in tailor-made +tweeds, with a little felt toque and a veil: a costume of which +Annunziata's eyes were quick to catch the suggestion.</p> +<p>"Why are you dressed like that?" she asked, uneasily. "I never +saw you dressed like that before. You look as if you were going +away somewhere."</p> +<p>"I have got to go away—I have got to go to my home, in +Austria. I have come to bid you good-bye," Maria Dolores +answered.</p> +<p>Annunziata's eyes were dark with pain. "Oh," she said, in a +voice of deep dismay.</p> +<p>"We shan't be separated long, though," Maria Dolores promised. +"I have asked your uncle to lend you to me. As soon as you are +strong enough to travel, you are coming to Austria to pay me a long +visit. Then I will come back with you to Sant' Alessina. And +then—well, wherever I go you will always go with me. For of +course I can never live happily again without you."</p> +<p>"One moment, please," put in John. "Here is a small difficulty. +I can never live happily without her, either. I also have asked her +uncle to lend her to me. And wherever <i>I</i> go, she is always to +go with me. How are we to adjust our rival claims?"</p> +<p>Annunziata's eyes lighted up.</p> +<p>"Oh, that will be easy enough," she pointed out. "You will have +to go everywhere together."</p> +<h3>THE END</h3> + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14682 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cfcb960 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #14682 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14682) diff --git a/old/14682-8.txt b/old/14682-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3c89dd2 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/14682-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6887 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of My Friend Prospero, by Henry Harland + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: My Friend Prospero + +Author: Henry Harland + +Release Date: January 13, 2005 [EBook #14682] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY FRIEND PROSPERO *** + + + + +Produced by Rick Niles, Charlie Kirschner and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + +MY FRIEND +PROSPERO + + +By HENRY HARLAND + +_Author of_ + +THE CARDINAL'S SNUFF-BOX. +Illustrated by G.C. Wilmshurst. +_One Hundred and Fifth Thousand_. + +THE LADY PARAMOUNT. +_Fifty-fifth Thousand_. + +COMEDIES AND ERRORS. +_Third Edition_. + +GREY ROSES. _Third Edition_. + +MADEMOISELLE MISS. _Second Edition_. + + + + +JOHN LANE: THE BODLEY HEAD + +LONDON & NEW YORK. MDCCCCIV + +1903 + + + + +PART FIRST + + + + +My Friend Prospero + + + + +I + + +The coachman drew up his horses before the castle gateway, where their +hoofs beat a sort of fanfare on the stone pavement; and the footman, +letting himself smartly down, pulled, with a peremptory gesture that was +just not quite a swagger, the bronze hand at the end of the dangling +bell-cord. + +Seated alone in her great high-swung barouche, in the sweet April +weather, Lady Blanchemain gave the interval that followed to a +consideration of the landscape: first, sleeping in shadowy stillness, +the formal Italian garden, its terraced lawns and metrical parterres, +its straight dark avenues of ilex, its cypresses, fountains, statues, +balustrades; and then, laughing in the breeze and the sun, the wild +Italian valley, a forest of blossoming fruit-trees, with the river +winding and glinting in its midst, with olive-clad hills blue-grey at +either side, and beyond the hills, peering over their shoulders, the +snow-peaks of mountains, crisp against the sky, and in the level +distance the hazy shimmer of the lake. + +"It is lovely," she exclaimed, fervently, in a whisper, "lovely.--And +only a generation of blind-worms," was her after-thought, "could discern +in it the slightest resemblance to the drop-scene of a theatre." + + + + +II + + +Big, humorous, emotional, imperious, but, above all, interested and +sociable Lady Blanchemain: do you know her, I wonder? Her billowy white +hair? Her handsome soft old face, with its smooth skin, and the good +strong bony structure underneath? Her beautiful old grey eyes, full of +tenderness and shrewdness, of curiosity, irony, indulgence, overarched +and emphasized by regular black eyebrows? Her pretty little plump +pink-white hands, (like two little elderly Cupids), with their shining +panoply of rings? And her luxurious, courageous, high-hearted manner of +dressing? The light colours and jaunty fashion of her gowns? Her laces, +ruffles, embroideries? Her gay little bonnets? Her gems? Linda Baroness +Blanchemain, of Fring Place, Sussex; Belmore Gardens, Kensington; and +Villa Antonina, San Remo: big, merry, sociable, sentimental, +worldly-wise, impetuous Linda Blanchemain: do you know her? If you do, +I am sure you love her and rejoice in her; and enough is said. If you +don't, I beg leave to present and to commend her. + +I spoke, by the bye, of her "old" face, her "old" eyes. She is, to be +sure, in so far as mere numbers of years tell, an old woman. But I once +heard her throw out, in the heat of conversation, the phrase, "a young +old thing like me;" and I thought she touched a truth. + + + + +III + + +Well, then, the footman, in his masterful way, pulled the bell-cord; +Lady Blanchemain contemplated the landscape, and had her opinion of a +generation that could liken it to the drop-scene of a theatre; and in +due process of things the bell was answered. + +It was answered by a man in a costume that struck my humorous old friend +as pleasing: a sallow little man whose otherwise quite featureless suit +of tweeds was embellished by scarlet worsted shoulder-knots. With +lack-lustre eyes, from behind the plexus of the grille, he rather +stolidly regarded the imposing British equipage, and waited to be +addressed. + +Lady Blanchemain addressed him in the language of Pistoja. Might one, +she inquired, with her air of high affability, in her distinguished old +voice, might one visit the castle?--a question purely of convention, for +she had not come hither without an assurance from her guide-book. + +Shoulder-knots, however,--either to flaunt his attainments, or because +indeed Pistoiese (what though the polyglot races of Italy have agreed +upon it as a lingua franca) offered the greater difficulties to his +Lombardian tongue,--replied in French. + +"I do not think so, Madame," was his reply, in a French sufficiently +heavy and stiff-jointed, enforced by a dubious oscillation of the head. + +Lady Blanchemain's black eyebrows shot upwards, marking her surprise; +then drew together, marking her determination. + +"But of course one can--it's in the guide-book," she insisted, and held +up the red-bound volume. + +The sceptic gave a shrug, as one who disclaimed responsibility and +declined discussion. + +"Me, I do not think so. But patience! I will go and ask," he said; and, +turning his back, faded from sight in the depths of the dark tunnel-like +porte-cochère. + +Vexed, perplexed, Lady Blanchemain fidgeted a little. To have taken this +long drive for nothing!--sweet though the weather was, fair though the +valley: but she was not a person who could let the means excuse the end. +She neither liked nor was accustomed to see her enterprises balked,--to +see doors remain closed in her face. Doors indeed had a habit of flying +open at her approach. Besides, the fellow's manner,--his initial stare +and silence, his tone when he spoke, his shrug, his exhortation to +patience, and something too in the conduct of his back as he +departed,--hadn't it lacked I don't know what of becoming deference? to +satisfy her amour-propre, at any rate, that the mistake, if there was a +mistake, sprang from no malapprehension of her own, she looked up +chapter and verse. Yes, there the assurance stood, circumstantial, in +all the convincingness of the sturdy, small black type:-- + +"From Roccadoro a charming excursion may be made, up the beautiful Val +Rampio, to the mediæval village of Sant' Alessina (7 miles), with its +magnificent castle, in fine grounds, formerly a seat of the Sforzas, now +belonging to the Prince of Zelt-Neuminster, and containing the +celebrated Zelt-Neuminster collection of paintings. Incorporated in the +castle buildings, a noticeable peculiarity, are the parish church and +presbytery. Accessible daily, except Monday, from 10 to 4; attendant 1 +fr." + +So then! To-day was Wednesday, the hour between two and three. So--! Her +amour-propre triumphed, but I fancy her vexation mounted.... + + + + +IV + + +"I beg your pardon. It's disgraceful you should have been made to wait. +The porter is an idiot. You wish, of course, to see the house--?" + +The English words, on a key of spontaneous apology, with a very zealous +inflection of concern--yet, at the same time, with a kind of entirely +respectful and amiable abruptness, as of one hailing a familiar +friend,--were pronounced in a breath by a brisk, cheerful, unmistakably +English voice. + +Lady Blanchemain, whose attention had still been on the incriminated +page, looked quickly up, and (English voice and spontaneous apology +notwithstanding) I won't vouch that the answer at the tip of her +impulsive tongue mightn't have proved a hasty one--but the speaker's +appearance gave her pause: the appearance of the tall, smiling, +unmistakably English young man, by whom Shoulder-knots had returned +accompanied, and who now, having pushed the grille ajar and issued +forth, stood, placing himself with a tentative obeisance at her service, +beside the carriage: he was so clearly, first of all--what, if it hadn't +been for her preoccupation, his voice, tone, accent would have warned +her to expect--so visibly a gentleman; and then, with the even pink of +his complexion, his yellowish hair and beard, his alert, friendly, very +blue blue eyes--with his very blue blue flannels too, and his brick-red +knitted tie--he was so vivid and so unusual. + +His appearance gave her a pause; and in the result she in her turn +almost apologized. + +"This wretched book," she explained, pathetically bringing forward her +_pièce justificative_, "said that it was open to the public." + +The vivid young man hastened to put her in the right. + +"It is--it _is_," he eagerly affirmed. "Only," he added, with a vaguely +rueful modulation, and always with that amiable abruptness, as a man +very much at his ease, while his blue eyes whimsically brightened, "only +the blessed public never comes--we're so off the beaten path. And I +suppose one mustn't expect a Scioccone"--his voice swelled on the word, +and he cast sidelong a scathing glance at his summoner--"to cope with +unprecedented situations. Will you allow me to help you out?" + +"Ah," thought Lady Blanchemain, "Eton," his tone and accent now nicely +appraised by an experienced ear. "Eton--yes; and probably--h'm? Probably +Balliol," her experience led her further to surmise. But what--with her +insatiable curiosity about people, she had of course immediately begun +to wonder--what was an Eton and Balliol man doing, apparently in a +position of authority, at this remote Italian castle? + + + + +V + + +He helped her out, very gracefully, very gallantly; and under his +guidance she made the tour of the vast building: its greater court and +lesser court; its cloisters, with their faded frescoes, and their +marvellous outlook, northwards, upon the Alps; its immense rotunda, +springing to the open dome, where the sky was like an inset plaque of +turquoise; its "staircase of honour," guarded, in an ascending file, by +statues of men in armour; and then, on the _piano nobile_, its endless +chain of big, empty, silent, splendid state apartments, with their +pavements of gleaming marble, in many-coloured patterns, their painted +and gilded ceilings, tapestried walls, carved wood and moulded stucco, +their pictures, pictures, pictures, and their atmosphere of stately +desolation, their memories of another age, their reminders of the power +and pomp of people who had long been ghosts. + +He was tall (with that insatiable curiosity of hers, she was of course +continuously studying him), tall and broad-shouldered, but not a bit +rigid or inflexible--of a figure indeed conspicuously supple, suave in +its quick movements, soft in its energetic lines, a figure that could +with equal thoroughness be lazy in repose and vehement in action. His +yellow hair was thick and fine, and if it hadn't been cropped so close +would have curled a little. His beard, in small crinkly spirals, did +actually curl, and toward the edge its yellow burned to red. And his +blue eyes were so very very blue, and so very keen, and so very frank +and pleasant--"They are like sailors' eyes," thought Lady Blanchemain, +who had a sentiment for sailors. He carried his head well thrown back, +as a man who was perfectly sure of himself and perfectly +unselfconscious; and thus unconsciously he drew attention to the +vigorous sweep of his profile, the decisive angles of his brow and nose. +His voice was brisk and cheerful and masculine; and that abruptness with +which he spoke--which seemed, as it were, to imply a previous +acquaintance--was so tempered by manifest good breeding and so coloured +by manifest good will, that it became a positive part and parcel of what +one liked in him. It was the abruptness of a man very much at his ease, +very much a man of the world, yet it was somehow, in its essence, +boyish. It expressed freshness, sincerity, conviction, a boyish +wholesale surrender of himself to the business of the moment; it +expressed, perhaps above all, a boyish thorough good understanding with +his interlocutor. "It amounts," thought his present interlocutrice, "to +a kind of infinitely sublimated bluffness." + +And then she fell to examining his clothes: his loose, soft, very blue +blue flannels, with vague stripes of darker blue; his soft shirt, with +its rolling collar; his red tie, knitted of soft silk, and tied in a +loose sailor's-knot. She liked his clothes, and she liked the way he +wore them. They suited him. They were loose and comfortable and +unconventional, but they were beautifully fresh and well cared for, and +showed him, if indifferent to the fashion-plate of the season, +meticulous in a fashion of his own. "It's hard to imagine him dressed +otherwise," she said, and instantly had a vision of him dressed for +dinner. + +But what--what--what was he doing at Castel Sant' Alessina? + + + + +VI + + +Meanwhile he plainly knew a tremendous lot about Italian art. Lady +Blanchemain herself knew a good deal, and could recognize a pundit. He +illumined their progress by a running fire of exposition and commentary, +learned and discerning, to which she encouragingly listened, and, as +occasion required, amiably responded. But Boltraffios, Bernardino +Luinis, even a putative Giorgione, could not divert her mind from its +human problem. What was he doing at Castel Sant' Alessina, the property, +according to her guide-book, of an Austrian prince? What was his status +here, apparently (bar servants) in solitary occupation? Was he its +tenant? He couldn't, surely, this well-dressed, high-bred, cultivated +young compatriot, he couldn't be a mere employé, a steward or curator? +No: probably a tenant. Antecedently indeed it might seem unlikely that a +young Englishman should become the tenant of an establishment so huge +and so sequestered; but was it conceivable that this particular young +Englishman should be a mere employé? And was there any other +alternative? She hearkened for a word, a note, that might throw light; +but of such notes, such words, a young man's conversation, in the +circumstances, would perhaps naturally yield a meagre crop. + +"You mustn't let me tire you," he said presently, as one who had +forgotten and suddenly remembered that looking at pictures is exhausting +work. "Won't you sit here and rest a little?" + +They were in a smaller room than any they had previously traversed, an +octagonal room, which a single lofty window filled with sunshine. + +"Oh, thank you," said Lady Blanchemain, and seated herself on the +circular divan in the centre of the polished terrazza floor. She wasn't +really tired in the least, the indefatigable old sight-seer; but a +respite from picture-gazing would enable her to turn the talk. She put +up her mother-of-pearl lorgnon, and glanced round the walls; then, +lowering it, she frankly raised her eyes, full of curiosity and +kindness, to her companion's. + +"It's a surprise, and a delightful one," she remarked, "having pushed so +far afield in a foreign land, to be met by the good offices of a +fellow-countryman--it's so nice of you to be English." + +And her eyes softly changed, their curiosity being veiled by a kind of +humorous content. + +The young man's face, from its altitude of six-feet-something, beamed +responsively down upon her. + +"Oh," he laughed, "you mustn't give me too much credit. To be English +nowadays is so ingloriously easy--since foreign lands have become merely +the wider suburbs of London." + +Lady Blanchemain's eyes lighted approvingly. Afterwards she looked half +serious. + +"True," she discriminated, "London has spread pretty well over the whole +of Europe; but England, thanks be to goodness, still remains mercifully +small." + +"Yes," agreed the young man, though with a lilt of dubiety, and a frown +of excogitation, as if he weren't sure that he had quite caught her +drift. + +"The mercy of it is," she smilingly pointed out, "that English folk, +decent ones, have no need to fight shy of each other when they meet as +strangers. We all know more or less about each other by hearsay, or +about each other's people; and we're all pretty sure to have some common +acquaintances. The smallness of England makes for sociability and +confidence." + +"It ought to, one would think," the young man admitted. "But does it, in +fact? It had somehow got stuck in my head that English folk, meeting as +strangers, were rather apt to glare. We're most of us in such a funk, +you see, lest, if we treat a stranger with civility, he should turn out +not to be a duke." + +"Oh," cried Lady Blanchemain, with merriment, "you forget that I said +_decent_. I meant, of course, folk who _are_ dukes. We're all dukes--or +bagmen." + +The young man chuckled; but in a minute he pulled a long face, and made +big, ominous eyes. + +"I feel I ought to warn you," he said in a portentous voice, "that some +of us are mere marquises--of the house of Carabas." + +Lady Blanchemain, her whole expansive person, simmered with enjoyment. + +"Bless you," she cried, "those are the ducalest, for marquises--of the +house of Carabas--are men of dash and spirit, born to bear everything +before them, and to marry the King's daughter." + +With that, she had a moment of abstraction. Again, her eyeglass up, she +glanced round the walls--hung, in this octagonal room, with dim-coloured +portraits of women, all in wonderful toilets, with wonderful hair and +head-gear, all wonderfully young and pleased with things, and all four +centuries dead. They caused her a little feeling of uneasiness, they +were so dead and silent, and yet somehow, in their fixed postures, with +their unblinking eyes, their unvarying smiles, so--as it seemed to +her--so watchful, so intent; and it was a relief to turn from them to +the window, to the picture framed by the window of warm, breathing, +heedless nature. But all the while, in her interior mind, she was busy +with the man before her. "He looks," she considered, "tall as he is, and +with his radiant blondeur--with the gold in his hair and beard, and the +sea-blue in his eyes--he looks like a hero out of some old Norse saga. +He looks like-what's his name?--like Odin. I must really compel him to +explain himself." + +It very well may be, meantime, that he was reciprocally busy with her, +taking her in, admiring her, this big, jolly, comely, high-mannered old +woman, all in soft silks and drooping laces, who had driven into his +solitude from Heaven knew where, and was quite unquestionably Someone, +Heaven knew who. + +She had a moment of abstraction; but now, emerging from it, she used her +eyeglass as a pointer, and indicatively swept the circle of painted +eavesdroppers. + +"They make one feel like their grandmother, their youth is so flagrant," +she sighed, "these grandmothers of the Quattrocento. Ah, well, we can +only be old once, and we should take advantage of the privileges of age +while we have 'em. Old people, I am thankful to say, are allowed, +amongst other things, to be inquisitive. I'm brazenly so. Now, if one of +our common acquaintances were at hand--for with England still mercifully +small, we're sure to possess a dozen, you and I--what do you think is +the question I should ask him?--I should ask him," she avowed, with a +pretty effect of hesitation, and a smile that went as an advance-guard +to disarm resentment, "to tell me who you are, and all about you--and to +introduce you to me." + +"Oh," cried the young man, laughing. He laughed for a second or two. In +the end, pleasantly, with a bow, "My name," he said, "if you can +possibly care to know, is Blanchemain." + +His visitor caught her breath. She sat up straight, and gazed hard at +him. + +"Blanchemain?" she gasped. + + + + +VII + + +There were, to be sure, reasons and to spare why the name should make +her sit up straight. Her curiosity had turned the key, and lo, with a +click, here was an entirely changed, immensely complicated, intensely +poignant situation. But our excitable old friend was an Englishwoman: +dissimulation would be her second nature; you could trust her to pull +the wool over your eyes with a fleet and practised hand. Instinctively, +furthermore, she would seek to extract from such a situation all the fun +it promised. Taken off her guard, for the span of ten heart-beats she +sat up straight and stared; but with the eleventh her attitude relaxed. +She had regained her outward nonchalance, and resolved upon her system +of fence. + +"Ah," she said, on a tone judiciously compounded of feminine artlessness +and of forthright British candour, and with a play of the eyebrows that +attributed her momentary suscitation to the workings of memory, "of +course--Blanchemain. The Sussex Blanchemains. I expect there's only one +family of the name?" + +"I've never heard of another," assented the young man. + +"The Ventmere Blanchemains," she pursued pensively. "Lord Blanchemain of +Ventmere is your titled head?" + +"Exactly," said he. + +"I knew the late Lord Blanchemain--I knew him fairly well," she +mentioned, always with a certain pensiveness. + +"Oh--?" said he, politely interested. + +"Yes," said she. "But I've never met his successor. The two were not, I +believe, on speaking terms. Of course,"--and her forthright British +candour carried her trippingly over the delicate ground,--"it's common +knowledge that the family is divided against itself--hostile branches--a +Protestant branch and a Catholic. The present lord, if I've got it +right, is a Catholic, and the late lord's distant cousin?" + +"You've got it quite right," the young man assured her, with a nod, and +a little laugh. "They had the same great-great-grandfather. The last +few lords have been Protestants, but in our branch the family have never +forsaken the old religion." + +"I know," said she. "And wasn't it--I've heard the story, but I'm a bit +hazy about it--wasn't it owing to your--is 'recusancy' the word?--that +you lost the title? Wasn't there some sort of sharp practice at your +expense in the last century?" + +The young man had another little laugh. + +"Oh, nothing," he answered, "that wasn't very much the fashion. The late +lord's great-grandfather denounced his elder brother as a Papist and a +Jacobite--nothing more than that. It was after the 'Forty-five. So the +cadet took the title and estates. But with the death of the late lord, a +dozen years or so ago, the younger line became extinct, and the title +reverted." + +"I see," said my lady. She knitted her eyebrows, computing. After an +instant, "General Blanchemain," she resumed, "as the present lord was +called for the best part of his life, is a bachelor. You will be one of +his nephews?" She raised her eyes inquiringly. + +"The son of his brother Philip," said the young man. + +Lady Blanchemain sat up straight again. + +"But then," she cried, forgetting to conceal her perturbation, "then +you're the heir. Philip Blanchemain had but one son, and was the +General's immediate junior. You're John Blanchemain--John Francis Joseph +Mary. You're the heir." + +The young man smiled--at her eagerness, perhaps. + +"The heir-presumptive--I suppose I am," he said. + +Lady Blanchemain leaned back and gently tittered. + +"See how I know my Peerage!" she exclaimed. Then, looking grave, "You're +heir to an uncommonly good old title," she informed him. + +"I hope it may be many a long day before I'm anything else," said he. + +"Your uncle is an old man," she suggestively threw out. + +"Oh, not so very old," he submitted. "Only seventy, or thereabouts, and +younger in many respects than I am. I hope he'll live for ever." + +"Hum!" said she, and appeared to fall a-musing. Absently, as it seemed, +and slowly, she was pulling off her gloves. + +"Feuds in families," she said, in a minute, "are bad things. Why don't +you make it up?" + +The young man waved his hand, a pantomimic _non-possumus_. + +"There's no one left to make it up with--the others are all dead." + +"Oh?" she wondered, her eyebrows elevated, whilst automatically her +fingers continued to operate upon her gloves. "I thought the last lord +left a widow. I seem to have heard of a _Lady_ Blanchemain somewhere." + +The young man gave still another of his little laughs. + +"Linda Lady Blanchemain?" he said. "Yes, one hears a lot of her. A +highly original character, by all accounts. One hears of her +everywhere." + +Linda Lady Blanchemain's lip began to quiver; but she got it under +control. + +"Well?" she questioned--eyes fixing his, and brimming with a kind of +humorous defiance, as if to say, "Think me an impertinent old meddler +if you will, and do your worst,"--"Why don't you make it up with _her_?" + +But he didn't seem to mind the meddling in the least. He stood at ease, +and plausibly put his case. + +"Why don't I? Or why doesn't my uncle? My uncle is a temperamental +conservative, a devotee to his traditions--the sort of man who will +never do anything that hasn't been the constant habit of his forebears. +He would no more dream of healing a well-established family feud than of +selling the family plate. And I--well, surely, it would never be for me +to make the advances." + +"No, you're right," acknowledged Lady Blanchemain. "The advances should +come from her. But people have such a fatal way--even without being +temperamental conservatives--of leaving things as they find them. +Besides, never having seen you, she couldn't know how nice you are. All +the same, I'll confess, if you insist upon it, that she ought to be +ashamed of herself. Come--let's make it up." + +She rose, a great soft glowing vision of benignancy, and held out her +hand, now gloveless, her pretty little smooth plump right hand, with +its twinkling rings. + +"Oh!" cried the astonished young man, the astonished, amused, moved, +wondering, and entirely won young man, his sea-blue eyes wide open, and +a hundred lights of pleasure and surprise dancing in them. + +The benignant vision floated towards him, and he took the little white +hand in his long lean brown one. + + + + +VIII + + +When the first stress of their emotion had in some degree spent itself +Lady Blanchemain, returning to her place on the ottoman, bade John sit +down beside her. + +"Now," she said, genially imperative, whilst all manner of kindly and +admiring interest shone in her face, "there are exactly nine million and +ninety-nine questions that you'll be obliged to answer before I've done +with you. But to begin, you must clear up at once a mystery that's been +troubling me ever since you dashed to my rescue at the gate. What in the +name of Reason is the cause of your residence in this ultramundane +stronghold?" + +John--convict me of damnable iteration if you must: Heaven has sent me a +laughing hero--John laughed. + +"Oh," he said, "there are several causes--there are exactly nine million +and ninety-eight." + +"Name," commanded Lady Blanchemain, "the first and the last." + +"Well," obeyed he, pondering, "I should think the first, the last, and +perhaps the chief intermediate, would be--the whole blessed thing." And +his arm described a circle which comprehended the castle and all within +it, and the countryside without. + +"It has a pleasant site, I'll not deny," said Lady Blanchemain. "But +don't you find it a trifle far away? And a bit up-hill? I'm staying at +the Victoria at Roccadoro, and it took me an hour and a half to drive +here." + +"But since," said John, with a flattering glance, "since you _are_ here, +I have no further reason to deplore its farawayness. So few places are +far away, in these times and climes," he added, on a note of melancholy, +as one to whom all climes and times were known. + +"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain, matter-of-fact. "Have you been here long?" + +"Let me see," John answered. "To-day is the 23rd of April. I arrived +here--I offer the fact for what it may be worth--on the Feast of All +Fools." + +"_Absit omen_," cried she. "And you intend to stay?" + +"Oh, I'm at least wise enough not to fetter myself with intentions," +answered John. + +She looked about, calculating, estimating. + +"I suppose it costs you the very eyes of your head?" she asked. + +John giggled. + +"Guess what it costs--I give it to you in a thousand." + +She continued her survey, brought it to a period. + +"A billion a week," she said, with finality. John exulted. + +"It costs me," he told her, "six francs fifty a day--wine included." + +"What!" cried she, mistrusting her ears. + +"Yes," said he. + +"Fudge!" said she, not to be caught with chaff. + +"It sounds like a traveller's tale, I know; but that's so often the +bother with the truth," said he. "Truth is under no obligation to be +_vraisemblable_. I'm here _en pension_." + +Lady Blanchemain sniffed. + +"Does the Prince of Zelt-Neuminster take in boarders?" she inquired, +her nose in the air. + +"Not exactly," said John. "But the Parroco of Sant' Alessina does. I +board at the presbytery." + +"Oh," said Lady Blanchemain, beginning to see light, while her eyebrows +went up, went down. "You board at the presbytery?" + +"For six francs fifty a day--wine included," chuckled John. + +"Wine, and apparently the unhindered enjoyment of--the whole blessed +thing," supplemented she, with a reminder of his comprehensive gesture. + +"Yes--the run of the house and garden, the freedom of the hills and +valley." + +"I understand," she said, and was mute for a space, readjusting her +impressions. "I had supposed," she went on at last, "from the handsome +way in which you snubbed that creature in shoulder-knots, and proceeded +to do the honours of the place, that you were little less than its +proprietor." + +"Well, and so I could almost feel I am," laughed John. "I'm alone +here--there's none my sway to dispute. And as for the creature in +shoulder-knots, what becomes of the rights of man or the bases of civil +society, if you can't snub a creature whom you regularly tip? For five +francs a week the creature in shoulder-knots cleans my boots +(indifferent well), brushes my clothes, runs my errands (indifferent +slow),--and swallows my snubs as if they were polenta." + +"And tries to shoo intrusive trippers from your threshold--and gets an +extra plateful for his pains," laughed the lady. "Where," she asked, +"does the Prince of Zelt-Neuminster keep himself?" + +"In Vienna, I believe. Anyhow, at a respectful distance. The parroco, +who is also his sort of intendant, tells me he practically never comes +to Sant' Alessina." + +"Good easy man," quoth she. "Yes, I certainly supposed you were his +tenant-in-fee, at the least. You have an air." And her bob of the head +complimented him upon it. + +"Oh, we Marquises of Carabas!" cried John, with a flourish. + +She regarded him doubtfully. + +"Wouldn't you find yourself in a slightly difficult position, if the +Prince or his family should suddenly turn up?" she suggested. + +"I? Why?" asked John, his blue eyes blank. + +"A young man boarding with the parroco for six francs a day--" she +began. + +"Six francs fifty, please," he gently interposed. + +"Make it seven if you like," her ladyship largely conceded. "Wouldn't +your position be slightly false? Would they quite realize who you were?" + +"What could that possibly matter? wondered John, eyes blanker still. + +"I could conceive occasions in which it might matter furiously," said +she. "Foreigners can't with half an eye distinguish amongst us, as we +ourselves can; and Austrians have such oddly exalted notions. You +wouldn't like to be mistaken for Mr. Snooks?" + +"I don't know," John reflected, vistas opening before him. "It might be +rather a lark." + +"Whrrr!" said Lady Blanchemain, fanning herself with her +pocket-handkerchief. Then she eyed him suspiciously. "You're hiding the +nine million other causes up your sleeve. It isn't merely the 'whole +blessed thing' that's keeping an eaglet of your feather alone in an +improbable nest like this--it's some one particular thing. In my time," +she sighed, "it would have been a woman." + +"And no wonder," riposted John, with a flowery bow. + +"You're very good--but you confuse the issue," said she. "In my time the +world was young and romantic. In this age of prose and prudence--_is_ it +a woman?" + +"The world is still, is always, young and romantic," said John, +sententious. "I can't admit that an age of prose and prudence is +possible. The poetry of earth is never dead, and no more is its folly. +The world is always romantic, if you have the three gifts needful to +make it so." + +"_Is_ it a woman?" repeated Lady Blanchemain. + +"And the three gifts are," said he, "Faith, and the sense of Beauty, and +the sense of Humour." + +"And I should have thought, an attractive member of the opposite sex," +said she. "_Is_ it a woman?" + +"Well," he at last replied, appearing to take counsel with himself, "I +don't know why I should forbid myself the relief of owning up to you +that in a sense it is." + +"Hurray!" cried she, moving in her seat, agog, as one who scented her +pet diversion. "A love affair! I'll be your confidante. Tell me all +about it." + +"Yes, in a sense, a love affair," he confessed. + +"Good--excellent," she approved. "But--but what do you mean by 'in a +sense'?" + +"Ah," said he, darkly nodding, "I mean whole worlds by that." + +"I don't understand," said she, her face prepared to fall. + +"It isn't one woman--it's a score, a century, of the dear things," he +announced. + +Her face fell. "Oh--?" she faltered. + +"It's a love affair with a type," he explained. + +She frowned upon him. "A love affair with a type--?" + +"Yes," said he. + +She shook her head. "I give you up. In one breath you speak like a +Mohammedan, in the next like--I don't know what." + +"With these," said John, his band stretched towards the wall. "With the +type of the Quattrocento." + +He got upon his feet, and moved from picture to picture; and a fire, +half indeed of mischief; but half it may be of real enthusiasm, +glimmered in his eyes. + +"With these lost ladies of old years; these soft-coloured shadows, that +were once rosy flesh; these proud, humble, innocent, subtle, brave, shy, +pious, pleasure-loving women of the long ago. With them; with their hair +and eyes and jewels, their tip-tilted, scornful, witty little noses, +their 'throats so round and lips so red,' their splendid raiment; with +their mirth, pathos, passion, kindness and cruelty, their infinite +variety, their undying youth. Ah, the pity of it! Their undying +youth--and they so irrevocably dead. Peace be to their souls! See," he +suddenly declaimed, laughing, "how the sun, the very sun in heaven, is +contending with me, as to which of us shall do them the greater homage, +the sun that once looked on their living forms, and remembers--see how +he lights memorial lamps about them," for the sun, reflected from the +polished floor, threw a sheen upon the ancient canvases, and burned +bright in the bosses of the frames. "Give me these," he wound up, "a +book or two, and a jug of the parroco's 'included wine'--my wilderness +is paradise enow." + +Lady Blanchemain's eyes, as she listened, had become deep wells of +disappointment, then gushing fountains of reproach. + +"Oh, you villain!" she groaned, when he had ended, shaking her pretty +fist. "So to have raised my expectations, and so to dash them!--Do you +_really_ mean," still clinging to a shred of hope, she pleaded, "really, +really mean that there's no--no actual woman?" + +"I'm sorry," said John, "but I'm afraid I really, really do." + +"And you're not--not really in love with any one?" + +"No--not really," he said, with a mien that feigned contrition. + +"But at your age--how old are you?" she broke off to demand. + +"Somewhere between twenty-nine and thirty, I believe," he laughed. + +"And in such a romantic environment, and not on account of a woman! It's +downright unnatural," she declared. "It's flat treason against the +kingly state of youth." + +"I'm awfully sorry," said John. "Yet, after all, what's the good of +repining? Nothing could happen even if there were a woman." + +Lady Blanchemain looked alarmed. + +"Nothing could happen? What do you mean? You're not _married_? If you +are, it must be secretly, for you're put down as single in Burke." + +"To the best of my knowledge," John reassured her, laughing, "Burke is +right. And I prayerfully trust he may never have occasion to revise his +statement." + +"For mercy's sake," cried she, "don't tell me you're a woman-hater!" + +"That's just the point," said he. "I'm an adorer of the sex." + +"Well, then?" questioned she, at a loss. "How can you 'prayerfully' wish +to remain a bachelor? Besides, aren't you heir to a peerage? What of the +succession?" + +"That's just the point," he perversely argued. "And you know there are +plenty of cousins." + +"Just the point! just the point!" fretted Lady Blanchemain. "What's just +the point? Just the point that you aren't a woman-hater?--just the point +that you're heir to a peerage? You talk like Tom o' Bedlam." + +"Well, you see," expounded John, unruffled, "as an adorer of the sex, +and heir to a peerage, I shouldn't want to marry a woman unless I could +support her in what they call a manner becoming her rank--and I +couldn't." + +"Couldn't?" the lady scoffed. "I should like to know why not?" + +"I'm too--if you will allow me to clothe my thought in somewhat homely +language--too beastly poor." + +"_You--poor?_" ejaculated Lady Blanchemain, falling back. + +"Ay--but honest," asseverated John, to calm her fears. + +She couldn't help smiling, though she resolutely frowned. + +"Be serious," she enjoined him. "Doesn't your uncle make you a suitable +allowance?" + +"I should deceive you," answered John, "if I said he made me an +_un_suitable one. He makes me, to put it in round numbers, exactly no +allowance whatsoever." + +"The--old--curmudgeon!" cried Lady Blanchemain, astounded, and fiercely +scanning her words. + +"No," returned John, soothingly, "he isn't a curmudgeon. But he's a +very peculiar man. He's a Spartan, and he lacks imagination. It has +simply never entered his head that I could _need_ an allowance. And, if +you come to that, I can't say that I positively do. I have a tiny +patrimony--threepence a week, or so--enough for my humble necessities, +though scarcely perhaps enough to support the state of a future peeress. +No, my uncle isn't a curmudgeon; he's a very fine old boy, of whom I'm +immensely proud, and though I've yet to see the colour of his money, +we're quite the best of friends. At any rate, you'll agree that it would +be the deuce to pay if I were to fall in love. + +"Ffff," breathed Lady Blanchemain, fanning. "What did I say of an age of +prose and prudence? Yet you don't _look_ cold-blooded. What does money +matter? _Dominus providebit_. Go read Browning. What's 'the true end, +sole and single' that we're here for? Besides, have you never heard that +there are such things as marriageable heiresses in the world?" + +"Oh, yes, I've heard that," John cheerfully assented. "But don't they +almost always squint or something? I've heard, too, that there are such +things as tufted fortune-hunters, but theirs is a career that requires a +special vocation, and I'm afraid I haven't got it." + +"Then you're no true Marquis of Carabas," the lady took him smartly up. + +"You've found me out--I'm only a _faux-marquis_," he laughed. + +"Thrrr!" breathed Lady Blanchemain, and for a little while appeared lost +in thought. By-and-by she got up and went to the window, and stood +looking out. "I never saw a lovelier landscape," she said, musingly. +"With the grey hills, and the snow-peaks, and the brilliant sky, with +the golden light and the purple shadows, and the cypresses and olives, +with the river gleaming below there amongst the peach-blossoms, +and--isn't that a blackcap singing in the mimosa? It only needs a pair +of lovers to be perfect--it _cries_ for a pair of lovers. And instead of +them, I find--what? A hermit and celibate. Look here. Make a clean +breast of it. _Are_ you cold-blooded?" she asked from over her shoulder. + +John merely giggled. + +"It would serve you right," said she, truculently, "if some one were to +rub your eyes with love-in-idleness, to make you dote upon the next +live creature that you see." + +John merely chuckled. + +"I'll tell you what," she proceeded, "I'm a bit of an old witch, and +I'll risk a soothword. As there isn't already a woman, there'll shortly +be one--my thumbs prick. The stage is set, the scene is too appropriate, +the play's inevitable. It was never in the will of Providence that a +youth of your complexion should pass the springtime in a spot all +teeming with romance like this, and miss a love adventure. A castle in a +garden, a flowering valley, and the Italian sky--the Italian sun and +moon! Your portraits of these smiling dead women too, if you like, to +keep your imagination working. And blackcaps singing in the mimosa. No, +no. The lady of the piece is waiting in the wings--my thumbs prick. Give +her but the least excuse, she'll enter, and ... Good Heavens, my +prophetic soul!" she suddenly, with a sort of catch in her throat, broke +off. + +She turned and faced him, cheeks flushed, eyes flashing. + +"Oh, you hypocrite! You monstrous fibber!" she cried, on a tone of +jubilation, looking daggers. + +"Why? What's up? What's the matter?" asked John, at fault. + +"How _could_ you have humbugged me so?" she wailed, in delight, +reverting to the window. "Anyhow, she's charming. She's made for the +part. I couldn't pray for a more promising heroine." + +"She? Who?" asked he, crossing to her side. + +"Who? Fie, you slyboots!" she crowed with glee. + +"Ah, I see," said John. + +For, below them, in the garden, just beyond the mimosa (all powdered +with fresh gold) where the blackcap was singing, stood a woman. + + + + +IX + + +She stood in the path, beside a sun-dial, from which she appeared to be +taking the time of day, a crumbling ancient thing of grey stone, green +and brown with mosses; and she was smiling pleasantly to herself the +while, all unaware of the couple who watched her from above. She wore a +light-coloured garden-frock, and was bare-headed, as one belonging to +the place. She was young--two or three and twenty, by her aspect: young, +slender, of an excellent height, and, I hope you would have agreed, a +beautiful countenance. She studied the sun-dial, and smiled; and what +with her dark eyes and softly chiselled features, the pale rose in her +cheeks and the deeper rose of her mouth, with her hair too, almost black +in shadow, but where the sun touched it turning to sombre red,--yes, I +think you would have agreed that she was beautiful. Lady Blanchemain, at +any rate, found her so. + +"She's quite lovely," she declared. "Her face is exquisite--so +sensitive, so spiritual; so distinguished, so aristocratic. And so +_clever_," she added, after a suspension. + +"Mm!" said John, his forehead wrinkled, as if something were puzzling +him. + +"She has a figure--she holds herself well," said Lady Blanchemain. + +"Mm!" said John. + +"I suppose," said she, "you're too much a mere man to be able to +appreciate her frock? It's the work of a dressmaker who knows her +business. And that lilac muslin (that's so fashionable now) really does, +in the open air, with the country for background, show to immense +advantage. Come--out with it. Tell me all about her. Who _is_ she?" + +"That's just what I'm up a tree to think," said John. "I can't imagine. +How long has she been there? From what direction did she come?" + +"Don't try to hoodwink me any longer," remonstrated the lady, +unbelieving. + +"I've never in my life set eyes on her before," he solemnly averred. + +She scrutinized him sharply. + +"Hand on heart?" she doubted. + +And he, supporting her scrutiny without flinching, answered, "Hand on +heart." + +"Well, then," concluded she, with a laugh, "it looks as if I were even +more of an old witch than I boasted--and my thumbs pricked to some +purpose. Here's the lady of the piece already arrived. There, she's +going away. How well she walks! Have after her--have after her quick, +and begin your courtship." + +The smiling young woman, her lilac dress softly bright in the sun, was +moving slowly down the garden path, towards the cloisters; and now she +entered them, and disappeared. But John, instead of "having after her," +remained at his counsellor's side, and watched. + +"She came from that low doorway, beyond there at the right, where the +two cypresses are; and she came at the very climax of my vaticination," +said her ladyship. "Without a hat, you'll hardly dispute it's probable +she's staying in the house." + +"No--it certainly would seem so," said John. "I'm all up a tree." + +"The garden looks rather dreary and empty, now that she has left, +doesn't it?" she asked. "Yet it looked jolly enough before her advent. +And see--the lizards (there are four of them, aren't there?) that +whisked away from the dial at her approach, have come back. Well, _your_ +work's cut out. I suppose it wouldn't be possible for you to give a poor +woman a dish of tea?" + +"I was on the very point of proposing it," said John. "May I conduct you +to my quarters?" + + + + +PART SECOND + + + + +I + + +Rather early next morning John was walking among the olives. He had gone +(straight from his bed, and in perhaps the least considered of toilets: +an old frieze ulster, ornamented with big buttons of mother-of-pearl, a +pair of Turkish slippers, a bathing-towel over his shoulder, and for +head-covering just his uncombed native thatch) he had gone for a swim, +some half a mile upstream, to a place he knew where the Rampio--the +madcap Rampio, all shallows and rapids--rests for a moment in a pool, +wide and deep, translucent, inviting, and, as you perceive when you have +made your plunge, of a most assertive chill. Now he was on his leisurely +way home, to the presbytery and what passed there for breakfast. + +The hill-side rose from the river's bank in a series of irregular +terraces, upheld by rough stone walls. The gnarled old trees bent +towards each other and away like dwarfs and crook-backs dancing a +fantastic minuet; and in the grass beneath them, where the sun shot his +fiery darts and cast his net of shadows, Chloris had scattered +innumerable wildflowers: hyacinths, the colour of the sky; violets, that +threaded the air for yards about with their sentiment-provoking +fragrance; tulips, red and yellow; sometimes a tall, imperial iris; here +and there little white nodding companies of jonquils. Here and there, +too, the dusty-green reaches were pointed by the dark spire of a +cypress, alone, in a kind of glooming isolation; here and there a +blossoming peach or almond, gaily pink, sent an inexpressible little +thrill of gladness to one's heart. The air was sweetened by many +incense-breathing things besides the violets,--by moss and bark, the +dew-laden grass, the moist brown earth; and it was quick with music: +bees droned, leaves whispered, birds called, sang, gossiped, disputed, +and the Rampio played a crystal accompaniment. + +John swung onwards at ease, while lizards, with tails that seemed +extravagantly long, fled from before his feet, terrible to them, no +doubt, as an army with banners, for his Turkish slippers, though not in +their pristine youth, were of scarlet leather embroidered in a rich +device with gold. And presently (an experience unusual at that hour in +the olive wood) he became aware of a human voice. + +"Ohé! My good men, there! Will you be so kind as to gather me some of +those anemones? Here is a lira for your pains." + +It was a feminine voice; it was youthful and melodious; it was finished, +polished, delicately modulated. And its inflection was at once confident +and gracious,--clearly the speaker took it for granted that she would +receive attention, and she implied her thanks abundantly beforehand. It +was a voice that evoked in the imagination a charming picture of fresh, +young, confident, and gracious womanhood. + +"Hello!" said John to himself. "Who is there in this part of the world +with a voice like that?" + +And he felt it would not be surprising if on glancing round he should +behold--as, in fact, he did--the stranger of yesterday, the Unknown of +the garden. + + + + +II + + +She stood on one of the higher terraces, (a very charming picture +indeed, bright and erect, in the warm shadow of the olives), and was +calling down to a couple of peasants at work on the other side of the +stream. Between the thumb and forefinger of an ungloved fair right hand, +she held up a silver lira. + +Anemones, said she! Near to where the men were working, by the river's +brink, there was a space of level ground, perhaps a hundred feet long, +and tapering from half that breadth to a point. And this was simply +crimson and purple with a countless host of anemones. + +She called to the men, and one seeing and hearing her would have thought +they must abandon everything, and spring to do her bidding. But they +didn't. Pausing only long enough to give her a phlegmatic stare, as if +in doubt whether conceivably she could have the impertinence to be +addressing _them_, and vouchsafing not a word, each went calmly on with +his employment;--very, very calmly, _piano_, _piano_, gently, languidly, +filling small baskets with fallen olives, and emptying them upon +outspread canvas sheets. There are, and more's the pity, two types of +Italian peasant. There's the old type, which we knew in our youth, and +happily it still survives in some numbers,--the peasant who, for all his +rags and tatters, has manners that will often put one's own to shame, +and, with a _simpatia_ like second-sight, is before one's wishes, in his +eagerness to serve and please. And there is the new type, which we know +to our disgust, and unhappily it multiplies like vermin,--the peasant +who has lent his ear to the social democrat, and, his heart envenomed by +class hatred, meets your civility with black glances and the behaviour +of a churl in the sulks. + +So, though her voice was sweet to hear, and though, standing there in +the warm penumbra of the olive orchard, tall and erect and graceful, in +her bright frock, she made a charming picture, and though she offered a +silver lira as a prize, the men merely stared at her churlishly, and +went on with their work--languidly, sluggishly, as men who deemed the +necessity to work an outrage, and weren't going to condone it by working +with anything like a will. + +Now, John Blanchemain, as I have previously mentioned, was an +unselfconscious sort of fellow. In his unselfconsciousness, forgetting +several trifles that might properly have weighed with him, (forgetting +the tarnished gorgeousness of his Turkish slippers for example, and his +towzled head, and the bathing-towel that flowed like a piece of classic +drapery from his shoulder), obeying impulse and instinct, he flung +himself into the breach. + +"Brutes," he muttered between his teeth. Then, in his easiest +man-of-the-worldy accents, "If you can wait two minutes," he called +aloud to her. And therewith he went scrambling down the terraces and +picked his way from stone to stone across the shallows, to the field of +anemones, where their satiny petals, like crisping wavelets, all +a-ripple in the moving air, shimmered with constantly changing lights. +And in a twinkling he had gathered a great armful, and was clambering +back. + +"I beg of you," he said, in his abrupt fashion, holding them out to +her, and slightly bowing, with that nothing-doubting assurance of his, +while his blue eyes (to put her entirely at her ease) smiled, frank and +friendly and serene, into her dark ones. + +But hers seemed troubled. She looked at the flowers, she looked at John, +I think she even looked at her lira. Her eyes seemed undecided. + +"Do pray take them," said he, still smiling, still frank and assured, +but as if a little puzzled, a little amused, by her hesitation, and more +airily a man-of-the-world than ever, his tone one of high detachment, to +spare her any possible feeling of personal obligation, and to place his +performance in the light of a matter of course,--as if indeed he had +done nothing more than pick up and return, say, a handkerchief she might +have dropped. "You were right," he owned to his thought of Lady +Blanchemain; "she is beautiful." Here, at close quarters with her, one's +perception of her beauty became acute,--here, under the grey old trees, +in the leafy dimness, alone with her, at two paces from her, where the +birds sang and the violets gave forth their fragrant breath. He saw that +her eyes were beautiful (soft and deep and luminous, despite their +trouble), and her low white brow, and the dark masses of her hair, under +her garden-hat, and the rose in her cheeks, and the red-rose of her +mouth. And he saw and felt the beauty and the vitality of her strong +young body. + +But meanwhile she had stretched forth, rather timidly, that ungloved +fair hand of hers, and taken the flowers. + +"You are very good, I am sure. Thank you very much," she said, rather +faintly, with a grave little inclination of the head. + +John, always with magnificent assurance, put up his hand, to doff a +man-of-the-worldy hat, and bow himself away;--and it encountered his +bare locks, bare, and still wet from recent ducking. Whereupon, +suddenly, the trifles he had forgotten were remembered, and at last (in +the formula of the criminologist) "he realized his position:" hatless +and uncombed, with the bathing-towel slung from his shoulder, in that +weather-beaten old frieze coat with its ridiculous buttons, in those +awful Turkish slippers,--offering, with his grand manner, flowers to a +woman he didn't know, and smiling, to put her at her ease! His pink +face burned to a livelier pink, his ears went hot, his heart went cold. +The bow he finally accomplished was the blighted bud of the bow he had +projected; and, as the earth didn't, of its charity, open and engulf +him, he hastened as best he could, and with a painful sense of slinking, +to remove his crestfallen person from her range of view. + +When these unselfconscious fellows are startled into selfconsciousness, +I fancy they take it hard. I don't know how long it was before John had +done heaping silent curses, silent but savage, upon himself; his luck, +his "beastly officiousness," upon the whole afflicting incident: curses +that he couldn't help diversifying now and then with a catch of +splenetic laughter, as a vision of the figure he had cut would +recurrently + + "--_flash upon that inward eye + Which is the bliss of solitude_." + +"Oh, you _ape!_" he groaned. "Rigged out like Pudding Jack, and, with +your ineffable simagrees, offering a strange woman flowers!" + +If _she_ had only laughed, had only smiled, it wouldn't have been so +bad, it would have shown that she understood. "But through it all," he +writhed to recollect, "she was as solemn as a mourner. I suppose she was +shocked--perhaps she was frightened--very likely she took me for a +tramp. I wonder she didn't crown my beatitude by giving me her lira. +These foreigners do so lack certain discernments." + +And with that rather an odd detail came back to him. _Was_ she a +foreigner? For it came vaguely back that he, impulsive and unthinking, +had spoken to her throughout in English. "And anyhow,"--this came +distinctly back,--"it was certainly in English that she thanked me." + + + + +III + + +What passed for breakfast at the presbytery was the usual Continental +evasion of that repast,--bread and coffee, despatched in your apartment. +But at noon the household met to dine. + +The dining-room, on the ground floor, long and low, with a vaulted +ceiling, whitewashed, and a pavement of worn red tiles, was a clean, +bare room, that (pervaded by a curious, dry, not unpleasant odour) +seemed actually to smell of bareness, as well as of cleanliness. There +was a table, there was a dresser, there were a few unpainted deal +chairs, rush-bottomed (exactly like the chairs in the church, in all +Italian churches), and there was absolutely nothing else, save a great +black and white Crucifix attached to the wall. But, by way of +compensation, its windows opened southwards, flooding it with sunshine, +and commanding the wonderful perspective of the valley,--the blue-grey +hills, the snow-peaks, the blossoming low-lands, and the far-away +opalescence that you knew to be the lake. + +At noon the parroco, his niece Annunziata, and his boarder met to dine. + +The parroco was a short, stout, florid, black-haired, hawk-nosed, +fierce-looking, still youngish man, if five-and-forty may be reckoned +youngish, with a pair of thin lips and powerful jaws which, for purposes +of speech, he never opened if he could help it. Never,--till Sunday +came: when, mounting the pulpit, he opened them indeed, and his pent-up +utterance burst forth in a perfect torrent of a sermon, a wild gush of +words, shouted at the topmost stress of a remarkably lusty voice, +arresting for a minute or two by reason of the sheer physical energy it +represented, and then for a long half hour exquisitely tiresome. But on +week-days he maintained a prodigious silence, and this (as, though +fierce-looking, he wasn't in the least really fierce) it would often be +John's malicious study to tempt him to break. Besides, to-day, John was +honestly concerned with the pursuit of knowledge. + +Accordingly, grace being said, "You never told me," he began, assuming a +mien of intelligent interest, "that the castle was haunted." He looked +at the Napoleonic profile of Don Ambrogio, but from the tail of his eye +he kept a watch as well upon Annunziata, and he saw that that wise +little maiden became attentive. + +"No," said Don Ambrogio, between two spoonfuls of soup. + +"You will conceive my astonishment, then," continued John, urbanely, +"when I discovered that it was." + +"It isn't," said Don Ambrogio. He gave himself diligently to the +business of the hour; his spoon flew backwards and forwards like a +shuttle. His napkin, tucked into his Roman collar, protected his bosom, +an effective white cuirass. + +"Oh? Not the castle?" questioned John. "Only the garden? And the olive +wood? True, on reflection, I've never seen it in the house." + +"Nothing here is haunted," said the parroco. He made a signal to +Annunziata, who rose to change the plates. Her big eyes were alight, her +serious little face was alert; but she would never dream of speaking in +the presence of her uncle. Marcella, the cook, brought in the inevitable +veal. + +"Oh, for that," insisted John, courteous but firm, "I beg your pardon. I +myself have seen it on two occasions; and, lest you should fancy it a +subjective illusion, I may tell you that it was yesterday seen +simultaneously by another." + +"It? It? What is _it_?" asked the parroco, his beaked and ensanguined +visage fiercer-looking than ever, as he fell upon the inevitable veal +with a somewhat dull carving-knife. + +"Ah," said John, "now you make me regret that I haven't a talent for +word-painting. It's the form of a woman, a young woman, tall, slender, +in some pale diaphanous garment, that appears here, appears there, +remaining distinctly visible for some minutes, and then disappears. No, +it isn't a subjective illusion. And it isn't, either," the unscrupulous +creature added, after a pause, raising his voice, and speaking with +emphasis, as if to repel the insinuation, while the darkness of +disenchantment swept the face of Annunziata, "it isn't, either, as some +imaginative people might too hastily conclude, a wraith, a phantom, an +insubstantial vapour. It's a real material form, that lives and +breathes, and even, if driven to it, speaks. There's nothing +supernatural about it,--unless, indeed, we take the transcendental view +that Nature herself is supernatural. I was wondering, Don Ambrogio, +whether, without violating a confidence, you could tell me whose form it +is?" + +"Nossignore," said Don Ambrogio, economizing his breath. + +"Ah," sighed John, nodding resignedly, "I feared as much. Divining that +I would institute inquiries, she has stolen a march upon me, and pledged +you to secrecy." + +"Nossignore," disavowed Don Ambrogio, raising eyes the sincerity of +which there could be no suspecting. + +John's face took on an expression of aggrieved surprise. + +"But then why won't you tell me?" + +"I cannot tell you because I do not know," said Don Ambrogio. + +"Oh, I see," said John. "And yet," he argued meditatively, "that's hard +to conceive. I don't for a moment mean that I doubt it--but it's hard to +conceive, like the atomic theory, and some of the articles of religion. +(I hear, by-the-by, that the scientists are throwing the atomic theory +over. Oh, fickle scientists! Oh, shifting sands of science!) Surely +there can't be many such tall slender forms, in diaphanous garments, +appearing and disappearing here and there in your parish? And one would +suppose, antecedently, that you'd know them all." + +"A peasant, a villager," said Don Ambrogio. + +"I put it to you as an observer of life," said John, "do peasants, do +villagers, wear diaphanous garments?" + +"A visitor, a sight-seer, from some place on the lake," said Don +Ambrogio. + +"I put it to you as a student of probabilities," said John, "would a +visitor, would a sight-seer, from some place on the lake, walk in the +garden of the castle without a hat? And would she appear at Sant' +Alessina on two days in succession?" + +But Don Ambrogio had finished his veal, and when he had finished his +veal he always left the table, first twice devoutly making the sign of +the Cross, and then with a bow to John, pronouncing the formula, "You +will graciously permit? My affairs call me. A thousand regrets." To-day +he slightly amplified that formula. "A thousand regrets," he said, "and +as many excuses for my inability to afford the information desired." + +After his departure, John turned to Annunziata, where, in her grey +cotton pinafore, her lips parted, her big eyes two lively points of +interrogation, she sat opposite to him, impatient to take up the theme. + +"Well, Mistress Wisdom!" he saluted her, smiling, and waving his hand. +"It is a good and wholesome thing for the young to witness the +discomfiture of the wicked. Your uncle retreats with flying colours. He +made, to be sure, a slender dinner, but that's his daily habit. If you +have tears to shed, shed them for me. I have made none at all." + +From points of interrogation, Annunziata's eyes changed to abysses of +wonder, and, big as they were, seemed to grow measurably bigger. + +"You have made no dinner?" she protested, in that strangely deep voice +of hers, with its effect of immense solemnity. + +"No, poor dear," said John, with pathos, "no, I have made no dinner." + +"But you have eaten a great deal," exclaimed Annunziata, frowning, +nonplussed. "And you are still eating." + +"Quite so," responded John, "though I think it's perhaps the merest +trifle unhandsome of you to fling it in my face. I have eaten a great +deal, and I am still eating. That is what I come to table for. In an +orderly life like mine there is a place for everything. I come to table +to eat, just as I go to bed to sleep and to church to say my prayers. +Would you have me sleep at table, eat in church, and say my prayers in +bed? Eating, however, has nothing to do with the case. I spoke of +dining--I said I had not dined. Now you shall be the judge. The question +is, can a Christian man dine twice on the same day? Answer me that." + +"Oh, no," answered Annunziata, her pale face very sober, and she +lengthened out her vowels in deprecation of the idea. "At least, it +would be gluttony if he did." + +"There you are," cried John. "And gluttony is not the undeadliest of the +Seven Deadly Sins. So, then, unless you would have me guilty of the +deadly sin of gluttony, you must agree that I have not dined. For I am +going to dine this evening. I am going to dine at the Hotel Victoria at +Roccadoro. I am going to dine with a lady. I am going to dine in all the +pomp and circumstance of my dress-suit, with a white tie and pumps. And +you yourself have said it, a Christian man may not, without guilt of +gluttony, dine twice on the same day. Therefore it is the height of +uncharitableness, it's a deliberate imputation of sin, to contend that I +have dined already." + +Annunziata followed his reasoning thoughtfully, and then gravely set him +right. + +"No," she said, with a drop of the eyelids and a quick little shake of +the head, "you do not understand. I will explain." Her eyes were wide +open again, and bright with zeal for his instruction. "You have dined +already. That is a certain truth, because this meal is dinner, and you +have eaten it. But to-night you are going to a dinner of ceremony--and +that is different. A dinner of ceremony does not count. It is the same +as a supper. My uncle himself once went to a dinner of ceremony at +Bergamo. No, it will not be gluttony for you to go to a dinner of +ceremony." + +"You speak like a little pope," said John, with enthusiasm. "In matters +of Faith and Morals I believe you are infallible. If you could guess the +load you have lifted from my conscience!" And he pushed a hearty ouf. + +"I am glad," said Annunziata. And then she attempted to hark back. +Curiosity again lighting her eyes, "This form that you have seen in the +garden--" she began. + +"Don't try to change the subject," John interrupted. "Let us cultivate +sequence in our ideas. What I am labouring with hammer and tongs to drag +from you is the exact date at which, somewhere between the years of our +salvation 1387 and 1455, you sat for your portrait to the beatified +painter Giovanni of Fiesole. Now, be a duck, and make a clean breast of +it." + +Annunziata's eyes clouded. A kind of scorn, a kind of pity, and a kind +of patient longanimity looked from them. + +"That is folly," she said, on the deepest of her deep notes, with a +succession of slow, reflective, side-wise nods. + +"Folly--?" repeated John, surprised, but bland. "Oh? Really?" + +"Sit for my portrait between the years 1387 and 1455,--how could I?" +scoffed Annunziata. + +"Why? What was to prevent you?" innocently questioned he. + +"_Ma come!_ I was not yet alive," said she. + +John looked at her with startled eyes, and spoke with animation. + +"Weren't you? Word of honour? Are you sure? How do you know? Have you +any definite recollection that you weren't? Can you clearly recall the +period in question, and then, reviewing it in detail, positively attest +that you were dead? For there's no third choice. A person must either be +alive or dead. And how, if you weren't alive, how ever did it come to +pass that there should be a perfect portrait of you from Giovanni's +brush in the Convent of Saint Mark at Florence? Your grave little white +face, and your wise little big eyes, and your eager little inquisitive +profile, and your curls flowing about your shoulders, and your pinafore +that's so like a peplum,--there they all are, precisely as I see them +before me now. And how was Giovanni able to do them if you weren't +alive? Perhaps you were pre-mortally alive in Heaven? Giovanni's cell, +as is well known, had a window that opened straight into Heaven. Perhaps +he saw you through that window, and painted you without your knowing it. +The name they give your portrait, by-the-by, would rather seem to +confirm that theory. What do you think they call it? They call it an _un +angiolo_. I've got a copy of it in England. When you come to London to +visit the Queen I'll show it to you." + +Annunziata gave her flowing curls a toss. + +"The form of the young woman which you have seen in the garden--" she +began anew. + +"Ah," said John, "observe how differently the big fish and the little +fish will be affected by the same bait." + +"When you first spoke of it," said she, "I thought you had seen a holy +apparition." + +"Yes," said he. "That was because I couched my communication in language +designedly misleading. I employed the terminology of ghost-lore. I said +'haunted' and 'appear,' and things like that. And you were very properly +and naturally deceived. I confidently expected that you would be. No, it +is not given to world-stained and world-worn old men like me to see holy +apparitions." + +"Old men? You are not an old man," said Annunziata. + +"Oh? Not? What am I, then?" said John. + +"You are a middle-aged man," said she. + +"Thank you, Golden Tongue," said he, with a bow. + +"And you are sure that it was merely a real person?" she pursued. + +"No," said he. "I am too profoundly imbued with the basic principles of +metaphysics ever to be sure of the objective reality of phenomena. I can +only swear to my impression. My impression was and is that it was merely +a real person." + +"Then," said Annunziata, with decision, "it must be the person who is +visiting the Signora Brandi." + +"The Signora Brandi?" repeated John. "What a nice name! Who is the +Signora Brandi?" + +"She is an Austrian," said Annunziata. + +"Oh--?" said John. + +"She lives in the pavilion beyond the clock-tower," said Annunziata. + +"I wasn't aware," said John, "that the pavilion beyond the clock-tower +was inhabited. I wasn't aware that any part of this castle was +inhabited, except the porter's lodge and the part that we inhabit. Why +have I been left till now in this state of outer darkness?" + +"The Signora Brandi has been absent," said Annunziata. "She has been in +her own country--in Austria. But the other day she returned. And with +her came a person to visit her. That is the person whose form you have +seen in the garden." + +"How do you know it wasn't the form of the Signora Brandi herself?" John +said. + +"Oh, no," said Annunziata. "The Signora Brandi is not young. She is old. +She is as old as--" + +"Methuselah? Sin? The hills?" suggested John, Annunziata having paused +to think. + +"No," said Annunziata, repudiating the suggestion with force. "No one is +so old as Methuselah. She is as old as--well, my uncle." + +"I see," said John. "Yes, it's all highly mysterious." + +"Mysterious?" said Annunziata. + +"I should think so," asseverated he. "Cryptic, enigmatic, esoteric to +the last degree. To begin with, how does the Signora Brandi, being an +Austrian, come by so characteristically un-Austrian a name? Is that +mysterious? And in the next place, why does an Austrian Signora Brandi +so far forget what is due to her nationality as to live, not in Austria, +but in Lombardy? And--as if that were not enough--at Castel Sant' +Alessina? And--as if that were not more than enough--in the pavilion +beyond the clock? Come, come! Mysterious!" + +"You are living in Lombardy, you are living at Castel Sant' Alessina, +yourself," said Annunziata. + +"I hardly think so," said John. "You can scarcely with precision call +this living--this is rather what purists call sojourning. But even were +it otherwise, there's all the difference in the world between my case +and the Signora Brandi's. I am middle-aged and foolish, but she is as +old as your uncle. Don't you see the mysterious significance of that +coincidence? And I haven't a young woman visiting me. _Who is the young +woman?_ Is that a mystery? My sweet child, we tread among mysteries. We +are at the centre of a coil of mysteries. _Who is the young woman?_ And +how--consider well upon this--how does it happen that the young woman +speaks English? Mysterious, indeed!" + +He rose, and bowed, with ceremony. + +"But we burn daylight. I must not detain you longer. Suffer me to +imprint upon your hand of velvet a token of my high regard." + +And taking Annunziata's frail little white hand, he bent low to kiss it; +and though his blue eyes were full of laughter, I think that behind the +laughter there was a great deal of real fondness and admiration. + + + + +IV + + +Half-way down the long straight avenue of ilex-trees that led from the +castle to the principal entrance of the garden, Annunziata, in her +pale-grey pinafore (that was so like a peplum), with her hair waving +about her shoulders, was curled up in the corner of a marble bench, +gazing with great intentness at a white flower that lay in her lap. It +was the warmest and the peacefullest moment of the afternoon. The sun +shone steadily; not a leaf stirred, not a shadow wavered; and the +intermittent piping of a blackbird, somewhere in the green world +overhead, seemed merely to give a kind of joyous rhythm to the silence. + +"Mercy upon me! Who ever saw so young a maiden so deeply lost in +thought!" exclaimed a voice. + +Annunziata, her reverie thus disturbed, raised a pair of questioning +eyes. + +A lady was standing before her, smiling down upon her, a lady in a frock +of lilac-coloured muslin, with a white sunshade. + +Annunziata, who, when she liked, could be the very pink of formal +politeness, rose, dropped a courtesy, and said: "Buon giorno, +Signorina." + +"Buon giorno," responded the smiling lady. "Buon giorno--and a penny for +your thoughts. But I'm sure you could never, never tell what it was you +were thinking so hard about." + +"Scusi," said Annunziata. "I was trying to think of the name of this +flower." She stooped and picked up the flower, which had slipped from +her lap to the ground when she rose. Then she held it at arm's length, +for inspection. + +"Oh?" asked the lady, smiling at the flower, as she had smiled at its +possessor. "Isn't it a narcissus?" + +"Yes," said Annunziata. "It is a narcissus. But I was trying to think of +its particular name." + +The lady looked as if she did not quite understand. "Its particular +name?" + +"It is a narcissus," explained Annunziata, "just as I am a girl. But it +must also have its particular name, just as I have mine. It is a soul +doing its Purgatory--a very good soul. If you are very good, then, when +you die, you do your Purgatory as a flower. But it is not such an easy +Purgatory--oh, no. For look: the flower is beautiful, but it is blind, +and cannot see; and it is fragrant, but it cannot smell; and people +admire it and praise it, but it is deaf, and cannot hear. It can only +wait, wait, wait, and think of God. But it is a short Purgatory. A few +days, and the flower will fade, and the soul will be released. I think +this flower's name is Cecilia, it is so white." + +The smile in the lady's eyes had brightened, as she listened; and now +she gave a little laugh, a little, light, musical, pleased and friendly +laugh. + +"Yes," she said. "I have sometimes wondered myself whether flowers might +not be the Purgatory of very good souls. I am glad to learn from you +that it is true. And yes, I should think that this flower's name was +sure to be Cecilia. Cecilia suits it perfectly. What, if one may ask, is +_your_ particular name?" + +"Mariannunziata," said its bearer, not to make two bites of a cherry. + +The lady's eyes grew round. "Dear me! A little short name like that?" +she marvelled. + +"No," returned Annunziata, with dignity. "My name in full is longer. My +name in full is Giuliana Falconieri Maria Annunziata Casalone. Is that +not long enough?" + +"Yes," the lady admitted, "that is just long enough." And she laughed +again. + +"What is _your_ name?" inquired Annunziata. + +"My name is Maria Dolores," the lady answered. "You see, we are both +named Maria." + +"Of course," said Annunziata. "All Christians should be named Maria." + +"So they should," agreed the lady. "Do you ever tell people how old you +are?" + +"Yes," said Annunziata, "if they wish to know. Why not?" + +The smile in the lady's eyes shone brighter than ever. "Do you think you +could be persuaded to tell me?" + +"With pleasure," said Annunziata. "I am eleven years and five months. +And you?" + +"I am just twice as old. I am twenty-two years and ten months. So, when +you are fifty, how old shall I be?" + +"No," said Annunziata, shaking her head. "That trick has been tried with +me before. My friend Prospero has tried it with me. You hope I will say +that you will be a hundred. But it is not so. When I am fifty, you will +be sixty-one, going on sixty-two." + +Still again the lady laughed, apparently with great amusement. + +"What a little bundle of wisdom you are!" she exclaimed. + +"Yes. My friend Prospero also says that I am wise," answered Annunziata. +"I like to see you laugh," she mentioned, looking critically at the face +above her. "You have beautiful teeth, they are so white and shining, and +so small, and your lips are so red." + +"Oh," said the lady, laughing more merrily than ever. "Then you must be +very entertaining, and I will laugh a great deal." + +Still looking critically at the lady's face, "Are you not," demanded +Annunziata, "the person who has come to visit the Signora Brandi?" + +"Signora Brandi?" The lady considered. "Yes, I suppose I must be. At any +rate, I am the person who has come to visit Frau Brandt." + +"Frao Branta? We call her Signora Brandi here," said Annunziata. "Are +you related to her?" + +"No," said the lady, who always seemed inclined to laugh, though +Annunziata had no consciousness of being very entertaining. "I am not +related to her. I am only her friend." + +"She is an Austrian," said Annunziata. "This castle belongs to +Austrians. Once upon a time, very long ago, before I was born, all this +country belonged to Austrians. Are you, too, an Austrian?" + +"Yes." The lady nodded. "I, too, am an Austrian." + +"And yet," remarked Annunziata, "you speak Italian just as I do." + +"It is very good of you to say so," laughed the lady. + +"No--it is the truth," said Annunziata. + +"But is it not good to tell the truth?" the lady asked. + +"No," said Annunziata. "It is only a duty." And again she shook her +head, slowly, darkly, with an effect of philosophic melancholy. "That is +very strange and very hard," she pointed out. "If you do not do that +which is your duty, it is bad, and you are punished. But if you do do +it, that is not good,--it is only what you ought to do, and you are not +rewarded." And she fetched her breath in the saddest of sad little +sighs. Then, briskly covering her cheerfulness, "And you speak English, +besides," she said. + +"Oh?" wondered the lady. "Are you a clairvoyante? How do you know that I +speak English?" + +"My friend Prospero told me so," said Annunziata. + +"Your friend Prospero?" the lady repeated. "You quote your friend +Prospero very often. Who is your friend Prospero?" + +"He is a signore," said Annunziata. "He has seen you, he has seen your +form, in the garden and in the olive wood." + +"Oh," said the lady. + +"And I suppose he must have heard you speak English," Annunziata added. +"He lives at the presbytery." + +"And where, by-the-by, do _you_ live?" asked the lady. + +"I live at the presbytery too," said Annunziata. "I am the niece of the +parroco. I am the orphan of his only brother. My friend Prospero lives +with us as a boarder. He is English." + +"Indeed?" said the lady. "Prospero is a very odd name for an +Englishman." + +"Prospero is not his name," said Annunziata. "His name is Gian. That is +English for Giovanni." + +"But why, then," the lady puzzled, "do you call him Prospero?" + +"Prospero is a name I have given him," explained Annunziata. "One day I +told his fortune. I can tell fortunes--with olive-stones, with +playing-cards, or from the lines of the hand. I will tell you yours, if +you wish. Well, one day, I told Prospero's, and everything came out so +prosperously for him, I have called him Prospero ever since. He will be +rich, though he is poor; and he will marry a dark woman, who will also +be rich; and they will have many, many children, and live in peace to +the end of their lives. But there!" Annunziata cried out suddenly, with +excitement, waving the hand that held her narcissus. "There is my friend +Prospero now, coming in the gig." + +Down the avenue, sure enough, a gig was coming, a sufficiently shabby, +ancient gig, drawn, however, at a very decent pace by a very +decent-looking horse, and driven by John Blanchemain. + +"_Ciao_, Prospero!" called Annunziata, as he passed. + +And John took off his hat, a modish Panama, and bowed and smiled to her +and to the lady. And one adept in reading the meaning of smiles might +have read three or four separate meanings in that smile of his. It +seemed to say to Annunziata, "Ah, you rogue! So already you have waylaid +her, and made her acquaintance." To the lady: "I congratulate you upon +your companion. Isn't she a diverting little monkey?" To himself: "And I +congratulate _you_, my dear, upon being clothed and in your right mind, +and upon having a proper hat to make your bow with." And to the universe +at large "By Jove, she _is_ good-looking. Standing there before that +marble bench, in the cool green light, under the great ilexes, with her +lilac frock and her white sunshade, and Annunziata all in grey beside +her,--what a subject for a painting, if only there were any painters +who knew how to paint!" + +"He is going to a dinner at Roccadoro," said Annunziata, while John's +back grew small and smaller in the distance. "Did you see, he had a +portmanteau under the seat? He is going to a dinner of ceremony, and he +will have his costume of ceremony in the portmaneau. I wonder what he +will bring back with him for me. When he goes to Roccadoro he always +brings something back for me. Last time it was a box of chocolate +cigars. I should like to see him in his costume of ceremony. Wouldn't +you?" + +But the lady merely laughed. And then, taking Annunziata's chin in her +hand, she looked down into her big clear eyes, and said, "I must be off +now, to join Signora Brandi. But I cannot leave without telling you how +glad I am to have met you, and what pleasure I have derived from your +conversation. I hope we shall meet often. Good-bye." + +"Good-bye, Signorina," said Annunziata, becoming formally polite again. +"I shall always be at your service." And she dropped another courtesy. +"If you will come to see me at the presbytery," she hospitably added, +"I will show you my tame kid." + +"You are all that is most kind," responded the lady, and went off +smiling towards the castle. + +Annunziata curled herself up in her old corner of the marble bench, and +appeared to relapse into profound thought. + + + + +V + + +A curious little intimate inward glow, a sense, somewhere deep down in +his consciousness, of elation and well-being, accompanied John all the +way to Roccadoro, mingling with and sweetening whatever thoughts or +perceptions occupied his immediate attention. This was a "soul-state" +that he knew of old, and he had no difficulty in referring it to its +cause. It was the glow and the elation which he was fortunate enough +always to experience when his eye had been fed with a fresh impression +of beauty; and he knew that he owed it to-day to the glimpse he had had, +in the cool light under the ilexes, of a slender figure in lilac and a +tiny figure in grey, beside a soft-complexioned old marble bench in the +midst of a shadowy, sunny, brown and green Italian garden. + +The drive to Roccadoro from Sant' Alessina is a pleasant drive. The road +follows for the most part the windings of the Rampio, so that you are +seldom out of sight of its gleaming waters, and the brawl of it, now +louder, now less loud, is perpetually in your ears. To right and left +you have the tender pink of blossoming almonds, with sometimes the +scarlet flame of a pomegranate; and then the blue-grey hills, mantled in +a kind of transparent cloth-of-gold, a gauze of gold, woven of haze and +sunshine; and then, rosy white, with pale violet shadows, the +snow-peaks, cut like cameos upon the brilliant azure of the sky. And +sometimes, of course, you rattle through a village, with its crumbling, +stained, and faded yellow-stuccoed houses, its dazzling white canvas +awnings, its church and campanile, and its life that seems to pass +entirely in the street: men in their shirt sleeves, lounging, smoking, +spitting (else the land were not Italy!), or perhaps playing cards at a +table under the leafless bush of the wine-shop; women gossiping over +their needlework, or, gathered in sociable knots, combing and binding up +their sleek black hair; children sprawling in the kindly dirt; the +priest, biretta on head, nose in breviary, drifting slowly upon some +priestly errand, and "getting through his office;" and the immemorial +goatherd, bare-legged, in a tattered sugar-loaf hat, followed by his +flock, with their queer anxious faces, blowing upon his Pan's-pipes +(shrill strains, in minor mode and plagal scale, a music older than +Theocritus), or stopping, jealously watched by the customer's avid +Italian eyes, to milk "_per due centesimi_"--say, a farthing's +worth--into an outstretched, close-clutched jug. Sometimes the almond +orchards give place to vineyards, or to maize fields, or to dusky groves +of walnut, or to plantations of scrubby oak where lean black pigs forage +for the delectable acorn. Sometimes the valley narrows to a ravine, and +signs of cultivation disappear, and the voice of the Rampio swells to a +roar, and you become aware, between the hills that rise gloomy and +almost sheer beside you, of a great solitude: a solitude that is +intensified rather than diminished by the sight of some +lonely--infinitely lonely--grange, perched far aloft, at a height that +seems out of reach of the world. What possible manner of human beings, +you wonder, can inhabit there, and what possible dreary manner of +existence can they lead? But even in the most solitary places you are +welcomed and sped on by a chorus of bird-songs. The hillsides resound +with bird-songs continuously for the whole seven miles,--and +continuously, at this season, for the whole four-and-twenty hours. +Blackbirds, thrushes, blackcaps, goldfinches, chaffinches, sing from the +first peep of dawn till the last trace of daylight has died out, and +then the nightingales begin and keep it up till dawn again. And +everywhere the soft air is aromatic with a faint scent of rosemary, for +rosemary grows everywhere under the trees. And everywhere you have the +purity and brilliancy and yet restraint of colour, and the crisp economy +of line, which give the Italian landscape its look of having been +designed by a conscious artist. + +In and through his enjoyment of all these pleasantnesses, John felt that +agreeable glow which he owed to his glimpse of the woman in the garden; +and when at last he reached the Hotel Victoria, and, having dressed, +found himself alone for a few moments with Lady Blanchemain, in the dim +and cool sitting-room where she awaited her guests, he hastened to let +her know that he shared her own opinion of the woman's charms. + +"Your beauty decidedly _is_ a beauty," he declared. "I wish you could +have seen her as I saw her an hour ago, with a white sunshade, against a +background of ilexes. It's a thousand pities that painting should be a +forgotten art." + +But Lady Blanchemain (magnificent in purple velvet, with diamonds round +her throat and in her hair) didn't seem interested. + +"Do you know," she said, "I made yesterday one of the most ridiculous +blunders of my life. It's been preying upon my mind ever since. I +generally have pretty trustworthy perceptions, and perhaps this is a +symptom of failing powers. I told myself positively that you were an +Eton and Balliol man. It never occurred to me till I was halfway home +that, as a Papist, you'd be nothing of the sort." + +"No," said John; "I'm afraid I'm Edgbaston and Paris. The way her hair +grows low about her brow, and swoops upwards and backwards in a sort of +tidal wave, and breaks loose in little curling tendrils,--it's +absolutely lyrical. And the smile at the bottom of her eyes is exactly +like silent music. And her mouth is a couplet in praise of love, with +two red lips for rhymes. And her chin is a perfect epithalamium of a +chin. And then her figure! And then her lilac frock! Oh, it's a +thousand, thousand pities that painting should he a forgotten art." + +"What, the same lilac frock?" said Lady Blanchemain, absently. "Yet you +certainly have the Eton voice," she mused. "And if I don't pay you the +doubtful compliment of saying that you have the Balliol manner, you have +at least a kind of subtilized reminiscence of it." + +"I must keep a guard upon myself," said John. "She's visiting an +Austrian woman who lives in a remote wing of the castle,--the pavilion +beyond the clock, in fact,--an Austrian woman of the exhilarating name +of Brandi." + +"I'm rather in luck for my dinner to-night," said Lady Blanchemain. +"I've got Agnes Scope, the niece of the Duke of Wexmouth. She arrived +here this morning with her aunt, Lady Louisa. Of course I'm putting you +next to her. As, besides being an extremely nice girl and an heiress, +she's an ardent pervert to Romanism,--well, a word to the wise." + +"Yes, I know her," said John. "We don't get on a bit. She moves on far +too high a plane for a groundling like me. She's intellectual and +earnest, and my ignorance and light-mindedness wound her to the quick. +She'll end, as I've told her to her face, by writing books,--serious +novels, probably,--which she'll illuminate with beautiful irrelevant +quotations from Browning and Cardinal Newman." + +"Bother," said Lady Blanchemain. "You're perverse." + +"Besides," said John, "she's engaged." + +"Engaged--?" faltered Lady Blanchemain. + +"Yes--to an intellectual and earnest man, named Blake--Bernard Blake--a +grandson of the famous Blake of Cambridge." + +Lady Blanchemain fixed him with darkening eyes. + +"Are you sure?" she pleaded. + +"I saw it officially stated in the _Morning Post_," was John's +relentless answer. + +"What a nuisance," said Lady Blanchemain, fanning. Her fan was of amber +tortoise-shell, with white ostrich feathers, and the end sticks bore her +cypher and coronet in gold. + +"What a jolly fan," said John. + +"Well, well," said Lady Blanchemain, reconciling herself. Then, after an +instant of pensiveness, "So you're already laid low by her beauty. But +you haven't found out yet who she is?" + +"Who who is?" said John, looking all at sea. + +"Tut. Don't tease. Your woman at the castle." + +"My woman at the castle appeared to leave you cold," he complained. "I +arrived full of her, and you wouldn't listen." + +"So you're already in love with her?" said Lady Blanchemain. + +"No--not yet," said he. "As yet I merely recognize in her admirable +material for a painting, and regret that such material should go begging +for the lack of a painter. But by this time to-morrow--who can tell?" + +"Have you found out who she is?" asked Lady Blanchemain. + +"No--not yet," said he. "As yet I've merely found out that she's +visiting an Austrian Signora Brandi, who lives (I can't think why) in +the pavilion beyond the clock. But by this time to-morrow!" His gesture +spoke volumes of prospective information. + +"She looked like a gentlewoman," reflected his friend. + +"For all the world," said he. + +"Yet, if she's an Austrian--" She paused and pondered. + +"Why? What's the difficulty?" said he. + +"To know whether she is _born_," said Lady Blanchemain. "Among +Austrians, unless you're born, you're impossible, you're nowhere. Brandi +doesn't sound born, does it? We mustn't let you become enamoured of her +if she isn't born." + +"Brandi sounds tremendously _un_born," assented John. "And if like +visits like, Signora Brandi's visitor will probably be unborn too. But +to me that would rather add an attraction,--provided she's _bred_. I'm +not an Austrian. I'm a Briton and a democrat. I feel it is my destiny, +if ever I am to become enamoured at all, to become enamoured of the +daughter of a miller,--of a rising miller, who has given his daughter +advantages. 'Brèd, not Born: or the Lady of the Mill'--that shall be the +title of my humble heart-history. If this woman could prove to me that +she was the daughter of a miller, I'm not sure I shouldn't become +enamoured of her on the spot. Well, I shall know to-morrow. By this time +to-morrow I shall possess her entire _dossier_. It may interest you to +learn that I am employing a detective to investigate her." + +"A detective? What do you mean?" said Lady Blanchemain. + +"A private detective, a female detective, whom, the next time you come +to Sant' Alessina, I'll introduce to you," said John. + +"What on earth do you mean?" said Lady Blanchemain. + +"The most amusing, the most adorable little detective unhung," said he. +"People are all love and laughter whenever they look at her. She'll worm +its inmost secrets from my sphinx's heart." + +"What pleasure can you take in practising upon a poor old woman who only +by a sort of fluke isn't your grandmother?" said she. + +"Lady Louisa FitzStephen, Miss Scope," said her servant, opening the +door. + + + + +VI + + +The nightingales sang him home, and the moon lighted him, the liquid +moon of April and Italy. As he approached the castle, through the purple +and silver garden, amid the mysterious sweet odours of the night, he +glanced up vaguely at the pavilion beyond the clock. He glanced up +vaguely, but next second he was no longer vague. + +There, on a low-hung balcony, not ten feet above him, full in the +moonlight, stood a figure in white--all in white, with a scarf of white +lace thrown over her dark hair. The nightingales sang and sobbed, the +moon rained its amethystine fire upon the earth, the earth gave forth +its mysterious sweet night odours, and she stood there motionless, and +breathed and gazed and listened. + +But at the sound of wheels in the avenue, she turned slightly, and +looked down. Her face was fair and delicate and pure in the moonlight, +and her eyes shone darkly bright. + +She turned, and looked down, and her eyes met John's. + +"Given the hour and the place, I wonder whether I ought to bow," he +thought. + +Before he could make up his mind, however, his hand had automatically +raised his hat. + +She inclined her head in acknowledgment, and something softly changed in +her face. + +"She smiled!" he said, and caught his breath, with a kind of astonished +exultancy. + +That soft change in her face came and went and came again through all +his dreams. + + + + +PART THIRD + + + + +I + + +"Good morning, Prospero," said Annunziata. + +"Good morning, Wide-awake," responded John. + +He was in the octagonal room on the _piano nobile_ of the castle, where +his lost ladies of old years smiled on him from their frames. He had +heard an approaching patter of feet on the pavement of the room beyond; +and then Annunziata's little grey figure, white face, and big grave +eyes, had appeared, one picture the more, in the vast carved and gilded +doorway. + +"I have been looking everywhere for you," she said, plaintive. + +"Poor sweetheart," he commiserated her. "And can't you find me?" + +"I couldn't," said Annunziata, bearing on the tense. "But I have found +you _now_." + +"Oh? Have you? Where?" asked he. + +"_Where?_" cried she, with a disdainful movement. "But _here_, of +course." + +"I wouldn't be too cocksure of that," he cautioned her. "_Here_ is a +mighty evasive bird. For, suppose we were elsewhere, then _there_ would +be here, and here would be somewhere else." + +"No," said Annunziata, with resolution. "Where a person is, that is +always _here_." + +"You speak as if a person carried his here with him, like his hat," said +John. + +"Yes, that is how it is," said Annunziata, nodding. + +"You have a remarkably solid little head,--for all its curls, there's no +confusing it," said he. "Well, have you your report, drawn up, signed, +sealed, sworn to before a Commissioner for Oaths, and ready to be +delivered?" + +"My report--?" questioned Annunziata, with a glance. + +"About the Form," said John. "I caught you yesterday red-handed in the +fact of pumping it." + +"Yes," said Annunziata. "Her name is Maria Dolores." + +"A most becoming name," said he. + +"She is very nice," said Annunziata. + +"She looks very nice," said he. + +"She is twenty-two years and ten months old," continued his informant. + +"Fancy. As middle-aged as that," commented he. + +"Yes. She is an Austrian." + +"Ah." + +"And as I told you, she is visiting the Signora Brandi. Only, she calls +her Frao Branta." + +"Frao Branta?" John turned the name on his tongue. "Branta? Branta?" +What familiar German name, at the back of his memory, did it half evoke? +Suddenly he had a flash. "Can you possibly mean Frau Brandt?" + +Annunziata gave a gesture of affirmation. + +"Yes, that is it," she said. "You sound it just as she did!" + +"I see," said John. "And Brandt, if there are degrees of unbirth, is +even more furiously unborn than Brandi." + +"Unborn--?" said Annunziata, frowning. + +"Not noble--not of the aristocracy," John explained. + +"Very few people are noble," said Annunziata. + +"All the more reason, then, why you and I should be thankful that we +are," said he. + +"You and I?" she expostulated, with a shrug of her little grey +shoulders. "_Machè!_ We are not noble." + +"Aren't we? How do you know?" asked John. "Anyhow," he impressively +moralized, "we can try to be." + +"No," said she, with conclusiveness, with fatalism. "It is no good +trying. Either you are noble or simple,--God makes you so,--you cannot +help it. If I were noble, I should be a contessina. If you were noble, +you would be a gransignore. + +"And my unassuming appearance assures you that I'm not?" said he, +smiling. + +"If you were a gransignore," she instructed him, "you would never be +such friends with me--you would be too proud." + +John laughed. + +"You judge people by the company they keep. Well, I will apply the same +principle of judgment to your gossip, Maria Dolores. By-the-by," he +broke off to inquire, "what is her Pagan name?" + +"Her Pagan name? What is that?" asked Annunziata. + +"Maria Dolores, I take it, is her Christian name, come by in Holy +Baptism," said John. "But I suppose she will have a Pagan name, come by +in the way of the flesh, to round it off with,--just as, for instance, a +certain flame of mine, whose image, when I die, they'll find engraved +upon my heart, has the Pagan name of Casalone." + +Annunziata looked up, surprised. "Casalone? That is my name," she said. + +"Yes," said John. "Yours will be the image." + +Annunziata gave her head a toss. "Maria Dolores did not tell me her +Pagan name," she said. + +"At any rate," said he, "to judge by the company she keeps, we may +safely classify her as unborn. She is probably the daughter of a +miller,--of a miller (to judge also a little by the frocks she wears) in +rather a large way of business, who (to judge finally by her cultivated +voice, her knowledge of languages, and her generally distinguished air) +has spared no expense in the matter of her education. I shouldn't +wonder a bit if she could even play the piano." + +"No," agreed Annunziata, "that is very likely. But why"--she tilted +upwards her inquisitive little profile--"why should you think she is the +daughter of a miller?" + +"Miller," said John, "I use as a generic term. Her father may be a +lexicographer or a dry-salter, a designer of dirigible balloons or a +manufacturer of air-pumps; he may even be a person of independent means, +who lives in a big, new, stuccoed villa in the suburbs of Vienna, and +devotes his leisure to the propagation of orchids: yet all the while a +miller. By miller I mean a member of the Bourgeoisie: a man who, though +he be well to do, well educated, well bred, does not bear coat-armour, +and is therefore to be regarded by those who do with their noses in the +air,--especially in Austria. Among Austrians, unless you bear +coat-armour, you're impossible, you're nowhere. We mustn't let you +become enamoured of her if she doesn't bear coat-armour." + +Annunziata's eyes, during this divagation, had wandered to the window, +the tall window with its view of the terraced garden, where the mimosa +bloomed and the blackcaps carolled. Now she turned them slowly upon +John, and he saw from their expression that at last she was coming to +what for her (as he had known all along) was the real preoccupation of +the moment. They were immensely serious, intensely concerned, and at the +same time, in their farther recesses, you felt a kind of fluttering +shyness, as if _I dare not_ were hanging upon _I would_. + +"Tell me," she began, on a deep note, a deep coaxing note.... Then _I +dare not_ got the better, and she held back.... Then _I would_ took his +courage in both hands, and she plunged. "What have you brought for me +from Roccadoro?" And after one glance of half-bashful, all-impassioned +supplication, she let her eyes drop, and stood before him suspensive, as +one awaiting the word of destiny. + +John's "radiant blondeur," his yellow beard, pink face, and sea-blue +eyes, lighted up, more radiant still, with subcutaneous laughter. + +"The shops were shut," he said. "I arrived after closing time." + +But something in his tone rendered this grim announcement nugatory. +Annunziata drew a long breath, and looked up again. "You have brought +me something, all the same," she declared with conviction; and eagerly, +eyes gleaming, "What is it? What is it?" she besought him. + +John laughed. "You are quite right," he said. "If one can't buy, beg, or +borrow, in this world, one can generally steal." + +Annunziata drew away, regarded him with misgiving. "Oh, no; you would +never steal," she protested. + +"I'm not so sure--for one I loved," said he. "What would you have liked +me to bring you?" + +Annunziata thought. "I liked those chocolate cigars," she said, her face +soft with reminiscence of delight. + +"Ah, but we mustn't have it _toujours perdrix_," said John. "Do you, by +any chance, like marchpane?" + +"Marchpane?--I adore it," she answered, in an outburst of emotion. + +"You have your human weaknesses, after all," John laughed. "Well, I +stole a pocketful of marchpane." + +Annunziata drew away again, her little white forehead furrowed. +"Stole?" she repeated, reluctant to believe. + +"Yes," said he, brazenly, nodding his head. + +"Oh, that was very wrong," said Annunziata, sadly shaking hers. + +"No," said he. "Because, in the first place, it's a matter of proverbial +wisdom that stolen marchpane's sweetest. And, in the next place, I stole +it quite openly, under the eye of the person it belonged to, and she +made no effort to defend her property. Seeing which, I even went so far +as to explain to her _why_ I was stealing it. 'There's a young limb o' +mischief with a sweet tooth at Sant' Alessina,' I explained, 'who +regularly levies blackmail upon me. I'm stealing this for her.' And then +the lady I was stealing from told me I might steal as much as ever I +thought good." + +"Oh-h-h," said Annunziata, a long-drawn _Oh_ of relief. "Then you didn't +steal it--she _gave_ it to you." + +"Well," said John, "if casuistry like that can ease your conscience--if +you feel that you can conscientiously receive it--" And he allowed his +inflection to complete the sentence. + +"Give it to me," said Annunziata, holding out her hands, and dancing up +and down in glee and in impatience. + +"Nenni-dà," said John. "Not till after dinner. I'm not going to be a +party to the spoiling of a fair, young, healthy appetite." + +Pain wrote itself upon Annunziata's brow. "Oh," she grieved, "must I +wait till after dinner?" + +"Yes," said John. + +For a breathing-space she struggled. "Would it be bad of me," she asked, +"if I begged for just a _little_ now?" + +"Yes," said John, "bad and bootless. You'd find me as unyielding as +adamant." + +"Ah, well," sighed Annunziata, a deep and tremulous sigh. "Then I will +wait." + +And, like a true philosopher, she proceeded to occupy her mind with a +fresh interest. She looked round the room, she looked out of the window. +"Why do you stay here? It is much pleasanter in the garden," she +remarked. + +"I came here to seek for consolation. To-day began for me with a tragic +misadventure," John replied. + +Annunziata's eyes grew big, compassionating him, and, at the same time, +bespeaking a lively curiosity. + +"Poor Prospero," she gently murmured. "What was it?" on tip-toe she +demanded. + +"Well," he said, "when I rose, to go for my morning swim, I made an +elaborate toilet, because I hoped to meet a certain person whom, for +reasons connected with my dignity, I wished to impress. But it was +love's labour lost. The certain person is an ornament of the uncertain +sex, and didn't turn up. So, to console myself, I came here." + +Annunziata looked round the room again. "What is there here that can +console you?" + +"These," said John. His hand swept the pictured walls. + +"The paintings?" said she, following his gesture. "How can they console +you?" + +"They're so well painted," said he, fondly studying the soft-coloured +canvases. "Besides, these ladies are dead. I like dead ladies." + +Annunziata looked critically at the pictures, and then at him with +solemn meaning. "They are very pretty--but they are not dead," she +pronounced in her deepest voice. + +"Not dead?" echoed John, astonished. "Aren't they?" + +"No," said she, with a slow shake of the head. + +"Dear me," said he. "And, when they're alone here and no one's looking, +do you think they come down from their frames and dance? It must be a +sight worth seeing." + +"No," said Annunziata. "These are only their pictures. They cannot come +down from their frames. But the ladies themselves are not dead. Some of +them are still in Purgatory, perhaps. We should pray for them." She +made, in parenthesis as it were, a pious sign of the Cross. "Some are +perhaps already in Heaven. We should ask their prayers. And others are +perhaps in Hell," she pursued, inexorable theologian that she was. "But +none of them is dead. No one is dead. There's no such thing as being +dead." + +"But then," puzzled John, "what is it that people mean when they talk of +Death?" + +"I will tell you," said Annunziata, her eyes heavy with thought. +"Listen, and I will tell you." She seated herself on the big round +ottoman, and raised her face to his. "Have you ever been at a +pantomime?" she asked. + +"Yes," said John, wondering what could possibly be coming. + +"Have you been at the pantomime," she continued earnestly, "when there +was what they call a transformation-scene?" + +"Yes," said John. + +"Well," said she, "last winter I was taken to the pantomime at Bergamo, +and I saw a transformation-scene. You ask me, what is Death? It is +exactly like a transformation-scene. At the pantomime the scene was just +like the world. There were trees, and houses, and people, common people, +like any one. Then suddenly click! Oh, it was wonderful. Everything was +changed. The trees had leaves of gold and silver, and the houses were +like fairy palaces, and there were strange lights, red and blue, and +there were great garlands of the most beautiful flowers, and the people +were like angels, with gems and shining clothes. Well, you understand, +at first we had only seen one side of the scene;--then click! everything +was turned round, and we saw the other side. That is like life and +death. Always, while we are alive, we can see only one side of things. +But there is the other side, the under side. Never, so long as we are +alive, we can never, never see it. But when we die,--click! It is a +transformation-scene. Everything is turned round, and we see the other +side. Oh, it will be very different, it will be wonderful. That is what +they call Death." + +It was John's turn to be grave. It was some time before he spoke. He +looked down at her, with a kind of grave laughter in his eyes, admiring, +considering. What could he say? ... What he did say, at last, was +simply, "Thank you, my dear." + +Annunziata jumped up. + +"Oh, come," she urged. "Let's go into the garden. It is so much nicer +there than here. There are lots of cockchafers. Besides"--she held out +as an additional inducement--"we might meet Maria Dolores." + +"No," said John. "Though the cockchafers are a temptation, I will stop +here. But go you to the garden, by all means. And if you do meet Maria +Dolores, tell her what you have just told me. I think she would like to +hear it." + +"All right," consented Annunziata, moving towards the door. "I'll see +you at dinner. You won't forget the marchpane?" + + + + +II + + +John was in a state of mind that perplexed and rather annoyed him. Until +the day before yesterday, his detachment here at Sant' Alessina from +ordinary human society, the absence of people more or less of his own +sort, had been one of the elements of his situation which he had +positively, consciously, rejoiced in,--had been an appreciable part of +what he had summarized to Lady Blanchemain as "the whole blessed thing." +He had his castle, his pictures, his garden, he had the hills and +valley, the birds, the flowers, the clouds, the sun, he had the Rampio, +he had Annunziata, he even had Annunziata's uncle; and with all this he +had a sense of having stepped out of a world that he knew by heart, that +he knew to satiety, a world that was stale and stuffy and threadbare, +with its gilt rubbed off and its colours tarnished, into a world where +everything was fresh and undiscovered and full of savour, a great cool +blue and green world that from minute to minute opened up new +perspectives, made new promises, brought to pass new surprises. And this +sense, in some strange way, included Time as well as space. It was as if +he had entered a new region of Time, as if he had escaped from the +moving current of Time into a stationary moment. Alone here, where +modern things or thoughts had never penetrated, alone with the earth and +the sky, the mediæval castle, the dead ladies, with Annunziata, and the +parroco, and the parroco's Masses and Benedictions--to-day, he would +please himself by fancying, might be a yesterday of long ago that had +somehow dropped out of the calendar and remained, a fragment of the Past +that had been forgotten and left over. The presence of a person of his +own sort, a fellow citizen of his own period, wearing its clothes, +speaking its speech, would have broken the charm, would have seemed as +undesirable and as inappropriate as the introduction of an English +meadow into the Italian landscape. + +Yet now such a person had come, and behold, her presence, so far from +breaking the charm, merged with and intensified it,--supplied indeed +the one feature needed to perfect it. A person of his own sort? The +expression is convenient. A fellow citizen, certainly, of his period, +wearing its clothes, speaking its speech. But a person, happily, not of +his own sex, a woman, a beautiful woman; and what her presence supplied +to the poetry of Sant' Alessina, making it complete, was, if you like, +the Eternal Feminine. As supplied already by the painted women on the +walls about him, this force had been static; as supplied by a woman who +lived and breathed, it became dynamic. That was all very well; if he +could have let it rest at that, if he could have confined his interest +in her, his feeling about her, to the plane of pure æsthetics, he would +have had nothing to complain of. But the mischief was that he couldn't. +The thing that perplexed and annoyed him,--and humiliated him too, in +some measure,--was a craving that had sprung up over-night, and was now +strong and constant, to get into personal touch with her, to make her +acquaintance, to talk with her; to find out a little what manner of soul +she had, to establish some sort of human relation with her. It wasn't +in the least as yet a sentimental craving; or, if it was, John at any +rate didn't know it. In its essence, perhaps, it was little more than +curiosity. But it was disturbing, upsetting, it destroyed the peace and +the harmonious leisure of his day. It perplexed him, it was outside his +habits, it was unreasonable. "Not unreasonable to think it might be fun +to talk to a pretty woman," he discriminated, "but unreasonable to yearn +to talk to her as if your life hung in the balance." And in some +measure, too, it humiliated him: it was a confession of weakness, of +insufficiency to himself, of dependence for his contentment upon +another. He tried to stifle it; he tried to fix his mind on subjects +that would lead far from it. Every subject, all subjects, subjects the +most discrepant, seemed to possess one common property, that of leading +straight back to it. Then he said, "Well, if you can't stifle it, yield +to it. Go down into the garden--hunt her up--boldly engage her in +conversation." Assurance was the note of the man; but when he pictured +himself in the act of "boldly engaging her in conversation," his +assurance oozed away, and he was conscious of a thrice-humiliating +shyness. Why? What _was_ there in the woman that should turn a brave man +shy? + +However, the stars were working for him. That afternoon, coming home +from a stroll among the olives, he met her face to face at the gate of +the garden, whither she had arrived from the direction of the village. +Having made his bow, which she accepted with a smile, he could do no +less than open the gate for her; and as their ways must thence lie +together, up the long ilex-shaded avenue to the castle, it would be an +awkward affectation not to speak. And yet (he ground his teeth at having +to admit it) his heart had begun to pound so violently, (not from +emotion, he told himself,--from a mere ridiculous sort of nervous +excitement: what _was_ there in the woman that should excite a sane man +like that?) he was afraid to trust his voice, lest it should quaver and +betray him. But fortunately this pounding of the heart lasted only a few +seconds. The short business of getting the gate open, and of closing it +afterwards, gave it time to pass. So that now, as they set forwards +towards the house, he was able to look her in the eye, and to observe, +with impressiveness, that it was a fine day. + +She had accepted his bow with a smile, amiable and unembarrassed; and at +this, in quite the most unembarrassed manner, smiling again,--perhaps +with just the faintest, just the gentlest shade of irony, and with just +the slightest quizzical upward tremor of the eyebrows,--"Isn't it a day +rather typical of the land and season?" she inquired. + +It was the first step that had cost. John's assurance was coming swiftly +back. Her own air of perfect ease in the circumstances very likely +accelerated it. "Yes," he answered her. "But surely that isn't a reason +for begrudging it a word of praise?" + +By this he was lucky enough to provoke a laugh, a little light gay +trill, sudden and brief like three notes on a flute. + +"No," she admitted. "You are right. The day deserves the best we can say +of it." + +"Her voice," thought John, availing himself of a phrase that had struck +him in a book he had lately read, "her voice is like ivory and white +velvet." And the touch, never so light, of a foreign accent with which +she spoke, rendered her English piquant and pretty,--gave to each +syllable a crisp little clean-cut outline. They sauntered on for a +minute or two in silence, with half the width of the road-way between +them, the shaded road-way, where the earth showed purple through a thin +green veil of mosses, and where irregular shafts of sunlight, here and +there, turned purple and green to red and gold. The warm air, woven of +garden-fragrances, hung round them palpable, like some infinitely +subtile fabric. And of course blackbirds were calling, blackcaps and +thrushes singing, in all the leafy galleries overhead. A fine day +indeed, mused John, and indeed worthy of the best that they could say. +His nervousness, his excitement, had entirely left him, his assurance +had come completely back; and with it had come a curious deep +satisfaction, a feeling that for the moment at any rate the world left +nothing to be wished for, that the cup of his desire was full. He didn't +even, now that he might do so, wish to talk to her. To walk with her was +enough,--to enjoy her companionship in silence. Yes, that was +it--companionship. He caught at the word. "That is what I have been +unconsciously needing all along. I flattered myself that I was +luxuriating in the very absence of it. But man is a gregarious animal, +and I was deceived." So he could refer the effect of her propinquity to +the mere gregarious instinct, not suspecting that a more powerful +instinct was already awake. Anyhow, his sense of that propinquity,--his +consciousness of her, gracefully moving beside him in the sweet weather, +while her summery garments fluttered, and some strange, faint, elusive +perfume was shaken from them,--filled him with a satisfaction that for +the moment seemed ultimate. He had no wish to talk. Their progress side +by side was a conversation without words. They were getting to know each +other, they were breaking the ice. Each step they took was as good as a +spoken sentence, was a mutual experience, drawing them closer, helping +to an understanding. They walked slowly, as by a tacit agreement. + +Silence, however, couldn't in the nature of things last for ever. It was +she who presently broke it. + +"I owe you," she said, in her ivory voice, with her clean-cut +enunciation, "a debt of thanks." And still again she smiled, as she +looked over towards him, her dark eyes glowing, her dark hair richly +drooping, in the shadow of a big hat of wine-coloured straw. + +John's eyes were at a loss. "Oh--?" he wondered. + +"For a pleasure given me by our friend Annunziata," she explained. "This +morning she told me a most interesting parable about Death. And she +mentioned that it was you who had suggested to her to tell it me." + +"Oh," said John, laughing, while the pink of his skin deepened a shade. +"She mentioned that, did she? I'm glad if you don't feel that I took a +good deal upon myself. But she had just told the same parable to me, and +it seemed a pity it shouldn't have a larger audience." + +Then, after a few more paces taken again in silence, "What a marvellous +little person she is, Annunziata!" said Maria Dolores. + +"She's to a marvellous degree the right product of her milieu," said +John. + +Maria Dolores did not speak, but her eyes questioned, "Yes? How do you +mean?" + +"I mean that she's a true child of the presbytery," he replied, "and at +the same time a true child of this Italy, where Paganism has never +perfectly died. She has been carefully instructed in her catechism, and +she has fed upon pious legends, she has breathed an ecclesiastical +atmosphere, until the things of the Church have become a part of her +very bone. She sees everything in relation to them, translates +everything in terms of them. But at the same time odd streaks of +Paganism survive in her. They survive a little--don't they?--in all +Italians. Wherever she goes her eye reads omens. She will cast your +fortune for you with olive-stones. The woods are peopled for her by +fauns and dryads. When she takes her walks abroad, I've no doubt, she +catches glimpses of Proteus rising from the lake, and hears old Triton +blow his wreathed horn." + +Maria Dolores looked interested. + +"Yes," she said, slowly, thoughtfully, and meditated for an interval. +By-and-by, "You know," she recommenced, "she's a sort of little person +about whom one can't help feeling rather frightened." And her eyes +looked to his for sympathetic understanding. + +But his were interrogative. "No? Why should one feel frightened about +her?" + +"Oh," said Maria Dolores, with a movement, "it isn't exactly easy to +tell why. One's fears are vague. But--well, for one thing, she thinks so +much about Death. Death and what comes after,--they interest her so +much. It doesn't seem natural, it makes one uneasy. And then she's so +delicate-looking. Sometimes she's almost transparent. In every way she +is too serious. She uses her mind too much, and her body too little. She +ought to have more of the gaiety of childhood, she ought to have other +children to romp with. She's too much like a disembodied spirit. It all +alarms one." + +John, as she spoke, frowned, pondering. When she had done, his frown +cleared, he shook his head. + +"I don't think it need," he said. "Her delicacy, her frailness, have +never struck me as indicating weakness,--they seem simply the proper +physical accompaniments of her crystalline little soul,--she's made of a +fine and delicate clay. She thinks about Death, it is true, but not in a +morbid way,--and that's a part of her ecclesiastical tradition; and she +thinks quite as much about life,--she thinks about everything. I agree +with you, it's a pity she has no other children. But she isn't by any +means deficient in the instincts of childhood. She can enjoy a chocolate +cigar, for instance, as well as another; and as for marchpane, I have +her own word that she adores it." + +Maria Dolores gave another light trill of laughter. + +"Yes, I'm aware of her passion for marchpane. She confided it to me this +morning. And as, in reply to her questions, I admitted that I rather +liked it myself, she very generously offered to bring me some this +afternoon,--which, to be sure, an hour ago, she did." + +She laughed again, and John laughed too. + +"All the same" she insisted, "I can't help that feeling of uneasiness +about her. Sometimes, when I look at her, I can almost see her wings. +What will be her future, if she grows up? One would rather not think of +her as married to some poor Italian, and having to give herself to the +prosaic sort of existence that would mean." + +"The sordid sort of existence," augmented John. "No, one would decidedly +rather not. But she will never marry. She will enter religion. Her +uncle has it all planned out. He destines her for the Servites." + +"Oh? The Servites--the Mantellate? I am glad of that," exclaimed Maria +Dolores. "It is a most beautiful order. They have an especial devotion +to Our Lady of Sorrows." + +"Yes," said John, and remembered it was for Our Lady of Sorrows that she +who spoke was named. + +Slow though their march had been, by this time they had come to the end +of the avenue, and were in the wide circular sweep before the castle. +They stopped here, and stood looking off over the garden, with its +sombre cypresses and bright beds of geranium, down upon the valley, dim +and luminous in a mist of gold. Great, heavy, fantastic-shaped clouds, +pearl-white with pearl-grey shadows, piled themselves up against the +scintillant dark blue of the sky. In and out among the rose-trees near +at hand, where the sun was hottest, heavily flew, with a loud +bourdonnement, the cockchafers promised by Annunziata,--big, blundering, +clumsy, the scorn of their light-winged and business-like competitors, +the bees. Lizards lay immobile as lizards cast in bronze, only their +little glittering, watchful pin-heads of eyes giving sign of life. And +of course the blackcaps never for a moment left off singing. + +They stood side by side, within a yard of each other, in silent +contemplation of these things, during I don't know how many long and, +for John, delicious seconds. Yes, he owned it to himself; it was +delicious to feel her standing there beside him, in silent communion +with him, contemplating the same things, enjoying the same +pleasantnesses. Companionship--companionship: it was what he had been +unconsciously needing all along! ... At last she turned, and, +withdrawing her eyes lingeringly from the landscape, looked into his, +with a smile. She did not speak, but her smile said, just as explicitly +as her lips could have done, "What a scene of beauty!" + +And John responded aloud, with fervour, "Indeed, indeed it is." + +"And so romantic," she added. "It is like a scene out of some old high +musical romance." + +"The most romantic scene I know," said he. "All my life I have thought +so." + +"Oh?" said she, looking surprise. "Have you known it all your life?" + +"Well,--very nearly," said he, with half a laugh. "I saw it first when I +was ten. Then for long years I lost it,--and only recovered it, by +accident, a month ago." + +Her face showed her interest. "Oh? How was that? How did it happen?" + +"When I was ten," John recounted, half laughing again, "I was travelling +with my father, and, among the many places we visited, one seemed to me +a very vision of romance made real. A vast and stately castle, in a +garden, in a valley, with splendid halls and chambers, and countless +beautiful pictures of women. All my life I remembered it, dreamed of it, +longed to see it again. But I hadn't a notion where it was, save vaguely +that it was somewhere in Italy; and, my poor father being dead, there +was no one I could ask. Then, wandering in these parts a month ago, I +stumbled upon it, and recognized it. Though shrunken a good deal in +size, to be sure, it was still recognizable, and as romantic as ever." + +Maria Dolores listened pensively. When he had reached his period, her +eyes lighted up. "What a charming adventure!" she said. "And so, for +you, besides its general romance, the place has a personal one, all your +own. I, too, have known it for long years, but only from photographs. I +suppose I should never have seen the real thing, except for a friend of +mine coming to live here." + +"I wonder," said John, "that the people who own it never live here." + +"The Prince of Zelt-Neuminster?" said she. "No,--he doesn't like the +Italian Government. Since Lombardy passed from Austria to Italy, the +family have entirely given up staying at Sant' Alessina." + +"In those circumstances," said John, "practical-minded people, I should +think, would get rid of the place." + +"Oh," said she, laughing, "the Prince, in some ways, is practical-minded +enough. He has this great collection of Italian paintings, which, by +Italian law, he mayn't remove from Italian soil; and if he were to get +rid of Sant' Alessina, where could he house them? In other ways, though, +he is perhaps not so practical. He is one of those Utopians who believe +that the present Kingdom of Italy must perforce before long make +shipwreck; and I think he holds on to Sant' Alessina in the dream of +coming here in triumph, and grandly celebrating that event." + +"I see," said John, nodding. "That is a beautiful ideal." + +"Good-bye," said she, flashing a last quick smile into his eyes; and she +moved away, down a garden path, towards the pavilion beyond the clock. + + + + +III + + +And now, I should have imagined, for a single session, (and that an +initial one), he had had enough. I should have expected him to spend the +remainder of his day, a full man, in thankful tranquillity, in agreeable +retrospective rumination. But no. Indulgence, it soon appeared, had but +whetted his appetite. After a quarter-hour of walking about the garden, +during which his jumble of sensations and impressions,--her soft-glowing +eyes, her soft-drooping hair, under her wine-red hat; her slender +figure, in its fluttering summery muslin, and the faint, faint perfume +(like a far-away memory of rose-leaves) that hovered near her; her +smile, and the curves, when she smiled, of her rose-red lips, and the +gleam of her snow-white teeth; her laugh, her voice, her ivory voice; +her pretty crisp-cut English; her appreciation of Annunziata, her +disquieting presentiments concerning her; and his deep satisfaction in +her propinquity, her "companionship;" and the long shaded fragrant +avenue, and the bird-songs, and the gentle weather,--after a +quarter-hour of anything but thankful tranquillity, a quarter-hour of +unaccountable excitement and exaltation, during which his jumble of +impressions and sensations settled themselves, from ebullition, into +some sort of quiescence, he began to grow restlessly aware that, so far +from having had enough, he had had just a sufficient taste to make him +hunger keenly for more and more. It was ridiculous, but he couldn't help +it. And as there seemed no manner of likelihood that his hunger would +soon be fed, it was trying. At the best, he could not reasonably hope to +see her again before to-morrow; and even then--? What ghost of a reason +had he to hope that even then he could renew their conversation? He had +owed that to-day to the bare hazard of their ways lying together. +To-morrow, very likely, at the best, he might get a bow and a smile. +Very likely it might be days before he should again have anything +approaching a real talk with her. And what--a new consideration, that +struck a sudden terror to his soul--what if her visit to Frau Brandt +was to be a short one? What if to-morrow even, she were to depart? "Her +very ease in talking with me, a stranger, may quite well have been due +to the fact that she knew she would never see me again," he argued. ... +So he was working himself into a fine state of despondency, and the +world was rapidly being resolved into dust and ashes, when Heaven sent +him a diversion. Nay, indeed, Heaven sent him two diversions. + + + + +IV + + +There was a sound of wheels on gravel, of horses' hoofs on stone, and +Lady Blanchemain's great high-swung barouche, rolling superbly forth +from the avenue, drew up before the Castle, Lady Blanchemain +herself, big and soft and sumptuous in silks and laces, under a +much-befurbelowed, much-befringed, lavender-hued silk sunshade, +occupying the seat of honour. John hastened across the garden, hat in +hand, to welcome her. + +"Jump in," she commanded, with a smile, and an imperious sweep of the +arm. "I have come to take you for a drive." + +The footman (proud man) held open the door, and John jumped in. But just +as the footman (with an air) had closed the door behind him, and before +the coachman had touched up his horses, there came a rhythm of running +footsteps, and the voice of Annunziata called, insistently, "Prospero! +Prospero!" Then, all out of breath, her pale cheeks pink, her curls in +disarray, Annunziata arrived beside the carriage, and, no wise abashed +by that magnificent equipage, nor by the magnificent old lady throning +in it, (no wise abashed, but, from the roundness of her eyes, a good +deal surprised and vastly curious), she explained, gasping, "A +telegram," and held up to John a straw-coloured envelope. + +"Thank you," said he, taking it, and waving a friendly hand. "But you +should not run so fast," he admonished her, with concern. + +Whereupon the carriage drove off, Annunziata standing and watching, +always round-eyed, till it was out of sight. + +"What an interesting-looking child!" said Lady Blanchemain. + +"Yes," said John. "I should have liked to introduce her to you." + +"Who is she?" asked the lady. + +"She's the private detective I told you of. She's my affinity. She's the +young limb o' mischief for whom I ravaged your stores of marchpane. +She's the niece of the parroco." + +"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain. "Why does she call you--what was +it?--Prospero?" + +"She's an optimist. She's a bird of good omen," answered John. "She's +satisfied herself, by consulting an oracle, that Fortune has favours up +her sleeve for me. She encouragingly anticipates them by calling me +Prospero before the fact." + +Lady Blanchemain softly laughed. "That's very nice of her, and very +wise. Aren't you going to read your telegram?" + +"I didn't know whether you'd permit," said John. + +"Oh pray," said she, with a gesture. + +The carriage by this time had left the garden, and the coachman had +turned his horses' heads northwards, away from the lake, towards the +Alps, where their snowy summits, attenuated by the sun and the distance +and the blue air, looked like vapours rising into the sky. + +John tore open his envelope, read, frowned, and uttered a half-stifled +ejaculation,--something that sounded rather like "I say!" and vaguely +like "By Jove!" + +"No bad news, I hope?" inquired the lady, sympathetic, and trying to +speak as if she didn't know what curiosity meant. + +"Excellent news, on the contrary," said John, "but a bolt from the +blue." And he offered her the paper. + +"Am on my way to Rome," she read aloud. "Could I come to you for a day? +Winthorpe, Hotel Cavour, Milan."--"Winthorpe?" She pursed her lips, as +one tasting something. "I don't know the name. Who is he? What's his +County?" she demanded,--she, who carried the County Families in her +head. + +John chuckled. "He hasn't got a County--he's only an American," he said, +pronouncing that genial British formula with intention. + +"Oh," sighed Lady Blanchemain, her expectations dashed; and drawing in +her skirts, she sank a little deeper into her corner. + +"He hasn't got a County," repeated John. "But he's far and away the +greatest swell I know." + +"A swell? An American?" Lady Blanchemain pressed down her lips, and gave +a movement to her shoulders. + +"An aristocrat, a patrician," said John. + +"Fudge!" said Lady Blanchemain. "Americans and Australians--they're +anything you like, but they're never that." + +John laughed. "I adore," he said, "our light and airy British way of +tarring Americans and Australians with the same brush,--the descendants +of transported convicts and the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers!" + +"Is your Winthorpe man a descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers?" asked Lady +Blanchemain, dryly. + +"Indeed he is," said John. "He's descended from ten separate individuals +who made the first voyage in the _Mayflower_. And he holds, by-the-by, +intact, the lands that were ceded to his family by the Indians the year +after. That ought to recommend him to your Ladyship,--an unbroken tenure +of nearly three hundred years." + +"Old acres," her ladyship admitted, cautiously, "always make for +respectability." + +"Besides," John carelessly threw out, "he's a baronet." + +Lady Blanchemain sat up. "A baronet?" she said. "An American?" + +"Alas, yes," said John, "a mere American. And one of the earliest +creations,--by James the First, no less. His patent dates from 1612. But +he doesn't use the title. He regards it, he pretends, as merged in a +higher dignity." + +"What higher dignity?" asked the lady, frowning. + +"That of an American citizen, he says," chuckled John. + +"Brrr!" she breathed, impatient. + +"And moreover," John gaily continued, "besides being descended from the +Pilgrim Fathers, he's descended in other lines from half the peerage of +Seventeenth Century England. And to top up with, if you please, he's +descended from Alfred the Great. He's only an American, but he can show +a clear descent bang down from Alfred the Great! I think the most +exquisite, the most subtle and delicate pleasure I have ever experienced +has been to see English people, people of yesterday, cheerfully +patronizing him." + +"You've enlarged my sphere of knowledge," said Lady Blanchemain, grimly. +"I had never known that there was blood in America. Does this prodigious +personage talk through his nose?" + +"Worse luck, no," said John. "I wish he did--a little--just enough to +smack of his soil, to possess local colour. No, he talks for all the +world like you or me,--which exposes him to compliments in England. 'An +American? Really?' our tactful people cry, when he avows his nationality +'Upon my word, I should never have suspected it.'" + +"I suppose, with all the rest, he's rich?" asked Lady Blanchemain. + +"Immensely," assented John. "Speaking of Fortune and her favours, she's +withheld none from him." + +"Then he's good-looking, too?" + +"He looks like a Man," said John. + +"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain, moving. "If _I_ had received a wire from a +creature of such proportions, I've a feeling I'd answer it." + +"I've a very similar feeling myself," laughed John. "When we turn back, +if you think your coachman can be persuaded to stop at the telegraph +office in the village, I'll give my feeling effect." + +"I think we might turn back now," said Lady Blanchemain. "It's getting +rather gloomy here." She looked round, with a little shudder, and then +gave the necessary order. The valley had narrowed to what was scarcely +more than a defile between two dark and rugged hillsides, +--pine-covered hillsides that shut out the sun, smiting the air with +chill and shadow, and turning the Rampio, whose brawl seemed somehow to +increase the chill, turning the sparkling, sportive Rampio to the colour +of slate. "It puts one in mind of brigands," she said, with another +little shudder. But though the air was chilly, it was wonderfully, +keenly fragrant with the incense of the pines. + +"Well," she asked, when they were facing homewards, "and your woman? +What of her?" + +"Nothing," said John. "Or, anyhow, very little." (It would be extremely +pleasant, he felt suddenly, to talk of her; but at the same time he felt +an extreme reluctance to let his pleasure be seen.) + +"But your private detective?" said Lady Blanchemain. "Weren't her +investigations fruitful?" + +"Not very," said he. "She learnt little beyond her name and age." + +"And what _is_ her name?" asked the lady. + +"Her name is Maria Dolores," answered John, (and he experienced a secret +joy, strange to him, in pronouncing it). + +"Maria Dolores?" said Lady Blanchemain, (and he experienced a secret joy +in hearing it). "Maria Dolores--what?" + +"My detective didn't discover her Pagan name," said John. + +"So that you are still in doubt whether she's the daughter of a miller?" +Lady Blanchemain raised her eyebrows. + +"Oh, no: I think she's a miller's daughter safely enough," said he. "But +she's an elaborately chiselled and highly polished one. Her voice is +like ivory and white velvet; and to hear her speak English is a +revelation of the hidden beauties of that language." + +"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain, eyeing him. "So you've advanced to the +point of talking with her?" + +"Well," answered John, weighing his words, "I don't know whether I can +quite say that. But accident threw us together for a minute or two this +afternoon, and we could scarcely do less, in civility, than exchange the +time of day." + +"And are you in love with her?" asked Lady Blanchemain. + +"I wonder," said he. "What do _you_ think? Is it possible for a man to +be in love with a woman he's seen only half a dozen times all told, and +spoken with never longer than a minute or two at a stretch?" + +"_Was_ it only a minute or two--_really_?" asked Lady Blanchemain, +wooing his confidence with a glance. + +"No," said John. "It was probably ten minutes, possibly fifteen. But +they passed so quickly, it's really nearer the truth to describe them as +one or two." + +Lady Blanchemain shifted her sunshade, and screwed herself half round, +so as to face him, her soft old eyes full of smiling scrutiny and +suspicion. + +"I never can tell whether or not you're serious," she complained. "If +you _are_ serious,--well, _à quand le mariage_?" + +"The marriage?" cried John. "How could I marry her? Such a thing's out +of all question. + +"Why?" asked she. + +"A miller's daughter!" said John. "Would you have me marry the daughter +of a miller?" + +"You said yourself yesterday--" the lady reminded him. + +"Ah, yes," said he. "But night brings counsel." + +"If she's well educated," said Lady Blanchemain, "if she's well-bred, +what does it matter about her father? Though a nobody in Austria, where +nothing counts but quarterings, he's probably what we'd call a gentleman +in England. Suppose he's a barrister? Or the editor of a newspaper? +Or--" + +She paused, thoughtful-eyed, to think of respectable professions. At +last she gave up the effort. + +"Well, anything decent," she concluded, "so long as he had plenty of +money." + +"Ah," said John, sadly, and with perhaps mock humility. "If he had +plenty of money, he'd never consent to his daughter marrying a son of +poverty like me." + +"Pooh! For a title?" cried Lady Blanchemain. "Besides, you have +prospects. Isn't your name Prospero?" + +"I have precious little faith in oracles," said John. + +"I advise you to have more," said Lady Blanchemain, with a smile that +seemed occult. + +And now her carriage entered the village, and she put him down at the +telegraph office. + +"Don't wait," said John. "The walk from here to the Castle is nothing, +and it would take you out of your way." + +"Well, good-bye, then," said she. "And cultivate more faith in +oracles--when they're auspicious." + +Alone, she drew from some recondite fold of her many draperies a letter, +an unsealed letter, which she opened, spread out, and proceeded to read. +It was a long letter in her ladyship's own handsome, high-bred, +old-fashioned handwriting; and it was addressed to Messrs. Farrow, +Bernscot, and Tisdale, Solicitors, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London. She +read it twice through, and at last (with a smile that seemed occult) +restored it to its envelope. "Stop at the Post Office," she said to her +coachman, as they entered Roccadoro; and to her footman, giving him the +letter, "Have that registered, please." + +Annunziata lay in wait for John in the garden. She ran up, and seized +him by the arm. Then, skipping beside him, as he walked on, "Who was +she? Where did she come from? Where did she take you? Whom was the +telegram from?" she demanded in a breath, nestling her curls against his +coat-sleeve. + +"_Piano, piano_," remonstrated John. "One question at a time. Now, begin +again." + +"Whom was the telegram from?" she obeyed, beginning at the end. + +"Ah," said he, "the telegram was from _my_ friend Prospero. He's coming +here to-morrow. We must ask your uncle whether he can give him a bed." + +"And the old lady?" pursued Annunziata. "Who was she?" + +"The old lady was my fairy godmother," said John, building better than +he knew. + + + + +PART FOURTH + + + + +I + + +Pacing together backwards and forwards, as they talked, John and his +friend Winthorpe presented a striking and perhaps interesting contrast. +John was tall, but Winthorpe seemed a good deal taller--though, (trifles +in these matters looming so large), had actual measurements been taken, +I dare say half an inch would have covered the difference. John was lean +and sinewy, but rounded off at the joints, and of a pliant carriage, so +that it never occurred to you to think of him as _thin_. Winthorpe's +spare figure, spare and angular, with its greater height, held +unswervingly to the plane of the perpendicular, appeared absolutely to +be constructed of nothing but bone and tendon. John's head, with its +yellow hair, its curly beard verging towards red, its pink skin, and +blue eyes full of laughter, might have served a painter as a model for +the head of Mirth. Winthorpe's,--with brown hair cropped close, and +showing the white of the scalp; clean-shaven, but of a steely tint where +the razor had passed; with a marked jaw-bone and a salient square chin; +with a high-bridged determined nose, and a white forehead rising +vertical over thick black eyebrows, and rather deep-set grey +eyes,--well, clap a steeple-crowned hat upon it, and you could have +posed him for one of his own Puritan ancestors. The very clothes of the +men carried on their unlikeness,--John's loose blue flannels and red +sailor's knot, careless-seeming, but smart in their effect, and showing +him careful in a fashion of his own; Winthorpe's black tie and dark +tweeds, as correct as Savile Row could turn them out, yet somehow, by +the way he wore them, proclaiming him immediately a man who never gave +two thoughts to his dress. If, however, Winthorpe's face was the face of +a Puritan, it was the face of a Puritan with a sense of humour--the +lines about the mouth were clearly the footprints of smiles. It seemed +the face of a sensitive Puritan, as well, and (maugre that high-bridged +nose) of a gentle--the light in his clear grey eyes was a kindly and +gentle light. After all, Governor Bradford, as his writings +show,--though he tried hard, perhaps, not to let them show it--was a +Puritan with a sense of humour; John Alden and Priscilla were surely +sensitive and gentle: and Winthorpe was descended from Governor +Bradford, and from John Alden and Priscilla. The two friends walked +backwards and forwards in the great open space before the Castle, and +talked. They had not met for nearly two years, and had plenty to talk +about. + + + + +II + + +Seated at one of the open windows of the pavilion beyond the clock, +Maria Dolores (in a pale green confection of I know not what airy, filmy +tissue) looked down, and somewhat vaguely watched them,--herself +concealed by the netted curtain, which, according to Italian usage, was +hung across the casement, to mitigate the heat and shut out insects. She +watched them at first vaguely, and only from time to time, for the rest +going on with some needlework she had in her lap. But by-and-by she +dropped her needlework altogether, and her watching became continuous +and absorbed. + +"What a singular-looking man!" she thought, studying Winthorpe. "What an +ascetic-looking man! He looks like an early Christian martyr. He looks +like a priest. I believe he _is_ a priest. English priests," she +remembered, "when they travel, often dress as laymen. Yes, he is a +priest, and a terribly austere one--I shouldn't like to go to him for +confession. But in spite of his austerity, he seems to be +extraordinarily happy about something just at present. That light in his +eyes,--it is almost a light of ecstasy. It is a light I have never seen +in any eyes, save those of priests and nuns." + +Winthorpe, while that "almost ecstatic" light shone in his eyes, had +been speaking. + +Now, as he paused, John, with a glance of gay astonishment, halted, and +turned so as to face him. John's lips moved, and it was perfectly plain +that he was exclaiming, delightedly, "Really? _Really_?" + +Winthorpe joyously nodded: whereupon John held out both hands, got hold +of his friend's, and, his pink face jubilant, shook them with tremendous +heartiness. + +"The priest has received advancement--he is probably to be made a +bishop," inferred Maria Dolores; "and Signor Prospero is congratulating +him." + +The men resumed their walk; but for quite a minute John kept his hand on +Winthorpe's shoulder, and again and again gently patted it, murmuring, +"I am so glad, so immensely glad." Maria Dolores was quite sure that +this was what he murmured, for, though no word could reach her, John's +beaming face spoke louder than his voice. + +At last John let his hand drop, and, eyebrows raised a little, asked a +question. + +"But how did it happen? But tell me all about it," was what he seemed to +say. + +And Winthorpe (always with something of that ecstatic light in his eyes) +proceeded to answer. But it was a longish story, and lasted through half +a dozen of their forward and backward ambulations. Apparently, +furthermore, it was a story which, as it developed, became less and less +agreeable to the mind of John; for his face, at first all awake with +interest, all aglow with pleasure, gradually sobered, gradually +darkened, took on a frown, expressed dissent, expressed disapprobation, +till, finally, with an impatient movement, he interrupted, and +began--speaking rapidly, heatedly--to protest, to remonstrate. + +"Ah," thought Maria Dolores, "the priest is to be made a bishop, sure +enough,--but a missionary bishop. It isn't for nothing that he looks +like an early Christian martyr. He is going to some outlandish, savage +part of the world, where he will be murdered by the natives, or die of +fever or loneliness. He is a man who has listened to the Counsels of +Perfection. But his unascetic friend Prospero (one would say June +remonstrating with December) can't bring himself to like it." + +John remonstrated, protested, argued. Winthorpe, calmly, smilingly, +restated his purpose and his motives. John pleaded, implored, appealed +(so the watcher read his gesture) to earth, to heaven. Winthorpe took +his arm, and calmly, smilingly, tried to soothe, tried to convince him. +John drew his arm free, and, employing it to add force and +persuasiveness to his speech, renewed his arguments, pointed out how +unnecessary, inhuman, impossible the whole thing was. "It's monstrous. +It's against all nature. There's no _reason_ in it. What does it _rhyme_ +with? It's wilfully going out of your way to seek, to create, +wretchedness. My mind simply refuses to accept it." It was as if Maria +Dolores could hear the words. But Winthorpe, calm and smiling, would not +be moved. John shook his head, muttered, shrugged his shoulders, threw +up his hands, muttered again. "Was ever such pig-headed obstinacy! Was +ever such arbitrary, voluntary blindness! I give you up, for a perverse, +a triple-pated madman!" And so, John muttering and frowning, Winthorpe +serenely smiling, reiterating, they passed round the corner of the +Castle buildings, and were lost to Maria Dolores' view. + + + + +III + + +That afternoon, seated on the moss, under a tall eucalyptus tree near to +Frau Brandt's pavilion, Maria Dolores received a visit from Annunziata. + +Annunziata's pale little face was paler, her big grave eyes were graver, +even than their wont. She nodded her head, slowly, portentously; and her +glance was heavy with significance. + +Maria Dolores smiled. "What is the matter?" she cheerfully inquired. + +"Ah," sighed Annunziata, deeply, with another portentous head-shake, "I +wish I knew." + +Maria Dolores laughed. "Sit down," she suggested, making room beside her +on the moss, "and try to think." + +Annunziata sat down, curled herself up. "Something has happened to +Prospero," she said, _de profundis_. + +"Oh?" asked Maria Dolores. "What?" She seemed heartlessly cheerful, and +even rather amused. + +"Ah," sighed Annunziata, "that is what I wish I knew. He has had a +friend to pass the day with him." + +"Yes?" said Maria Dolores. "I expect I saw his friend walking with him +this morning?" + +"_Già_," said Annunziata. "They have been walking about all day. _His_ +friend Prospero he calls him. But he doesn't look very prosperous. He +looks like a slate-pencil. He is long and thin, and dark and cold, and +hard, just like a slate-pencil. He would not stay the night, though we +had a bed prepared for him. He is going to Rome, and Prospero has driven +him to the railway station at Cortello. I hate him," wound up +Annunziata, simply. + +"Mercy!" exclaimed Maria Dolores, opening her eyes. "Why do you hate +him?" + +"Because he must have said or done something very unkind to Prospero," +answered Annunziata. "Oh, you should see him. He is so sad--so sad and +so angry. He keeps scowling, and shaking his head, and saying things in +English, which I cannot understand, but I am sure they are sad things +and angry things. And he would not eat any dinner,--no, not that much," +(Annunziata measured off an inch on her finger), "he who always eats a +great deal,--_eh, ma molto, molto_," and, separating her hands, she +measured off something like twenty inches in the air. + +Maria Dolores couldn't help laughing a little at this. But afterwards +she said, on a key consolatory, "Ah, well, he has gone away now, so let +us hope your friend Prospero will promptly recover his accustomed +appetite." + +"Yes," said Annunziata, "I hope so. But oh, that old slate-pencil man, +how I hate him! I would like to--_uhhh!_" She clenched her little white +fist, and shook it, threateningly, vehemently, while her eyes fiercely +flashed. ... Next instant, however, her mien entirely changed. Like a +light extinguished, all the fierceness went out of her face, making way +for what seemed pain and terror. "There," she cried, pain and terror in +her voice, "I have offended God. Oh, I am so sorry, so sorry. My sin, my +sin, my sin," she murmured, bowing her head, and thrice striking her +breast. + +"I take back every word I said. I do not hate him. I would not hurt +him--I would not even stick a pin in him--if I had him at my mercy. +No--I would do anything I could to help him. I would give him anything I +had that he could want. I would give him my coral rosary. I would give +him"--she hesitated, struggled, and at last, drawing a deep breath, +gritting her teeth, in supreme renunciation--"yes, I would give him my +tame kid," she forced herself to pronounce, with a kind of desperate +firmness. "But see," she wailed, her little white brow a mesh of painful +wrinkles, "it is all no good. God is still angry. Oh, what shall I do?" +And, to the surprise and distress of Maria Dolores, she burst into a +sudden passion of tears, sobbing, sobbing, with that abandonment of +grief which only children know. + +"My dear, my dear," exclaimed Maria Dolores, drawing her to her. "My +dearest, you mustn't cry like that. Dear little Annunziata. What is it? +Why do you cry so, dear one? Answer me. Tell me." + +But Annunziata only buried her face in Maria Dolores' sleeve, and +moaned, while long, tremulous convulsions shook her frail little body. +Maria Dolores put both arms about her, hugged her close, and laid her +cheek upon her hair. + +"Darling Annunziata, don't cry. Why should you cry so, dearest? God is +not angry with you. Why should you think that God is angry with you? God +loves you, darling. Everyone loves you. There, there--dearest--don't +cry. Sweet one, dear one." + +Transitions, with Annunziata, were sometimes inexplicably rapid. All at +once her sobbing ceased; she looked up, and smiled, smiled radiantly, +from a face that was wet and glistening with tears. "Thanks be to God," +she piously exulted; "God is not angry any more." + +"Of course He isn't," said Maria Dolores, tightening her hug, and +touching Annunziata's curls lightly with her lips. "But He was never +angry. What made you think that God was angry?" + +Annunziata's big eyes widened. "Didn't you notice?" she asked, in a +hushed voice, amazed. + +"No," wondered Maria Dolores. "What was there to notice?" + +"He made them draw a cloud over the sun," Annunziata whispered. "Didn't +you notice that when I said I would like to--when I said what I said +about that friend of Prospero's--just then they drew a cloud across the +sun? That is a sign that God is angry. The sun, you know, is the window +in Heaven through which God looks down on the world, and through which +the light of Heaven shines on the world. And when the window is open, we +feel happy and thankful, and wish to sing and laugh. But when we have +done something to make God angry with us, then He sends angels to draw +clouds over the window, so that we may be shut out of His sight, and the +light of Heaven may be shut off from us. And then we are lonely and +cold, and we could quarrel with anything, even with the pigs. God wishes +to show us how bad it would be always to be shut off from His sight. But +now they have drawn the cloud away, so God is not angry any more. I made +a good act of contrition, and He has forgiven me." + +Maria Dolores smiled, but under her smile there was a look of +seriousness, a look of concern. + +"My dear," she said smiling, and looking concerned, "you should try to +control your vivid little imagination. If every time a cloud crosses the +sun, you are going to assume the responsibility for it, and to fancy +that you have offended God, I'm afraid you'll have rather an agitated +life." + +"Oh, no; not _every_ time," exclaimed Annunziata, and she was manifestly +on the point of making a fine distinction, when abruptly the current of +her ideas was diverted. "Sh-h! There comes Prospero," she cried, +starting up. "I can see the top of his white hat above the rhododendron +bushes. He has driven his friend to Cortello, and come home. I must run +away, or he will see that I've been crying. Don't tell him," she begged, +putting her finger on her lips; and she set off running, towards the +presbytery, just as John stepped forth from behind the long hedge of +rhododendrons. + + + + +IV + + +John stepped forth from behind the rhododendrons, with a kind of +devil-may-care, loose, aimless gait, the brim of his Panama pulled +brigandishly down over one ear, his hands in the pockets of his coat, +his head bent, his brow creased, his eyes sombre, every line and fibre +of his person advertising him the prey of morose disgust. But when he +saw Maria Dolores, he hastily straightened up, unpocketed his hands, +took off his hat (giving it a flap that set the brim at a less truculent +angle), and smiled. And when, the instant after, he caught sight of the +flying form of Annunziata, his smile turned into a glance of wonder. + +"What is the matter with Annunziata? Why is she running with all her +legs like that?" he asked. + +Maria Dolores had the tiniest catch of laughter. "She is running away +from you," she answered. + +"From _me_?" marvelled John. "_Je suis donc un foudre de guerre?_ What +on earth is she running away from me for?" + +Maria Dolores smiled mysteriously. + +"Ah," she said, "she asked me not to tell you. I am in the delicate +position of confidante." + +"And therefore I hope you'll tell me with the less reluctance," said +John, urbanely unprincipled. "A confidante always betrays her confidence +to some one,--that's the part of the game that makes it worth while." + +Maria Dolores' smile deepened. + +"In that pale green frock, on that bank of dark-green moss, with her +complexion and her hair,--by Jove, how stunning she is!" thought John, +in a commotion. + +"Well," she said, "Annunziata ran away because she didn't want you to +see that she'd been crying." + +John raised his eyebrows, the blue eyes under them becoming expressive +of dismay. + +"Crying?" he echoed. "The poor little kiddie! What had she been crying +about!" + +"That is a long story, and involves some of her peculiar theological +tenets," said Maria Dolores. "But, in a single word, about your +friend." + +John's eyebrows descended to their normal level, and drew together. + +"Crying about my friend? What friend?" he puzzled. + +"Your friend the priest--the man who has been passing the day here with +you," explained Maria Dolores. + +John gave a start, threw back his head, and eyed her with astonishment. + +"That is extraordinary," he exclaimed. + +"What?" asked she, lightly glancing up. + +"That you should call him my friend the priest," said John, wagging a +bewildered head. + +"Why? Isn't he a priest? He has all the air of one," said Maria Dolores. + +"No; he's an American millionaire," said John, succinctly. + +Maria Dolores moved in her place, and laughed. + +"Dear me!" she said, "I did strike wide of the mark. An American +millionaire should cultivate a less deceptive appearance. With that +thin, shaven face of his, and that look of an early Christian martyr in +his eyes, and the dark clothes he wears, wherever he goes he's sure to +be mistaken for a priest." + +"Yes," said John, with a kind of grimness; "that's what's extraordinary. +He comes of a long line of bigoted Protestants, he's a reincarnation of +some of his stern old Puritan forebears, and you find that he looks like +their pet abomination, a Romish priest. Well, you have a prophetic eye." + +Maria Dolores gazed up inquiringly. "A prophetic eye?" she questioned. + +"I merely mean," said John, with thaumaturgic airiness, "that the man is +on his way to Rome to study for the priesthood." And he gave a +thaumaturgic toss to his bearded chin. + +"Oh!" cried Maria Dolores, and leaned back against her eucalyptus tree, +and laughed again. + +John, however, dejectedly shook his head, and gloomed. + +"Laugh if you will," he said, "though it seems to me as far as possible +from a laughing matter, and I think Annunziata chose the better part +when she cried." + +"I beg your pardon," said Maria Dolores, perhaps a trifle stiffly. "I +was only laughing at the coincidence of my having supposed him to be a +priest, and then learning that, though he isn't, he is going to become +one. I was not laughing at the fact itself. Nor was it," she added, her +stiffness leaving her, and a little glimmer of amusement taking its +place, "that fact which made Annunziata cry." + +"I dare say not," responded John, "seeing that she couldn't possibly +have known it. But it might well have done so. It's enough to bring +tears to the eyes of a brazen image." He angrily jerked his shoulders. + +"What?" cried Maria Dolores, surprised, rebukeful. "That a man is to +become a holy priest?" + +"Oh, no," said John. "That fact alone, detached from special +circumstances, might be a subject for rejoicing. But the fact that this +particular man, _in_ his special circumstances, is to become a +priest--well, I simply have no words to express my feeling." He threw +out his arms, in a gesture of despair. "I'm simply sick with rage and +pity. I could gnash my teeth and rend my garments." + +"Mercy!" cried Maria Dolores, stirring. "What are the special +circumstances?" + +"Oh, it's a grisly history," said John. "It's a tale of the wanton, +ruthless, needless, purposeless sacrifice of two lives. It's his old +black icy Puritan blood. Winthorpe--that's his name--had for years been +a freethinker, far too intellectual and enlightened, and that sort of +thing, you know, to believe any such old wives' tale as the Christian +Religion. He and I used to have arguments, tremendous ones, in which, of +course, neither in the least shook the other. Darwin and Spencer, with a +dash of his native Emerson, were religion enough for him. Then this +morning he arrived here, and said, 'Congratulate me. A month ago I was +received into the Church.'" + +Maria Dolores looked up, animated, her dark eyes sparkling. + +"How splendid!" she said. + +"Yes," agreed John, "so I thought. 'Congratulate me,' he said. I should +think I did congratulate him,--with all my heart and soul. But then, +naturally, I asked him how it had happened, what had brought it to +pass." + +"Yes--?" prompted Maria Dolores, as he paused. + +"Well," said John, his face hardening, "he thereupon proceeded to tell +me in his quiet way, with his cool voice (it's like smooth-flowing cold +water), absolutely the most inhuman story I have ever had to keep my +patience and listen to." + +"What was the story?" asked Maria Dolores. + +"If you can credit such inhumanity, it was this," answered John. "It +seems that he fell in love--with a girl in Boston, where he lives. And +what's more, and worse, the girl fell in love with him. So there they +were, engaged. But she was a Catholic, and his state of unbelief was a +cause of great grief to her. So she pleaded with him, and persuaded, +till, merely to comfort her, and without the faintest suspicion that his +scepticism could be weakened, he promised to give the Catholic position +a thorough reconsideration, to read certain books, and to put himself +under instruction with a priest: which he did. Which he did, if you +please, with the result, to his own unutterable surprise, that one fine +day he woke up and discovered that he'd been convinced, that he +_believed_." + +"Yes?" said Maria Dolores, eagerly. "Yes--? And then? And the girl?" + +"Ah," said John, with a groan, "the girl That's the pity of it. That's +where his black old Puritan blood comes in. Blood? It isn't blood--it's +some fluid form of stone--it's flint dissolved in vinegar. The girl! +Mind you, she loved him, they were engaged to be married. Well, he went +to her, and said, 'I have been converted. I believe in the Christian +religion--your religion. But I can't believe a thing like that, and go +on living as I lived when I didn't believe it,--go on living as if it +weren't true, or didn't matter. It does matter--it matters +supremely--it's the only thing in the world that matters. I can't +believe it, and _marry_--marry, and live in tranquil indifference to it. +No, I must put aside the thought of marriage, the thought of personal +happiness. I must sell all I have and give it to the poor, take up my +cross and follow Him. I am going to Rome to study for the priesthood.' +Imagine," groaned John, stretching out his hands, "_imagine_ talking +like that to a woman you are supposed to love, to a woman who loves +you." And he wrathfully ground his heel into the earth. + +Maria Dolores looked serious. + +"After all, he had to obey his conscience," she said. "After all, he was +logical, he was consistent." + +"Oh, his conscience! Oh, consistency!" cried John, with an intolerant +fling of the body. "At bottom it's nothing better than common +self-indulgence, as I took the liberty of telling him to his face. It's +the ardour of the convert, acting upon that acid solution of flint which +takes the place of blood in his veins, and causing sour puritanical +impulses, which (like any other voluptuary) he immediately gives way to. +It's nothing better than unbridled passion. Conscience, indeed! Where +was his conscience when it came to _her_? Think of that poor girl--that +poor pale girl--who _loved_ him. Oh, Mother of Mercy!" + +He moved impatiently three steps to the left, three steps to the right, +beating the palm of one hand with the back of the other. + +"What did she do? How did she take it?" asked Maria Dolores. + +"What she ought to have done," said John, between his teeth, "was to +scratch his eyes out. What she did do, as he informed me with a seraphic +countenance, was not merely to approve of everything he said, but to +determine to do likewise. So, while he's on his way to Rome, to get +himself tonsured and becassocked, she's scrubbing the floors of an +Ursuline convent, as a novice. And there are two lives spoiled." He +shrugged his shoulders. + +"Oh, no, no," contended Maria Dolores, earnestly, shaking her head, "not +spoiled. On the contrary. It is sad, in a way, if you like, but it is +very beautiful, it is heroic. Their love must have been a very beautiful +love, that could lead them to such self-sacrifice. Two lives given to +God." + +"Can't people give their lives to God without ceasing to _live_?" cried +John. "If marriage is a sacrament, how can they better give their lives +to God than by living sanely and sweetly in Christian marriage? But +these people withdraw from life, renounce life, shirk and evade the life +that God had prepared for them and was demanding of them. It's as bad as +suicide. Besides, it implies such a totally perverted view of religion. +Religion surely is given to us to help us to _live_, to show us _how_ to +live, to enable us to meet the difficulties, emergencies, +responsibilities of life. But these people look upon their religion as +a mandate to turn their backs on the responsibilities of life, and +scuttle away. And as for _love_! Well, she no doubt did love, poor lady. +But Winthorpe! No. When a man loves he doesn't send his love into a +convent, and go to Rome to get himself becassocked." He gave his head a +nod of finality. + +"That, I fancy, is a question of temperament," said Maria Dolores. "Your +friend has the ascetic temperament. And it does not by any means follow +that he loves less because he resigns his love. What you call an inhuman +story seems to me a wonderfully noble one. I saw your friend this +morning, when he and you were walking together, and I said to myself, +'That man looks as if he had listened to the Counsels of Perfection. His +vocation shines through him.' I think you should reconcile yourself to +his accepting it." + +"Well," said John, on the tone of a man ready to change the subject, "I +owe him at least one good mark. His account of his 'heart-state' led me +to examine my own, and I discovered that I am in love myself,--which is +a useful thing to know." + +"Oh?" said Maria Dolores, with a little effect of reserve. + +"Yes," said John, nothing daunted, "though unlike his, mine is an +unreciprocated flame, and unavowed." + +"Ah?" said Maria Dolores, reserved indeed, but not without an undertone +of sympathy. + +"Yes," said John, playing with fire, and finding therein a heady mixture +of fearfulness and joy. "The woman I love doesn't dream I love her, and +dreams still less of loving me,--for which blessed circumstance may +Heaven make me truly thankful." + +The sentiment sounding unlikely, Maria Dolores raised doubtful eyes. +They shone into John's; his drank their light; and something violent +happened in his bosom. + +"Oh--?" she said. + +"Yes," said he, thinking what adorable little hands she had, as they lay +loosely clasped in her lap, thinking how warm they would be, and +fragrant; thinking too what fun it was, this playing with fire, how +perilous and exciting, and how egotistical he must seem to her, and how +nothing on earth should prevent him from continuing the play. "Yes," he +said, "it's a circumstance to be thankful for, because, like Winthorpe +himself, though for different reasons, I'm unable to contemplate +marriage." His voice sank sorrowfully, and he made a sorrowful movement. + +"Oh--?" said Maria Dolores, her sympathy becoming more explicit. + +"Winthorpe's too beastly puritanical--and I'm too beastly poor," said +he. + +"Oh," she murmured. Her eyes softened; her sympathy deepened to +compassion. + +"She must certainly put me down as the most complacent egotist in two +hemispheres, so to regale her with unsolicited information about +myself," thought John; "but surely it would need six hemispheres to +produce another pair of eyes as beautiful as hers."--"Yes," he said, "I +should be 'looking up' if I asked even a beggar-maid to marry me." + +Maria Dolores' beautiful eyes became thoughtful as well as +compassionate. + +"But men who are poor work and earn money," she said, on the tone that +young women adopt when the spirit moves them to preach to young men. And +when the spirit does move them to that, things may be looked upon as +having advanced an appreciable distance, the ball may be looked upon as +rolling. + +"So I've heard," said John, his head in the clouds. "It must be dull +business." + +Maria Dolores dimly smiled. "Do _you_ do no work?" she asked. + +"I've never had time," said John. "I've been too busy enjoying life." + +"Oh," said Maria Dolores, with the intonation of reproach. + +"Yes," said he, "enjoying the Humour, the Romance, the Beauty of +it,--and combine the three together, make a chord of 'em, you get the +Divinity. Or, to take a lower plane, the world's a stage, and life's the +drama. I could never leave off watching and listening long enough to do +any work." + +"But do you not wish to play a part in the drama, to be one of the +actors?" asked his gentle homilist. "Have you no ambition?" + +"Not an atom," he easily confessed. "The part of spectator seems to me +by far the pleasantest. To sit in the stalls and watch the incredible +jumble-show, the reason-defying topsy-turvydom of it, the gorgeous, +squalid, tearful, and mirthful pageantry, the reckless inconsequences, +the flagrant impossibilities; to watch the Devil ramping up and down +like a hungry lion, and to hear the young-eyed cherubim choiring from +the skies: what better entertainment could the heart of man desire?" + +"But are we here merely to be entertained?" she sweetly preached, while +John's blue eyes somewhat mischievously laughed, and he felt it hard +that he couldn't stop her rose-red mouth with kisses. "Aren't we here to +be, as the old-fashioned phrase goes, of use in the world? Besides, now +that you are in love, surely you will never sit down weakly, and say, 'I +am too poor to marry,' and so give up your love,--like your friend +Winthorpe indeed, but for ignoble instead of noble motives. Surely you +will set to work with determination, and earn money, and make it +possible to marry. Or else your love must be a very poor affair." And +her adorable little hands, as they lay ("like white lilies," thought +John) upon the pale-green fabric of her gown, unclasped themselves, +opened wide for an instant, showing the faint pink of their palms, then +lightly again interlaced their fingers. + +He laughed. "You are delicious," he said to her fervently, in silence. +"My love is all right," he said aloud. "I love her as much as it is +humanly possible to love. I love her with passion, with tenderness; with +worship, with longing; I love her with wonder; I love her with sighs, +with laughter. I love her with all I have and with all I am. And I owe +one to Winthorpe for having unwittingly opened my eyes to my condition. +But earning money? I've a notion it's difficult. What could I do?" + +"Have you no profession?" she asked. + +"Not the ghost of one," said he, with nonchalance. + +"But is there no profession that appeals to you--for which you feel that +you might have a taste?" Her dark eyes were very earnest. + +"Not the ghost of one," said he, dissembling his amusement. +"Professions--don't they all more or less involve sitting shut up in +stuffy offices, among pigeon-holes full of dusty and futile papers, +doing tiresome tasks for the greater glory of other people, like a slave +in the hold of a galley? No, if I'm to work, I must work at something +that will keep me above decks--something that will keep me out of +doors, in touch with the air and the earth. I might become an +agricultural labourer,--but that's not very munificently paid; or a +farmer,--but that would require perhaps more capital than I could +command, and anyhow the profits are uncertain. I've an uncle who's a bit +of a farmer, and year in, year out, I believe he makes a loss. 'Well, +what's left? ... Ah, a gardener. I don't think I should half mind being +a gardener." + +Maria Dolores looked as if she weren't sure whether or not to take him +seriously. + +"A gardener? That's not very munificently paid either, is it?" she +suggested, trying her ground. + +"Alas, I fear not," sighed John. Then he made a grave face. "But would +you have me entirely mercenary? Money isn't everything here below." + +Maria Dolores smiled. She saw that for the moment at least he was not to +be taken seriously. + +"True," she agreed, "though it ran in my mind that to earn money, so +that you might marry, was your only motive for going to work at all." + +"I had forgotten that," said the light-minded fellow. "I was thinking of +occupations that would keep one in touch with the earth. A gardener's +occupation keeps him constantly in the charmingest possible sort of +touch with her, and the most intimate." + +"Do they call the earth _her_ in English?" asked Maria Dolores. "I +thought they said _it_." + +"I'm afraid, for the greater part, they do," answered John. "But it's +barbarous of them, it's unfilial. Our brown old mother,--fancy +begrudging her the credit of her sex! Our brown and green old mother; +our kindly, bounteous mother; our radiant, our queenly mother, old, and +yet perennially, radiantly young. Look at her now," he cried, circling +the garden with his arm, and pointing to the farther landscape, "look at +her, shining in her robes of pearl and gold, shining and smiling,--one +would say a bride arrayed for the altar. Such is her infinite variety. +Her infinite variety, her infinite abundance, the fragrance and the +sweetness of her,--oh, I could fall upon my face and worship her, like a +Pagan of Eld. The earth and all that grows and lives upon her, the +blossoming tree, the singing bird,--I could build temples to her." + +"And the crawling snake?" put in Maria Dolores, a gleam at the bottom of +her eyes. + +"The crawling snake," quickly retorted John, "serves a most useful +purpose. He establishes the _raison d'être_ of man. Man and his heel are +here to crush the serpent's head." + +Maria Dolores leaned back, softly laughing. + +"Your infatuation for the earth is so great," she said, "mightn't your +lady-love, if she suspected it, be jealous?" + +"No," said John, "it is the earth that might be jealous, for, until I +saw my lady-love, she was the undivided mistress of my heart. For the +rest, my lady-love enjoys, upon this point, my entire confidence. I have +kept nothing from her." + +"That is well," approved Maria Dolores. "And the sky and the sea," still +softly laughing, she asked, "have they no place in your affections? + +"The sky is her tiring-maiden, and I love the sky for that," said John. +"'Tis the sky that clothes her in her many-coloured raiment, and holds +the light whereby her beauty is made manifest. And the sea is a jewel +that she bears upon her bosom,--a magical jewel, whence, with the sky's +aid, she draws the soft rain that is her scent and her cosmetic. +'Fragrant the fertile earth after soft showers.' Do you know, I could +almost forgive the dour and detestable Milton everything for the sake of +those seven words. They show that in the sense of smell he had at least +one attribute of humanity." + +Maria Dolores' dark eyes were quizzical. + +"The dour and detestable Milton?" she exclaimed. "Poor Milton! What has +he done to merit such anathema? + +"It isn't what he has done, but what he was," said John. "That he was +dour nobody will deny, dour and sour and inhuman. Ask those unfortunate, +long-suffering daughters of his, if you doubt it. _They_ could tell you +stories. But he was worse. He was a scribe and a Pharisee, a +pragmatical, self-righteous, canting old scribe and Pharisee. And he was +worse still, and still worse yet. He was--what seems to me to-day the +worstest thing unhung--he was a Puritan. Like Winthorpe's, his blood was +black and icy and vinegarish. Like Winthorpe--But there. I mustn't +abuse Winthorpe any more, and I must try to forgive Milton. Milton wrote +seven good words, and Winthorpe unwittingly opened a lover's eyes to his +condition." + +He paused, and smiled down upon her, and his newly opened (and very +blue) blue eyes said much. Her eyes were dreaming on the landscape, +where it shone in pearl and gold. However, as she gave no sign of +finding his conversation wearisome, he took heart, and continued. + +"For when he told me how he had put his love away, never again to see +her, and how at that moment she would be scrubbing floors (or taking the +discipline, perhaps?) in a convent of Ursulines, suddenly, and without +any action of the will on my part, there rose before me the vision of a +certain woman;--a woman I knew a little, admired immensely, very much +liked, but didn't for an instant suppose I was seriously in love with. +And involuntarily, with the vision of her before me, I asked myself +whether, _mutatis mutandis_, I could have done as he had, and in a flash +I saw that I could not,--that not for the wealth of Ormus and of Ind +could I or would I give her up, if once I had her. So, by that token, +and by the uncommon wrath with which his tale inflamed me," John, with a +rhetorical flourish, perorated, "I discovered that I loved." And again +his eyes said much. + +Hers were still on the prospect. + +"Yet if you only know her a little, how can you love her?" she asked, in +a musing voice. + +"Did I say I only know her a little?" asked John. "I know her a great +deal. I know her through and through. I know that she is pure gold, pure +crystal; that she is made of all music, all light, all sweetness, and of +all shadow and silence and mystery too, as women should be. I know that +earth holds naught above her. I do not care to employ superlatives, so, +to put it in the form of an understatement, I know that she is simply +and absolutely perfect. If you could see her! If you could see her eyes, +her deep-glowing, witty, humorous, mischievous, innocent eyes, with the +soul that burns in them, the passion that sleeps. If you could see the +black soft masses of her hair, and her white brow, and the pale-rose of +her cheeks, and the red-rose of her lovely smiling mouth. If you could +see her figure, slender and strong, and the grace and pride of her +carriage,--the carriage of an imperial princess. If you could see her +hands,--they lie in her lap like languid lilies. And her voice,--'tis +the colour of her mouth and the glow of her eyes made audible. And if +you could whisper to yourself her melodious and thrice adorable name. I +know her a great deal. When I said that I only knew her a little, I +meant it in the sense that she only knows me a little,--which after all, +alas, for practical purposes comes to the same thing." + +He had spoken with emphasis, with fervour, his pink face animated and +full of intention. Maria Dolores kept her soft-glowing eyes resolutely +away from him, but I think the soul that burned in them (if not the +passion that slept) was vaguely troubled. _Qui pane d'amour_--how does +the French proverb run? Did she vaguely feel perhaps that the seas they +were sailing were perilous? Anyhow, as John saw with sinking heart, she +was at the point of putting an end to their present conjunction,--she +was preparing to rise. He would have given worlds to offer a helping +hand, but (however rich in worlds) he was, for the occasion, poor in +courage. When love comes in at the door, assurance as like as not will +fly out of the window. So she rose unaided. + +"Let us hope," she said, giving him a glance in which he perceived an +under-gleam as of not unfriendly mockery, "that she will soon come to +know you better." + +"Heaven forbid!" cried he, with a fine simulation of alarm. "It is upon +her ignorance of my true character that I base such faint hopes as I +possess of some day winning her esteem." + +Maria Dolores laughed, nodded, and lightly moved away. + +"My son," said John to himself, "you steered precious close to the wind. +You had best be careful." + +And then he was conscious of a sudden change in things. The garden +smiled about him, the valley below laughed in the breeze, the blackcaps +sang, the many windows of the Castle glistened in the sun; but their +beauty and their pleasantness had departed, had retired with her into +the long, low, white-walled, red-roofed pavilion. He was conscious of a +sudden change in things, and of a sudden acute and bitter depression +within himself. + +"These are great larks," he said; "great larks while they last,--but +what's the good of them in the end? What do they lead to? What's the +good of coquetting with blisses that can't be yours?" And he breathed a +prodigious sigh. "When shall I see her again?" he asked, and thereupon +was seized by his old terror--his terror of yesterday, though it seemed +to him a terror he had known all his life--lest he should never see her +again. "She's only a visitor. What's to prevent her leaving this very +night?" + +The imagination was intolerable. He entered the Castle court, and +climbed the staircase of honour, and rambled through the long suites of +great empty rooms, empty of everything save the memory of the past and +the portraits of the dead, there, if he might, for a time at least, to +lose himself and to forget her. + + + + +V + + +"Who is the young man you have been talking with so long?" asked Frau +Brandt, as Maria Dolores came into her sitting-room, a vast, square, +bare room, with a marble floor and a painted ceiling, with Venetian +blinds to shelter it from the sun, and a bitter-sweet smell, as of +rosemary or I know not what other aromatic herb, upon its cool air. + +"Oh? You saw us?" said Maria Dolores, answering the question with +question. + +"Him I have seen many times--every day for a week at least," said Frau +Brandt. "But I never before saw you talking with him. Who is he?" She +was a small, brown, square-built, black-haired, homely-featured old +woman, in a big, round starched white cap and a flowing black silk gown. +She sat in an uncushioned oaken armchair by the window, with some +white knitting in her bony, blunt-fingered brown hands, and +tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles on her nose. But the spectacles +couldn't hide the goodness or the soundness or the sweetness that looked +forth from her motherly old honest brown eyes. + +"He is a young man who lives _en pension_ at the presbytery," said Maria +Dolores, "a young Englishman." + +"So?" said Frau Brandt. "What is his name?" + +"I don't know," said Maria Dolores, with disengagement real or feigned. +"His Christian name, I believe, is John." + +"But his family name?" persisted Frau Brandt. + +"It is probably Brown, Jones, or Robinson," said Maria Dolores. "Or it +may even be Black, Smith, or Johnson. Most Englishmen are named one or +the other." + +"So?" said Frau Brandt. "But is it prudent or seemly for you to talk +familiarly with a young man whose name is unknown to you?" + +"Why not?" asked Maria Dolores, raising her eyebrows, as if surprised. +"He seems a very harmless young man. I don't think he will eat me. And +he is English,--and I like English people. And he is intelligent,--his +conversation amuses me. And he has nice easy, impetuous manners,--so +different from the formality and restraint of Austrian young men. What +can his name matter?" + +"But"--Frau Brandt looked up impressively over her spectacles, and her +voice was charged with gravity, for she was about to ask a question to +the Teutonic mind of quite supreme importance--"but is he noble?" It was +to her what--nay, more than what--the question, "Is he respectable?" +would have been to an Englishwoman. + +Maria Dolores laughed. + +"Oh, no," she said. "At least I have every reason to believe not, and I +devoutly hope not. He belongs I expect to what they call in England the +middle class. He has an uncle who is a farmer." + +Frau Brandt's good old brown eyes showed her profoundly shocked, and +expressed profound reprehension. + +"But you were speaking with him familiarly--you were speaking with him +almost as an equal," she pronounced in bated accents, in accents of +consternation. + +Again Maria Dolores laughed. + +"True," she assented gaily, "and that is exactly what I couldn't do if +he _were_ noble. Then I should have to remember our respective +positions. But where the difference of rank is so great, one can talk +familiarly without fear. _Ça n'engage à rien_." + +Frau Brandt nodded her head, for full half a minute, with many meanings; +she nodded it now up and down, and now shook it sidewise. + +"I do not like it," she said, at last. "Your brother would not like it. +It is not becoming. Well, thanks be to Heaven, he is only English." + +"Oh, of course," agreed Maria Dolores, "if he were Austrian, it would be +entirely different." + +"But is it fair to the young man himself?" pursued Frau Brandt. "Is he +aware that he is hobanobbing with a Serene Highness? You treat him as an +equal. What if he should fall in love with you?" + +"What indeed! But he won't," laughed Maria Dolores, possibly with a +mental reservation. + +"Who can tell?" said Frau Brandt. "His eyes, when he looked at you, had +an expression. But there is a greater danger still. You are both at the +dangerous age. He is good-looking. What if your heart should become +interested in him?" + +"Oh, in that case," answered Maria Dolores, lightly, her chin a little +in the air, "I should marry him--if he asked me." + +"What!" cried Frau Brandt, half rising from her chair. + +"Yes," said Maria Dolores, cheerfully unexcited. "He is a man of +breeding and education, even if he isn't noble. If I loved a man, I +shouldn't give one thought to his birth. I'm tired of all our Austrian +insistence upon birth, upon birth and quarterings and precedencies. If +ever I love, I shall love some one just for what he is, for what God has +made him, and for nothing else. It wouldn't matter if his father were a +cobbler--if I loved him, I'd marry him." Her chin higher in the air, she +had every appearance of meaning what she said. + +Frau Brandt had sunk back in her chair, and was nodding her white-capped +old head again. + +"Oh, my child, my child," she grieved. "Will you never rid your fancy of +these high-flown, unpractical, romantic whimsies? It all comes of +reading poetry." She herself, good woman, read little but her prayers. + +"Oh, my dear true Heart," responded Maria Dolores, laughing. She crossed +the room, and placed her hand affectionately upon Frau Brandt's +shoulder. "My dearest old Nurse! Do not distress yourself. This is not +yet a question of actuality. Let us not cry before we are hurt." And she +stooped, and kissed her nurse's brown old brow. + +But afterwards she stood looking with great pensiveness out of the +window, stood so for a long while; and I fancy there was a softer glow +than ever in her soft-glowing eyes, and perhaps a livelier rose in her +pale-rose cheeks. + +"What are you thinking so deeply about?" Frau Brandt asked by-and-by. + +Maria Dolores woke with a little start, and turned from the window, and +laughed again. + +"Oh, thinking about my cobbler's son, of course," she said. + + + + +VI + + +Annunziata, seeking him to announce that supper was ready, found John, +seated in his chamber of dead ladies, his arms folded, his legs crossed, +his eyes fixed, a frown upon his prone brow; his spirit apparently rapt +in a brown study. + +"Eh! Prospero!" she called. + +Whereat he came to himself glanced up, glanced round, changed his +posture, and finally, rising, blew his preoccupations from him in a +deep, deep sigh. + +"Oh, what a sigh!" marvelled Annunziata, making big eyes. "What are you +sighing so hard for?" + +John looked at her, and smiled. + +"Sighing for my miller's daughter, my dear," he said. + +And, as he followed her to the presbytery, he sang softly to himself-- + + _"It is the miller's daughter, + And she is grown so dear, so dear, + That I would be the jewel + That trembles in her ear."_ + + + + +PART FIFTH + + + + +I + + +It was Sunday. It was early morning. It was raining,--a fine quiet, +determined rain, that blurred the lower reaches of the valley, and +entirely hid the mountain-tops, so that one found it hard not to doubt a +little whether they were still there. Near at hand the garden was as if +a thin web of silver had been cast over it, pale and dim, where wet +surfaces reflected the diffused daylight. And just across the Rampio, on +the olive-clad hillside that rose abruptly from its brink, rather an +interesting process was taking place,--the fabrication of clouds, no +less. The hillside, with its rondure of blue-grey foliage, would lie for +a moment quite bare and clear; then, at some high point, a mist would +begin to form, would appear indeed to issue from the earth, as smoke +from a subterranean fire, white smoke with pearly shadows; would thicken +and spread out; would draw together and rise in an irregular spiral +column, curling, swaying, poising, as if uncertain what to do next; and +at last, all at once making up its mind, (how like a younker or a +prodigal!), would go sailing away, straggling away, amorphous, on a puff +of wind, leaving the hillside clear again;--till, presently, the process +would recommence _da capo_. + +John and Annunziata, seated together on a marble bench in the shelter of +the great cloister, with its faded frescoes, at the north-eastern +extremity of the castle buildings, had been watching this element-play +for some minutes in silence. But by-and-by Annunziata spoke. + +"What makes the cloud come out of the hill like that?" she asked, her +eyes anxiously questioning his. "I have seen it happen many times, but I +could never understand it. There cannot be a fire underneath?" + +"If _you_ can't understand it, Mistress Wisdom," responded John, smiling +on her, "you surely mustn't expect a featherpate like me to. Between +ourselves, I don't believe any one can really understand it, though +there's a variety of the human species called scientists who might +pretend they could. It's all a part of that great scheme of miracles by +which God's world goes on, Nature, which nobody can really understand in +the very least. All that the chaps called scientists can really do is to +observe and more or less give names to the miracles. They can't explain +'em." + +"It is great pleasure to watch such things," said Annunziata. "It is a +great blessing to be allowed to see a miracle performed with your own +eyes." + +"So it is," agreed John. "And if you keep your eyes well open, there's +not a minute of the livelong day when you mayn't see one." + +"It is very strange," said Annunziata, "but when the sun shines, then I +love the sunny weather, and am glad that it does not rain. Yet when it +does rain, then I find that I love the rain too, that I love it just as +much as the sun,--it is so fresh, it smells so good, the raindrops are +so pretty, and they make such a pretty sound where they fall, and the +grey light is so pleasant." + +"Our loves," said John, "are always very strange. Love is the rummest +miracle of them all. It is even more difficult to account for than the +formation of clouds on the hillside." + +"We love the things that give us pleasure," said Annunziata. + +"And the people, sometimes, who give us pain," said John. + +"We love the people, first of all, who are related to us," said +Annunziata, "and then the people we see a great deal of--just as I love, +first of all, my uncle, and then you and Marcella the cook." + +"Who brings in the inevitable veal," said John. "Thank you, Honeymouth." +He bowed and laughed, while Annunziata's grave eyes wondered what he was +laughing at. "But it isn't every one," he pointed out, "who has your +solid and well-balanced little head-piece. It isn't every one who keeps +his love so neatly docketed, or so sanely submitted to the sway of +reason. Some of us love first of all people who aren't related to us in +the remotest degree, and people we've seen hardly anything of and know +next to nothing about." + +Annunziata deprecatingly shook her head. + +"It is foolish to love people we know nothing about," she declared, in +her deep voice, and looked a very sage delivering judgment. + +"True enough," said John. "But what would you have? Some of us are born +to folly, as the sparks fly upward. You see, there's a mighty difference +between love and love. There's the love which is affection, there's the +love which is cupboard-love, and there's the love which is just simply +love-love and nothing else. The first, as you have truly observed, has +its roots in consanguinity or association, the second in a lively hope +of future comfits, and either is sufficiently explicable. But the third +has its roots apparently in mere haphazard and causelessness, and isn't +explicable by any means whatsoever, and yet is far and away the +violentest of the three. It falls as the lightning from the clouds, and +strikes whom it will. Though I mix my metaphors fearlessly, like a man, +I trust, with your feminine intuition, you follow me?" + +"No," said Annunziata, without compunction, her eyes on the distance. "I +don't know what you mean." + +"Thank Heaven you don't, pray Heaven you never may," said her +inconsequential friend. "For love-love is a plague. You meet a person, +for example, in a garden. You know nothing whatever about her, not even +her name, though you fear it may be Schmidt. You meet her not more than +half a dozen times all told. And suddenly one morning you wake up to +discover that she has become to you the person of first importance in +the world. She is practically a total stranger to you, she's of a +different nationality, a different rank, yet she's infinitely the most +precious and important person in the world. When you're absent from her +you can do nothing but think of her, gloating with throes of aromatic +pain over the memory of your last meeting with her, longing with +soul-hunger for your next. The merest flutter of her gown, modulation of +her voice, glance of her eye, will throw your heart into a palpitation. +You look in the direction of the house that she inhabits, and you feel +the emotions of a Peri looking at the gate of Eden. And it gives you the +strangest sort of strange joy to talk about her, though of course you +take pains to talk about her in veiled terms, obliquely, so that your +listener shan't guess _whom_ you are talking about. In short, she is the +be-all and the end-all of your existence,--and you don't even know her +name, though you fear it may be Schmidt." + +He lolled back at ease on the marble bench, and twirled his yellow-red +moustaches, fancy free. + +"But you do know her name," said Annunziata, simply, in her deepest +voice, holding him with a gaze, lucent and serious, that seemed almost +reproachful. "Her name is Maria Dolores." + +The thing was tolerably unexpected. What wonder if it put my hero out of +countenance? His attitude grew rigid, his pink skin three shades pinker; +his blue eyes stared at her, startled. So for a second; then he relaxed, +and laughed, laughed long and heartily, perhaps a little despitefully +too, at his own expense. ... But he must try, if he might, to repair the +mischief. + +"My poor child," he said, resting his hand on her curls, and gently +smoothing them. "You are what the French call an _enfant terrible_. You +are what the English call a deuced sharp little pickle. And I must try, +if I can, without actually lying, to persuade you that you are utterly +mistaken, utterly and absolutely mistaken,"--he raised his voice, for +greater convincingness,--"and that her name is nothing distantly +resembling the name that you have spoken, and that in fact her name is +Mrs. Harris, and that in fine there is no such person, and that I was +merely talking hypothetically, in abstractions; I must draw a herring +across the trail, I must raise a dust, and throw a lot of it into your +amazingly clear-sighted little eyes. Now, is it definitely impressed +upon you that her name is _not_--the thrice-adorable name you +mentioned?" + +"I thought it was," answered Annunziata. "I am sorry it is not." And +then she dismissed the subject. "See, it is raining harder. See how the +rain comes down in long strings of beads,--see how it is like a network +of long strings of glass beads falling through the air. When the rain +comes down like that, it means that after the rain stops it will be very +hot. To-morrow it will be very hot." + +The bell in the clock-tower tolled out seven solemn strokes; then the +lighter-toned and nimbler-tongued bell of the church began to ring. + +"Come," peremptorily said Annunziata, jumping up. "Mass." + +She held out her hand, took John's, and, like a mother, led the meek and +unquestioning young man to his duties. + + + + +II + + +Of course there are no such heretical inventions as pews in the parish +church of Sant' Alessina. You sit upon orthodox rush-bottomed chairs, +you kneel upon orthodox bare stones. But at the Epistle side of the +altar, at an elevation of perhaps a yard from the pavement, there is a +recess in the wall, enclosed by a marble balustrade, and hung with faded +red curtains, which looks, I'm afraid, a good deal like a private box at +a theatre, and is in fact the tribune reserved for the masters of the +Castle. (In former days those masters were the Sforzas. So, from this +tribune, the members of that race of iron and blood, of fierceness and +of guile, have assisted at the mystical sacrifice of the Lamb of God!) +Heretofore, during John's residence at the presbytery, the tribune had +stood vacant. To-day it was occupied by Maria Dolores and Frau Brandt. +Maria Dolores, instead of wearing a hat, had adopted the ancient and +beautiful use of draping a long veil of black lace over her dark hair. + +John knelt in the middle of the church, in the thick of the ragged, +dirty, unsavoury villagers. When Mass was over, he returned to the +cloisters, and there, face to face, he met the lady of his dreams. + +She graciously inclined her head. + +"Good morning," she said, smiling, in a voice that seemed to him full of +morning freshness. + +"Good morning," he responded, wondering whether she could hear the +tremor of his heart. "Though, in honest truth, it's rather a bad +morning, isn't it?" he submitted, posing his head at an angle, dubious +and reflective, that seemed to raise the question to a level of +philosophic import. + +"Oh, with these cloisters, one shouldn't complain," said she, glancing +indicatively round. "One can still be out of doors, and yet not get the +wetting one deserves. And the view is so fine, and these faded old +frescoes are so droll." + +"Yes," said he, his wits, for the instant, in a state of suspended +animation. "The view is fine, the frescoes are droll." + +She looked as if she were thinking about something. + +"Don't you find it," she asked, after a moment, with the slightest +bepuzzled drawing together of her eyebrows, "a trifle unpleasant, +hearing Mass from where you do?" + +John looked blank. + +"Unpleasant? No. Why?" he asked. + +"I should think it might be disagreeable to be hemmed in and elbowed by +those extraordinarily ragged and dirty people," she explained. "It's a +pity they shouldn't clean themselves up a little before coming to +church." + +"Ah, yes," he assented, "a little cleaning up wouldn't hurt them; that's +very certain. But," he set forth, in extenuation, "it's not the custom +of the country, and the fact that it isn't has its good significance, as +well as its bad. It's one of the many signs of how genuinely democratic +and popular the Church is in Italy,--as it ought to be everywhere. It is +here essentially the Church of the people, the Church of the poor. It is +the one place where the poorest man, in all his rags, and with the soil +of his work upon him, feels perfectly at ease, perfectly at home, +perfectly equal to the richest. It is the one place where a reeking +market-woman, with her basket on her arm, will feel at liberty to take +her place beside the great lady, in her furs and velvets, and even to +ask her, with a nudge, to move up and make room. That is as it should +be, isn't it?" + +"No doubt, no doubt," agreed Maria Dolores, beginning to pace backwards +and forwards over the lichen-stained marble pavement, (stained as by the +hand of an artist, in wavy veins of yellow or pale-green, with here and +there little rosettes of scarlet), while John kept beside her. "All the +same, I should not like to kneel quite in the very heart of the crowd, +as you do." + +"You are a delicate and sensitive woman," he reminded her. "I am a man, +and a moderately tough one. However, I must admit that until rather +recently I had exactly your feeling. But I got a lesson." He broke off +and gave a vague little laugh, vaguely rueful, as at a not altogether +pleasant reminiscence. + +"What was the lesson?" she asked. + +"Well," said he, "if you care to know, it was this. The first time that +I attended Mass here, desiring to avoid the people, I sought out a far +corner of the church, behind a pillar, where there was no one. But as +soon as I had got myself well established there, up hobbled a deformed +and lame old man, and plumped himself down beside me, so close that our +coat-sleeves touched. I think he was the most repulsive-looking old man +I have ever seen; he was certainly the dirtiest, the grimiest, and his +rags were extravagantly foul. I will spare you a more circumstantial +portrait. And all through Mass I was sick with disgust and sore with +resentment. Why should he come and rub his coat-sleeve against mine, +when there was room in plenty for him elsewhere? The next time I went to +church, I chose a different corner, as remote as might be from my former +one; but again, no sooner was I well installed, than, lo and behold, the +same unspeakable old man limped up and knelt with me, cheek by jowl. And +so, if you can believe it, the next time, and so the next. It didn't +matter where I placed myself, there he was sure to place himself too. +You will suppose that, apart from my annoyance, I was vastly perplexed. +Why should he pursue me so? Who was he? What was he after? And for +enlightenment I addressed myself to Annunziata. 'Who is the hideous old +man who always kneels beside me?' I asked her. She had not noticed any +one kneeling beside me, she said; she had noticed, on the contrary, that +I always knelt alone, at a distance. 'Well,' said I, 'keep your eyes +open to-day, and you will see the man I mean.' So we went to Mass, and +sure enough, no sooner had I found a secluded place, than my old friend +appeared and joined me, dirtier and more hideous and if possible more +deformed than ever. + +"Yes?" said Maria Dolores, with interest, as he paused. + +"When we came out of church, I asked Annunziata who he was," continued +John. "And she said that though she had kept her eyes open, according to +my injunction, she had failed to see any one kneeling beside me--that, +on the contrary, she had seen me," he concluded, with an insouciance +that was plainly assumed for its dramatic value, "kneeling alone, at a +distance from every one." + +Maria Dolores' face was white. She frowned her mystification. + +"What!" she exclaimed, in a half-frightened voice. + +"That is precisely the ejaculation that fell from my own lips at the +time," said John. "Then I gave her a minute description of the old man, +in all his ugliness. And then she administered my lesson to me." + +"Yes? What was it?" questioned Maria Dolores, her interest acute. + +"Speaking in that oracular vein of hers, her eyes very big, her face +very grave, she assured me that my horrible old man had no objective +existence. She informed me cheerfully and calmly that he was an image of +my own soul, as it appeared, corrupted and aged and deformed by the sins +of a lifetime, to God and to the Saints. And she added that he was sent +to punish me for my pride in thinking myself different to the common +people, and in seeking to hold myself aloof. Since then," John brought +his anecdote to a term, "I have always knelt in the body of the church, +and I have never again seen my Doppelgänger." + +Maria Dolores was silent for a little. They had come to the southern end +of the cloisters, where the buttresses of the Castle walls, all +shaggy-mantled in a green overgrowth of creepers, fall precipitously +away, down the steep face of a natural cliff. They stopped here, and +stood looking off. The rain had held up, though the valley was still +misty with its vapours. Whiffs of velvety air, warm and sweet, blew in +their faces, lightly stirred the dark hair about her brow, and, catching +the flowery edge of her black lace mantilla, set it fluttering. + +"That is a very good story," she said, by-and-by, with a sober glance, +behind which there was the glint of laughter. "In view of it, however, I +suppose there will be no use in my delivering a message I am charged +with for you from my friend Frau Brandt." + +"Oh?" questioned John. "What message?" + +"Frau Brandt has received from the owner of the Castle the privilege of +hearing Mass from the tribune; and she wished me to invite you in her +name hereafter to hear Mass from there with us. But I suppose, in view +of your 'lesson,' that is an invitation which you will decline?" The +glint of laughter shone brighter in her eyes, and her mouth had a tiny +pucker, amiably derisive. + +John looked at her, his blue eyes bold. + +"That is an invitation which I am terribly tempted to accept," he said, +in a voice of unconcealed emotion, of patent meaning; and beneath his +bold gaze, her dark eyes dropped, while I think a blush faintly swept +her cheeks. "And first of all," he added, "pray express to Frau Brandt +my grateful thanks for it--and let me thank you also for your kindness +in conveying it. If, in spite of my temptation, I _don't_ accept it, +that will be for a very special reason, and one quite unconnected with +my 'lesson.'" + +Maria Dolores probably knew her danger. She turned, and began to walk +backwards, towards the point where you can pass from the cloisters, +through the great porte-cochère, into the garden, and so on to the +pavilion beyond the clock. She probably knew her danger; but she was +human, but she was a woman. Besides, she had reached the porte-cochère, +and thus commanded a clear means of escape. So, coming to a standstill +here, "What is the very special reason?" she asked, in a low voice, +keeping her eyes from his. + +His were bolder than ever. Infinite admiration of her burned in them, +infinite delight in her, desire for her; at the same time a kind of +angry hopelessness darkened them, and a kind of bitter amusement, as of +one amused at his own sad plight. + +"I wish I were rich," he exclaimed, irritably, between his teeth. + +"Oh? Is _that_ the very special reason?" asked she, with two notes of +laughter. + +"No," said he, "but it has a connection with it. You see, I'm in love." + +"Yes," said she. "I remember your telling me so." + +"Well, I wish I were rich," said he. "Then I might pluck up courage to +ask the woman I love to be my wife." + +"Money isn't everything here below," said she. "I have your own word for +that." + +"What else counts," said he, "when you wish to ask a woman to marry +you?" + +"Oh, many things," said she. "Difference of rank, for example." + +"That wouldn't count with me," said the democratic fellow, handsomely. +"I shouldn't give two thoughts to differences of rank." + +Maria Dolores smiled--at her secret reflections, I suppose. + +"But poverty puts it out of all question," John moodily went on. "I +couldn't ask a woman to come and share with me an income of sixpence a +week. Especially as I have grounds for believing that she's in rather +affluent circumstances herself. Oh, I wish I were rich!" He repeated +this aspiration in a groan. + +"Poor, poor young man!" she commiserated him, while her eyes, which she +held perseveringly averted, were soft with sympathy and gay with mirth. +"When do you begin your gardening?" + +"Oh, don't mock me!" he cried, with an imploring gesture. "You know, +joking apart, that it's child's play for a man of my age, with no +profession and no special talent, to fancy he can turn to and earn +money. I might, if I made supernatural exertions, and if Fortune went +out of her way to favour me, add a maximum of another sixpence to my +weekly budget. No, there's never a hope for me on sea or land. I must +e'en bear it, though I cannot grin withal." + +"Ah, well," said Maria Dolores, to comfort him, "these attacks, I have +read, are often as short as they are sharp. Let us trust you'll soon +rally from this one. How long have they generally lasted in the past?" + +John's face grew dark with upbraiding; the sea-blue of his eyes, the +gold of his hair and beard, the pink of his complexion visibly grew +dark. + +"You are so needlessly unkind," he said, "that you don't deserve to hear +the true answer to your question." + +She studied the half-obliterated fresco on the wall beside her. + +"All the same," said he, "you _shall_ hear it. If falling in love were +my habit, no doubt I shouldn't take it so hard. But the simple truth, +though I am thirty years old, is that I have never before felt so much +as a heart-flutter for any woman. And, since you cite your reading, _I_ +have read that a fire which may merely singe the surface of green wood, +will entirely consume the dry." + +She continued to study the ancient painting. Her fingers were playing +with the ends of her lace veil. + +"Besides," he went on, "if I had been in love a dozen times, it wouldn't +signify. For I should have been in love with ordinary usual human +women. They're the only sort I ever met--till I met her. She's of a +totally different order--as distinct from them as ... What shall +I say? Oh, as unlike them as starfire is unlike dull clay. +Starfire--starfire--the wonderful, high, white-burning starfire of her +spirit, that's the thing that strikes you most in her. It shines through +her. It shines in her eyes, it shines in her hair, her adorable, soft, +dark, warm and fragrant hair; it shines in her very voice; it shines in +every word she utters, even in the unkindest." + +"Dear me! what an alarmingly refulgent person you depict!" laughed Maria +Dolores, her eyes still on the wall. + +"I have no gift for word-painting," said John; "though I doubt if the +words are yet invented that could fitly paint my lady. She grows in +beauty day by day. It's a literal fact--every fresh time I see her, she +is perceptibly more lovely than the last, more love-compelling in her +loveliness. But 'tis a thing unpaintable, indescribable, as +indescribable as the perfume of a rose. Oh, why haven't I five thousand +a year?" + +"You harp so persistently upon your desire for money," suggested Maria +Dolores, "one might infer she was a commodity, to be bought and sold. +You begin at the wrong end. What good would five or fifty thousand a +year do you, if you had not begun by winning her love? + +"No, I begin at the proper end, worse luck," John answered, glooming. +"For, without a decent income, I have no right even to try to win her +love. + +"And that being so," questioned Maria Dolores, "I hope you +conscientiously avoid her society, or, when you meet, make yourself +consistently disagreeable to her? + +"There's no need for such precautions," John replied. "There's no fear +for her. She regards me as a casual and passing acquaintance. So I make +myself no more disagreeable than I am by nature. And if I avoided her +society, (which I am far from doing), it would be not for her sake, but +for my own. For, though her society is to me a kind of anticipation of +the joys of Heaven, yet when I leave it and find myself alone, the +reaction is dreary in the superlative degree; and the fear, which +perpetually haunts me (for I know nothing of her plans), lest I shall +never see her again, is agonizing as a foretaste of--Heaven's antipode. +Oh, I love her!" + +He took, involuntarily I dare say, a step in her direction. She +retreated under the vaulting of the _porte-cochère_. + +"You seem," she commented, "to be getting a good deal of emotional +experience,--which doubtless some day you will find of value. Why not, +instead of gardener, embark as novelist or poet? Here is material you +could then turn to account." + +"Ah, there you are," he complained, piteously, "mocking me again. Ah, +well, if you must have your laugh, have it, and welcome. A man can learn +to take the bitter with the sweet." + +"To spare you that discomfort," said she, moving deeper into the +archway, while John's face fell, "I will bid you good-bye. I am to +report, then, that you decline my friend's invitation with thanks?" + +"With my most grateful thanks," he was able intensively to rejoin, in +spite of his dismay at the imminence of her departure. + +"And for a very special reason?" she harked back, now, suddenly, for +the first time since they had touched thin ice, giving him a glance. + +It was the fleetingest of fleeting glances, it was merry and ironic, but +there was something in it which brought a flame to his blue eyes. + +"For the very special reason," he answered, with vehemence, "that I fear +the presence near me of--" He held his breath for a second, the flame in +his eyes enveloping her; then, with an abrupt change of tone and mien, +he ended, "--of Frau Brandt might distract my attention from the +sermon." + +She laughed, and said, "Good-bye." + +"Good-bye," said John. And when she was halfway through the tunnel-like +passage, "I suppose you know you are leaving me to a day as barren as +the Desert of Sahara?" he called after her. + +"Oh, who can tell what a day may bring forth?" called she, but without +looking back. + +For a long while John's faculties were kept busy, trying to determine +whether that was a promise, a menace, or a mere word in the air. + + + + +III + + +"Rain before seven, clear before eleven," is as true, or as untrue, in +Lombardy as it is in other parts of the world. The rain had held up, and +now, in that spirited phrase of Corvo's, "here came my lord the Sun," +splendidly putting the clouds to flight, or chaining them, transfigured, +to his chariot-wheels; clothing the high snow-peaks in a roseate glory, +(that seemed somehow, I don't know why, to accent their solitude and +their remoteness); flooding the valley with ethereal amber; turning the +swollen Rampio to a river of fire while the nearer hillsides, the olive +woods, the trees in the Castle garden, glistened with a million million +crystals, and the petals of the flowers were crystal-tipped; while the +breath of the earth rose in long streamers of luminous incense, and the +sky gleamed with every tender, every brilliant, tint of blue, from the +blue of pale forgetmenots to the blue of larkspur. + +John, contemplating this spectacle, (and thinking of Maria Dolores? +revolving still her cryptic valediction?), all at once, as his eye +rested on the shimmer at the valley's end which he knew to be the lake, +lifted up his hand and clapped his brow. "By Jove," he muttered, "if I +wasn't within an ace of clean forgetting!" The sight of the lake had +fortunately put him in mind that he was engaged to-day to lunch with +Lady Blanchemain at Roccadoro. + +He found her ladyship, in a frock all concentric whirls of crisp white +ruffles, vigorously wielding a fan, and complaining of the heat. +(Indeed, as Annunziata had predicted, it had grown markedly warmer.) "I +shall fly away, if this continues; I shall fly straight to town, and set +my house in order for the season. When do _you_ come?" she asked, +smiling on him from her benign old eyes. + +"I don't come," answered John. "I rather like town in autumn and winter, +when it's too dark to see its ugliness, but save me from it in the clear +light of summer." + +"Fudge," said Lady Blanchemain. "London's the most beautiful capital in +Europe--it's grandiose. And it's the only place where there are any +people. + +"Yes," said John, "but, as at Nice and Homburg, too many of them are +English. And there's a liberal scattering, I've heard, of Jews?" + +"Oh, Jews are all right--when they aren't Jewy," said Lady Blanchemain, +with magnanimity. "I know some very nice ones. I was rather hoping you +would be a feature of my Sunday afternoons." + +"I'm not a society man," said John. "I've no aptitude myself for +patronizing or toadying, and I don't particularly enjoy being patronized +or toadied to." + +"Is that the beginning and end of social life in England?" Lady +Blanchemain inquired, delicately sarcastic. + +"As I have seen it, yes," asseverated John. "The beginning, end, and +middle of social life in England, as in Crim-Tartary, is worship of the +longest pigtail,--a fetichism sometimes grosser, sometimes subtler, +sometimes deliberate, often unconscious and instinctive. Every one you +meet is aware that his pigtail is either longer or shorter than yours, +and accordingly, more or less subtly, grossly, unconsciously or +deliberately, swaggers or bends the knee. It's a state of things I've +tried in vain to find diverting." + +"It's a state of things you'll find prevailing pretty well in all places +where the human species breeds," said Lady Blanchemain. "The only +difference will be a question of what constitutes the pigtail. And are +you, then, remaining at Sant' Alessina?" + +"For the present," answered John. + +"Until--?" she questioned. + +"Oh, well, until she sends me away, or leaves herself," said he, "and so +my fool's paradise achieves its inevitable end." + +Lady Blanchemain laughed--a long, quiet laugh of amused contentment. + +"Come in to luncheon," she said, putting her soft white hand upon his +arm, "and tell me all about it." And when they were established at her +table, a round table, gay with flowers, in a window at the far end of +the cool, terazza-paved, stucco-columned dining-room of the Hotel +Victoria, "Why do you call it a fool's paradise?" she asked. + +"Well, you see, I'm in love," said he. + +"You really are?" she doubted, with sprightliness, looking gleeful. + +"All too really," he assured her, in a sinking voice. + +"What an old witch I was!" mused she, with satisfaction. "Accept my +heart-felt felicitations." She beamed upon him. + +"I should prefer your condolences," said he, in a voice from the depths. + +"_Allons donc!_ Cheer up," laughed she, dallying with her bliss. "Men +have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for love." + +"I wonder," said John. "That is a statement, it seems to me, which would +be the better for some proving." + +"At all events," said she, "you, for one, are not dead yet." + +"No," admitted he; "though I could almost wish I was." + +"Do you mean to say she has definitely rejected you?" she demanded, +alarmed. + +"Fortune has spared her that necessity," said John. "I haven't asked +her, and I never shall. I haven't any money." + +"Pooh! Is that all?" scoffed her ladyship, relieved. "You have +prospects." + +"Remote ones--the remoter the better. I won't count on dead men's +shoes," said John. + +"What is it your little fortune-teller at the Castle calls you?" asked +Lady Blanchemain, shrewdly, her dark old eyebrows up. + +"She calls me _lucus a non lucendo_," was John's quick riposte; and the +lady laughed. + +But in a moment she pulled a straight face. "I seriously counsel you to +have more faith," she said. "Go home and ask her to marry you; and if +she accepts,--you'll see. Money will come. Besides, your rank and your +prospective rank are assets which you err in not adding to the balance. +Go home, and propose to her." + +"'Twould do no good," said John, dejectedly. "She regards me with +imperturbable indifference. I've made the fieriest avowals to her, and +she's never turned a hair." + +Lady Blanchemain looked bewildered. "You've made avowals--?" she +falteringly echoed. + +"I should rather think so," John affirmed. "Indirect ones, of course, +and I hope inoffensive, but fiery as live coals. In the third person, +you know. I've given her two and two; she has, you may be sure, enough +skill in mathematics to put 'em together." + +"And she never turned a hair?" the lady marvelled. + +"She jeered at me, she mocked me, she laughed and rode away," said he. + +"She's probably in love with you," said Lady Blanchemain. "If a woman +will listen, if a woman will laugh! If you don't propose to her now, +having ensnared her young affections, you'll be something worse than the +wicked nobleman of song and story." + +"Oh, well," John responded, conciliatory, "I dare say some of these days +a proposal will slip out when I least intend it. So I shall have done +the honourable thing--and I'm sure I can trust her to play fair and say +me nay." + +Lady Blanchemain slowly shook her head. "I'm glad you're not _my_ +lover," she devoutly murmured, plying her fan. + +"Oh, but I am," cried John, with a bow, and an admiring flash of the +eyes. + +Her soft old face lighted up; then it took on an expression of +resolution, and she set her strong old jaws. + +"In that case," she remarked, "you will have the less reluctance in +granting a favour I'm about to ask you." + +"What's the favour?" said John, in a tone of readiness. + +"I want you to buy a pig in a poke," said she. + +"Oh?" questioned he. + +"Yes," said she. "I want you to make me a promise blindfold. I want you +to promise in the dark that you will do something. What it is that +you're to do you're not to know till the time comes. Will you promise?" + +"Dearest lady," said the trustful young man, "I'm perfectly confident +that you would never ask me to do anything that I couldn't do with +profit to myself. Buy a pig in a poke? From you, without a moment's +hesitation. Of course I promise." + +"Bravo, bravo," applauded Lady Blanchemain, glowing at her easy triumph. +"In a few days you'll receive a letter. That will tell you what it is +you're pledged to. And now, to reward you, come with me to my +sitting-room, and I will make you a little present." + +When they had reached her sitting-room (dim and cool, with its +half-drawn blinds and the straw-coloured linen covers of its furniture), +she put into his hands a small case of shagreen, small and hard, and at +the edges white with age. + +"Go to the window and see what's in it," she said. + +And obeying, "By Jove, what a stunner!" he exclaimed. The case contained +a ring, a light circle of gold, set with a ruby, surrounded by a row of +diamonds,--for my part, I think the most beautiful ruby I have ever +seen. It was as big as a hazel-nut, or almost; it was cut, with +innumerable facets, in the shape of a heart; and it quivered and burned, +and flowed and rippled, liquidly, with the purest, limpidest red fire. + +"'Tis the spirit of a rose, distilled and crystallized," said Lady +Blanchemain. + +"'Tis a drop of liquid light," said John. "But why do you give it to me? +I can't wear it. I don't think I ought to accept it." + +"Nobody asks you to wear it," said Lady Blanchemain. "It's a woman's +ring, of course. But as for accepting it, you need have no scruples. +It's an old Blanchemain gem, that was in the family a hundred years +before I came into it. It's properly an heirloom, and you're the heir. +I give it to you for a purpose. Should you ever become engaged, I desire +you to placcit upon the finger of the adventurous woman." + + + + +IV + + +Under a gnarled old olive, by the river's brim, Annunziata sat on the +turf, head bowed, so that her curls fell in a tangle all about her +cheeks, and gazed fixedly into the green waters, the laughing, dancing, +purling waters, green, and, where the sun reached them, shot with seams +and cleavages of light, like fluorspar. In the sun-flecked, +shadow-dappled grass near by, violets tried to hide themselves, but were +betrayed by their truant sweetness. The waters purled, a light breeze +rustled the olive-leaves, and birds were singing loud and wild, as birds +will after rain. + +Maria Dolores, coming down the path that followed the river's windings, +stood for a minute, and watched her small friend without speaking. But +at last she called out, "_Ciao_, Annunziata. Are you dreaming dreams and +seeing visions?" + +Annunziata started and looked up. "Sh-h!" she whispered, with an +admonitory gesture. She stole a wary glance roundabout, and then spoke +as one fearful of being overheard. "I was listening to the music of +Divopan," she said. + +Maria Dolores, who had come closer, appeared at a loss. "The music +of--what?" she questioned. + +"Sh-h!" whispered Annunziata. "I would not dare to say it aloud. The +music of Divopan." + +"Divopan?" Maria Dolores puzzled, compliantly guarding her tone. "What +is that?" + +"Divo--Pan," said Annunziata, dividing the word in two, and always with +an air of excessive caution. + +But Maria Dolores helplessly shook her head. "I'm afraid I don't +understand. What is Divo--Pan?" + +"Don't you know what a _divo_ is?" asked Annunziata, her clear grey eyes +surprised. + +"Oh, a _divo?_" said Maria Dolores, getting a glimmer of light. "Ah, +yes, a divo is a saint, I think? + +"Not exactly," Annunziata discriminated, "but something like one. The +saints, you see, are always very good, and _divi_ are sometimes bad. +But they are powerful, like saints. They can do anything they wish. Divo +Pan is the divo who makes all the music that you hear out of doors,--the +music of the wind and the water and the bird-songs. But you must be +careful never to praise his music aloud, lest Divo Apollone should hear +you. He is the divo that makes all the music you hear on instruments--on +harps and violins and pianos. He is very jealous of Divo Pan, and if he +hears you praising him, will do something to you. You know what he did +to King Mida, don't you?" + +"What did he do?" asked Maria Dolores. + +Annunziata stole another wary glance about. + +"Once upon a time," she recounted, always in her lowest voice, "many +years ago, hundreds of years ago, the King of this country was named +Mida. And he loved very much the music of Divo Pan. He loved to sit by +the river here, and to listen to the music of the water, and of the +leaves, and of the birds. I love to do it too, and I think he was quite +right. But one day, in his house, there came a musician with a harp, and +began to play to him. And the King listened for a while, and then he +told the musician to stop. 'Your music is very good,' he said, 'but now +I am going into the fields and by the river, where I can hear a music I +like better.' But the musician with the harp was really Divo Apollone +himself; disguised. And this made him very angry and jealous. And to +punish King Mida he changed his ears to long hairy ears, like an ass's. +So, if you love the music of Divo Pan, you must be very careful not to +let Divo Apollone hear you praise it, or he will do something to you." + +And to drive home this application of her theme, she held up a warning +finger. + +Maria Dolores had listened, smiling. Now she gave a gay little laugh, +and then for a moment mused. "That is a very curious bit of history," +she said, in the end. "How ever did it come to your knowledge?" + +Annunziata shrugged. "Oh," she answered, "everybody knows that. I have +known it for years. My grandmother who lived in Milan told it to me. +Doesn't the water look cool and pleasant?" was her abrupt digression, as +she returned her gaze to the Rampio. "When it is hot like this, I +should like to lie down in the water, and go to sleep. Wouldn't you?" + +"I'm not so sure," said Maria Dolores. "I should rather fear I might be +drowned." + +"Oh, but that wouldn't hurt," said Annunziata, with security. "To be +drowned in such beautiful green water, among all those beams of light, +would be nice." + +"Perhaps you are not aware," said Maria Dolores, "that when people are +drowned they die?" + +"Oh, yes, I know that," said Annunziata. "But"--she raised calm pellucid +eyes--"wouldn't you like to die?" + +"Certainly not," said Maria Dolores, a shadow on her face. + +"I would," said Annunziata, stoutly. "It must be lovely to die." + +"Hush," Maria Dolores rebuked her, frowning. "You must not say such +things." + +"Why not say them, if you think them?" asked Annunziata. + +"You mustn't think them either," said Maria Dolores. + +"Oh, I can't help thinking them," said Annunziata, with a movement. "It +surely must be lovely to die and go to Heaven. If I were perfectly sure +I should go to Heaven, I would shut my eyes and die now. But I should +probably have to wait some time in Purgatory. And, of course, I might go +to Hell." + +Maria Dolores' face was full of trouble. "You must not talk like that," +she said. "You must not. It is wicked of you." + +"Then, if I am wicked, I _should_ go to Hell?" inquired Annunziata, +looking alertly up. + +Maria Dolores looked about her, looked across the river, down the +valley, as one in distress scanning the prospect for aid. "Of course you +would not," she said. "My dear child, can't we find something else to +talk of?" + +"Do you think I shall have a very long and hard Purgatory?" asked +Annunziata. + +Maria Dolores threw a despairing glance at the horizon. + +"No, no, dear," she answered uneasily. "You will have a very short and +gentle one. Anyhow, you'll not have to consider that for years to come. +Now shall we change the subject?" + +"Well," said Annunziata, with an air of deliberation, "if you are +perfectly sure I shall not go to Hell, and that my Purgatory will not +be long and hard, I think I will do what I said. I will lie down in the +water and go to sleep, and the water will drown me, and I shall die." + +Maria Dolores' face was terrified. "Annunziata!" she cried. "You don't +know what you are saying. You are cruel. You won't do anything of the +sort. You must give me your solemn word of honour that you won't do +anything of the sort. It would be a most dreadful sin. Come. Come with +me now, away from here, away from the sight of the river. You must never +come here alone again. Give me your hand, and come away." + +Annunziata got up, gave her hand, and moved off at Maria Dolores' side, +towards the Castle. "Of course," she said, "if I want to die, I don't +need to lie down in the water. I can die at any moment I wish, by just +shutting my eyes, and holding my breath, and telling my heart seven +times to stop beating. Heart, stop beating; heart, stop beating;--that +way, seven times." + +"For the love of Mercy," wailed poor Maria Dolores, almost writhing in +her misery.... Then, suddenly, she breathed a deep sigh of relief, and +fervently exclaimed, "Thank God." John was advancing towards them, down +the rugged pathway. + +"Do please come and help me with this perverse and maddening child," she +called to him, in English. "She's frightening me half out of my wits by +threatening to die. She even threatened to drown herself in the Rampio." + +"Children of her complexion can't die," said John, in Italian, (and +Annunziata pricked up her ears). "They can only turn into monkeys, and +then they have to live in the forests of Africa, where it is always +dark, and all the men and women are negro savages, and all the other +animals (except the mosquitos and the snakes) are lions and tigers. +Besides, if Annunziata were to turn into a monkey, she couldn't have the +sugared chestnuts that somebody or other has brought her from Roccadoro. +On the chest of drawers in my room there has mysteriously appeared a box +of sugared chestnuts. I thought they were for her, but they're not, +unless she will promise never to turn into a monkey." + +Annunziata's eyes had clouded. + +"Of course I won't turn into a monkey," she said, in accents at once of +disillusion and disdain. "I did not know there was any such danger. I +should hate to be a monkey." Then her eyes brightened again. "May I go +and get them now?" she asked, wistful and impatient. + +"Yes," said John; "be off with you." And she went running lightly up the +hill. + +He turned to Maria Dolores. Her face (clear-cut, with its dark hair, +against the red background of her sunshade) was white and drawn with +pain. But she smiled, rather wanly, as her gaze met his, and said, in a +weak voice, "Oh, I am so glad you came. I can't tell you how she was +frightening me." And all at once her eyes filled with tears. + +I needn't say whether John was moved, whether it was his impulse to take +her in his arms and dry her tears with kisses. He did actually, on that +impulse, give a perceptible start towards her, but then he restrained +himself. "The child ought to be whipped," he broke out angrily. "You +must not take her prattle so seriously." + +"But _she_ was so serious," said Maria Dolores. "Oh, when she +threatened to lie down in the river, and let herself be drowned--!" Her +voice failed her, as at the inexpressible. + +"No fear of that," said John. "The first touch of the cold water (and +icy-cold it is, a glacier-stream, you know) would bring her to her +senses. But come! You must not think of it any more. You have had a bad +shock, but no bones are broken, and now you must try to banish it all +from your mind." + +"What an unaccountable child she is!" said Maria Dolores. "Surely it is +unnatural and alarming for a child to have her head so teeming with +strange freaks and fancies. Oh, I pray God to grant that nothing may +happen to her." + +"The most serious evil that's likely to happen to her for the present," +said John, "will be an indigestion of marrons glacés." + +Maria Dolores' tears had gone now. She smiled. But afterwards she looked +grave again. "Oh, I wish I could get the dread of something happening to +her out of my heart. I wish she wasn't so pale and fragile-looking," she +said. Then there came a gleam in her eyes. "But you were going for a +walk, and I am detaining you." + +"The object of my walk has been accomplished," said John. + +"Oh?" questioned she. + +"I was walking in the hope, on the chance, that I might meet you," he +hardily explained. "It's such an age since I've seen you. Are you making +for the garden? I pray you to be kind, and let me go with you. I've been +an exile and a wanderer--I've been to Roccadoro." + +She had rebegun her ascension of the hill. The path was steep, as well +as rugged. Sometimes John had to help her over a hard bit. The touch of +her hand, soft and warm, and firm too, in his; the sense of her +closeness; the faint fragrance of her garments, of her hair,--these +things, you may be sure, went to his head, went to his heart. The garden +lay in a white blaze of sunshine, that seemed almost material, like an +incandescent fluid; but the entrance to the avenue was dark and +inviting. "Let us," he proposed, "go and sit on a marble bench under the +glossy leaves of the ilexes, in the deep, cool shade; and let's play +that it's a thousand years ago, and that you're a Queen (white Queen +Blanche, like a queen of lilies), and that I'm your minstrel-man." + +"What song will you sing me?" asked she gaily, as they took their places +on the marble bench. It was semicircular, with a high carved back, +(carved with the armorials of the Sforzas), and of course it was +lichen-stained, grey and blue and green, yellow and scarlet. + + "_White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies, + Fairer and dearer than dearest and fairest, + To hear me sing, if it her sweet will is,-- + Sing, minstrel-man, of thy love, an thou darest_," + +trolled John, in his light barytone, to a tune, I imagine, improvised +for the occasion. "But if it's a thousand years ago," he laughed, "that +song smacks too much perhaps of actuality, and I had best choose +another." + +Maria Dolores joined in his laugh. "I did not know you sang," she said. +"Let me hear the other." + +"A song," reflected he, "that I could sing with a good deal of feeling +and conviction, would be 'Give her but the least excuse to love me.'" + +Maria Dolores all at once looked sober. + +"Oughtn't you to be careful," she said, "to give her no excuse at all to +love you, if you are really resolved never to ask her to be your wife?" + +"That is exactly what I have given her," answered John, "no excuse at +all. I should sing in a spirit purely academic,--my song would be the +utterance of a pious but hopeless longing, of the moth's desire for the +star." + +"But she, I suppose, isn't a star," objected Maria Dolores. "She's +probably just a weak human woman. You may have given her excuses without +meaning to." There was the slightest quaver in her voice. + +John caught his breath; he turned upon her almost violently. But she was +facing away from him, down the avenue, so that he could not get her +eyes. + +"In that case," she said, "wouldn't you owe her something?" + +"I should owe myself a lifetime's penance with the discipline," John on +a solemn tone replied, hungrily looking at her cheek, at the little +tendrils of dark hair about her brow. "God knows what I should owe to +her." + +"You would owe it to her," said Maria Dolores, always facing away, "to +tell her your love straightforwardly, and to ask her to marry you." + +John thrilled, John ached. His blue eyes burned upon her. "What else do +you think I dream of, night and day? But how could I, with honour? You +know my poverty," he groaned. + +"But if she has enough, more than enough, for two?" softly urged Maria +Dolores. + +"Ah, that's the worst of it," cried he. "If we were equals in penury, if +she had nothing, then I might honourably ask her, and we could live on +herbs together in a garret, and I could keep her respect and my own. Oh, +garret-paradise! But to marry a woman who is rich, to live in luxury +with her, and to try to look unconscious while she pays the bills,--she +would despise me, I should abhor myself." + +"Why should she despise you?" asked Maria Dolores. "The possession of +wealth is a mere accident. If people are married and love each other, I +can't see that it matters an atom whether their money belonged in the +first place to the man or to the woman,--it would belong henceforward to +them both equally." + +"That is a very generous way of looking at it, but it is a woman's way. +No decent man could accept it," said John. + +"Up to a certain point," said Maria Dolores, slowly, "I understand your +scruples. I understand that a poor man might feel that he would not like +to make the advances, if the woman he loved was rich. But suppose the +woman loved him, and knew that he loved her, and knew that it was only +his poverty which held him back, then _she_ might make the advances. She +might put aside her pride, and go halfway to meet him, and to remove his +difficulties and embarrassments. If, after that, he still did not ask +her, I think his scruples would have become mere vanity,--I think it +would show that he cared more for his mere vanity than for her +happiness." + +Her voice died out. John could see that her lip quivered a little. His +throat was dry. The pulses were pounding in his temples. His brain was +all a confusion. He hardly knew what had befallen him, he hardly knew +what she had said. He only knew that there was a great ball of fire in +his breast, and that the pain of it was half an immeasurable joy. + +"God forgive me," the absurd and exaggerated stickler for the dignity of +his sex wildly cried. "God knows how I love her, how I care for her +happiness. But to go to her empty-handed,--but to put myself in the +position of being kept by a woman,--God knows how impossible it is." + +Maria Dolores stood up, still looking away from him. + +"Well, let us hope," she said, changing her tone to one of unconcerned +detachment, "that we have been discussing baseless suppositions. Let us +hope that her heart is quite untouched. And for both your sakes," she +concluded, her head in the air, "let us hope that you and she will never +meet again. Good-bye." + +She gave him a curt little nod, and walked lightly, rapidly up the +avenue. + +John's brain was all a confusion. He looked after her helplessly. He +only knew that there was a great ball of fire in his breast, and that +the pain of it was now unmixed. + + + + +V + + +Maria Dolores tripped into Frau Brandt's sitting-room, merrily singing a +snatch of song. + + "_Gardez vous d'être sévère + Quand on vous park d'amour_," + +she carolled. Then she stopped singing, and blithely laughed. + +Frau Brandt raised her good brown face from her knitting, and her good +brown eyes looked anxiously upwards, slantwise over her +tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles. + +"What is the matter now?" she asked. "What has happened to vex you now?" + +"To vex me!" cried Maria Dolores, in apparent astonishment. "Wasn't I +singing aloud from sheer exuberance of high spirits?" + +"No," said Frau Brandt, with a very positive shake of her white-capped +head. "You were singing to conceal your low spirits. What has +happened?" + +"Ah, well, then, if you know so much and must know all," said Maria +Dolores, "I've just proposed to the man I'm in love with, and been sent +about my business." + +"What do you mean?" asked Frau Brandt, phlegmatic. "What nonsense is +this?" + +"I mean my cobbler's son," Maria Dolores answered. "I, a Princess of the +Empire, humbly offered him, a cobbler's son, my hand, heart, and +fortune,--and the graceless man rejected them with scorn." + +"That is a likely story," said Frau Brandt, wagging her chin. Her blunt +brown fingers returned to their occupation. "I see your Serene Highness +offering her hand." + +"At all events, will you kindly tell Josephine to pack our boxes. +To-morrow we'll be flitting," her Serene Highness in a casual way +announced. + +"What say you?" cried Frau Brandt, dropping her knitting into her lap. + +"Yes--to Mischenau, to my brother," the Princess pursued. "Of course +you'll have to come with us, poor dear. You can't let me travel alone +with Josephine." + +"No," said Frau Brandt. "I will go with you." + +"And you can remain for my wedding," Maria Dolores added. "I am going +home to meet my brother's wishes, and to marry my second cousin, the +high and mighty Maximilian, Prince of Zelt-Zelt." + +"Herr Gott!" said Frau Brandt, glancing with devotion at the ceiling. + + + + +VI + + +John, wild-eyed, was still where she had left him, in the avenue, +savouring and resavouring his woe. "If only," he brooded, "she were of +one's own rank in the world, then her wealth might perhaps not be such +an absolutely hopeless impediment as it is. But to marry, as they say, +beneath one, and to marry money into the bargain,--that would be a +little too much like the fortune-hunter of tradition." He still sat +where she had left him, on the marble bench, disconsolate, when the +parroco approached hurriedly, from the direction of the house. + +"Signore," the parroco began, out of breath, "I offer a thousand excuses +for venturing to disturb you, but my niece has suddenly fallen ill. I am +going to the village to telephone for a doctor. My cook is away, for her +Sunday afternoon. Might I pray you to have the extreme kindness to stay +with the child till I return? I don't know what is the matter, but she +fainted, and now is delirious, and, I'm afraid, very ill indeed." + +"Good Heavens!" gasped John, forgetting everything else. "Of course, of +course." + +And he set off hotfoot for the presbytery. + + + + +PART SIXTH + + + + +I + + +I would rather not dwell upon the details of Annunziata's illness. By +the mercy of Providence, she got well in the end; but in the mean time +those details were sufficiently painful. John, for example, found it +more than painful to hear her cry out piteously, as she often would in +her delirium, that she did not wish to be turned into a monkey; he hung +his head and groaned, and cursed the malinspired moment which had given +that chimæra birth. However, he had his compensations. Maria Dolores, +whom he had thought never to see again, he saw every day. "Let us hope +that you and she may never meet again." In his despairing heart the +words became a refrain. But an hour later the news of trouble at the +presbytery had travelled to the pavilion, and she flew straight to +Annunziata's bedside. Ever since, (postponing those threatened nuptials +at Mischenau), she had shared with John, and the parroco, and Marcella +the cook, the labours of nurse. And though it was arranged that the men, +turn and turn about, should watch by night, and the women by day, John, +by coming early and leaving late, contrived to make a good part of his +vigil and of hers coincident. And the strange result is that now, +looking backwards upon that period of pain and dread, when from minute +to minute no one knew what awful change the next minute might +bring,--looking backwards, and seeing again the small bare room, +cell-like, with its whitewashed walls, its iron cot, its Crucifix, its +narrow window (through which wide miles of valley shone), and then the +little white face and the brown curls tossing on the pillow, and the +woman of his love sitting near to him, in the intimacy of a common care +and common duties,--the strange result is that John feels a glow in his +heart, as at the memory of a period of joy. + +"Oh, do not let them turn me into a monkey. Oh, Holy Mother, I am so +afraid. Oh, do not let them!" Annunziata cried, shuddering, and +shrinking deeper into bed, towards the wall. + +John hung his head and wrung his hands. "My God, my God!" he groaned. + +"You should not blame yourself," Maria Dolores said in a low voice, +while she bathed the child's forehead, and fanned her face. "Your +intention was good, you could not foresee what has happened, and it may +be for the best, after all,--it may strengthen her 'will to live,' which +is the great thing, the doctor says." + +She had spoken English, but Annunziata's next outcry was like a +response. + +"Oh, to live, to live--I want to live, to live Oh, let me live!" + +But at other times her wandering thoughts took quite a different turn. + +Gazing solemnly up into Maria Dolores' face, she said, "He does not even +know her name, though he fears it may be Smitti. I thought it was Maria +Dolores, but he fears it may be Smitti." + +John looked out of the window, pretending not to hear, and praying, I +expect, that Maria Dolores' eyes might be blinded and her counsel +darkened. At the same time, (Heaven having sent me a laughing hero), I +won't vouch that his shoulders didn't shake a little. + + + + +II + + +Apropos of their ignorance of each other's patronymics. ... One +afternoon Maria Dolores was taking the air at the open door of the +presbytery, when, to a mighty clattering of horses' hoofs, a big +high-swung barouche came sweeping into the court-yard, described a bold +half-circle, and abruptly drew up before her. In the barouche sat a big +old lady, a big soft, humorous-eyed old lady, in cool crêpe-de-chine, +cream-coloured, with beautiful white hair, a very gay light straw +bonnet, and a much befurbelowed lavender-hued sunshade. Coachman and +footman, bolt upright, stared straight before them, as rigid as if their +liveries were of papier-maché. The horses, with a full sense of what +they owed to appearances, fierily champed their bits, tossed their +manes, and pawed the paving-stones. The old lady smiled upon Maria +Dolores with a look of great friendliness and interest, softly bowed, +and wished her, in a fine, warm, old high-bred voice, "Good afternoon." + +Maria Dolores (feeling an instant liking, as well as curiosity and +admiration) smiled in her turn, and responded, "Good afternoon." + +"You enjoy a fine view from here," the old lady remarked, ducking her +sunshade in the direction of the valley. + +"A beautiful view," agreed Maria Dolores, following the sunshade with +her eyes. + +Those of the stranger had a gleam. "But don't you think, if the +unvarnished truth may be whispered, that it's becoming the merest trifle +too hot?" she suggested. + +Maria Dolores lightly laughed. "I think it is decidedly too hot," she +said. + +"I'm glad to find we're of the same opinion," declared the old lady, +fanning herself. "You can positively _see_ the heat vibrating there in +the distance. We children of the North should fly such weather. For my +part, I'm off to-morrow for England, where I can shiver through the +summer comfortably in my chimney-corner." + +Maria Dolores laughed out again. + +"So I've driven over from Roccadoro," the newcomer continued, "to have a +farewell look at a young man of my acquaintance who's staying here. I +dare say you may know him. He has blue eyes and a red beard, a +flattering manner and a pretty wit, and his name is Blanchemain." + +"Oh?" said Maria Dolores, her eyebrows going up. "Is that his name? You +mean the young Englishman who lives with the parroco?" + +The old lady's eyebrows, which were thick and dark, went up too. + +"Is it possible you didn't know his name?" was her surprised +ejaculation. Then she said, "I wonder whether he is anywhere about?" + +"I fancy he's asleep," said Maria Dolores. + +"Asleep? At this hour?" The dark eyebrows frowned their protest. "That +sounds like a sad slugabed." + +Maria Dolores looked serious. "He was up all night. We have a child ill +here, and he was up all night, watching." + +The stranger's grey eyes filled with concern and sympathy. "I hope, I'm +sure, it's not that pretty little girl, the niece of the parroco?" she +said. + +"Unhappily, it is," said Maria Dolores. "She has been very ill indeed." + +"I am extremely sorry to hear it, extremely sorry," the old lady +declared, with feeling. "If I can be of any sort of use--if I can send +anything--or in any way help--" Her eyes completed the offer. + +"Oh, thank you, thank you," replied Maria Dolores. "You are most kind, +but I don't think there is anything any one can do. Besides, she is on +the mend now, we hope. The doctor says the worst is probably over." + +"Well, thank God for that," exclaimed the visitor, with a will. She +considered for a moment, and then reverted to the previous question. "So +you did not know that my vivid young friend's name was Blanchemain?" + +"No," said Maria Dolores. + +"It is a good name--there's none better in England," averred the old +lady, with a nod of emphasis that set the wheat-ears in her bonnet +quivering. + +"Oh--?" said Maria Dolores, looking politely interested. + +"He's the nephew and heir of Lord Blanchemain of Ventmere," her +instructress went on. "That is one of our most ancient peerages." + +"Really?" said Maria Dolores. (What else did she say in her heart? Where +now was her cobbler's son?) + +"And I'm glad to be able to add that I'm his sort of connection--I'm the +widow of the late Lord Blanchemain." The lady paused; then, with that +smile of hers which we know, that smile which went as an advance-guard +to disarm resentment, "People of my age are allowed to be inquisitive," +she premised. "I have introduced myself to you--won't you introduce +yourself to me?" + +"My name is Maria Dolores of Zelt-Neuminster," answered the person +questioned, also smiling. + +The widow of the late Lord Blanchemain inwardly gasped, but she was +quick to suppress all outward symptoms of that circumstance. The +daughter of Eve in her gasped, but the practised old Englishwoman of the +world affably and imperturbably pronounced, with a gracious movement of +the head, "Ah, indeed? You are then, of course, a relation of the +Prince?" + +"I am the Prince's sister," said Maria Dolores. And, as if an +explanation of her presence was in order, she added, "I am here visiting +my old nurse and governess, to whom my brother has given a pavilion of +the Castle for her home." + +Lady Blanchemain fanned herself. "A miller's daughter!" she thought, +with a silent laugh at John's expense and her own. "I am very glad to +have made your acquaintance," she said, "and I hope this may not be our +last meeting. I'm afraid I ought now to be hastening back to Roccadoro. +I wonder whether you will have the kindness, when you see him, to convey +my parting benediction to Mr. Blanchemain. Oh, no, I would not let him +be wakened, not for worlds. Thank you. Good-bye." + +And with a great effect of majesty and importance, like a conscious +thing, her carriage rolled away. + + + + +III + + +"My romance is over, my April dream is ended," said the Princess, with +an air, perhaps a feint, of listless melancholy, to Frau Brandt. + +"What mean you?" asked Frau Brandt, unmoved. + +"My cobbler's son has disappeared--has vanished in a blaze of glory," +her Serene Highness explained, and laughed. + +"I don't understand," said Frau Brandt. "He has not left Sant' +Alessina?" + +"No, but he isn't a cobbler's son at all--he's merely been masquerading +as one--his name is not Brown, Jones, or Robinson--his name is the +high-sounding name of Blanchemain, and he's heir to an English peerage." + +"Ah, so? He is then noble?" Frau Brandt inferred, raising her eyes, with +satisfaction. + +"As noble as need be. An English peer is marriageable. So here's adieu +to my cottage in the air." + +"Here's good riddance to it," said Frau Brandt. + +That evening, at the hour of sunset, Maria Dolores met John in the +garden. + +"You had a visitor this afternoon," she announced. "A most inspiritingly +young old lady, as soft and white as a powder-puff, in a carriage that +was like a coach-and-four. Lady Blanchemain. She is leaving to-morrow +for England. She desired me to give you her farewell blessing." + +"It will be doubly precious to me by reason of the medium through which +it comes," said John, with his courtliest obeisance. + +There was a little pause, during which she looked at the western sky. +But presently, "Why did you tell me you had an uncle who was a farmer?" +she asked, beginning slowly to pace down the pathway. + +"Did I tell you that? I suppose I had a boastful fit upon me," John +replied. + +"But it very much misled me," said Maria Dolores. + +"Oh, it's perfectly true," said John. + +"You are the heir to a peerage," said Maria Dolores. + +John had a gesture. + +"There you are," he said; "and my uncle, the peer, spends much of his +time and most of his money breeding sheep and growing turnips. If that +isn't a farmer, I should like to know what is." + +"I hope you displayed less reticence regarding your station in the world +to that woman you were in love with," said she. + +"That woman I _was_ in love with?" John caught her up. "That woman I +_am_ in love with, please." + +"Oh? Are you still in love with her?" Maria Dolores wondered. "It is so +long since you have spoken of her, I thought your heart was healed." + +"If I have not spoken of her, it has been because I was under the +impression that you had tacitly forbidden me to do so," John informed +her. + +"So I had," she admitted. "But I find that there is such a thing--as +being too well obeyed." + +She brought out her last words, after the briefest possible suspension, +hurriedly, in a voice that quailed a little, as if in terror of its own +audacity. John, with tingling pulses, turned upon her. But she, +according to her habit at such times, refused him her eyes. He could +see, though, that her eyelashes trembled. + +"Oh," he cried, "I love her so much, I need her so, I suppose I shall +end by doing the dishonourable thing." + +"Did you ever tell her that you were Lord Blanchemain's heir?" she +asked. + +"I never thought of it. Why should I?" said John. + +"When you were bemoaning your poverty, as an obstacle to marriage, you +might have remembered that your birth counted for something. With us +Austrians, for example, birth counts for almost everything,--for +infinitely more than money." + +"I think," said John, as one impersonally generalizing, "that a +fortune-hunter with a tuft is the least admirable variety of that +animal. I wish you could see what beautiful little rose-white ears she +has, and the lovely way in which her dark hair droops about them." + +"How long ago was it," mused she, "that love first made people fancy +they saw beauties which had no real existence?" + +"Oh, the moment you see a thing, it acquires real existence," John +returned. "The act of seeing is an act of creation. The thing you see +has real existence on your retina and in your mind, if nowhere else, and +that is the realest sort of real existence." + +"Then she must thank you as the creator of her 'rose-white' ears," +laughed Maria Dolores. "I wonder whether that sunset has any real +existence, and whether it is really as splendid as it seems." + +The west had become a vast sea of gold, a pure and placid sea of +many-tinted gold, bounded and intersected and broken into innumerable +wide bays and narrow inlets by great cloud-promontories, purple and rose +and umber. Directly opposite, just above the crest-line of the hills, +hung the nearly full moon, pale as a mere phantom of itself. +And from somewhere in the boscage at the garden's end came a +lool-lool-lool-lioo-liô, deep and long-drawn, liquid and complaining, +which one knew to be the preliminary piping-up of Philomel. + +"If some things," said John, "derive their beauty from the eye of the +beholder, the beauty of other things is determined by the presence or +absence of the person you long to share all beautiful visions with. The +sky, the clouds, the whole air and earth, this evening, seem to me +beauty in its ultimate perfection." + +Maria Dolores softly laughed, softly, softly. And for a long time, by +the marble balustrade that guarded this particular terrace of the +garden, they stood in silence. The western gold burned to red, and more +sombre red; the cloud-promontories gloomed purpler; the pale moon +kindled, and shone like ice afire, with its intense cold brilliancy; the +olive woods against the sky lay black; a score of nightingales, near and +far, were calling and sobbing and exulting; and two human spirits +yearned with the mystery of love. + +"My income," said John, all at once, brusquely coming to earth, "is +exactly six hundred pounds a year. I suppose two people _could_ live on +that, though I'm dashed if I see how. Of course we couldn't live in +England, where that infernal future peerage would put us under a +thousand obligations; but I dare say we might find a garret here in +Italy. The question is, would she be willing, or have I any right to +ask her, to marry me, on the condition of leaving her own money +untouched, and living with me on mine? + +"Apropos of future peerages and things," said Maria Dolores, "do you +happen to know whether she has any rank of her own to keep up?" + +"I don't care twopence about her rank," said John. + +"Do you happen to know her name?" she asked. + +"I know what I wish her name was," John promptly answered. "I wish to +Heaven it was Blanchemain." + +Maria Dolores gazed, pensive, at the moon. "He does not even know her +name," she remarked, on a key of meditation, "though he fears," she +sadly shook her head, "he fears it may be Smitti." + +"Oh, I say!" cried John, wincing, with a kind of sorry giggle; and I +don't know whether he looked or felt the more sheepish. His face showed +every signal of humiliation, he tugged nervously at his beard, but his +eyes, in spite of him, his very blue blue eyes were full of vexed +amusement. + +The bell in the clock-tower struck eight. + +"There--it is your hour for going to Annunziata," said Maria Dolores. + +"You have not answered my question?" said John. + +"I will think about it," said she. + + + + +IV + + +Annunziata's delirium had passed, but in spite of all their efforts to +persuade her not to talk, talk she would. + +"This is the month of May, isn't it?" she asked, next morning. + +"Yes, dear one," said Maria Dolores, whose watch it was. + +"And that is the month of Mary. San Luca ought to hurry up and make me +well, so that I can keep flowers on the Lady Altar." + +"Then if you wish to get well quickly," said Maria Dolores, "you must +try not to talk,--nor even to think, if you can help it. You know the +doctor does not want you to talk." + +"All right. I won't talk. A going clock may be always wrong, but a +stopped clock is right twice a day. So stop your tongue, and avoid +folly. My uncle told me that. He never talks." + +"And now shall you and I imitate his example?" proposed Maria Dolores. +Her lips, compressed, were plainly the gaolers of a laugh. + +"Yes," said Annunziata. "But I can't help thinking of those poor +flowers. All May flowers are born to be put on the Lady Altar. Those +poor flowers are missing what they were born for. They must be very +sad." + +"This afternoon, every afternoon," Maria Dolores promised, "I will put +flowers on the Lady Altar. Now see if you can't shut your eyes, and rest +for a little while." + +"I once found a toad on the Lady Altar. What do you think he was there +for?" asked Annunziata. + +"I can't think, I'm sure," said Maria Dolores. + +"Well, when I first saw him I was angry, and I was going to get a broom +and sweep him away. But then I thought it must be very hard to be a +toad, and that you can't help being a toad if you are born one, and I +thought that perhaps that toad was there praying that he might be +changed from a toad to something else. So I didn't sweep him away. Have +you ever heard of the little Mass of Corruption that lay in a garden?" + +"No," said Maria Dolores. + +"Well," said Annunziata, "once upon a time a little Mass of Corruption +lay in a garden. But it did not know it was a Mass of Corruption, and it +did not wish to be a Mass of Corruption, and it never did any harm or +wished any harm to any one, but just lay there all day long, and thought +how beautiful the sky was, and how good and warm the sun, and how sweet +the flowers were and the bird-songs, and thanked God with all its heart +for having given it such a lovely place to lie in. Yet all the while, +you know, it couldn't help being what it was, a little Mass of +Corruption. And at the close of the day some people who were walking in +the garden saw it, and cried out, 'Oh, what a horrible little Mass of +Corruption!' and they called the gardener, and had it buried in the +earth. But the little Mass of Corruption, when it heard that it _was_ a +little Mass of Corruption, felt very, very sad, and it made a +supplication to Our Lady. 'I do not wish to be a Mass of Corruption,' it +said. 'Queen of Heaven, pray for me, that I may be purified, and made +clean, and not be a Mass of Corruption any longer, and that I may then +go back to the garden, out of this dark earth.' So Our Lady prayed for +it, and it was cleansed with water and purified, and--what do you think +the Little Mass of Corruption became? It became a rose--a red rose in +that very garden, just where they had buried it. From which we see--But +I don't quite remember what we see from it," she broke off the pain of +baffled effort on her brow. "My uncle could tell you that." + +Afterwards, for a few minutes, she was silent, lying quite still, with +her eyes on the ceiling. + +"Why do sunny lands produce dark people, and dark lands light people?" +she asked all at once. + +"Ah, don't begin to talk again, dear," Maria Dolores pleaded. "The +doctor will he coming soon now, and he will be angry if he finds that I +have let you talk." + +"Oh, I will tell him that it isn't your fault," said Annunziata. "I will +tell him that you didn't let me, but that I talked because it is so hard +to lie here and think, think, think, and not be allowed to say what you +are thinking. Prospero asked me that question about sunny lands a long +time ago. I've been thinking and thinking, but I can't think it out. +Have you a great deal of money? Are you very rich?" + +"Darling, won't you please not talk any more?" Maria Dolores implored +her. + +"I'll stop pretty soon," said Annunziata. "I think you are very rich. I +think, in spite of his saying her name is not Maria Dolores, that you +are the dark woman whom Prospero is to marry. He is to marry a dark +woman who will be very rich. But then he will also he very rich himself. +Is Austria a sunny land? England must be a dark land, for Prospero is +light. Let me see your left hand, please, and I will tell you whether +you are to marry a light man. + +"Hush!" said Maria Dolores, trying not to laugh. "That shall be some +other time." + +"Wouldn't you like to marry Prospero? I would," said Annunziata. + +"I think I hear the wheels of the doctor's gig," said Maria Dolores. +"Now we shall both be scolded." + +"But of course, if you do marry him, I can't," Annunziata pursued, +undaunted by this menace. "A man isn't allowed to have two +wives,--unless he is a king. He may have two sisters or two daughters, +but not two wives or two mothers. There was once a king named Salomone +who had a thousand wives, but even he had only one mother, I think. I +hope you will live at Sant' Alessina after your marriage. Will you?" + +Maria Dolores bit her lip and vouchsafed no answer; and again for a +minute or two Annunziata lay silent. But presently, "Have you ever waked +up in the middle of the night, and felt terribly frightened?" she asked. + +"Yes, dear, sometimes. I suppose every one has," said Maria Dolores. + +"Well, do you know why people feel so frightened when they wake like +that?" pursued the child. + +"No," said Maria Dolores. + +"I do," said Annunziata. "The middle of the night is the Devil's Noon. +Nobody is awake in the middle of the night except wicked people, like +thieves or roysterers, or people who are suffering. All people who are +good, and who are well and happy, are sound asleep. So it is the time +the Devil likes best, and he and all his evil spirits come to the earth +to enjoy the great pleasure of seeing people wicked or suffering. And +that is why we feel so frightened when we wake. The air all round us is +full of evil spirits, though we can't see them, and they are watching +us, to run and tell the Devil if we do anything wicked or suffer any +pain. But it is foolish of us to feel frightened, because our Guardian +Angels are always there too, and they are a hundred times stronger than +the evil spirits. Angels, you know, are very big, very much bigger than +men. Some of them are as tall as mountains, but even the quite small +ones are as tall as trees." + +"This time I really do hear wheels," said Maria Dolores, with an accent +of thanksgiving. + +And she rose to meet the doctor. + + + + +V + + +John sat in his room, absorbed in contemplation of a tiny lace-edged +pocket-handkerchief. He spread it out upon his knee, and laughed. He +crumpled it up in his palm, and pressed it to his face, and drank deep +of its faint perfume,--faint, but powerfully provocative of visions and +emotions. He had found it during the night on the floor of the +sick-room, and had captured and borne it away like a treasure. He spread +it out on his knee again, and was again about to laugh at its small size +and gauzy texture, when his eye was caught by something in its corner. +He held it nearer to the window. The thing that had caught his eye was a +cypher surmounted by a crown, embroidered so minutely as almost to call +for a magnifying glass. But without a glass he could see that the cypher +was composed of the initials M and D, and that the crown was not a +coronet, but a closed crown, of the pattern worn by mediatised princes. + +"What on earth can be the meaning of this?" he wondered, frowning, and +breathing quick. + +But he was stopped from further speculation for the moment by a knock at +the door. The postman entered with two letters, for one of which, as it +was registered, John had to sign. When he had tipped the postman and was +alone again, he put his registered letter on the dressing-table (with a +view to disciplining curiosity and exercising patience, possibly) and +turned his attention to the other. In a handsome, high old hand, that +somehow reminded him of the writer's voice, it ran as follows:-- + + "DEAR JOHN, + + "I was heart-broken not to see you when I drove over to say + good-bye this afternoon, but chance favoured me at least to the + extent of letting me see your miller's daughter, and you may + believe that I was glad of an opportunity to inspect her at close + quarters. My dear boy, she is no more a miller's daughter than you + are. Her beauty--there's _race_ in it. Her manner and carriage, + her voice, accent, her way of dressing, (I'd give a sovereign for + the name of her dressmaker), the fineness of her skin, her hair, + everything--there's race in 'em all, race and consciousness of + race, pride, dignity, distinction. These things don't come to pass + in a generation. I'm surprised at your lack of perspicacity. And + those blue eyes of yours look so sharp, too. But perhaps your wish + was father to your thought. You felt (well, and so to some extent + did I) that it would be more _romantic_. She's probably a very + great swell indeed, and I expect the Frau What's-her-name she's + staying with will turn out to be her old governess or nurse or + something. When those Austrians _can_ show quarterings, (of course + you must bar recent creations--they're generally named Cohen), they + can show them to some effect. They think nothing of thirty-two. All + of which, _au fond_, rather rejoices me, for if she really had been + a miller's daughter, it would have seemed a good deal like throwing + yourself away, and who knows what your rusty, crusty old uncle B. + might have said? I've long had a rod in pickle for _him_, and + t'other day I applied it. _Attendez_. + + "Don't forget the pig you purchased--so gallantly and confidingly. + I would not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments--your + pig will gobble 'em up. You should by this have received a + communication from my solicitors. Remember, you have pledged your + sacred promise. There must be no question of trying to shirk or + burke it. Remember that I am quite outrageously rich. I have no + children of my own, and no very near relatives, (and my distant + ones are intensely disagreeable), and I can't help looking upon the + heir of the Blanchemains as a kind of spiritual son. In your + position there's no such thing as having too much money. Take all + that comes, and never mind the quarter whence. They're Plymouth + Brethren, and send me tracts. + + "Good-bye now till August, if not before. For of course in August + you must come to me at Fring. Will you bring your bride? When and + where the wedding? I suppose they'll want it in Austria. Beware of + long engagements--or of too short ones. The autumn's the time,--the + only pretty ring-time. You see, you'll need some months for the + preparation of your trousseau. I love a man to be smart. Well, + good-bye. I was so sorry about that child's illness, but thankful + to hear she was mending. + + "Yours affectionately, + + "LINDA BLANCHEMAIN." + +And his registered letter, when at last he opened it, ran thus:-- + + "DEAR SIR:--Pursuant to instructions received from our client Lady + Blanchemain, we beg to hand you herewith our cheque for Seven + hundred and fifty pounds (£750 stg.), and to request the favour of + your receipt for the same, together with the address of your + bankers, that we may pay in quarterly a like sum to your account, + it being her ladyship's intention, immediately upon her return to + England, to effect a settlement upon yourself and heirs of £100,000 + funded in Bk. of Eng. stock. + + "We are further to have the pleasure to inform you that by the + terms of a will just prepared by us, and to be executed by Lady + Blanchemain at the earliest possible date, you are constituted her + residuary legatee. + + "With compliments and respectful congratulations, + + "We have the honour, dear Sir, to be, + + "Your obedient servants, + + "FARROW, BERNSCOT, AND TISDALE." + +And then there came another tap at the door, and it was the postman who +had returned, with a third letter which, like the true Italian postman +that he was, he had forgotten,--and I fancy, if it hadn't been for that +tip still warm in his pocket, the easy-going fellow would have allowed +it to stand over till to-morrow. He made, at any rate, a great virtue of +having discovered it and of having retraced his steps. + +The letter was written in black, angular, uncompromising characters, +that looked rather like sabre-thrusts and bayonets. It read:-- + + "DEAR JACK:--I have received the enclosure from Linda Lady + Blanchemain. She is an exceedingly impertinent and meddlesome old + woman. But she is right about the allowance. I don't know why I + never thought of it myself. I don't know why you never suggested + it. I extremely regret it. As next in succession, you are + certainly entitled to an annuity from the estate. I have to-day + remitted £500 to your bankers, and am instructing my agents to pay + in a like amount quarterly. + + "I hope I shall soon be seeing you at Ventmere. We are having a + grand lambing season, but there's a nasty spread of swine-fever, + and the whole country's papered with handbills. I got a goodish bit + of hunting down at Wilsborough during the winter. Now there's + nothing to do but play golf. I never could find any fun in shooting + rooks. + + "Your affectionate uncle, + + "B of V." + +And the enclosure:-- + + "Linda Lady Blanchemain presents her compliments to Lord + Blanchemain of Ventmere, and begs to apprise him that she has + lately had the pleasure of meeting his lordship's nephew John, and + has discovered to her amazement that his lordship makes him no + allowance. This situation, for the heir to the barony of + Blanchemain, is of course absurd, and must, Lady Blanchemain is + sure, be due entirely to an oversight on his lordship's part. She + ventures, therefore, with all respect, to bring it to his notice." + +So! Here sat a young man with plenty to think about; a young man, whose +income, yesterday a bare six hundred, had sprung up over night to +something near six thousand. Six thousand a year isn't opulence, if you +like, but a young man possessing it can hardly look upon himself as +quite empty-handed, either. This young man, however, had other things as +well to think of. What of that embroidered handkerchief? What of those +shrewd suspicions of Lady Blanchemain's? What of his miller's daughter? + +And there was another thing still. What of his proud old honest Spartan +of an unimaginative uncle? He thought of him, and "Oh, the poor old +boy," he cried. "Not for ten times the money would I have had the dear +old woman write to him like that. How hard it must have hit him!" + +"M, D, and a princely crown," he reflected. "I wish I had an Almanach de +Gotha." + + + + +VI + + +"Who was it said of some one that he dearly loved a lord?" Maria +Dolores, her chin in the air, asked of Frau Brandt. + +"I do not know," Frau Brandt replied, knitting. + +"Well, at least, you know whether it would be possible for a man and +wife to live luxuriously on sixpence a week. Would it?" pursued her +tease. + +"You are well aware that it would not," said Frau Brandt. + +"How about six hundred pounds a year?" + +"Six hundred pounds--?" Frau Brandt computed. "That would be six +thousand florins, no? It would depend upon their station in the world." + +"Well, suppose their station were about my station--and my lord's?" + +"You," said Frau Brandt, with a chuckle of contentment, swaying her +white-bonneted head. "You would need twice that for your dress alone." + +"One could dress more simply," said Maria Dolores. + +"No," said Frau Brandt, her good eyes beaming, "you must always dress in +the very finest that can be had." + +"But then," Maria Dolores asked with wistfulness, "what am I to do? For +six hundred pounds is the total of his income." + +"You have, unless I am mistaken, an income of your own," Frau Brandt +remarked. + +"Yes--but he won't let me use it," said Maria Dolores. + +"He? Who?" demanded Frau Brandt, bridling. "Who is there that dares to +say let or not let to you? + +"My future husband," said Maria Dolores. "He has peculiar ideas of +honour. He does not like the notion of marrying a woman who is richer +than himself. So he will marry me only on the condition that I send my +own fortune to be dropped in the middle of the sea." + +"What nonsense is this?" said Frau Brandt, composed. + +"No, it is the truth," said Maria Dolores, "the true truth. He is too +proud to live in luxury at his wife's expense." + +"I like a man making conditions, when it is a question of marrying you," +said Frau Brandt, with scorn. + +"So do I," said Maria Dolores, with heartiness. + +"Well, at any rate, I am glad to see that he is not after you for your +money," Frau Brandt reflected. + +"I suppose we shall have to dress in sackcloth and dine on lentils," +said Maria Dolores. + +"Of course you will tell him to take his conditions to the Old One," +said Frau Brandt. "It is out of the question for you to change the +manner of your life." + +"I feel indeed as if it were," admitted Maria Dolores. "But if he +insists?" + +"Then tell him to go to the Old One himself," was Frau Brandt's blunt +advice. + +Maria Dolores laughed. "It seems like an _impasse_," she said. "Who is +to break the news to my brother?" + +"We will wait until there is some news to break," the old woman amiably +grumbled. + +Again at the sunset hour Maria Dolores met him in the garden. He was +seated on one of their marble benches, amongst marble columns, +(rose-tinted by the western light, and casting long purple shadows), in +a vine-embowered pergola. He was leaning forward, legs crossed, brow +wrinkled, as one deep in thought. But of course at the sound of her +footstep he jumped up. + +"What mighty problem were you revolving?" she asked. "You looked like +Rembrandt's _philosophe en méditation_." + +"I was revolving the problem of human love," he answered. "I was +mutilating Browning. + + '_Was it something said, + Something done, + Was it touch of hand, + Turn of head?_' + +I was also thinking about you. I was wondering whether it would be my +cruel destiny not to see you this evening, and thinking of the first +time I ever saw you." + +"Oh," said she, lightly, "that morning among the olives,--when you +gathered the windflowers for me?" + +"No," said he. "That was the second time." + +"Indeed?" said she, surprised. She sat down on the marble bench. John +stood before her. + +"Yes," said he. "The first time was the day before. You were crossing +the garden--you were bending over the sun-dial--and I spied upon you +from a window of the _piano nobile_. Lady Blanchemain was there with me, +and she made a prediction." + +"What did she predict?" asked Maria Dolores, unsuspicious. + +"She predicted that I would fall--" But he dropped his sentence in the +middle. "She predicted what has happened." + +"Oh," murmured Maria Dolores, and looked at the horizon. By-and-by, +"That morning among the olives was the first time that I saw you--when +you dashed like a paladin to my assistance. I feel that I have never +sufficiently thanked you." + +"A paladin oddly panoplied," said John. "Tell me honestly, weren't you +in two minds whether or not to reward me with largesse? You had silver +in your hand." + +Maria Dolores laughed. I think she coloured a little. + +"Perhaps I was, for half a second," she confessed. "But your grand +manner soon put me in one mind." + +John also laughed. He took a turn backwards and forwards. "I have waked +in the dead of night, and grown hot and cold to remember the figure of +fun I was." + +"No," said Maria Dolores, to console him. "You weren't a figure of fun. +Your costume had the air of being an impromptu, but," she laughed, "your +native dignity shone through." + +"Thank you," said John, bowing. "The next time I saw you was that same +afternoon. You were with Annunziata in the avenue. I carried my vision +of you, like a melody, all the way to Roccadoro-and all the way home +again." + +"I had just made Annunziata's acquaintance," said Maria Dolores. + +"You had a white sunshade and a lilac frock," said John. "The next time +was that night in the moonlight. You were all in white, with a scarf of +white lace over your hair. You threw me a white rose from your +balcony--and I have carried that rose with me ever since." + +"I threw you a white rose?" doubted Maria Dolores, looking up, at fault. + +"Yes," said John. "Have you forgotten it?" + +"I certainly have," said she, with emphasis. + +"You threw me a smile that was like a white rose," said he. + +She laughed. + +"I think I just distantly acknowledged your bow," she said. + +"Well, some people's distant acknowledgments are like white roses," said +he. "I hope, at least, you remember what a glorious night it was, and +how the nightingales were singing?" + +"Yes," said she. "I remember that." + +"I have a fancy," he declared, "that it will be a more glorious night +still to-night, and that the nightingales will sing better than they +have ever sung before." + +Maria Dolores did not speak. + +"Do you happen," John asked, after a long silence, while they gazed at +the deepening colours in the west, "do you happen to possess such a +thing as a copy of the Almanach de Gotha?" + +"Yes," said she. + +"Really? I wonder whether you will lend it to me?" + +"I am sorry--it is in Vienna." And after an instant's pause, she +ventured, "What, if it isn't indiscreet to inquire, do you wish to look +up?" + +"I wish to look up a lady--a dream lady--a lady who walks in beauty like +the night of cloudless climes--and whose pocket-handkerchiefs are +embroidered with the initials M.D., in a cypher, under a princely +crown." + +"I should think," said Maria Dolores, considering, "that she would +probably be a member of one of the mediatised princely houses. But if +you have nothing more than her initials to go by, you would find it +difficult to trace her in the Almanach de Gotha." + +"No doubt," said John. "But to a man of spirit a difficulty is a +challenge." + +"Do you make a practice," asked she, "of appropriating people's +handkerchiefs?" + +"Certain people's--yes," unblushing, he promptly owned. + +"M.D. under a princely crown, I think you said?" she mused. "It occurs +to me that Maria Dolores of Zelt-Neuminster's pocket-handkerchiefs might +be so embroidered." + +"Ah?" said John. "Zelt-Neuminster? That would be a daughter of the man +who owns this Castle?" + +"No, she is a sister of the man who owns this Castle." + +"I understand," said John. "I wonder that the sister of the man who owns +this Castle never comes here to see how fine it is." + +"She has been here quite recently," said Maria Dolores. "She has been +here visiting her foster-mother, who lives in the pavilion beyond the +clock. She came to make a sort of retreat--to think something over." + +"Yes--?" questioned he. + +"Her brother is very anxious to marry her off. He is anxious that she +should marry her second cousin, the Prince of Zelt-Zelt. She came here +to make up her mind." + +"Has she made it up?" he asked. + +"I am not sure," said she. + +"Yet you seem to be deep in her confidence," said he. + +"Yes--but she is not quite sure herself." + +"Oh--?" said John. + +"She is one of those foolish women who dream of marriage as a high +romance." + +"Wise men," said John, "dream of it as the highest." + +She shook her head. + +"A marriage with her cousin would be an end to all romance for ever. She +was thinking a little while ago, I believe, of marrying a plain +commoner, the nephew of a farmer. That would have been indeed romantic. +Now, I hear, she is considering, a future member of your English House +of Lords." + +"Wouldn't even that be rather romantic--if a step down constitutes +romance?" John suggested. + +"Oh, a British peer is scarcely a step down," she returned. "Besides, +there are people who don't care--what is the expression?--twopence about +rank." + +"When I said that," John explained, "I had no inkling that her rank was +so exalted." + +"Did you think she was the daughter of a cobbler?" Maria Dolores +quickly, with some haughtiness, inquired. + +"I thought she was a daughter of the stars," John answered. + +"And you feared her name was Smitti," she said, haughtiness dissolving +in mirth. "I will never tell you what she feared that yours was." + +"See," said John, "how they are hanging the heavens with banners. It +must be in honour of some great impending event." + +Yesterday the west had been a sea. To-day it was a city, a vast grey and +violet city, with palaces and battlemented towers, and countless airy +spires and pinnacles; and here, there, everywhere, its walls were gay +with gold and crimson, as with drooping banners. + +"'Tis a city _en fête_," said John. "'Tis the city where marriages are +made. They must have one in hand." + +"Hark," said she, putting up a finger. "There are your nightingales +beginning." + +But the raised finger reminded him of something. "Have you a rooted +objection to rings?" he asked. + +"Why?" asked she. + +"I notice that you don't wear any." + +"Oh, sometimes I wear many," she said. "Then one has moods in which one +leaves them off." + +"I have a ring in my pocket which I think belongs to you," said he. + +"Really? I don't know that any of my rings are missing." + +"Here it is," said he. He produced the little old shagreen case he had +received from Lady Blanchemain, opened, and offered it. + +"It is a singularly beautiful ring," said she, her eyes admiring. "But +it doesn't belong to me." + +"I think it does," said he. "May I try it on your finger?" + +She put forth her right hand. + +"No--your left hand, please," he said. He dropped upon one knee before +her, and when the delicate white hand was surrendered, I imagine he made +of getting the ring upon the alliance finger a longer business by a good +deal than was necessary. "There," he said in the end, "you see. It looks +as if it had grown there. Of course it belongs to you." He still held +her hand, warm and firm and velvet-soft. I think in another second he +would have touched it with his lips. But she drew it away. + +She gazed into the depths of the heart-shaped ruby, tremulous with +liquid light, and smiled as at secret thoughts. + +"But I don't see," said John, getting to his feet, "how any man can ask +a Princess of the House of Zelt to marry him and live on six hundred +pounds a year." + +"She would have to modify her habits a good deal, that is very certain," +said Maria Dolores. + +"She would have to modify them utterly," said John. "Six hundred a year +is poverty even for a single man. For a married couple it would be +beggary. She would have to live like the wife of a petty employé. She +would have to travel second class and stay at fourth-rate hotels. She +would have to turn her old dresses and trim her own bonnets. She would +have to do without a maid. And all this means that she would have +virtually to renounce her caste, to give up the society of her equals, +who demand a certain scale of appearances, and to live among pariahs or +to live in isolation. Don't you think a man would be a monster of +selfishness to exact such sacrifices?" + +"Oh, some men have excessively far-fetched and morbid notions of +honour," said she. + +"Do you think the Princess, with all this brought to her attention, +would ever dream of consenting?" + +"Women in love are weak--they will consent to almost anything," said +she, her dark eyes smiling for an instant into his. + +Why didn't he take her in his arms? Hope deferred maketh the heart sick, +but to defer the consummation of a joy assured (observes the Persian +poet) giveth the heart a peculiar sweet excitement. + +"Well," said John. "I'm glad to think she is weak; but I'll never ask my +wife to consent to anything so unpleasant. A Princess and a future +peeress, living on six hundred pounds a year! It's unheard of." + +She looked at him, puzzled, incredulous. + +"Oh--? Can you possibly mean--that you will--take back your condition?" + +"Yes," said he, humbly. "Who am I to make conditions?" + +"You will let her spend as much of her own money as she likes?" she +wondered, wide-eyed. + +"As a lover of thrift, I shall deprecate extravagance," said John. "But +as a submissive husband, I shall let her do in all things as her fancy +dictates." + +"Well," marvelled she, "here is a surprise--here is a volte-face +indeed." + +And she looked at the city in the sky, and appeared to turn things over. + +John was mysteriously chuckling. + +"Haven't you your opinion," he asked, "of men who eat their words and +put their scruples in their pockets?" + +"I don't understand," said she, looking wild. "There is, of course, some +joke." + +"There is a joke, indeed," said he; "the joke is that I'm ten times +richer than I told you I was." + +She started back, and fixed him with a glance. + +"Then all that about your being poor was only humbug?" There was +reproach in her voice, I'm not sure there wasn't disappointment. + +"No," said he, "it was the exact and literal truth. But I have come into +a modest competency over-night." + +"I don't understand," said she. + +"My own part in the story is a sufficiently inglorious one," said he. +"I'm the benefactee. Lady Blanchemain and my uncle have put their heads +together, and endowed me. I feel rather small at letting them, but it +enables me to look my affianced boldly in the money-eye." + +"Oh? You are affianced? Already?" she asked gaily. + +"No--not unless you are," gaily answered John. + +She looked down at her ring. + + + + +VII + + +The quiet-coloured end of evening smiled fainter, fainter. The aerial +city, its cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces, had crumbled into +ruins, and stars twinkled among their shattered and darkened walls. The +moon burned icily above the eastern hills. The nightingales (or John was +no true prophet) sang better than they had ever sung before, while bats, +hither, thither, flew in startling zig-zags, as if waltzing to the +music. And all the air was sweet with the breath of dew-wet roses. + +The clock struck eight. + +"There--you must go," said Maria Dolores. + +"Go? Where to?" asked John, feigning vagueness. + +"This is no subject for jest," said she, feigning severity. + +"I can't go yet--I can't leave you yet," said he. "Besides, it is an +education in æsthetics to watch the moonlight on these marble columns, +and the pale shadows of the vine-leaves." + +"Well, then," said she, "stay you here and pursue your education. I will +go in your place. For Marcella Cuciniera must be relieved." She rose, +and moved towards the darkling front of the Castle. + +"Hang education! I'll go with you," said John, following. + +"I shall only stop a moment, to see how she is," said Maria Dolores. +"Then I must hurry home, to get my packing begun." + +"Your packing?" faltered John. + +"To-morrow morning Frau Brandt and I are leaving for Austria--for +Schloss Mischenau, where my brother lives." + +"Good Lord!" said John. "Ah, well, I suppose it is what they would call +the proper course," he admitted with gloomy resignation. "But think how +dreadfully you'll be missed--by Annunziata." + +"Annunziata is so much better, I can easily be spared," said Maria +Dolores; "and anyhow--'tis needs must. I think you will probably soon +receive a letter from my brother, asking you to visit him. Mischenau is +a place worth seeing, in its northern style. And, in his northern style, +my brother is a man worth meeting. I counsel you to go." + +"I shall certainly go," said John. "I shall linger here at Sant' +Alessina like a soul in durance, counting the hours till my release. I +shall be particularly glad to meet your brother, as I have matters of +importance to arrange with him." + +"Until then," said she, smiling, "I think we must do with those--matters +of importance"--her voice quavered on the word--"what is it that the +Pope sometimes does with Cardinals?" + +"Yes," moodily consented John, "I suppose we must. But oh me, what a +dreary, blank, stale, and unprofitable desolation this garden will +become,--and at every turn the ghost of some past joy!" + +Annunziata looked up with eyes that seemed omniscient. + +"I was thinking about you," she greeted them. + +"About which of us?" asked John. + +"About both of you. I always now, since a long while, think of you both +together. I think Maria Dolores is the dark woman whom Prospero is to +marry." + +John laughed. Maria Dolores looked out of the window. + +"And I was thinking," Annunziata went on, "how strange it was that if +you hadn't both at the same time just happened to come to Sant' +Alessina, you might have lived and died and never have known each +other." + +"Perish that thought," laughed John. "But I have sometimes thought it +myself." + +"And then," Annunziata rounded out her tale, "I thought that perhaps you +had not just happened--that probably you had been led." + +"That is a thing I haven't a doubt of," John with energy affirmed. + +"You look as if you were very glad about something--both of you," said +Annunziata, those omniscient eyes of hers studying their faces. "What is +it that you are both so glad of?" + +"We are so glad to find you feeling so well," answered Maria Dolores. + +But Annunziata shook her head, as one who knew better. "No--that is not +the only thing. You are glad of something else besides." + +"There's no taking you in," said John. "But we are under bonds to treat +that Something Else as the Pope sometimes treats Princes of the Church." + +"He gives them red hats," said Annunziata. + +"I shall give this thing a crown of myrtle," said John. + +"You sometimes say things that sound as if they hadn't any sense," +Annunziata informed him, with patient indulgence, nodding at the +ceiling. + +Maria Dolores leaned over the bed, and kissed Annunziata's brow. "Good +night, carina," she murmured. + +Annunziata put up her little white arms, and encircled Maria Dolores' +neck. Then she kissed her four times--on the brow, on the chin, on the +left cheek, on the right. "That is a cross of kisses," she explained. +"It is the way my mother used to kiss me. It means may the four Angels +of Peace, Grace, Holiness, and Wisdom watch over your sleep." + +But early next morning, John being still on duty, Maria Dolores came +back,--booted and spurred for her journey, in tailor-made tweeds, with a +little felt toque and a veil: a costume of which Annunziata's eyes were +quick to catch the suggestion. + +"Why are you dressed like that?" she asked, uneasily. "I never saw you +dressed like that before. You look as if you were going away somewhere." + +"I have got to go away--I have got to go to my home, in Austria. I have +come to bid you good-bye," Maria Dolores answered. + +Annunziata's eyes were dark with pain. "Oh," she said, in a voice of +deep dismay. + +"We shan't be separated long, though," Maria Dolores promised. "I have +asked your uncle to lend you to me. As soon as you are strong enough to +travel, you are coming to Austria to pay me a long visit. Then I will +come back with you to Sant' Alessina. And then--well, wherever I go you +will always go with me. For of course I can never live happily again +without you." + +"One moment, please," put in John. "Here is a small difficulty. I can +never live happily without her, either. I also have asked her uncle to +lend her to me. And wherever _I_ go, she is always to go with me. How +are we to adjust our rival claims?" + +Annunziata's eyes lighted up. + +"Oh, that will be easy enough," she pointed out. "You will have to go +everywhere together." + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of My Friend Prospero, by Henry Harland + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY FRIEND PROSPERO *** + +***** This file should be named 14682-8.txt or 14682-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/6/8/14682/ + +Produced by Rick Niles, Charlie Kirschner and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: My Friend Prospero + +Author: Henry Harland + +Release Date: January 13, 2005 [EBook #14682] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY FRIEND PROSPERO *** + + + + +Produced by Rick Niles, Charlie Kirschner and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + +</pre> + +<div> +<h1>MY FRIEND<br /> +PROSPERO</h1> +</div> +<h2>By HENRY HARLAND</h2> +<h4><i>Author of</i></h4> +<h4>THE CARDINAL'S SNUFF-BOX.</h4> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div> +<h3>JOHN LANE: THE BODLEY HEAD<br /> +<br /> +LONDON & NEW YORK. MDCCCCIV</h3> +</div> +<h5>1903</h5> +<div class="center"><a href="#PART_FIRST"><b>PART +FIRST</b></a><br /> +<a href="#PART_SECOND"><b>PART SECOND</b></a><br /> +<a href="#PART_THIRD"><b>PART THIRD</b></a><br /> +<a href="#PART_FOURTH"><b>PART FOURTH</b></a><br /> +<a href="#PART_FIFTH"><b>PART FIFTH</b></a><br /> +<a href="#PART_SIXTH"><b>PART SIXTH</b></a></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PART_FIRST" id="PART_FIRST"></a>PART FIRST</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>My Friend Prospero</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>I</h2> +<p>The coachman drew up his horses before the castle gateway, where +their hoofs beat a sort of fanfare on the stone pavement; and the +footman, letting himself smartly down, pulled, with a peremptory +gesture that was just not quite a swagger, the bronze hand at the +end of the dangling bell-cord.</p> +<p>Seated alone in her great high-swung barouche, in the sweet +April weather, Lady Blanchemain gave the interval that followed to +a consideration of the landscape: first, sleeping in shadowy +stillness, the formal Italian garden, its terraced lawns and +metrical parterres, its straight dark avenues of ilex, its +cypresses, fountains, statues, balustrades; and then, laughing in +the breeze and the sun, the wild Italian valley, a forest of +blossoming fruit-trees, with the river winding and glinting in its +midst, with olive-clad hills blue-grey at either side, and beyond +the hills, peering over their shoulders, the snow-peaks of +mountains, crisp against the sky, and in the level distance the +hazy shimmer of the lake.</p> +<p>"It is lovely," she exclaimed, fervently, in a whisper, +"lovely.—And only a generation of blind-worms," was her +after-thought, "could discern in it the slightest resemblance to +the drop-scene of a theatre."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>II</h2> +<p>Big, humorous, emotional, imperious, but, above all, interested +and sociable Lady Blanchemain: do you know her, I wonder? Her +billowy white hair? Her handsome soft old face, with its smooth +skin, and the good strong bony structure underneath? Her beautiful +old grey eyes, full of tenderness and shrewdness, of curiosity, +irony, indulgence, overarched and emphasized by regular black +eyebrows? Her pretty little plump pink-white hands, (like two +little elderly Cupids), with their shining panoply of rings? And +her luxurious, courageous, high-hearted manner of dressing? The +light colours and jaunty fashion of her gowns? Her laces, ruffles, +embroideries? Her gay little bonnets? Her gems? Linda Baroness +Blanchemain, of Fring Place, Sussex; Belmore Gardens, Kensington; +and Villa Antonina, San Remo: big, merry, sociable, sentimental, +worldly-wise, impetuous Linda Blanchemain: do you know her? If you +do, I am sure you love her and rejoice in her; and enough is said. +If you don't, I beg leave to present and to commend her.</p> +<p>I spoke, by the bye, of her "old" face, her "old" eyes. She is, +to be sure, in so far as mere numbers of years tell, an old woman. +But I once heard her throw out, in the heat of conversation, the +phrase, "a young old thing like me;" and I thought she touched a +truth.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>III</h2> +<p>Well, then, the footman, in his masterful way, pulled the +bell-cord; Lady Blanchemain contemplated the landscape, and had her +opinion of a generation that could liken it to the drop-scene of a +theatre; and in due process of things the bell was answered.</p> +<p>It was answered by a man in a costume that struck my humorous +old friend as pleasing: a sallow little man whose otherwise quite +featureless suit of tweeds was embellished by scarlet worsted +shoulder-knots. With lack-lustre eyes, from behind the plexus of +the grille, he rather stolidly regarded the imposing British +equipage, and waited to be addressed.</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain addressed him in the language of Pistoja. Might +one, she inquired, with her air of high affability, in her +distinguished old voice, might one visit the castle?—a +question purely of convention, for she had not come hither without +an assurance from her guide-book.</p> +<p>Shoulder-knots, however,—either to flaunt his attainments, +or because indeed Pistoiese (what though the polyglot races of +Italy have agreed upon it as a lingua franca) offered the greater +difficulties to his Lombardian tongue,—replied in French.</p> +<p>"I do not think so, Madame," was his reply, in a French +sufficiently heavy and stiff-jointed, enforced by a dubious +oscillation of the head.</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain's black eyebrows shot upwards, marking her +surprise; then drew together, marking her determination.</p> +<p>"But of course one can—it's in the guide-book," she +insisted, and held up the red-bound volume.</p> +<p>The sceptic gave a shrug, as one who disclaimed responsibility +and declined discussion.</p> +<p>"Me, I do not think so. But patience! I will go and ask," he +said; and, turning his back, faded from sight in the depths of the +dark tunnel-like porte-cochère.</p> +<p>Vexed, perplexed, Lady Blanchemain fidgeted a little. To have +taken this long drive for nothing!—sweet though the weather +was, fair though the valley: but she was not a person who could let +the means excuse the end. She neither liked nor was accustomed to +see her enterprises balked,—to see doors remain closed in her +face. Doors indeed had a habit of flying open at her approach. +Besides, the fellow's manner,—his initial stare and silence, +his tone when he spoke, his shrug, his exhortation to patience, and +something too in the conduct of his back as he +departed,—hadn't it lacked I don't know what of becoming +deference? to satisfy her amour-propre, at any rate, that the +mistake, if there was a mistake, sprang from no malapprehension of +her own, she looked up chapter and verse. Yes, there the assurance +stood, circumstantial, in all the convincingness of the sturdy, +small black type:—</p> +<p>"From Roccadoro a charming excursion may be made, up the +beautiful Val Rampio, to the mediæval village of Sant' +Alessina (7 miles), with its magnificent castle, in fine grounds, +formerly a seat of the Sforzas, now belonging to the Prince of +Zelt-Neuminster, and containing the celebrated Zelt-Neuminster +collection of paintings. Incorporated in the castle buildings, a +noticeable peculiarity, are the parish church and presbytery. +Accessible daily, except Monday, from 10 to 4; attendant 1 fr."</p> +<p>So then! To-day was Wednesday, the hour between two and three. +So—! Her amour-propre triumphed, but I fancy her vexation +mounted....</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>IV</h2> +<p>"I beg your pardon. It's disgraceful you should have been made +to wait. The porter is an idiot. You wish, of course, to see the +house—?"</p> +<p>The English words, on a key of spontaneous apology, with a very +zealous inflection of concern—yet, at the same time, with a +kind of entirely respectful and amiable abruptness, as of one +hailing a familiar friend,—were pronounced in a breath by a +brisk, cheerful, unmistakably English voice.</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain, whose attention had still been on the +incriminated page, looked quickly up, and (English voice and +spontaneous apology notwithstanding) I won't vouch that the answer +at the tip of her impulsive tongue mightn't have proved a hasty +one—but the speaker's appearance gave her pause: the +appearance of the tall, smiling, unmistakably English young man, by +whom Shoulder-knots had returned accompanied, and who now, having +pushed the grille ajar and issued forth, stood, placing himself +with a tentative obeisance at her service, beside the carriage: he +was so clearly, first of all—what, if it hadn't been for her +preoccupation, his voice, tone, accent would have warned her to +expect—so visibly a gentleman; and then, with the even pink +of his complexion, his yellowish hair and beard, his alert, +friendly, very blue blue eyes—with his very blue blue +flannels too, and his brick-red knitted tie—he was so vivid +and so unusual.</p> +<p>His appearance gave her a pause; and in the result she in her +turn almost apologized.</p> +<p>"This wretched book," she explained, pathetically bringing +forward her <i>pièce justificative</i>, "said that it was +open to the public."</p> +<p>The vivid young man hastened to put her in the right.</p> +<p>"It is—it <i>is</i>," he eagerly affirmed. "Only," he +added, with a vaguely rueful modulation, and always with that +amiable abruptness, as a man very much at his ease, while his blue +eyes whimsically brightened, "only the blessed public never +comes—we're so off the beaten path. And I suppose one mustn't +expect a Scioccone"—his voice swelled on the word, and he +cast sidelong a scathing glance at his summoner—"to cope with +unprecedented situations. Will you allow me to help you out?"</p> +<p>"Ah," thought Lady Blanchemain, "Eton," his tone and accent now +nicely appraised by an experienced ear. "Eton—yes; and +probably—h'm? Probably Balliol," her experience led her +further to surmise. But what—with her insatiable curiosity +about people, she had of course immediately begun to +wonder—what was an Eton and Balliol man doing, apparently in +a position of authority, at this remote Italian castle?</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>V</h2> +<p>He helped her out, very gracefully, very gallantly; and under +his guidance she made the tour of the vast building: its greater +court and lesser court; its cloisters, with their faded frescoes, +and their marvellous outlook, northwards, upon the Alps; its +immense rotunda, springing to the open dome, where the sky was like +an inset plaque of turquoise; its "staircase of honour," guarded, +in an ascending file, by statues of men in armour; and then, on the +<i>piano nobile</i>, its endless chain of big, empty, silent, +splendid state apartments, with their pavements of gleaming marble, +in many-coloured patterns, their painted and gilded ceilings, +tapestried walls, carved wood and moulded stucco, their pictures, +pictures, pictures, and their atmosphere of stately desolation, +their memories of another age, their reminders of the power and +pomp of people who had long been ghosts.</p> +<p>He was tall (with that insatiable curiosity of hers, she was of +course continuously studying him), tall and broad-shouldered, but +not a bit rigid or inflexible—of a figure indeed +conspicuously supple, suave in its quick movements, soft in its +energetic lines, a figure that could with equal thoroughness be +lazy in repose and vehement in action. His yellow hair was thick +and fine, and if it hadn't been cropped so close would have curled +a little. His beard, in small crinkly spirals, did actually curl, +and toward the edge its yellow burned to red. And his blue eyes +were so very very blue, and so very keen, and so very frank and +pleasant—"They are like sailors' eyes," thought Lady +Blanchemain, who had a sentiment for sailors. He carried his head +well thrown back, as a man who was perfectly sure of himself and +perfectly unselfconscious; and thus unconsciously he drew attention +to the vigorous sweep of his profile, the decisive angles of his +brow and nose. His voice was brisk and cheerful and masculine; and +that abruptness with which he spoke—which seemed, as it were, +to imply a previous acquaintance—was so tempered by manifest +good breeding and so coloured by manifest good will, that it became +a positive part and parcel of what one liked in him. It was the +abruptness of a man very much at his ease, very much a man of the +world, yet it was somehow, in its essence, boyish. It expressed +freshness, sincerity, conviction, a boyish wholesale surrender of +himself to the business of the moment; it expressed, perhaps above +all, a boyish thorough good understanding with his interlocutor. +"It amounts," thought his present interlocutrice, "to a kind of +infinitely sublimated bluffness."</p> +<p>And then she fell to examining his clothes: his loose, soft, +very blue blue flannels, with vague stripes of darker blue; his +soft shirt, with its rolling collar; his red tie, knitted of soft +silk, and tied in a loose sailor's-knot. She liked his clothes, and +she liked the way he wore them. They suited him. They were loose +and comfortable and unconventional, but they were beautifully fresh +and well cared for, and showed him, if indifferent to the +fashion-plate of the season, meticulous in a fashion of his own. +"It's hard to imagine him dressed otherwise," she said, and +instantly had a vision of him dressed for dinner.</p> +<p>But what—what—what was he doing at Castel Sant' +Alessina?</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>VI</h2> +<p>Meanwhile he plainly knew a tremendous lot about Italian art. +Lady Blanchemain herself knew a good deal, and could recognize a +pundit. He illumined their progress by a running fire of exposition +and commentary, learned and discerning, to which she encouragingly +listened, and, as occasion required, amiably responded. But +Boltraffios, Bernardino Luinis, even a putative Giorgione, could +not divert her mind from its human problem. What was he doing at +Castel Sant' Alessina, the property, according to her guide-book, +of an Austrian prince? What was his status here, apparently (bar +servants) in solitary occupation? Was he its tenant? He couldn't, +surely, this well-dressed, high-bred, cultivated young compatriot, +he couldn't be a mere employé, a steward or curator? No: +probably a tenant. Antecedently indeed it might seem unlikely that +a young Englishman should become the tenant of an establishment so +huge and so sequestered; but was it conceivable that this +particular young Englishman should be a mere employé? And +was there any other alternative? She hearkened for a word, a note, +that might throw light; but of such notes, such words, a young +man's conversation, in the circumstances, would perhaps naturally +yield a meagre crop.</p> +<p>"You mustn't let me tire you," he said presently, as one who had +forgotten and suddenly remembered that looking at pictures is +exhausting work. "Won't you sit here and rest a little?"</p> +<p>They were in a smaller room than any they had previously +traversed, an octagonal room, which a single lofty window filled +with sunshine.</p> +<p>"Oh, thank you," said Lady Blanchemain, and seated herself on +the circular divan in the centre of the polished terrazza floor. +She wasn't really tired in the least, the indefatigable old +sight-seer; but a respite from picture-gazing would enable her to +turn the talk. She put up her mother-of-pearl lorgnon, and glanced +round the walls; then, lowering it, she frankly raised her eyes, +full of curiosity and kindness, to her companion's.</p> +<p>"It's a surprise, and a delightful one," she remarked, "having +pushed so far afield in a foreign land, to be met by the good +offices of a fellow-countryman—it's so nice of you to be +English."</p> +<p>And her eyes softly changed, their curiosity being veiled by a +kind of humorous content.</p> +<p>The young man's face, from its altitude of six-feet-something, +beamed responsively down upon her.</p> +<p>"Oh," he laughed, "you mustn't give me too much credit. To be +English nowadays is so ingloriously easy—since foreign lands +have become merely the wider suburbs of London."</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain's eyes lighted approvingly. Afterwards she +looked half serious.</p> +<p>"True," she discriminated, "London has spread pretty well over +the whole of Europe; but England, thanks be to goodness, still +remains mercifully small."</p> +<p>"Yes," agreed the young man, though with a lilt of dubiety, and +a frown of excogitation, as if he weren't sure that he had quite +caught her drift.</p> +<p>"The mercy of it is," she smilingly pointed out, "that English +folk, decent ones, have no need to fight shy of each other when +they meet as strangers. We all know more or less about each other +by hearsay, or about each other's people; and we're all pretty sure +to have some common acquaintances. The smallness of England makes +for sociability and confidence."</p> +<p>"It ought to, one would think," the young man admitted. "But +does it, in fact? It had somehow got stuck in my head that English +folk, meeting as strangers, were rather apt to glare. We're most of +us in such a funk, you see, lest, if we treat a stranger with +civility, he should turn out not to be a duke."</p> +<p>"Oh," cried Lady Blanchemain, with merriment, "you forget that I +said <i>decent</i>. I meant, of course, folk who <i>are</i> dukes. +We're all dukes—or bagmen."</p> +<p>The young man chuckled; but in a minute he pulled a long face, +and made big, ominous eyes.</p> +<p>"I feel I ought to warn you," he said in a portentous voice, +"that some of us are mere marquises—of the house of +Carabas."</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain, her whole expansive person, simmered with +enjoyment.</p> +<p>"Bless you," she cried, "those are the ducalest, for +marquises—of the house of Carabas—are men of dash and +spirit, born to bear everything before them, and to marry the +King's daughter."</p> +<p>With that, she had a moment of abstraction. Again, her eyeglass +up, she glanced round the walls—hung, in this octagonal room, +with dim-coloured portraits of women, all in wonderful toilets, +with wonderful hair and head-gear, all wonderfully young and +pleased with things, and all four centuries dead. They caused her a +little feeling of uneasiness, they were so dead and silent, and yet +somehow, in their fixed postures, with their unblinking eyes, their +unvarying smiles, so—as it seemed to her—so watchful, +so intent; and it was a relief to turn from them to the window, to +the picture framed by the window of warm, breathing, heedless +nature. But all the while, in her interior mind, she was busy with +the man before her. "He looks," she considered, "tall as he is, and +with his radiant blondeur—with the gold in his hair and +beard, and the sea-blue in his eyes—he looks like a hero out +of some old Norse saga. He looks like-what's his name?—like +Odin. I must really compel him to explain himself."</p> +<p>It very well may be, meantime, that he was reciprocally busy +with her, taking her in, admiring her, this big, jolly, comely, +high-mannered old woman, all in soft silks and drooping laces, who +had driven into his solitude from Heaven knew where, and was quite +unquestionably Someone, Heaven knew who.</p> +<p>She had a moment of abstraction; but now, emerging from it, she +used her eyeglass as a pointer, and indicatively swept the circle +of painted eavesdroppers.</p> +<p>"They make one feel like their grandmother, their youth is so +flagrant," she sighed, "these grandmothers of the Quattrocento. Ah, +well, we can only be old once, and we should take advantage of the +privileges of age while we have 'em. Old people, I am thankful to +say, are allowed, amongst other things, to be inquisitive. I'm +brazenly so. Now, if one of our common acquaintances were at +hand—for with England still mercifully small, we're sure to +possess a dozen, you and I—what do you think is the question +I should ask him?—I should ask him," she avowed, with a +pretty effect of hesitation, and a smile that went as an +advance-guard to disarm resentment, "to tell me who you are, and +all about you—and to introduce you to me."</p> +<p>"Oh," cried the young man, laughing. He laughed for a second or +two. In the end, pleasantly, with a bow, "My name," he said, "if +you can possibly care to know, is Blanchemain."</p> +<p>His visitor caught her breath. She sat up straight, and gazed +hard at him.</p> +<p>"Blanchemain?" she gasped.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>VII</h2> +<p>There were, to be sure, reasons and to spare why the name should +make her sit up straight. Her curiosity had turned the key, and lo, +with a click, here was an entirely changed, immensely complicated, +intensely poignant situation. But our excitable old friend was an +Englishwoman: dissimulation would be her second nature; you could +trust her to pull the wool over your eyes with a fleet and +practised hand. Instinctively, furthermore, she would seek to +extract from such a situation all the fun it promised. Taken off +her guard, for the span of ten heart-beats she sat up straight and +stared; but with the eleventh her attitude relaxed. She had +regained her outward nonchalance, and resolved upon her system of +fence.</p> +<p>"Ah," she said, on a tone judiciously compounded of feminine +artlessness and of forthright British candour, and with a play of +the eyebrows that attributed her momentary suscitation to the +workings of memory, "of course—Blanchemain. The Sussex +Blanchemains. I expect there's only one family of the name?"</p> +<p>"I've never heard of another," assented the young man.</p> +<p>"The Ventmere Blanchemains," she pursued pensively. "Lord +Blanchemain of Ventmere is your titled head?"</p> +<p>"Exactly," said he.</p> +<p>"I knew the late Lord Blanchemain—I knew him fairly well," +she mentioned, always with a certain pensiveness.</p> +<p>"Oh—?" said he, politely interested.</p> +<p>"Yes," said she. "But I've never met his successor. The two were +not, I believe, on speaking terms. Of course,"—and her +forthright British candour carried her trippingly over the delicate +ground,—"it's common knowledge that the family is divided +against itself—hostile branches—a Protestant branch and +a Catholic. The present lord, if I've got it right, is a Catholic, +and the late lord's distant cousin?"</p> +<p>"You've got it quite right," the young man assured her, with a +nod, and a little laugh. "They had the same +great-great-grandfather. The last few lords have been Protestants, +but in our branch the family have never forsaken the old +religion."</p> +<p>"I know," said she. "And wasn't it—I've heard the story, +but I'm a bit hazy about it—wasn't it owing to your—is +'recusancy' the word?—that you lost the title? Wasn't there +some sort of sharp practice at your expense in the last +century?"</p> +<p>The young man had another little laugh.</p> +<p>"Oh, nothing," he answered, "that wasn't very much the fashion. +The late lord's great-grandfather denounced his elder brother as a +Papist and a Jacobite—nothing more than that. It was after +the 'Forty-five. So the cadet took the title and estates. But with +the death of the late lord, a dozen years or so ago, the younger +line became extinct, and the title reverted."</p> +<p>"I see," said my lady. She knitted her eyebrows, computing. +After an instant, "General Blanchemain," she resumed, "as the +present lord was called for the best part of his life, is a +bachelor. You will be one of his nephews?" She raised her eyes +inquiringly.</p> +<p>"The son of his brother Philip," said the young man.</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain sat up straight again.</p> +<p>"But then," she cried, forgetting to conceal her perturbation, +"then you're the heir. Philip Blanchemain had but one son, and was +the General's immediate junior. You're John Blanchemain—John +Francis Joseph Mary. You're the heir."</p> +<p>The young man smiled—at her eagerness, perhaps.</p> +<p>"The heir-presumptive—I suppose I am," he said.</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain leaned back and gently tittered.</p> +<p>"See how I know my Peerage!" she exclaimed. Then, looking grave, +"You're heir to an uncommonly good old title," she informed +him.</p> +<p>"I hope it may be many a long day before I'm anything else," +said he.</p> +<p>"Your uncle is an old man," she suggestively threw out.</p> +<p>"Oh, not so very old," he submitted. "Only seventy, or +thereabouts, and younger in many respects than I am. I hope he'll +live for ever."</p> +<p>"Hum!" said she, and appeared to fall a-musing. Absently, as it +seemed, and slowly, she was pulling off her gloves.</p> +<p>"Feuds in families," she said, in a minute, "are bad things. Why +don't you make it up?"</p> +<p>The young man waved his hand, a pantomimic +<i>non-possumus</i>.</p> +<p>"There's no one left to make it up with—the others are all +dead."</p> +<p>"Oh?" she wondered, her eyebrows elevated, whilst automatically +her fingers continued to operate upon her gloves. "I thought the +last lord left a widow. I seem to have heard of a <i>Lady</i> +Blanchemain somewhere."</p> +<p>The young man gave still another of his little laughs.</p> +<p>"Linda Lady Blanchemain?" he said. "Yes, one hears a lot of her. +A highly original character, by all accounts. One hears of her +everywhere."</p> +<p>Linda Lady Blanchemain's lip began to quiver; but she got it +under control.</p> +<p>"Well?" she questioned—eyes fixing his, and brimming with +a kind of humorous defiance, as if to say, "Think me an impertinent +old meddler if you will, and do your worst,"—"Why don't you +make it up with <i>her</i>?"</p> +<p>But he didn't seem to mind the meddling in the least. He stood +at ease, and plausibly put his case.</p> +<p>"Why don't I? Or why doesn't my uncle? My uncle is a +temperamental conservative, a devotee to his traditions—the +sort of man who will never do anything that hasn't been the +constant habit of his forebears. He would no more dream of healing +a well-established family feud than of selling the family plate. +And I—well, surely, it would never be for me to make the +advances."</p> +<p>"No, you're right," acknowledged Lady Blanchemain. "The advances +should come from her. But people have such a fatal way—even +without being temperamental conservatives—of leaving things +as they find them. Besides, never having seen you, she couldn't +know how nice you are. All the same, I'll confess, if you insist +upon it, that she ought to be ashamed of herself. Come—let's +make it up."</p> +<p>She rose, a great soft glowing vision of benignancy, and held +out her hand, now gloveless, her pretty little smooth plump right +hand, with its twinkling rings.</p> +<p>"Oh!" cried the astonished young man, the astonished, amused, +moved, wondering, and entirely won young man, his sea-blue eyes +wide open, and a hundred lights of pleasure and surprise dancing in +them.</p> +<p>The benignant vision floated towards him, and he took the little +white hand in his long lean brown one.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>VIII</h2> +<p>When the first stress of their emotion had in some degree spent +itself Lady Blanchemain, returning to her place on the ottoman, +bade John sit down beside her.</p> +<p>"Now," she said, genially imperative, whilst all manner of +kindly and admiring interest shone in her face, "there are exactly +nine million and ninety-nine questions that you'll be obliged to +answer before I've done with you. But to begin, you must clear up +at once a mystery that's been troubling me ever since you dashed to +my rescue at the gate. What in the name of Reason is the cause of +your residence in this ultramundane stronghold?"</p> +<p>John—convict me of damnable iteration if you must: Heaven +has sent me a laughing hero—John laughed.</p> +<p>"Oh," he said, "there are several causes—there are exactly +nine million and ninety-eight."</p> +<p>"Name," commanded Lady Blanchemain, "the first and the +last."</p> +<p>"Well," obeyed he, pondering, "I should think the first, the +last, and perhaps the chief intermediate, would be—the whole +blessed thing." And his arm described a circle which comprehended +the castle and all within it, and the countryside without.</p> +<p>"It has a pleasant site, I'll not deny," said Lady Blanchemain. +"But don't you find it a trifle far away? And a bit up-hill? I'm +staying at the Victoria at Roccadoro, and it took me an hour and a +half to drive here."</p> +<p>"But since," said John, with a flattering glance, "since you +<i>are</i> here, I have no further reason to deplore its +farawayness. So few places are far away, in these times and +climes," he added, on a note of melancholy, as one to whom all +climes and times were known.</p> +<p>"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain, matter-of-fact. "Have you been +here long?"</p> +<p>"Let me see," John answered. "To-day is the 23rd of April. I +arrived here—I offer the fact for what it may be +worth—on the Feast of All Fools."</p> +<p>"<i>Absit omen</i>," cried she. "And you intend to stay?"</p> +<p>"Oh, I'm at least wise enough not to fetter myself with +intentions," answered John.</p> +<p>She looked about, calculating, estimating.</p> +<p>"I suppose it costs you the very eyes of your head?" she +asked.</p> +<p>John giggled.</p> +<p>"Guess what it costs—I give it to you in a thousand."</p> +<p>She continued her survey, brought it to a period.</p> +<p>"A billion a week," she said, with finality. John exulted.</p> +<p>"It costs me," he told her, "six francs fifty a day—wine +included."</p> +<p>"What!" cried she, mistrusting her ears.</p> +<p>"Yes," said he.</p> +<p>"Fudge!" said she, not to be caught with chaff.</p> +<p>"It sounds like a traveller's tale, I know; but that's so often +the bother with the truth," said he. "Truth is under no obligation +to be <i>vraisemblable</i>. I'm here <i>en pension</i>."</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain sniffed.</p> +<p>"Does the Prince of Zelt-Neuminster take in boarders?" she +inquired, her nose in the air.</p> +<p>"Not exactly," said John. "But the Parroco of Sant' Alessina +does. I board at the presbytery."</p> +<p>"Oh," said Lady Blanchemain, beginning to see light, while her +eyebrows went up, went down. "You board at the presbytery?"</p> +<p>"For six francs fifty a day—wine included," chuckled +John.</p> +<p>"Wine, and apparently the unhindered enjoyment of—the +whole blessed thing," supplemented she, with a reminder of his +comprehensive gesture.</p> +<p>"Yes—the run of the house and garden, the freedom of the +hills and valley."</p> +<p>"I understand," she said, and was mute for a space, readjusting +her impressions. "I had supposed," she went on at last, "from the +handsome way in which you snubbed that creature in shoulder-knots, +and proceeded to do the honours of the place, that you were little +less than its proprietor."</p> +<p>"Well, and so I could almost feel I am," laughed John. "I'm +alone here—there's none my sway to dispute. And as for the +creature in shoulder-knots, what becomes of the rights of man or +the bases of civil society, if you can't snub a creature whom you +regularly tip? For five francs a week the creature in +shoulder-knots cleans my boots (indifferent well), brushes my +clothes, runs my errands (indifferent slow),—and swallows my +snubs as if they were polenta."</p> +<p>"And tries to shoo intrusive trippers from your +threshold—and gets an extra plateful for his pains," laughed +the lady. "Where," she asked, "does the Prince of Zelt-Neuminster +keep himself?"</p> +<p>"In Vienna, I believe. Anyhow, at a respectful distance. The +parroco, who is also his sort of intendant, tells me he practically +never comes to Sant' Alessina."</p> +<p>"Good easy man," quoth she. "Yes, I certainly supposed you were +his tenant-in-fee, at the least. You have an air." And her bob of +the head complimented him upon it.</p> +<p>"Oh, we Marquises of Carabas!" cried John, with a flourish.</p> +<p>She regarded him doubtfully.</p> +<p>"Wouldn't you find yourself in a slightly difficult position, if +the Prince or his family should suddenly turn up?" she +suggested.</p> +<p>"I? Why?" asked John, his blue eyes blank.</p> +<p>"A young man boarding with the parroco for six francs a +day—" she began.</p> +<p>"Six francs fifty, please," he gently interposed.</p> +<p>"Make it seven if you like," her ladyship largely conceded. +"Wouldn't your position be slightly false? Would they quite realize +who you were?"</p> +<p>"What could that possibly matter? wondered John, eyes blanker +still.</p> +<p>"I could conceive occasions in which it might matter furiously," +said she. "Foreigners can't with half an eye distinguish amongst +us, as we ourselves can; and Austrians have such oddly exalted +notions. You wouldn't like to be mistaken for Mr. Snooks?"</p> +<p>"I don't know," John reflected, vistas opening before him. "It +might be rather a lark."</p> +<p>"Whrrr!" said Lady Blanchemain, fanning herself with her +pocket-handkerchief. Then she eyed him suspiciously. "You're hiding +the nine million other causes up your sleeve. It isn't merely the +'whole blessed thing' that's keeping an eaglet of your feather +alone in an improbable nest like this—it's some one +particular thing. In my time," she sighed, "it would have been a +woman."</p> +<p>"And no wonder," riposted John, with a flowery bow.</p> +<p>"You're very good—but you confuse the issue," said she. +"In my time the world was young and romantic. In this age of prose +and prudence—<i>is</i> it a woman?"</p> +<p>"The world is still, is always, young and romantic," said John, +sententious. "I can't admit that an age of prose and prudence is +possible. The poetry of earth is never dead, and no more is its +folly. The world is always romantic, if you have the three gifts +needful to make it so."</p> +<p>"<i>Is</i> it a woman?" repeated Lady Blanchemain.</p> +<p>"And the three gifts are," said he, "Faith, and the sense of +Beauty, and the sense of Humour."</p> +<p>"And I should have thought, an attractive member of the opposite +sex," said she. "<i>Is</i> it a woman?"</p> +<p>"Well," he at last replied, appearing to take counsel with +himself, "I don't know why I should forbid myself the relief of +owning up to you that in a sense it is."</p> +<p>"Hurray!" cried she, moving in her seat, agog, as one who +scented her pet diversion. "A love affair! I'll be your confidante. +Tell me all about it."</p> +<p>"Yes, in a sense, a love affair," he confessed.</p> +<p>"Good—excellent," she approved. "But—but what do you +mean by 'in a sense'?"</p> +<p>"Ah," said he, darkly nodding, "I mean whole worlds by +that."</p> +<p>"I don't understand," said she, her face prepared to fall.</p> +<p>"It isn't one woman—it's a score, a century, of the dear +things," he announced.</p> +<p>Her face fell. "Oh—?" she faltered.</p> +<p>"It's a love affair with a type," he explained.</p> +<p>She frowned upon him. "A love affair with a type—?"</p> +<p>"Yes," said he.</p> +<p>She shook her head. "I give you up. In one breath you speak like +a Mohammedan, in the next like—I don't know what."</p> +<p>"With these," said John, his band stretched towards the wall. +"With the type of the Quattrocento."</p> +<p>He got upon his feet, and moved from picture to picture; and a +fire, half indeed of mischief; but half it may be of real +enthusiasm, glimmered in his eyes.</p> +<p>"With these lost ladies of old years; these soft-coloured +shadows, that were once rosy flesh; these proud, humble, innocent, +subtle, brave, shy, pious, pleasure-loving women of the long ago. +With them; with their hair and eyes and jewels, their tip-tilted, +scornful, witty little noses, their 'throats so round and lips so +red,' their splendid raiment; with their mirth, pathos, passion, +kindness and cruelty, their infinite variety, their undying youth. +Ah, the pity of it! Their undying youth—and they so +irrevocably dead. Peace be to their souls! See," he suddenly +declaimed, laughing, "how the sun, the very sun in heaven, is +contending with me, as to which of us shall do them the greater +homage, the sun that once looked on their living forms, and +remembers—see how he lights memorial lamps about them," for +the sun, reflected from the polished floor, threw a sheen upon the +ancient canvases, and burned bright in the bosses of the frames. +"Give me these," he wound up, "a book or two, and a jug of the +parroco's 'included wine'—my wilderness is paradise +enow."</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain's eyes, as she listened, had become deep wells +of disappointment, then gushing fountains of reproach.</p> +<p>"Oh, you villain!" she groaned, when he had ended, shaking her +pretty fist. "So to have raised my expectations, and so to dash +them!—Do you <i>really</i> mean," still clinging to a shred +of hope, she pleaded, "really, really mean that there's no—no +actual woman?"</p> +<p>"I'm sorry," said John, "but I'm afraid I really, really +do."</p> +<p>"And you're not—not really in love with any one?"</p> +<p>"No—not really," he said, with a mien that feigned +contrition.</p> +<p>"But at your age—how old are you?" she broke off to +demand.</p> +<p>"Somewhere between twenty-nine and thirty, I believe," he +laughed.</p> +<p>"And in such a romantic environment, and not on account of a +woman! It's downright unnatural," she declared. "It's flat treason +against the kingly state of youth."</p> +<p>"I'm awfully sorry," said John. "Yet, after all, what's the good +of repining? Nothing could happen even if there were a woman."</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain looked alarmed.</p> +<p>"Nothing could happen? What do you mean? You're not +<i>married</i>? If you are, it must be secretly, for you're put +down as single in Burke."</p> +<p>"To the best of my knowledge," John reassured her, laughing, +"Burke is right. And I prayerfully trust he may never have occasion +to revise his statement."</p> +<p>"For mercy's sake," cried she, "don't tell me you're a +woman-hater!"</p> +<p>"That's just the point," said he. "I'm an adorer of the +sex."</p> +<p>"Well, then?" questioned she, at a loss. "How can you +'prayerfully' wish to remain a bachelor? Besides, aren't you heir +to a peerage? What of the succession?"</p> +<p>"That's just the point," he perversely argued. "And you know +there are plenty of cousins."</p> +<p>"Just the point! just the point!" fretted Lady Blanchemain. +"What's just the point? Just the point that you aren't a +woman-hater?—just the point that you're heir to a peerage? +You talk like Tom o' Bedlam."</p> +<p>"Well, you see," expounded John, unruffled, "as an adorer of the +sex, and heir to a peerage, I shouldn't want to marry a woman +unless I could support her in what they call a manner becoming her +rank—and I couldn't."</p> +<p>"Couldn't?" the lady scoffed. "I should like to know why +not?"</p> +<p>"I'm too—if you will allow me to clothe my thought in +somewhat homely language—too beastly poor."</p> +<p>"<i>You—poor?</i>" ejaculated Lady Blanchemain, falling +back.</p> +<p>"Ay—but honest," asseverated John, to calm her fears.</p> +<p>She couldn't help smiling, though she resolutely frowned.</p> +<p>"Be serious," she enjoined him. "Doesn't your uncle make you a +suitable allowance?"</p> +<p>"I should deceive you," answered John, "if I said he made me an +<i>un</i>suitable one. He makes me, to put it in round numbers, +exactly no allowance whatsoever."</p> +<p>"The—old—curmudgeon!" cried Lady Blanchemain, +astounded, and fiercely scanning her words.</p> +<p>"No," returned John, soothingly, "he isn't a curmudgeon. But +he's a very peculiar man. He's a Spartan, and he lacks imagination. +It has simply never entered his head that I could <i>need</i> an +allowance. And, if you come to that, I can't say that I positively +do. I have a tiny patrimony—threepence a week, or +so—enough for my humble necessities, though scarcely perhaps +enough to support the state of a future peeress. No, my uncle isn't +a curmudgeon; he's a very fine old boy, of whom I'm immensely +proud, and though I've yet to see the colour of his money, we're +quite the best of friends. At any rate, you'll agree that it would +be the deuce to pay if I were to fall in love.</p> +<p>"Ffff," breathed Lady Blanchemain, fanning. "What did I say of +an age of prose and prudence? Yet you don't <i>look</i> +cold-blooded. What does money matter? <i>Dominus providebit</i>. Go +read Browning. What's 'the true end, sole and single' that we're +here for? Besides, have you never heard that there are such things +as marriageable heiresses in the world?"</p> +<p>"Oh, yes, I've heard that," John cheerfully assented. "But don't +they almost always squint or something? I've heard, too, that there +are such things as tufted fortune-hunters, but theirs is a career +that requires a special vocation, and I'm afraid I haven't got +it."</p> +<p>"Then you're no true Marquis of Carabas," the lady took him +smartly up.</p> +<p>"You've found me out—I'm only a <i>faux-marquis</i>," he +laughed.</p> +<p>"Thrrr!" breathed Lady Blanchemain, and for a little while +appeared lost in thought. By-and-by she got up and went to the +window, and stood looking out. "I never saw a lovelier landscape," +she said, musingly. "With the grey hills, and the snow-peaks, and +the brilliant sky, with the golden light and the purple shadows, +and the cypresses and olives, with the river gleaming below there +amongst the peach-blossoms, and—isn't that a blackcap singing +in the mimosa? It only needs a pair of lovers to be +perfect—it <i>cries</i> for a pair of lovers. And instead of +them, I find—what? A hermit and celibate. Look here. Make a +clean breast of it. <i>Are</i> you cold-blooded?" she asked from +over her shoulder.</p> +<p>John merely giggled.</p> +<p>"It would serve you right," said she, truculently, "if some one +were to rub your eyes with love-in-idleness, to make you dote upon +the next live creature that you see."</p> +<p>John merely chuckled.</p> +<p>"I'll tell you what," she proceeded, "I'm a bit of an old witch, +and I'll risk a soothword. As there isn't already a woman, there'll +shortly be one—my thumbs prick. The stage is set, the scene +is too appropriate, the play's inevitable. It was never in the will +of Providence that a youth of your complexion should pass the +springtime in a spot all teeming with romance like this, and miss a +love adventure. A castle in a garden, a flowering valley, and the +Italian sky—the Italian sun and moon! Your portraits of these +smiling dead women too, if you like, to keep your imagination +working. And blackcaps singing in the mimosa. No, no. The lady of +the piece is waiting in the wings—my thumbs prick. Give her +but the least excuse, she'll enter, and ... Good Heavens, my +prophetic soul!" she suddenly, with a sort of catch in her throat, +broke off.</p> +<p>She turned and faced him, cheeks flushed, eyes flashing.</p> +<p>"Oh, you hypocrite! You monstrous fibber!" she cried, on a tone +of jubilation, looking daggers.</p> +<p>"Why? What's up? What's the matter?" asked John, at fault.</p> +<p>"How <i>could</i> you have humbugged me so?" she wailed, in +delight, reverting to the window. "Anyhow, she's charming. She's +made for the part. I couldn't pray for a more promising +heroine."</p> +<p>"She? Who?" asked he, crossing to her side.</p> +<p>"Who? Fie, you slyboots!" she crowed with glee.</p> +<p>"Ah, I see," said John.</p> +<p>For, below them, in the garden, just beyond the mimosa (all +powdered with fresh gold) where the blackcap was singing, stood a +woman.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>IX</h2> +<p>She stood in the path, beside a sun-dial, from which she +appeared to be taking the time of day, a crumbling ancient thing of +grey stone, green and brown with mosses; and she was smiling +pleasantly to herself the while, all unaware of the couple who +watched her from above. She wore a light-coloured garden-frock, and +was bare-headed, as one belonging to the place. She was +young—two or three and twenty, by her aspect: young, slender, +of an excellent height, and, I hope you would have agreed, a +beautiful countenance. She studied the sun-dial, and smiled; and +what with her dark eyes and softly chiselled features, the pale +rose in her cheeks and the deeper rose of her mouth, with her hair +too, almost black in shadow, but where the sun touched it turning +to sombre red,—yes, I think you would have agreed that she +was beautiful. Lady Blanchemain, at any rate, found her so.</p> +<p>"She's quite lovely," she declared. "Her face is +exquisite—so sensitive, so spiritual; so distinguished, so +aristocratic. And so <i>clever</i>," she added, after a +suspension.</p> +<p>"Mm!" said John, his forehead wrinkled, as if something were +puzzling him.</p> +<p>"She has a figure—she holds herself well," said Lady +Blanchemain.</p> +<p>"Mm!" said John.</p> +<p>"I suppose," said she, "you're too much a mere man to be able to +appreciate her frock? It's the work of a dressmaker who knows her +business. And that lilac muslin (that's so fashionable now) really +does, in the open air, with the country for background, show to +immense advantage. Come—out with it. Tell me all about her. +Who <i>is</i> she?"</p> +<p>"That's just what I'm up a tree to think," said John. "I can't +imagine. How long has she been there? From what direction did she +come?"</p> +<p>"Don't try to hoodwink me any longer," remonstrated the lady, +unbelieving.</p> +<p>"I've never in my life set eyes on her before," he solemnly +averred.</p> +<p>She scrutinized him sharply.</p> +<p>"Hand on heart?" she doubted.</p> +<p>And he, supporting her scrutiny without flinching, answered, +"Hand on heart."</p> +<p>"Well, then," concluded she, with a laugh, "it looks as if I +were even more of an old witch than I boasted—and my thumbs +pricked to some purpose. Here's the lady of the piece already +arrived. There, she's going away. How well she walks! Have after +her—have after her quick, and begin your courtship."</p> +<p>The smiling young woman, her lilac dress softly bright in the +sun, was moving slowly down the garden path, towards the cloisters; +and now she entered them, and disappeared. But John, instead of +"having after her," remained at his counsellor's side, and +watched.</p> +<p>"She came from that low doorway, beyond there at the right, +where the two cypresses are; and she came at the very climax of my +vaticination," said her ladyship. "Without a hat, you'll hardly +dispute it's probable she's staying in the house."</p> +<p>"No—it certainly would seem so," said John. "I'm all up a +tree."</p> +<p>"The garden looks rather dreary and empty, now that she has +left, doesn't it?" she asked. "Yet it looked jolly enough before +her advent. And see—the lizards (there are four of them, +aren't there?) that whisked away from the dial at her approach, +have come back. Well, <i>your</i> work's cut out. I suppose it +wouldn't be possible for you to give a poor woman a dish of +tea?"</p> +<p>"I was on the very point of proposing it," said John. "May I +conduct you to my quarters?"</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PART_SECOND" id="PART_SECOND"></a>PART SECOND</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>I</h2> +<p>Rather early next morning John was walking among the olives. He +had gone (straight from his bed, and in perhaps the least +considered of toilets: an old frieze ulster, ornamented with big +buttons of mother-of-pearl, a pair of Turkish slippers, a +bathing-towel over his shoulder, and for head-covering just his +uncombed native thatch) he had gone for a swim, some half a mile +upstream, to a place he knew where the Rampio—the madcap +Rampio, all shallows and rapids—rests for a moment in a pool, +wide and deep, translucent, inviting, and, as you perceive when you +have made your plunge, of a most assertive chill. Now he was on his +leisurely way home, to the presbytery and what passed there for +breakfast.</p> +<p>The hill-side rose from the river's bank in a series of +irregular terraces, upheld by rough stone walls. The gnarled old +trees bent towards each other and away like dwarfs and crook-backs +dancing a fantastic minuet; and in the grass beneath them, where +the sun shot his fiery darts and cast his net of shadows, Chloris +had scattered innumerable wildflowers: hyacinths, the colour of the +sky; violets, that threaded the air for yards about with their +sentiment-provoking fragrance; tulips, red and yellow; sometimes a +tall, imperial iris; here and there little white nodding companies +of jonquils. Here and there, too, the dusty-green reaches were +pointed by the dark spire of a cypress, alone, in a kind of +glooming isolation; here and there a blossoming peach or almond, +gaily pink, sent an inexpressible little thrill of gladness to +one's heart. The air was sweetened by many incense-breathing things +besides the violets,—by moss and bark, the dew-laden grass, +the moist brown earth; and it was quick with music: bees droned, +leaves whispered, birds called, sang, gossiped, disputed, and the +Rampio played a crystal accompaniment.</p> +<p>John swung onwards at ease, while lizards, with tails that +seemed extravagantly long, fled from before his feet, terrible to +them, no doubt, as an army with banners, for his Turkish slippers, +though not in their pristine youth, were of scarlet leather +embroidered in a rich device with gold. And presently (an +experience unusual at that hour in the olive wood) he became aware +of a human voice.</p> +<p>"Ohé! My good men, there! Will you be so kind as to +gather me some of those anemones? Here is a lira for your +pains."</p> +<p>It was a feminine voice; it was youthful and melodious; it was +finished, polished, delicately modulated. And its inflection was at +once confident and gracious,—clearly the speaker took it for +granted that she would receive attention, and she implied her +thanks abundantly beforehand. It was a voice that evoked in the +imagination a charming picture of fresh, young, confident, and +gracious womanhood.</p> +<p>"Hello!" said John to himself. "Who is there in this part of the +world with a voice like that?"</p> +<p>And he felt it would not be surprising if on glancing round he +should behold—as, in fact, he did—the stranger of +yesterday, the Unknown of the garden.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>II</h2> +<p>She stood on one of the higher terraces, (a very charming +picture indeed, bright and erect, in the warm shadow of the +olives), and was calling down to a couple of peasants at work on +the other side of the stream. Between the thumb and forefinger of +an ungloved fair right hand, she held up a silver lira.</p> +<p>Anemones, said she! Near to where the men were working, by the +river's brink, there was a space of level ground, perhaps a hundred +feet long, and tapering from half that breadth to a point. And this +was simply crimson and purple with a countless host of +anemones.</p> +<p>She called to the men, and one seeing and hearing her would have +thought they must abandon everything, and spring to do her bidding. +But they didn't. Pausing only long enough to give her a phlegmatic +stare, as if in doubt whether conceivably she could have the +impertinence to be addressing <i>them</i>, and vouchsafing not a +word, each went calmly on with his employment;—very, very +calmly, <i>piano</i>, <i>piano</i>, gently, languidly, filling +small baskets with fallen olives, and emptying them upon outspread +canvas sheets. There are, and more's the pity, two types of Italian +peasant. There's the old type, which we knew in our youth, and +happily it still survives in some numbers,—the peasant who, +for all his rags and tatters, has manners that will often put one's +own to shame, and, with a <i>simpatia</i> like second-sight, is +before one's wishes, in his eagerness to serve and please. And +there is the new type, which we know to our disgust, and unhappily +it multiplies like vermin,—the peasant who has lent his ear +to the social democrat, and, his heart envenomed by class hatred, +meets your civility with black glances and the behaviour of a churl +in the sulks.</p> +<p>So, though her voice was sweet to hear, and though, standing +there in the warm penumbra of the olive orchard, tall and erect and +graceful, in her bright frock, she made a charming picture, and +though she offered a silver lira as a prize, the men merely stared +at her churlishly, and went on with their work—languidly, +sluggishly, as men who deemed the necessity to work an outrage, and +weren't going to condone it by working with anything like a +will.</p> +<p>Now, John Blanchemain, as I have previously mentioned, was an +unselfconscious sort of fellow. In his unselfconsciousness, +forgetting several trifles that might properly have weighed with +him, (forgetting the tarnished gorgeousness of his Turkish slippers +for example, and his towzled head, and the bathing-towel that +flowed like a piece of classic drapery from his shoulder), obeying +impulse and instinct, he flung himself into the breach.</p> +<p>"Brutes," he muttered between his teeth. Then, in his easiest +man-of-the-worldy accents, "If you can wait two minutes," he called +aloud to her. And therewith he went scrambling down the terraces +and picked his way from stone to stone across the shallows, to the +field of anemones, where their satiny petals, like crisping +wavelets, all a-ripple in the moving air, shimmered with constantly +changing lights. And in a twinkling he had gathered a great armful, +and was clambering back.</p> +<p>"I beg of you," he said, in his abrupt fashion, holding them out +to her, and slightly bowing, with that nothing-doubting assurance +of his, while his blue eyes (to put her entirely at her ease) +smiled, frank and friendly and serene, into her dark ones.</p> +<p>But hers seemed troubled. She looked at the flowers, she looked +at John, I think she even looked at her lira. Her eyes seemed +undecided.</p> +<p>"Do pray take them," said he, still smiling, still frank and +assured, but as if a little puzzled, a little amused, by her +hesitation, and more airily a man-of-the-world than ever, his tone +one of high detachment, to spare her any possible feeling of +personal obligation, and to place his performance in the light of a +matter of course,—as if indeed he had done nothing more than +pick up and return, say, a handkerchief she might have dropped. +"You were right," he owned to his thought of Lady Blanchemain; "she +is beautiful." Here, at close quarters with her, one's perception +of her beauty became acute,—here, under the grey old trees, +in the leafy dimness, alone with her, at two paces from her, where +the birds sang and the violets gave forth their fragrant breath. He +saw that her eyes were beautiful (soft and deep and luminous, +despite their trouble), and her low white brow, and the dark masses +of her hair, under her garden-hat, and the rose in her cheeks, and +the red-rose of her mouth. And he saw and felt the beauty and the +vitality of her strong young body.</p> +<p>But meanwhile she had stretched forth, rather timidly, that +ungloved fair hand of hers, and taken the flowers.</p> +<p>"You are very good, I am sure. Thank you very much," she said, +rather faintly, with a grave little inclination of the head.</p> +<p>John, always with magnificent assurance, put up his hand, to +doff a man-of-the-worldy hat, and bow himself away;—and it +encountered his bare locks, bare, and still wet from recent +ducking. Whereupon, suddenly, the trifles he had forgotten were +remembered, and at last (in the formula of the criminologist) "he +realized his position:" hatless and uncombed, with the +bathing-towel slung from his shoulder, in that weather-beaten old +frieze coat with its ridiculous buttons, in those awful Turkish +slippers,—offering, with his grand manner, flowers to a woman +he didn't know, and smiling, to put her at her ease! His pink face +burned to a livelier pink, his ears went hot, his heart went cold. +The bow he finally accomplished was the blighted bud of the bow he +had projected; and, as the earth didn't, of its charity, open and +engulf him, he hastened as best he could, and with a painful sense +of slinking, to remove his crestfallen person from her range of +view.</p> +<p>When these unselfconscious fellows are startled into +selfconsciousness, I fancy they take it hard. I don't know how long +it was before John had done heaping silent curses, silent but +savage, upon himself; his luck, his "beastly officiousness," upon +the whole afflicting incident: curses that he couldn't help +diversifying now and then with a catch of splenetic laughter, as a +vision of the figure he had cut would recurrently</p> +<div class="blockquot">"—<i>flash upon that inward eye<br /> +Which is the bliss of solitude</i>."</div> +<p>"Oh, you <i>ape!</i>" he groaned. "Rigged out like Pudding Jack, +and, with your ineffable simagrees, offering a strange woman +flowers!"</p> +<p>If <i>she</i> had only laughed, had only smiled, it wouldn't +have been so bad, it would have shown that she understood. "But +through it all," he writhed to recollect, "she was as solemn as a +mourner. I suppose she was shocked—perhaps she was +frightened—very likely she took me for a tramp. I wonder she +didn't crown my beatitude by giving me her lira. These foreigners +do so lack certain discernments."</p> +<p>And with that rather an odd detail came back to him. <i>Was</i> +she a foreigner? For it came vaguely back that he, impulsive and +unthinking, had spoken to her throughout in English. "And +anyhow,"—this came distinctly back,—"it was certainly +in English that she thanked me."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>III</h2> +<p>What passed for breakfast at the presbytery was the usual +Continental evasion of that repast,—bread and coffee, +despatched in your apartment. But at noon the household met to +dine.</p> +<p>The dining-room, on the ground floor, long and low, with a +vaulted ceiling, whitewashed, and a pavement of worn red tiles, was +a clean, bare room, that (pervaded by a curious, dry, not +unpleasant odour) seemed actually to smell of bareness, as well as +of cleanliness. There was a table, there was a dresser, there were +a few unpainted deal chairs, rush-bottomed (exactly like the chairs +in the church, in all Italian churches), and there was absolutely +nothing else, save a great black and white Crucifix attached to the +wall. But, by way of compensation, its windows opened southwards, +flooding it with sunshine, and commanding the wonderful perspective +of the valley,—the blue-grey hills, the snow-peaks, the +blossoming low-lands, and the far-away opalescence that you knew to +be the lake.</p> +<p>At noon the parroco, his niece Annunziata, and his boarder met +to dine.</p> +<p>The parroco was a short, stout, florid, black-haired, +hawk-nosed, fierce-looking, still youngish man, if five-and-forty +may be reckoned youngish, with a pair of thin lips and powerful +jaws which, for purposes of speech, he never opened if he could +help it. Never,—till Sunday came: when, mounting the pulpit, +he opened them indeed, and his pent-up utterance burst forth in a +perfect torrent of a sermon, a wild gush of words, shouted at the +topmost stress of a remarkably lusty voice, arresting for a minute +or two by reason of the sheer physical energy it represented, and +then for a long half hour exquisitely tiresome. But on week-days he +maintained a prodigious silence, and this (as, though +fierce-looking, he wasn't in the least really fierce) it would +often be John's malicious study to tempt him to break. Besides, +to-day, John was honestly concerned with the pursuit of +knowledge.</p> +<p>Accordingly, grace being said, "You never told me," he began, +assuming a mien of intelligent interest, "that the castle was +haunted." He looked at the Napoleonic profile of Don Ambrogio, but +from the tail of his eye he kept a watch as well upon Annunziata, +and he saw that that wise little maiden became attentive.</p> +<p>"No," said Don Ambrogio, between two spoonfuls of soup.</p> +<p>"You will conceive my astonishment, then," continued John, +urbanely, "when I discovered that it was."</p> +<p>"It isn't," said Don Ambrogio. He gave himself diligently to the +business of the hour; his spoon flew backwards and forwards like a +shuttle. His napkin, tucked into his Roman collar, protected his +bosom, an effective white cuirass.</p> +<p>"Oh? Not the castle?" questioned John. "Only the garden? And the +olive wood? True, on reflection, I've never seen it in the +house."</p> +<p>"Nothing here is haunted," said the parroco. He made a signal to +Annunziata, who rose to change the plates. Her big eyes were +alight, her serious little face was alert; but she would never +dream of speaking in the presence of her uncle. Marcella, the cook, +brought in the inevitable veal.</p> +<p>"Oh, for that," insisted John, courteous but firm, "I beg your +pardon. I myself have seen it on two occasions; and, lest you +should fancy it a subjective illusion, I may tell you that it was +yesterday seen simultaneously by another."</p> +<p>"It? It? What is <i>it</i>?" asked the parroco, his beaked and +ensanguined visage fiercer-looking than ever, as he fell upon the +inevitable veal with a somewhat dull carving-knife.</p> +<p>"Ah," said John, "now you make me regret that I haven't a talent +for word-painting. It's the form of a woman, a young woman, tall, +slender, in some pale diaphanous garment, that appears here, +appears there, remaining distinctly visible for some minutes, and +then disappears. No, it isn't a subjective illusion. And it isn't, +either," the unscrupulous creature added, after a pause, raising +his voice, and speaking with emphasis, as if to repel the +insinuation, while the darkness of disenchantment swept the face of +Annunziata, "it isn't, either, as some imaginative people might too +hastily conclude, a wraith, a phantom, an insubstantial vapour. +It's a real material form, that lives and breathes, and even, if +driven to it, speaks. There's nothing supernatural about +it,—unless, indeed, we take the transcendental view that +Nature herself is supernatural. I was wondering, Don Ambrogio, +whether, without violating a confidence, you could tell me whose +form it is?"</p> +<p>"Nossignore," said Don Ambrogio, economizing his breath.</p> +<p>"Ah," sighed John, nodding resignedly, "I feared as much. +Divining that I would institute inquiries, she has stolen a march +upon me, and pledged you to secrecy."</p> +<p>"Nossignore," disavowed Don Ambrogio, raising eyes the sincerity +of which there could be no suspecting.</p> +<p>John's face took on an expression of aggrieved surprise.</p> +<p>"But then why won't you tell me?"</p> +<p>"I cannot tell you because I do not know," said Don +Ambrogio.</p> +<p>"Oh, I see," said John. "And yet," he argued meditatively, +"that's hard to conceive. I don't for a moment mean that I doubt +it—but it's hard to conceive, like the atomic theory, and +some of the articles of religion. (I hear, by-the-by, that the +scientists are throwing the atomic theory over. Oh, fickle +scientists! Oh, shifting sands of science!) Surely there can't be +many such tall slender forms, in diaphanous garments, appearing and +disappearing here and there in your parish? And one would suppose, +antecedently, that you'd know them all."</p> +<p>"A peasant, a villager," said Don Ambrogio.</p> +<p>"I put it to you as an observer of life," said John, "do +peasants, do villagers, wear diaphanous garments?"</p> +<p>"A visitor, a sight-seer, from some place on the lake," said Don +Ambrogio.</p> +<p>"I put it to you as a student of probabilities," said John, +"would a visitor, would a sight-seer, from some place on the lake, +walk in the garden of the castle without a hat? And would she +appear at Sant' Alessina on two days in succession?"</p> +<p>But Don Ambrogio had finished his veal, and when he had finished +his veal he always left the table, first twice devoutly making the +sign of the Cross, and then with a bow to John, pronouncing the +formula, "You will graciously permit? My affairs call me. A +thousand regrets." To-day he slightly amplified that formula. "A +thousand regrets," he said, "and as many excuses for my inability +to afford the information desired."</p> +<p>After his departure, John turned to Annunziata, where, in her +grey cotton pinafore, her lips parted, her big eyes two lively +points of interrogation, she sat opposite to him, impatient to take +up the theme.</p> +<p>"Well, Mistress Wisdom!" he saluted her, smiling, and waving his +hand. "It is a good and wholesome thing for the young to witness +the discomfiture of the wicked. Your uncle retreats with flying +colours. He made, to be sure, a slender dinner, but that's his +daily habit. If you have tears to shed, shed them for me. I have +made none at all."</p> +<p>From points of interrogation, Annunziata's eyes changed to +abysses of wonder, and, big as they were, seemed to grow measurably +bigger.</p> +<p>"You have made no dinner?" she protested, in that strangely deep +voice of hers, with its effect of immense solemnity.</p> +<p>"No, poor dear," said John, with pathos, "no, I have made no +dinner."</p> +<p>"But you have eaten a great deal," exclaimed Annunziata, +frowning, nonplussed. "And you are still eating."</p> +<p>"Quite so," responded John, "though I think it's perhaps the +merest trifle unhandsome of you to fling it in my face. I have +eaten a great deal, and I am still eating. That is what I come to +table for. In an orderly life like mine there is a place for +everything. I come to table to eat, just as I go to bed to sleep +and to church to say my prayers. Would you have me sleep at table, +eat in church, and say my prayers in bed? Eating, however, has +nothing to do with the case. I spoke of dining—I said I had +not dined. Now you shall be the judge. The question is, can a +Christian man dine twice on the same day? Answer me that."</p> +<p>"Oh, no," answered Annunziata, her pale face very sober, and she +lengthened out her vowels in deprecation of the idea. "At least, it +would be gluttony if he did."</p> +<p>"There you are," cried John. "And gluttony is not the +undeadliest of the Seven Deadly Sins. So, then, unless you would +have me guilty of the deadly sin of gluttony, you must agree that I +have not dined. For I am going to dine this evening. I am going to +dine at the Hotel Victoria at Roccadoro. I am going to dine with a +lady. I am going to dine in all the pomp and circumstance of my +dress-suit, with a white tie and pumps. And you yourself have said +it, a Christian man may not, without guilt of gluttony, dine twice +on the same day. Therefore it is the height of uncharitableness, +it's a deliberate imputation of sin, to contend that I have dined +already."</p> +<p>Annunziata followed his reasoning thoughtfully, and then gravely +set him right.</p> +<p>"No," she said, with a drop of the eyelids and a quick little +shake of the head, "you do not understand. I will explain." Her +eyes were wide open again, and bright with zeal for his +instruction. "You have dined already. That is a certain truth, +because this meal is dinner, and you have eaten it. But to-night +you are going to a dinner of ceremony—and that is different. +A dinner of ceremony does not count. It is the same as a supper. My +uncle himself once went to a dinner of ceremony at Bergamo. No, it +will not be gluttony for you to go to a dinner of ceremony."</p> +<p>"You speak like a little pope," said John, with enthusiasm. "In +matters of Faith and Morals I believe you are infallible. If you +could guess the load you have lifted from my conscience!" And he +pushed a hearty ouf.</p> +<p>"I am glad," said Annunziata. And then she attempted to hark +back. Curiosity again lighting her eyes, "This form that you have +seen in the garden—" she began.</p> +<p>"Don't try to change the subject," John interrupted. "Let us +cultivate sequence in our ideas. What I am labouring with hammer +and tongs to drag from you is the exact date at which, somewhere +between the years of our salvation 1387 and 1455, you sat for your +portrait to the beatified painter Giovanni of Fiesole. Now, be a +duck, and make a clean breast of it."</p> +<p>Annunziata's eyes clouded. A kind of scorn, a kind of pity, and +a kind of patient longanimity looked from them.</p> +<p>"That is folly," she said, on the deepest of her deep notes, +with a succession of slow, reflective, side-wise nods.</p> +<p>"Folly—?" repeated John, surprised, but bland. "Oh? +Really?"</p> +<p>"Sit for my portrait between the years 1387 and 1455,—how +could I?" scoffed Annunziata.</p> +<p>"Why? What was to prevent you?" innocently questioned he.</p> +<p>"<i>Ma come!</i> I was not yet alive," said she.</p> +<p>John looked at her with startled eyes, and spoke with +animation.</p> +<p>"Weren't you? Word of honour? Are you sure? How do you know? +Have you any definite recollection that you weren't? Can you +clearly recall the period in question, and then, reviewing it in +detail, positively attest that you were dead? For there's no third +choice. A person must either be alive or dead. And how, if you +weren't alive, how ever did it come to pass that there should be a +perfect portrait of you from Giovanni's brush in the Convent of +Saint Mark at Florence? Your grave little white face, and your wise +little big eyes, and your eager little inquisitive profile, and +your curls flowing about your shoulders, and your pinafore that's +so like a peplum,—there they all are, precisely as I see them +before me now. And how was Giovanni able to do them if you weren't +alive? Perhaps you were pre-mortally alive in Heaven? Giovanni's +cell, as is well known, had a window that opened straight into +Heaven. Perhaps he saw you through that window, and painted you +without your knowing it. The name they give your portrait, +by-the-by, would rather seem to confirm that theory. What do you +think they call it? They call it an <i>un angiolo</i>. I've got a +copy of it in England. When you come to London to visit the Queen +I'll show it to you."</p> +<p>Annunziata gave her flowing curls a toss.</p> +<p>"The form of the young woman which you have seen in the +garden—" she began anew.</p> +<p>"Ah," said John, "observe how differently the big fish and the +little fish will be affected by the same bait."</p> +<p>"When you first spoke of it," said she, "I thought you had seen +a holy apparition."</p> +<p>"Yes," said he. "That was because I couched my communication in +language designedly misleading. I employed the terminology of +ghost-lore. I said 'haunted' and 'appear,' and things like that. +And you were very properly and naturally deceived. I confidently +expected that you would be. No, it is not given to world-stained +and world-worn old men like me to see holy apparitions."</p> +<p>"Old men? You are not an old man," said Annunziata.</p> +<p>"Oh? Not? What am I, then?" said John.</p> +<p>"You are a middle-aged man," said she.</p> +<p>"Thank you, Golden Tongue," said he, with a bow.</p> +<p>"And you are sure that it was merely a real person?" she +pursued.</p> +<p>"No," said he. "I am too profoundly imbued with the basic +principles of metaphysics ever to be sure of the objective reality +of phenomena. I can only swear to my impression. My impression was +and is that it was merely a real person."</p> +<p>"Then," said Annunziata, with decision, "it must be the person +who is visiting the Signora Brandi."</p> +<p>"The Signora Brandi?" repeated John. "What a nice name! Who is +the Signora Brandi?"</p> +<p>"She is an Austrian," said Annunziata.</p> +<p>"Oh—?" said John.</p> +<p>"She lives in the pavilion beyond the clock-tower," said +Annunziata.</p> +<p>"I wasn't aware," said John, "that the pavilion beyond the +clock-tower was inhabited. I wasn't aware that any part of this +castle was inhabited, except the porter's lodge and the part that +we inhabit. Why have I been left till now in this state of outer +darkness?"</p> +<p>"The Signora Brandi has been absent," said Annunziata. "She has +been in her own country—in Austria. But the other day she +returned. And with her came a person to visit her. That is the +person whose form you have seen in the garden."</p> +<p>"How do you know it wasn't the form of the Signora Brandi +herself?" John said.</p> +<p>"Oh, no," said Annunziata. "The Signora Brandi is not young. She +is old. She is as old as—"</p> +<p>"Methuselah? Sin? The hills?" suggested John, Annunziata having +paused to think.</p> +<p>"No," said Annunziata, repudiating the suggestion with force. +"No one is so old as Methuselah. She is as old as—well, my +uncle."</p> +<p>"I see," said John. "Yes, it's all highly mysterious."</p> +<p>"Mysterious?" said Annunziata.</p> +<p>"I should think so," asseverated he. "Cryptic, enigmatic, +esoteric to the last degree. To begin with, how does the Signora +Brandi, being an Austrian, come by so characteristically +un-Austrian a name? Is that mysterious? And in the next place, why +does an Austrian Signora Brandi so far forget what is due to her +nationality as to live, not in Austria, but in Lombardy? +And—as if that were not enough—at Castel Sant' +Alessina? And—as if that were not more than enough—in +the pavilion beyond the clock? Come, come! Mysterious!"</p> +<p>"You are living in Lombardy, you are living at Castel Sant' +Alessina, yourself," said Annunziata.</p> +<p>"I hardly think so," said John. "You can scarcely with precision +call this living—this is rather what purists call sojourning. +But even were it otherwise, there's all the difference in the world +between my case and the Signora Brandi's. I am middle-aged and +foolish, but she is as old as your uncle. Don't you see the +mysterious significance of that coincidence? And I haven't a young +woman visiting me. <i>Who is the young woman?</i> Is that a +mystery? My sweet child, we tread among mysteries. We are at the +centre of a coil of mysteries. <i>Who is the young woman?</i> And +how—consider well upon this—how does it happen that the +young woman speaks English? Mysterious, indeed!"</p> +<p>He rose, and bowed, with ceremony.</p> +<p>"But we burn daylight. I must not detain you longer. Suffer me +to imprint upon your hand of velvet a token of my high regard."</p> +<p>And taking Annunziata's frail little white hand, he bent low to +kiss it; and though his blue eyes were full of laughter, I think +that behind the laughter there was a great deal of real fondness +and admiration.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>IV</h2> +<p>Half-way down the long straight avenue of ilex-trees that led +from the castle to the principal entrance of the garden, +Annunziata, in her pale-grey pinafore (that was so like a peplum), +with her hair waving about her shoulders, was curled up in the +corner of a marble bench, gazing with great intentness at a white +flower that lay in her lap. It was the warmest and the peacefullest +moment of the afternoon. The sun shone steadily; not a leaf +stirred, not a shadow wavered; and the intermittent piping of a +blackbird, somewhere in the green world overhead, seemed merely to +give a kind of joyous rhythm to the silence.</p> +<p>"Mercy upon me! Who ever saw so young a maiden so deeply lost in +thought!" exclaimed a voice.</p> +<p>Annunziata, her reverie thus disturbed, raised a pair of +questioning eyes.</p> +<p>A lady was standing before her, smiling down upon her, a lady in +a frock of lilac-coloured muslin, with a white sunshade.</p> +<p>Annunziata, who, when she liked, could be the very pink of +formal politeness, rose, dropped a courtesy, and said: "Buon +giorno, Signorina."</p> +<p>"Buon giorno," responded the smiling lady. "Buon +giorno—and a penny for your thoughts. But I'm sure you could +never, never tell what it was you were thinking so hard about."</p> +<p>"Scusi," said Annunziata. "I was trying to think of the name of +this flower." She stooped and picked up the flower, which had +slipped from her lap to the ground when she rose. Then she held it +at arm's length, for inspection.</p> +<p>"Oh?" asked the lady, smiling at the flower, as she had smiled +at its possessor. "Isn't it a narcissus?"</p> +<p>"Yes," said Annunziata. "It is a narcissus. But I was trying to +think of its particular name."</p> +<p>The lady looked as if she did not quite understand. "Its +particular name?"</p> +<p>"It is a narcissus," explained Annunziata, "just as I am a girl. +But it must also have its particular name, just as I have mine. It +is a soul doing its Purgatory—a very good soul. If you are +very good, then, when you die, you do your Purgatory as a flower. +But it is not such an easy Purgatory—oh, no. For look: the +flower is beautiful, but it is blind, and cannot see; and it is +fragrant, but it cannot smell; and people admire it and praise it, +but it is deaf, and cannot hear. It can only wait, wait, wait, and +think of God. But it is a short Purgatory. A few days, and the +flower will fade, and the soul will be released. I think this +flower's name is Cecilia, it is so white."</p> +<p>The smile in the lady's eyes had brightened, as she listened; +and now she gave a little laugh, a little, light, musical, pleased +and friendly laugh.</p> +<p>"Yes," she said. "I have sometimes wondered myself whether +flowers might not be the Purgatory of very good souls. I am glad to +learn from you that it is true. And yes, I should think that this +flower's name was sure to be Cecilia. Cecilia suits it perfectly. +What, if one may ask, is <i>your</i> particular name?"</p> +<p>"Mariannunziata," said its bearer, not to make two bites of a +cherry.</p> +<p>The lady's eyes grew round. "Dear me! A little short name like +that?" she marvelled.</p> +<p>"No," returned Annunziata, with dignity. "My name in full is +longer. My name in full is Giuliana Falconieri Maria Annunziata +Casalone. Is that not long enough?"</p> +<p>"Yes," the lady admitted, "that is just long enough." And she +laughed again.</p> +<p>"What is <i>your</i> name?" inquired Annunziata.</p> +<p>"My name is Maria Dolores," the lady answered. "You see, we are +both named Maria."</p> +<p>"Of course," said Annunziata. "All Christians should be named +Maria."</p> +<p>"So they should," agreed the lady. "Do you ever tell people how +old you are?"</p> +<p>"Yes," said Annunziata, "if they wish to know. Why not?"</p> +<p>The smile in the lady's eyes shone brighter than ever. "Do you +think you could be persuaded to tell me?"</p> +<p>"With pleasure," said Annunziata. "I am eleven years and five +months. And you?"</p> +<p>"I am just twice as old. I am twenty-two years and ten months. +So, when you are fifty, how old shall I be?"</p> +<p>"No," said Annunziata, shaking her head. "That trick has been +tried with me before. My friend Prospero has tried it with me. You +hope I will say that you will be a hundred. But it is not so. When +I am fifty, you will be sixty-one, going on sixty-two."</p> +<p>Still again the lady laughed, apparently with great +amusement.</p> +<p>"What a little bundle of wisdom you are!" she exclaimed.</p> +<p>"Yes. My friend Prospero also says that I am wise," answered +Annunziata. "I like to see you laugh," she mentioned, looking +critically at the face above her. "You have beautiful teeth, they +are so white and shining, and so small, and your lips are so +red."</p> +<p>"Oh," said the lady, laughing more merrily than ever. "Then you +must be very entertaining, and I will laugh a great deal."</p> +<p>Still looking critically at the lady's face, "Are you not," +demanded Annunziata, "the person who has come to visit the Signora +Brandi?"</p> +<p>"Signora Brandi?" The lady considered. "Yes, I suppose I must +be. At any rate, I am the person who has come to visit Frau +Brandt."</p> +<p>"Frao Branta? We call her Signora Brandi here," said Annunziata. +"Are you related to her?"</p> +<p>"No," said the lady, who always seemed inclined to laugh, though +Annunziata had no consciousness of being very entertaining. "I am +not related to her. I am only her friend."</p> +<p>"She is an Austrian," said Annunziata. "This castle belongs to +Austrians. Once upon a time, very long ago, before I was born, all +this country belonged to Austrians. Are you, too, an Austrian?"</p> +<p>"Yes." The lady nodded. "I, too, am an Austrian."</p> +<p>"And yet," remarked Annunziata, "you speak Italian just as I +do."</p> +<p>"It is very good of you to say so," laughed the lady.</p> +<p>"No—it is the truth," said Annunziata.</p> +<p>"But is it not good to tell the truth?" the lady asked.</p> +<p>"No," said Annunziata. "It is only a duty." And again she shook +her head, slowly, darkly, with an effect of philosophic melancholy. +"That is very strange and very hard," she pointed out. "If you do +not do that which is your duty, it is bad, and you are punished. +But if you do do it, that is not good,—it is only what you +ought to do, and you are not rewarded." And she fetched her breath +in the saddest of sad little sighs. Then, briskly covering her +cheerfulness, "And you speak English, besides," she said.</p> +<p>"Oh?" wondered the lady. "Are you a clairvoyante? How do you +know that I speak English?"</p> +<p>"My friend Prospero told me so," said Annunziata.</p> +<p>"Your friend Prospero?" the lady repeated. "You quote your +friend Prospero very often. Who is your friend Prospero?"</p> +<p>"He is a signore," said Annunziata. "He has seen you, he has +seen your form, in the garden and in the olive wood."</p> +<p>"Oh," said the lady.</p> +<p>"And I suppose he must have heard you speak English," Annunziata +added. "He lives at the presbytery."</p> +<p>"And where, by-the-by, do <i>you</i> live?" asked the lady.</p> +<p>"I live at the presbytery too," said Annunziata. "I am the niece +of the parroco. I am the orphan of his only brother. My friend +Prospero lives with us as a boarder. He is English."</p> +<p>"Indeed?" said the lady. "Prospero is a very odd name for an +Englishman."</p> +<p>"Prospero is not his name," said Annunziata. "His name is Gian. +That is English for Giovanni."</p> +<p>"But why, then," the lady puzzled, "do you call him +Prospero?"</p> +<p>"Prospero is a name I have given him," explained Annunziata. +"One day I told his fortune. I can tell fortunes—with +olive-stones, with playing-cards, or from the lines of the hand. I +will tell you yours, if you wish. Well, one day, I told Prospero's, +and everything came out so prosperously for him, I have called him +Prospero ever since. He will be rich, though he is poor; and he +will marry a dark woman, who will also be rich; and they will have +many, many children, and live in peace to the end of their lives. +But there!" Annunziata cried out suddenly, with excitement, waving +the hand that held her narcissus. "There is my friend Prospero now, +coming in the gig."</p> +<p>Down the avenue, sure enough, a gig was coming, a sufficiently +shabby, ancient gig, drawn, however, at a very decent pace by a +very decent-looking horse, and driven by John Blanchemain.</p> +<p>"<i>Ciao</i>, Prospero!" called Annunziata, as he passed.</p> +<p>And John took off his hat, a modish Panama, and bowed and smiled +to her and to the lady. And one adept in reading the meaning of +smiles might have read three or four separate meanings in that +smile of his. It seemed to say to Annunziata, "Ah, you rogue! So +already you have waylaid her, and made her acquaintance." To the +lady: "I congratulate you upon your companion. Isn't she a +diverting little monkey?" To himself: "And I congratulate +<i>you</i>, my dear, upon being clothed and in your right mind, and +upon having a proper hat to make your bow with." And to the +universe at large "By Jove, she <i>is</i> good-looking. Standing +there before that marble bench, in the cool green light, under the +great ilexes, with her lilac frock and her white sunshade, and +Annunziata all in grey beside her,—what a subject for a +painting, if only there were any painters who knew how to +paint!"</p> +<p>"He is going to a dinner at Roccadoro," said Annunziata, while +John's back grew small and smaller in the distance. "Did you see, +he had a portmanteau under the seat? He is going to a dinner of +ceremony, and he will have his costume of ceremony in the +portmaneau. I wonder what he will bring back with him for me. When +he goes to Roccadoro he always brings something back for me. Last +time it was a box of chocolate cigars. I should like to see him in +his costume of ceremony. Wouldn't you?"</p> +<p>But the lady merely laughed. And then, taking Annunziata's chin +in her hand, she looked down into her big clear eyes, and said, "I +must be off now, to join Signora Brandi. But I cannot leave without +telling you how glad I am to have met you, and what pleasure I have +derived from your conversation. I hope we shall meet often. +Good-bye."</p> +<p>"Good-bye, Signorina," said Annunziata, becoming formally polite +again. "I shall always be at your service." And she dropped another +courtesy. "If you will come to see me at the presbytery," she +hospitably added, "I will show you my tame kid."</p> +<p>"You are all that is most kind," responded the lady, and went +off smiling towards the castle.</p> +<p>Annunziata curled herself up in her old corner of the marble +bench, and appeared to relapse into profound thought.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>V</h2> +<p>A curious little intimate inward glow, a sense, somewhere deep +down in his consciousness, of elation and well-being, accompanied +John all the way to Roccadoro, mingling with and sweetening +whatever thoughts or perceptions occupied his immediate attention. +This was a "soul-state" that he knew of old, and he had no +difficulty in referring it to its cause. It was the glow and the +elation which he was fortunate enough always to experience when his +eye had been fed with a fresh impression of beauty; and he knew +that he owed it to-day to the glimpse he had had, in the cool light +under the ilexes, of a slender figure in lilac and a tiny figure in +grey, beside a soft-complexioned old marble bench in the midst of a +shadowy, sunny, brown and green Italian garden.</p> +<p>The drive to Roccadoro from Sant' Alessina is a pleasant drive. +The road follows for the most part the windings of the Rampio, so +that you are seldom out of sight of its gleaming waters, and the +brawl of it, now louder, now less loud, is perpetually in your +ears. To right and left you have the tender pink of blossoming +almonds, with sometimes the scarlet flame of a pomegranate; and +then the blue-grey hills, mantled in a kind of transparent +cloth-of-gold, a gauze of gold, woven of haze and sunshine; and +then, rosy white, with pale violet shadows, the snow-peaks, cut +like cameos upon the brilliant azure of the sky. And sometimes, of +course, you rattle through a village, with its crumbling, stained, +and faded yellow-stuccoed houses, its dazzling white canvas +awnings, its church and campanile, and its life that seems to pass +entirely in the street: men in their shirt sleeves, lounging, +smoking, spitting (else the land were not Italy!), or perhaps +playing cards at a table under the leafless bush of the wine-shop; +women gossiping over their needlework, or, gathered in sociable +knots, combing and binding up their sleek black hair; children +sprawling in the kindly dirt; the priest, biretta on head, nose in +breviary, drifting slowly upon some priestly errand, and "getting +through his office;" and the immemorial goatherd, bare-legged, in a +tattered sugar-loaf hat, followed by his flock, with their queer +anxious faces, blowing upon his Pan's-pipes (shrill strains, in +minor mode and plagal scale, a music older than Theocritus), or +stopping, jealously watched by the customer's avid Italian eyes, to +milk "<i>per due centesimi</i>"—say, a farthing's +worth—into an outstretched, close-clutched jug. Sometimes the +almond orchards give place to vineyards, or to maize fields, or to +dusky groves of walnut, or to plantations of scrubby oak where lean +black pigs forage for the delectable acorn. Sometimes the valley +narrows to a ravine, and signs of cultivation disappear, and the +voice of the Rampio swells to a roar, and you become aware, between +the hills that rise gloomy and almost sheer beside you, of a great +solitude: a solitude that is intensified rather than diminished by +the sight of some lonely—infinitely lonely—grange, +perched far aloft, at a height that seems out of reach of the +world. What possible manner of human beings, you wonder, can +inhabit there, and what possible dreary manner of existence can +they lead? But even in the most solitary places you are welcomed +and sped on by a chorus of bird-songs. The hillsides resound with +bird-songs continuously for the whole seven miles,—and +continuously, at this season, for the whole four-and-twenty hours. +Blackbirds, thrushes, blackcaps, goldfinches, chaffinches, sing +from the first peep of dawn till the last trace of daylight has +died out, and then the nightingales begin and keep it up till dawn +again. And everywhere the soft air is aromatic with a faint scent +of rosemary, for rosemary grows everywhere under the trees. And +everywhere you have the purity and brilliancy and yet restraint of +colour, and the crisp economy of line, which give the Italian +landscape its look of having been designed by a conscious +artist.</p> +<p>In and through his enjoyment of all these pleasantnesses, John +felt that agreeable glow which he owed to his glimpse of the woman +in the garden; and when at last he reached the Hotel Victoria, and, +having dressed, found himself alone for a few moments with Lady +Blanchemain, in the dim and cool sitting-room where she awaited her +guests, he hastened to let her know that he shared her own opinion +of the woman's charms.</p> +<p>"Your beauty decidedly <i>is</i> a beauty," he declared. "I wish +you could have seen her as I saw her an hour ago, with a white +sunshade, against a background of ilexes. It's a thousand pities +that painting should be a forgotten art."</p> +<p>But Lady Blanchemain (magnificent in purple velvet, with +diamonds round her throat and in her hair) didn't seem +interested.</p> +<p>"Do you know," she said, "I made yesterday one of the most +ridiculous blunders of my life. It's been preying upon my mind ever +since. I generally have pretty trustworthy perceptions, and perhaps +this is a symptom of failing powers. I told myself positively that +you were an Eton and Balliol man. It never occurred to me till I +was halfway home that, as a Papist, you'd be nothing of the +sort."</p> +<p>"No," said John; "I'm afraid I'm Edgbaston and Paris. The way +her hair grows low about her brow, and swoops upwards and backwards +in a sort of tidal wave, and breaks loose in little curling +tendrils,—it's absolutely lyrical. And the smile at the +bottom of her eyes is exactly like silent music. And her mouth is a +couplet in praise of love, with two red lips for rhymes. And her +chin is a perfect epithalamium of a chin. And then her figure! And +then her lilac frock! Oh, it's a thousand, thousand pities that +painting should he a forgotten art."</p> +<p>"What, the same lilac frock?" said Lady Blanchemain, absently. +"Yet you certainly have the Eton voice," she mused. "And if I don't +pay you the doubtful compliment of saying that you have the Balliol +manner, you have at least a kind of subtilized reminiscence of +it."</p> +<p>"I must keep a guard upon myself," said John. "She's visiting an +Austrian woman who lives in a remote wing of the castle,—the +pavilion beyond the clock, in fact,—an Austrian woman of the +exhilarating name of Brandi."</p> +<p>"I'm rather in luck for my dinner to-night," said Lady +Blanchemain. "I've got Agnes Scope, the niece of the Duke of +Wexmouth. She arrived here this morning with her aunt, Lady Louisa. +Of course I'm putting you next to her. As, besides being an +extremely nice girl and an heiress, she's an ardent pervert to +Romanism,—well, a word to the wise."</p> +<p>"Yes, I know her," said John. "We don't get on a bit. She moves +on far too high a plane for a groundling like me. She's +intellectual and earnest, and my ignorance and light-mindedness +wound her to the quick. She'll end, as I've told her to her face, +by writing books,—serious novels, probably,—which +she'll illuminate with beautiful irrelevant quotations from +Browning and Cardinal Newman."</p> +<p>"Bother," said Lady Blanchemain. "You're perverse."</p> +<p>"Besides," said John, "she's engaged."</p> +<p>"Engaged—?" faltered Lady Blanchemain.</p> +<p>"Yes—to an intellectual and earnest man, named +Blake—Bernard Blake—a grandson of the famous Blake of +Cambridge."</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain fixed him with darkening eyes.</p> +<p>"Are you sure?" she pleaded.</p> +<p>"I saw it officially stated in the <i>Morning Post</i>," was +John's relentless answer.</p> +<p>"What a nuisance," said Lady Blanchemain, fanning. Her fan was +of amber tortoise-shell, with white ostrich feathers, and the end +sticks bore her cypher and coronet in gold.</p> +<p>"What a jolly fan," said John.</p> +<p>"Well, well," said Lady Blanchemain, reconciling herself. Then, +after an instant of pensiveness, "So you're already laid low by her +beauty. But you haven't found out yet who she is?"</p> +<p>"Who who is?" said John, looking all at sea.</p> +<p>"Tut. Don't tease. Your woman at the castle."</p> +<p>"My woman at the castle appeared to leave you cold," he +complained. "I arrived full of her, and you wouldn't listen."</p> +<p>"So you're already in love with her?" said Lady Blanchemain.</p> +<p>"No—not yet," said he. "As yet I merely recognize in her +admirable material for a painting, and regret that such material +should go begging for the lack of a painter. But by this time +to-morrow—who can tell?"</p> +<p>"Have you found out who she is?" asked Lady Blanchemain.</p> +<p>"No—not yet," said he. "As yet I've merely found out that +she's visiting an Austrian Signora Brandi, who lives (I can't think +why) in the pavilion beyond the clock. But by this time to-morrow!" +His gesture spoke volumes of prospective information.</p> +<p>"She looked like a gentlewoman," reflected his friend.</p> +<p>"For all the world," said he.</p> +<p>"Yet, if she's an Austrian—" She paused and pondered.</p> +<p>"Why? What's the difficulty?" said he.</p> +<p>"To know whether she is <i>born</i>," said Lady Blanchemain. +"Among Austrians, unless you're born, you're impossible, you're +nowhere. Brandi doesn't sound born, does it? We mustn't let you +become enamoured of her if she isn't born."</p> +<p>"Brandi sounds tremendously <i>un</i>born," assented John. "And +if like visits like, Signora Brandi's visitor will probably be +unborn too. But to me that would rather add an +attraction,—provided she's <i>bred</i>. I'm not an Austrian. +I'm a Briton and a democrat. I feel it is my destiny, if ever I am +to become enamoured at all, to become enamoured of the daughter of +a miller,—of a rising miller, who has given his daughter +advantages. 'Brèd, not Born: or the Lady of the +Mill'—that shall be the title of my humble heart-history. If +this woman could prove to me that she was the daughter of a miller, +I'm not sure I shouldn't become enamoured of her on the spot. Well, +I shall know to-morrow. By this time to-morrow I shall possess her +entire <i>dossier</i>. It may interest you to learn that I am +employing a detective to investigate her."</p> +<p>"A detective? What do you mean?" said Lady Blanchemain.</p> +<p>"A private detective, a female detective, whom, the next time +you come to Sant' Alessina, I'll introduce to you," said John.</p> +<p>"What on earth do you mean?" said Lady Blanchemain.</p> +<p>"The most amusing, the most adorable little detective unhung," +said he. "People are all love and laughter whenever they look at +her. She'll worm its inmost secrets from my sphinx's heart."</p> +<p>"What pleasure can you take in practising upon a poor old woman +who only by a sort of fluke isn't your grandmother?" said she.</p> +<p>"Lady Louisa FitzStephen, Miss Scope," said her servant, opening +the door.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>VI</h2> +<p>The nightingales sang him home, and the moon lighted him, the +liquid moon of April and Italy. As he approached the castle, +through the purple and silver garden, amid the mysterious sweet +odours of the night, he glanced up vaguely at the pavilion beyond +the clock. He glanced up vaguely, but next second he was no longer +vague.</p> +<p>There, on a low-hung balcony, not ten feet above him, full in +the moonlight, stood a figure in white—all in white, with a +scarf of white lace thrown over her dark hair. The nightingales +sang and sobbed, the moon rained its amethystine fire upon the +earth, the earth gave forth its mysterious sweet night odours, and +she stood there motionless, and breathed and gazed and +listened.</p> +<p>But at the sound of wheels in the avenue, she turned slightly, +and looked down. Her face was fair and delicate and pure in the +moonlight, and her eyes shone darkly bright.</p> +<p>She turned, and looked down, and her eyes met John's.</p> +<p>"Given the hour and the place, I wonder whether I ought to bow," +he thought.</p> +<p>Before he could make up his mind, however, his hand had +automatically raised his hat.</p> +<p>She inclined her head in acknowledgment, and something softly +changed in her face.</p> +<p>"She smiled!" he said, and caught his breath, with a kind of +astonished exultancy.</p> +<p>That soft change in her face came and went and came again +through all his dreams.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PART_THIRD" id="PART_THIRD"></a>PART THIRD</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>I</h2> +<p>"Good morning, Prospero," said Annunziata.</p> +<p>"Good morning, Wide-awake," responded John.</p> +<p>He was in the octagonal room on the <i>piano nobile</i> of the +castle, where his lost ladies of old years smiled on him from their +frames. He had heard an approaching patter of feet on the pavement +of the room beyond; and then Annunziata's little grey figure, white +face, and big grave eyes, had appeared, one picture the more, in +the vast carved and gilded doorway.</p> +<p>"I have been looking everywhere for you," she said, +plaintive.</p> +<p>"Poor sweetheart," he commiserated her. "And can't you find +me?"</p> +<p>"I couldn't," said Annunziata, bearing on the tense. "But I have +found you <i>now</i>."</p> +<p>"Oh? Have you? Where?" asked he.</p> +<p>"<i>Where?</i>" cried she, with a disdainful movement. "But +<i>here</i>, of course."</p> +<p>"I wouldn't be too cocksure of that," he cautioned her. +"<i>Here</i> is a mighty evasive bird. For, suppose we were +elsewhere, then <i>there</i> would be here, and here would be +somewhere else."</p> +<p>"No," said Annunziata, with resolution. "Where a person is, that +is always <i>here</i>."</p> +<p>"You speak as if a person carried his here with him, like his +hat," said John.</p> +<p>"Yes, that is how it is," said Annunziata, nodding.</p> +<p>"You have a remarkably solid little head,—for all its +curls, there's no confusing it," said he. "Well, have you your +report, drawn up, signed, sealed, sworn to before a Commissioner +for Oaths, and ready to be delivered?"</p> +<p>"My report—?" questioned Annunziata, with a glance.</p> +<p>"About the Form," said John. "I caught you yesterday red-handed +in the fact of pumping it."</p> +<p>"Yes," said Annunziata. "Her name is Maria Dolores."</p> +<p>"A most becoming name," said he.</p> +<p>"She is very nice," said Annunziata.</p> +<p>"She looks very nice," said he.</p> +<p>"She is twenty-two years and ten months old," continued his +informant.</p> +<p>"Fancy. As middle-aged as that," commented he.</p> +<p>"Yes. She is an Austrian."</p> +<p>"Ah."</p> +<p>"And as I told you, she is visiting the Signora Brandi. Only, +she calls her Frao Branta."</p> +<p>"Frao Branta?" John turned the name on his tongue. "Branta? +Branta?" What familiar German name, at the back of his memory, did +it half evoke? Suddenly he had a flash. "Can you possibly mean Frau +Brandt?"</p> +<p>Annunziata gave a gesture of affirmation.</p> +<p>"Yes, that is it," she said. "You sound it just as she did!"</p> +<p>"I see," said John. "And Brandt, if there are degrees of +unbirth, is even more furiously unborn than Brandi."</p> +<p>"Unborn—?" said Annunziata, frowning.</p> +<p>"Not noble—not of the aristocracy," John explained.</p> +<p>"Very few people are noble," said Annunziata.</p> +<p>"All the more reason, then, why you and I should be thankful +that we are," said he.</p> +<p>"You and I?" she expostulated, with a shrug of her little grey +shoulders. "<i>Machè!</i> We are not noble."</p> +<p>"Aren't we? How do you know?" asked John. "Anyhow," he +impressively moralized, "we can try to be."</p> +<p>"No," said she, with conclusiveness, with fatalism. "It is no +good trying. Either you are noble or simple,—God makes you +so,—you cannot help it. If I were noble, I should be a +contessina. If you were noble, you would be a gransignore.</p> +<p>"And my unassuming appearance assures you that I'm not?" said +he, smiling.</p> +<p>"If you were a gransignore," she instructed him, "you would +never be such friends with me—you would be too proud."</p> +<p>John laughed.</p> +<p>"You judge people by the company they keep. Well, I will apply +the same principle of judgment to your gossip, Maria Dolores. +By-the-by," he broke off to inquire, "what is her Pagan name?"</p> +<p>"Her Pagan name? What is that?" asked Annunziata.</p> +<p>"Maria Dolores, I take it, is her Christian name, come by in +Holy Baptism," said John. "But I suppose she will have a Pagan +name, come by in the way of the flesh, to round it off +with,—just as, for instance, a certain flame of mine, whose +image, when I die, they'll find engraved upon my heart, has the +Pagan name of Casalone."</p> +<p>Annunziata looked up, surprised. "Casalone? That is my name," +she said.</p> +<p>"Yes," said John. "Yours will be the image."</p> +<p>Annunziata gave her head a toss. "Maria Dolores did not tell me +her Pagan name," she said.</p> +<p>"At any rate," said he, "to judge by the company she keeps, we +may safely classify her as unborn. She is probably the daughter of +a miller,—of a miller (to judge also a little by the frocks +she wears) in rather a large way of business, who (to judge finally +by her cultivated voice, her knowledge of languages, and her +generally distinguished air) has spared no expense in the matter of +her education. I shouldn't wonder a bit if she could even play the +piano."</p> +<p>"No," agreed Annunziata, "that is very likely. But +why"—she tilted upwards her inquisitive little +profile—"why should you think she is the daughter of a +miller?"</p> +<p>"Miller," said John, "I use as a generic term. Her father may be +a lexicographer or a dry-salter, a designer of dirigible balloons +or a manufacturer of air-pumps; he may even be a person of +independent means, who lives in a big, new, stuccoed villa in the +suburbs of Vienna, and devotes his leisure to the propagation of +orchids: yet all the while a miller. By miller I mean a member of +the Bourgeoisie: a man who, though he be well to do, well educated, +well bred, does not bear coat-armour, and is therefore to be +regarded by those who do with their noses in the +air,—especially in Austria. Among Austrians, unless you bear +coat-armour, you're impossible, you're nowhere. We mustn't let you +become enamoured of her if she doesn't bear coat-armour."</p> +<p>Annunziata's eyes, during this divagation, had wandered to the +window, the tall window with its view of the terraced garden, where +the mimosa bloomed and the blackcaps carolled. Now she turned them +slowly upon John, and he saw from their expression that at last she +was coming to what for her (as he had known all along) was the real +preoccupation of the moment. They were immensely serious, intensely +concerned, and at the same time, in their farther recesses, you +felt a kind of fluttering shyness, as if <i>I dare not</i> were +hanging upon <i>I would</i>.</p> +<p>"Tell me," she began, on a deep note, a deep coaxing note.... +Then <i>I dare not</i> got the better, and she held back.... Then +<i>I would</i> took his courage in both hands, and she plunged. +"What have you brought for me from Roccadoro?" And after one glance +of half-bashful, all-impassioned supplication, she let her eyes +drop, and stood before him suspensive, as one awaiting the word of +destiny.</p> +<p>John's "radiant blondeur," his yellow beard, pink face, and +sea-blue eyes, lighted up, more radiant still, with subcutaneous +laughter.</p> +<p>"The shops were shut," he said. "I arrived after closing +time."</p> +<p>But something in his tone rendered this grim announcement +nugatory. Annunziata drew a long breath, and looked up again. "You +have brought me something, all the same," she declared with +conviction; and eagerly, eyes gleaming, "What is it? What is it?" +she besought him.</p> +<p>John laughed. "You are quite right," he said. "If one can't buy, +beg, or borrow, in this world, one can generally steal."</p> +<p>Annunziata drew away, regarded him with misgiving. "Oh, no; you +would never steal," she protested.</p> +<p>"I'm not so sure—for one I loved," said he. "What would +you have liked me to bring you?"</p> +<p>Annunziata thought. "I liked those chocolate cigars," she said, +her face soft with reminiscence of delight.</p> +<p>"Ah, but we mustn't have it <i>toujours perdrix</i>," said John. +"Do you, by any chance, like marchpane?"</p> +<p>"Marchpane?—I adore it," she answered, in an outburst of +emotion.</p> +<p>"You have your human weaknesses, after all," John laughed. +"Well, I stole a pocketful of marchpane."</p> +<p>Annunziata drew away again, her little white forehead furrowed. +"Stole?" she repeated, reluctant to believe.</p> +<p>"Yes," said he, brazenly, nodding his head.</p> +<p>"Oh, that was very wrong," said Annunziata, sadly shaking +hers.</p> +<p>"No," said he. "Because, in the first place, it's a matter of +proverbial wisdom that stolen marchpane's sweetest. And, in the +next place, I stole it quite openly, under the eye of the person it +belonged to, and she made no effort to defend her property. Seeing +which, I even went so far as to explain to her <i>why</i> I was +stealing it. 'There's a young limb o' mischief with a sweet tooth +at Sant' Alessina,' I explained, 'who regularly levies blackmail +upon me. I'm stealing this for her.' And then the lady I was +stealing from told me I might steal as much as ever I thought +good."</p> +<p>"Oh-h-h," said Annunziata, a long-drawn <i>Oh</i> of relief. +"Then you didn't steal it—she <i>gave</i> it to you."</p> +<p>"Well," said John, "if casuistry like that can ease your +conscience—if you feel that you can conscientiously receive +it—" And he allowed his inflection to complete the +sentence.</p> +<p>"Give it to me," said Annunziata, holding out her hands, and +dancing up and down in glee and in impatience.</p> +<p>"Nenni-dà," said John. "Not till after dinner. I'm not +going to be a party to the spoiling of a fair, young, healthy +appetite."</p> +<p>Pain wrote itself upon Annunziata's brow. "Oh," she grieved, +"must I wait till after dinner?"</p> +<p>"Yes," said John.</p> +<p>For a breathing-space she struggled. "Would it be bad of me," +she asked, "if I begged for just a <i>little</i> now?"</p> +<p>"Yes," said John, "bad and bootless. You'd find me as unyielding +as adamant."</p> +<p>"Ah, well," sighed Annunziata, a deep and tremulous sigh. "Then +I will wait."</p> +<p>And, like a true philosopher, she proceeded to occupy her mind +with a fresh interest. She looked round the room, she looked out of +the window. "Why do you stay here? It is much pleasanter in the +garden," she remarked.</p> +<p>"I came here to seek for consolation. To-day began for me with a +tragic misadventure," John replied.</p> +<p>Annunziata's eyes grew big, compassionating him, and, at the +same time, bespeaking a lively curiosity.</p> +<p>"Poor Prospero," she gently murmured. "What was it?" on tip-toe +she demanded.</p> +<p>"Well," he said, "when I rose, to go for my morning swim, I made +an elaborate toilet, because I hoped to meet a certain person whom, +for reasons connected with my dignity, I wished to impress. But it +was love's labour lost. The certain person is an ornament of the +uncertain sex, and didn't turn up. So, to console myself, I came +here."</p> +<p>Annunziata looked round the room again. "What is there here that +can console you?"</p> +<p>"These," said John. His hand swept the pictured walls.</p> +<p>"The paintings?" said she, following his gesture. "How can they +console you?"</p> +<p>"They're so well painted," said he, fondly studying the +soft-coloured canvases. "Besides, these ladies are dead. I like +dead ladies."</p> +<p>Annunziata looked critically at the pictures, and then at him +with solemn meaning. "They are very pretty—but they are not +dead," she pronounced in her deepest voice.</p> +<p>"Not dead?" echoed John, astonished. "Aren't they?"</p> +<p>"No," said she, with a slow shake of the head.</p> +<p>"Dear me," said he. "And, when they're alone here and no one's +looking, do you think they come down from their frames and dance? +It must be a sight worth seeing."</p> +<p>"No," said Annunziata. "These are only their pictures. They +cannot come down from their frames. But the ladies themselves are +not dead. Some of them are still in Purgatory, perhaps. We should +pray for them." She made, in parenthesis as it were, a pious sign +of the Cross. "Some are perhaps already in Heaven. We should ask +their prayers. And others are perhaps in Hell," she pursued, +inexorable theologian that she was. "But none of them is dead. No +one is dead. There's no such thing as being dead."</p> +<p>"But then," puzzled John, "what is it that people mean when they +talk of Death?"</p> +<p>"I will tell you," said Annunziata, her eyes heavy with thought. +"Listen, and I will tell you." She seated herself on the big round +ottoman, and raised her face to his. "Have you ever been at a +pantomime?" she asked.</p> +<p>"Yes," said John, wondering what could possibly be coming.</p> +<p>"Have you been at the pantomime," she continued earnestly, "when +there was what they call a transformation-scene?"</p> +<p>"Yes," said John.</p> +<p>"Well," said she, "last winter I was taken to the pantomime at +Bergamo, and I saw a transformation-scene. You ask me, what is +Death? It is exactly like a transformation-scene. At the pantomime +the scene was just like the world. There were trees, and houses, +and people, common people, like any one. Then suddenly click! Oh, +it was wonderful. Everything was changed. The trees had leaves of +gold and silver, and the houses were like fairy palaces, and there +were strange lights, red and blue, and there were great garlands of +the most beautiful flowers, and the people were like angels, with +gems and shining clothes. Well, you understand, at first we had +only seen one side of the scene;—then click! everything was +turned round, and we saw the other side. That is like life and +death. Always, while we are alive, we can see only one side of +things. But there is the other side, the under side. Never, so long +as we are alive, we can never, never see it. But when we +die,—click! It is a transformation-scene. Everything is +turned round, and we see the other side. Oh, it will be very +different, it will be wonderful. That is what they call Death."</p> +<p>It was John's turn to be grave. It was some time before he +spoke. He looked down at her, with a kind of grave laughter in his +eyes, admiring, considering. What could he say? ... What he did +say, at last, was simply, "Thank you, my dear."</p> +<p>Annunziata jumped up.</p> +<p>"Oh, come," she urged. "Let's go into the garden. It is so much +nicer there than here. There are lots of cockchafers. +Besides"—she held out as an additional inducement—"we +might meet Maria Dolores."</p> +<p>"No," said John. "Though the cockchafers are a temptation, I +will stop here. But go you to the garden, by all means. And if you +do meet Maria Dolores, tell her what you have just told me. I think +she would like to hear it."</p> +<p>"All right," consented Annunziata, moving towards the door. +"I'll see you at dinner. You won't forget the marchpane?"</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>II</h2> +<p>John was in a state of mind that perplexed and rather annoyed +him. Until the day before yesterday, his detachment here at Sant' +Alessina from ordinary human society, the absence of people more or +less of his own sort, had been one of the elements of his situation +which he had positively, consciously, rejoiced in,—had been +an appreciable part of what he had summarized to Lady Blanchemain +as "the whole blessed thing." He had his castle, his pictures, his +garden, he had the hills and valley, the birds, the flowers, the +clouds, the sun, he had the Rampio, he had Annunziata, he even had +Annunziata's uncle; and with all this he had a sense of having +stepped out of a world that he knew by heart, that he knew to +satiety, a world that was stale and stuffy and threadbare, with its +gilt rubbed off and its colours tarnished, into a world where +everything was fresh and undiscovered and full of savour, a great +cool blue and green world that from minute to minute opened up new +perspectives, made new promises, brought to pass new surprises. And +this sense, in some strange way, included Time as well as space. It +was as if he had entered a new region of Time, as if he had escaped +from the moving current of Time into a stationary moment. Alone +here, where modern things or thoughts had never penetrated, alone +with the earth and the sky, the mediæval castle, the dead +ladies, with Annunziata, and the parroco, and the parroco's Masses +and Benedictions—to-day, he would please himself by fancying, +might be a yesterday of long ago that had somehow dropped out of +the calendar and remained, a fragment of the Past that had been +forgotten and left over. The presence of a person of his own sort, +a fellow citizen of his own period, wearing its clothes, speaking +its speech, would have broken the charm, would have seemed as +undesirable and as inappropriate as the introduction of an English +meadow into the Italian landscape.</p> +<p>Yet now such a person had come, and behold, her presence, so far +from breaking the charm, merged with and intensified +it,—supplied indeed the one feature needed to perfect it. A +person of his own sort? The expression is convenient. A fellow +citizen, certainly, of his period, wearing its clothes, speaking +its speech. But a person, happily, not of his own sex, a woman, a +beautiful woman; and what her presence supplied to the poetry of +Sant' Alessina, making it complete, was, if you like, the Eternal +Feminine. As supplied already by the painted women on the walls +about him, this force had been static; as supplied by a woman who +lived and breathed, it became dynamic. That was all very well; if +he could have let it rest at that, if he could have confined his +interest in her, his feeling about her, to the plane of pure +æsthetics, he would have had nothing to complain of. But the +mischief was that he couldn't. The thing that perplexed and annoyed +him,—and humiliated him too, in some measure,—was a +craving that had sprung up over-night, and was now strong and +constant, to get into personal touch with her, to make her +acquaintance, to talk with her; to find out a little what manner of +soul she had, to establish some sort of human relation with her. It +wasn't in the least as yet a sentimental craving; or, if it was, +John at any rate didn't know it. In its essence, perhaps, it was +little more than curiosity. But it was disturbing, upsetting, it +destroyed the peace and the harmonious leisure of his day. It +perplexed him, it was outside his habits, it was unreasonable. "Not +unreasonable to think it might be fun to talk to a pretty woman," +he discriminated, "but unreasonable to yearn to talk to her as if +your life hung in the balance." And in some measure, too, it +humiliated him: it was a confession of weakness, of insufficiency +to himself, of dependence for his contentment upon another. He +tried to stifle it; he tried to fix his mind on subjects that would +lead far from it. Every subject, all subjects, subjects the most +discrepant, seemed to possess one common property, that of leading +straight back to it. Then he said, "Well, if you can't stifle it, +yield to it. Go down into the garden—hunt her up—boldly +engage her in conversation." Assurance was the note of the man; but +when he pictured himself in the act of "boldly engaging her in +conversation," his assurance oozed away, and he was conscious of a +thrice-humiliating shyness. Why? What <i>was</i> there in the woman +that should turn a brave man shy?</p> +<p>However, the stars were working for him. That afternoon, coming +home from a stroll among the olives, he met her face to face at the +gate of the garden, whither she had arrived from the direction of +the village. Having made his bow, which she accepted with a smile, +he could do no less than open the gate for her; and as their ways +must thence lie together, up the long ilex-shaded avenue to the +castle, it would be an awkward affectation not to speak. And yet +(he ground his teeth at having to admit it) his heart had begun to +pound so violently, (not from emotion, he told himself,—from +a mere ridiculous sort of nervous excitement: what <i>was</i> there +in the woman that should excite a sane man like that?) he was +afraid to trust his voice, lest it should quaver and betray him. +But fortunately this pounding of the heart lasted only a few +seconds. The short business of getting the gate open, and of +closing it afterwards, gave it time to pass. So that now, as they +set forwards towards the house, he was able to look her in the eye, +and to observe, with impressiveness, that it was a fine day.</p> +<p>She had accepted his bow with a smile, amiable and +unembarrassed; and at this, in quite the most unembarrassed manner, +smiling again,—perhaps with just the faintest, just the +gentlest shade of irony, and with just the slightest quizzical +upward tremor of the eyebrows,—"Isn't it a day rather typical +of the land and season?" she inquired.</p> +<p>It was the first step that had cost. John's assurance was coming +swiftly back. Her own air of perfect ease in the circumstances very +likely accelerated it. "Yes," he answered her. "But surely that +isn't a reason for begrudging it a word of praise?"</p> +<p>By this he was lucky enough to provoke a laugh, a little light +gay trill, sudden and brief like three notes on a flute.</p> +<p>"No," she admitted. "You are right. The day deserves the best we +can say of it."</p> +<p>"Her voice," thought John, availing himself of a phrase that had +struck him in a book he had lately read, "her voice is like ivory +and white velvet." And the touch, never so light, of a foreign +accent with which she spoke, rendered her English piquant and +pretty,—gave to each syllable a crisp little clean-cut +outline. They sauntered on for a minute or two in silence, with +half the width of the road-way between them, the shaded road-way, +where the earth showed purple through a thin green veil of mosses, +and where irregular shafts of sunlight, here and there, turned +purple and green to red and gold. The warm air, woven of +garden-fragrances, hung round them palpable, like some infinitely +subtile fabric. And of course blackbirds were calling, blackcaps +and thrushes singing, in all the leafy galleries overhead. A fine +day indeed, mused John, and indeed worthy of the best that they +could say. His nervousness, his excitement, had entirely left him, +his assurance had come completely back; and with it had come a +curious deep satisfaction, a feeling that for the moment at any +rate the world left nothing to be wished for, that the cup of his +desire was full. He didn't even, now that he might do so, wish to +talk to her. To walk with her was enough,—to enjoy her +companionship in silence. Yes, that was it—companionship. He +caught at the word. "That is what I have been unconsciously needing +all along. I flattered myself that I was luxuriating in the very +absence of it. But man is a gregarious animal, and I was deceived." +So he could refer the effect of her propinquity to the mere +gregarious instinct, not suspecting that a more powerful instinct +was already awake. Anyhow, his sense of that propinquity,—his +consciousness of her, gracefully moving beside him in the sweet +weather, while her summery garments fluttered, and some strange, +faint, elusive perfume was shaken from them,—filled him with +a satisfaction that for the moment seemed ultimate. He had no wish +to talk. Their progress side by side was a conversation without +words. They were getting to know each other, they were breaking the +ice. Each step they took was as good as a spoken sentence, was a +mutual experience, drawing them closer, helping to an +understanding. They walked slowly, as by a tacit agreement.</p> +<p>Silence, however, couldn't in the nature of things last for +ever. It was she who presently broke it.</p> +<p>"I owe you," she said, in her ivory voice, with her clean-cut +enunciation, "a debt of thanks." And still again she smiled, as she +looked over towards him, her dark eyes glowing, her dark hair +richly drooping, in the shadow of a big hat of wine-coloured +straw.</p> +<p>John's eyes were at a loss. "Oh—?" he wondered.</p> +<p>"For a pleasure given me by our friend Annunziata," she +explained. "This morning she told me a most interesting parable +about Death. And she mentioned that it was you who had suggested to +her to tell it me."</p> +<p>"Oh," said John, laughing, while the pink of his skin deepened a +shade. "She mentioned that, did she? I'm glad if you don't feel +that I took a good deal upon myself. But she had just told the same +parable to me, and it seemed a pity it shouldn't have a larger +audience."</p> +<p>Then, after a few more paces taken again in silence, "What a +marvellous little person she is, Annunziata!" said Maria +Dolores.</p> +<p>"She's to a marvellous degree the right product of her milieu," +said John.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores did not speak, but her eyes questioned, "Yes? How +do you mean?"</p> +<p>"I mean that she's a true child of the presbytery," he replied, +"and at the same time a true child of this Italy, where Paganism +has never perfectly died. She has been carefully instructed in her +catechism, and she has fed upon pious legends, she has breathed an +ecclesiastical atmosphere, until the things of the Church have +become a part of her very bone. She sees everything in relation to +them, translates everything in terms of them. But at the same time +odd streaks of Paganism survive in her. They survive a +little—don't they?—in all Italians. Wherever she goes +her eye reads omens. She will cast your fortune for you with +olive-stones. The woods are peopled for her by fauns and dryads. +When she takes her walks abroad, I've no doubt, she catches +glimpses of Proteus rising from the lake, and hears old Triton blow +his wreathed horn."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores looked interested.</p> +<p>"Yes," she said, slowly, thoughtfully, and meditated for an +interval. By-and-by, "You know," she recommenced, "she's a sort of +little person about whom one can't help feeling rather frightened." +And her eyes looked to his for sympathetic understanding.</p> +<p>But his were interrogative. "No? Why should one feel frightened +about her?"</p> +<p>"Oh," said Maria Dolores, with a movement, "it isn't exactly +easy to tell why. One's fears are vague. But—well, for one +thing, she thinks so much about Death. Death and what comes +after,—they interest her so much. It doesn't seem natural, it +makes one uneasy. And then she's so delicate-looking. Sometimes +she's almost transparent. In every way she is too serious. She uses +her mind too much, and her body too little. She ought to have more +of the gaiety of childhood, she ought to have other children to +romp with. She's too much like a disembodied spirit. It all alarms +one."</p> +<p>John, as she spoke, frowned, pondering. When she had done, his +frown cleared, he shook his head.</p> +<p>"I don't think it need," he said. "Her delicacy, her frailness, +have never struck me as indicating weakness,—they seem simply +the proper physical accompaniments of her crystalline little +soul,—she's made of a fine and delicate clay. She thinks +about Death, it is true, but not in a morbid way,—and that's +a part of her ecclesiastical tradition; and she thinks quite as +much about life,—she thinks about everything. I agree with +you, it's a pity she has no other children. But she isn't by any +means deficient in the instincts of childhood. She can enjoy a +chocolate cigar, for instance, as well as another; and as for +marchpane, I have her own word that she adores it."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores gave another light trill of laughter.</p> +<p>"Yes, I'm aware of her passion for marchpane. She confided it to +me this morning. And as, in reply to her questions, I admitted that +I rather liked it myself, she very generously offered to bring me +some this afternoon,—which, to be sure, an hour ago, she +did."</p> +<p>She laughed again, and John laughed too.</p> +<p>"All the same" she insisted, "I can't help that feeling of +uneasiness about her. Sometimes, when I look at her, I can almost +see her wings. What will be her future, if she grows up? One would +rather not think of her as married to some poor Italian, and having +to give herself to the prosaic sort of existence that would +mean."</p> +<p>"The sordid sort of existence," augmented John. "No, one would +decidedly rather not. But she will never marry. She will enter +religion. Her uncle has it all planned out. He destines her for the +Servites."</p> +<p>"Oh? The Servites—the Mantellate? I am glad of that," +exclaimed Maria Dolores. "It is a most beautiful order. They have +an especial devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows."</p> +<p>"Yes," said John, and remembered it was for Our Lady of Sorrows +that she who spoke was named.</p> +<p>Slow though their march had been, by this time they had come to +the end of the avenue, and were in the wide circular sweep before +the castle. They stopped here, and stood looking off over the +garden, with its sombre cypresses and bright beds of geranium, down +upon the valley, dim and luminous in a mist of gold. Great, heavy, +fantastic-shaped clouds, pearl-white with pearl-grey shadows, piled +themselves up against the scintillant dark blue of the sky. In and +out among the rose-trees near at hand, where the sun was hottest, +heavily flew, with a loud bourdonnement, the cockchafers promised +by Annunziata,—big, blundering, clumsy, the scorn of their +light-winged and business-like competitors, the bees. Lizards lay +immobile as lizards cast in bronze, only their little glittering, +watchful pin-heads of eyes giving sign of life. And of course the +blackcaps never for a moment left off singing.</p> +<p>They stood side by side, within a yard of each other, in silent +contemplation of these things, during I don't know how many long +and, for John, delicious seconds. Yes, he owned it to himself; it +was delicious to feel her standing there beside him, in silent +communion with him, contemplating the same things, enjoying the +same pleasantnesses. Companionship—companionship: it was what +he had been unconsciously needing all along! ... At last she +turned, and, withdrawing her eyes lingeringly from the landscape, +looked into his, with a smile. She did not speak, but her smile +said, just as explicitly as her lips could have done, "What a scene +of beauty!"</p> +<p>And John responded aloud, with fervour, "Indeed, indeed it +is."</p> +<p>"And so romantic," she added. "It is like a scene out of some +old high musical romance."</p> +<p>"The most romantic scene I know," said he. "All my life I have +thought so."</p> +<p>"Oh?" said she, looking surprise. "Have you known it all your +life?"</p> +<p>"Well,—very nearly," said he, with half a laugh. "I saw it +first when I was ten. Then for long years I lost it,—and only +recovered it, by accident, a month ago."</p> +<p>Her face showed her interest. "Oh? How was that? How did it +happen?"</p> +<p>"When I was ten," John recounted, half laughing again, "I was +travelling with my father, and, among the many places we visited, +one seemed to me a very vision of romance made real. A vast and +stately castle, in a garden, in a valley, with splendid halls and +chambers, and countless beautiful pictures of women. All my life I +remembered it, dreamed of it, longed to see it again. But I hadn't +a notion where it was, save vaguely that it was somewhere in Italy; +and, my poor father being dead, there was no one I could ask. Then, +wandering in these parts a month ago, I stumbled upon it, and +recognized it. Though shrunken a good deal in size, to be sure, it +was still recognizable, and as romantic as ever."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores listened pensively. When he had reached his +period, her eyes lighted up. "What a charming adventure!" she said. +"And so, for you, besides its general romance, the place has a +personal one, all your own. I, too, have known it for long years, +but only from photographs. I suppose I should never have seen the +real thing, except for a friend of mine coming to live here."</p> +<p>"I wonder," said John, "that the people who own it never live +here."</p> +<p>"The Prince of Zelt-Neuminster?" said she. "No,—he doesn't +like the Italian Government. Since Lombardy passed from Austria to +Italy, the family have entirely given up staying at Sant' +Alessina."</p> +<p>"In those circumstances," said John, "practical-minded people, I +should think, would get rid of the place."</p> +<p>"Oh," said she, laughing, "the Prince, in some ways, is +practical-minded enough. He has this great collection of Italian +paintings, which, by Italian law, he mayn't remove from Italian +soil; and if he were to get rid of Sant' Alessina, where could he +house them? In other ways, though, he is perhaps not so practical. +He is one of those Utopians who believe that the present Kingdom of +Italy must perforce before long make shipwreck; and I think he +holds on to Sant' Alessina in the dream of coming here in triumph, +and grandly celebrating that event."</p> +<p>"I see," said John, nodding. "That is a beautiful ideal."</p> +<p>"Good-bye," said she, flashing a last quick smile into his eyes; +and she moved away, down a garden path, towards the pavilion beyond +the clock.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>III</h2> +<p>And now, I should have imagined, for a single session, (and that +an initial one), he had had enough. I should have expected him to +spend the remainder of his day, a full man, in thankful +tranquillity, in agreeable retrospective rumination. But no. +Indulgence, it soon appeared, had but whetted his appetite. After a +quarter-hour of walking about the garden, during which his jumble +of sensations and impressions,—her soft-glowing eyes, her +soft-drooping hair, under her wine-red hat; her slender figure, in +its fluttering summery muslin, and the faint, faint perfume (like a +far-away memory of rose-leaves) that hovered near her; her smile, +and the curves, when she smiled, of her rose-red lips, and the +gleam of her snow-white teeth; her laugh, her voice, her ivory +voice; her pretty crisp-cut English; her appreciation of +Annunziata, her disquieting presentiments concerning her; and his +deep satisfaction in her propinquity, her "companionship;" and the +long shaded fragrant avenue, and the bird-songs, and the gentle +weather,—after a quarter-hour of anything but thankful +tranquillity, a quarter-hour of unaccountable excitement and +exaltation, during which his jumble of impressions and sensations +settled themselves, from ebullition, into some sort of quiescence, +he began to grow restlessly aware that, so far from having had +enough, he had had just a sufficient taste to make him hunger +keenly for more and more. It was ridiculous, but he couldn't help +it. And as there seemed no manner of likelihood that his hunger +would soon be fed, it was trying. At the best, he could not +reasonably hope to see her again before to-morrow; and even +then—? What ghost of a reason had he to hope that even then +he could renew their conversation? He had owed that to-day to the +bare hazard of their ways lying together. To-morrow, very likely, +at the best, he might get a bow and a smile. Very likely it might +be days before he should again have anything approaching a real +talk with her. And what—a new consideration, that struck a +sudden terror to his soul—what if her visit to Frau Brandt +was to be a short one? What if to-morrow even, she were to depart? +"Her very ease in talking with me, a stranger, may quite well have +been due to the fact that she knew she would never see me again," +he argued. ... So he was working himself into a fine state of +despondency, and the world was rapidly being resolved into dust and +ashes, when Heaven sent him a diversion. Nay, indeed, Heaven sent +him two diversions.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>IV</h2> +<p>There was a sound of wheels on gravel, of horses' hoofs on +stone, and Lady Blanchemain's great high-swung barouche, rolling +superbly forth from the avenue, drew up before the Castle, Lady +Blanchemain herself, big and soft and sumptuous in silks and laces, +under a much-befurbelowed, much-befringed, lavender-hued silk +sunshade, occupying the seat of honour. John hastened across the +garden, hat in hand, to welcome her.</p> +<p>"Jump in," she commanded, with a smile, and an imperious sweep +of the arm. "I have come to take you for a drive."</p> +<p>The footman (proud man) held open the door, and John jumped in. +But just as the footman (with an air) had closed the door behind +him, and before the coachman had touched up his horses, there came +a rhythm of running footsteps, and the voice of Annunziata called, +insistently, "Prospero! Prospero!" Then, all out of breath, her +pale cheeks pink, her curls in disarray, Annunziata arrived beside +the carriage, and, no wise abashed by that magnificent equipage, +nor by the magnificent old lady throning in it, (no wise abashed, +but, from the roundness of her eyes, a good deal surprised and +vastly curious), she explained, gasping, "A telegram," and held up +to John a straw-coloured envelope.</p> +<p>"Thank you," said he, taking it, and waving a friendly hand. +"But you should not run so fast," he admonished her, with +concern.</p> +<p>Whereupon the carriage drove off, Annunziata standing and +watching, always round-eyed, till it was out of sight.</p> +<p>"What an interesting-looking child!" said Lady Blanchemain.</p> +<p>"Yes," said John. "I should have liked to introduce her to +you."</p> +<p>"Who is she?" asked the lady.</p> +<p>"She's the private detective I told you of. She's my affinity. +She's the young limb o' mischief for whom I ravaged your stores of +marchpane. She's the niece of the parroco."</p> +<p>"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain. "Why does she call you—what +was it?—Prospero?"</p> +<p>"She's an optimist. She's a bird of good omen," answered John. +"She's satisfied herself, by consulting an oracle, that Fortune has +favours up her sleeve for me. She encouragingly anticipates them by +calling me Prospero before the fact."</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain softly laughed. "That's very nice of her, and +very wise. Aren't you going to read your telegram?"</p> +<p>"I didn't know whether you'd permit," said John.</p> +<p>"Oh pray," said she, with a gesture.</p> +<p>The carriage by this time had left the garden, and the coachman +had turned his horses' heads northwards, away from the lake, +towards the Alps, where their snowy summits, attenuated by the sun +and the distance and the blue air, looked like vapours rising into +the sky.</p> +<p>John tore open his envelope, read, frowned, and uttered a +half-stifled ejaculation,—something that sounded rather like +"I say!" and vaguely like "By Jove!"</p> +<p>"No bad news, I hope?" inquired the lady, sympathetic, and +trying to speak as if she didn't know what curiosity meant.</p> +<p>"Excellent news, on the contrary," said John, "but a bolt from +the blue." And he offered her the paper.</p> +<p>"Am on my way to Rome," she read aloud. "Could I come to you for +a day? Winthorpe, Hotel Cavour, Milan."—"Winthorpe?" She +pursed her lips, as one tasting something. "I don't know the name. +Who is he? What's his County?" she demanded,—she, who carried +the County Families in her head.</p> +<p>John chuckled. "He hasn't got a County—he's only an +American," he said, pronouncing that genial British formula with +intention.</p> +<p>"Oh," sighed Lady Blanchemain, her expectations dashed; and +drawing in her skirts, she sank a little deeper into her +corner.</p> +<p>"He hasn't got a County," repeated John. "But he's far and away +the greatest swell I know."</p> +<p>"A swell? An American?" Lady Blanchemain pressed down her lips, +and gave a movement to her shoulders.</p> +<p>"An aristocrat, a patrician," said John.</p> +<p>"Fudge!" said Lady Blanchemain. "Americans and +Australians—they're anything you like, but they're never +that."</p> +<p>John laughed. "I adore," he said, "our light and airy British +way of tarring Americans and Australians with the same +brush,—the descendants of transported convicts and the +descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers!"</p> +<p>"Is your Winthorpe man a descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers?" +asked Lady Blanchemain, dryly.</p> +<p>"Indeed he is," said John. "He's descended from ten separate +individuals who made the first voyage in the <i>Mayflower</i>. And +he holds, by-the-by, intact, the lands that were ceded to his +family by the Indians the year after. That ought to recommend him +to your Ladyship,—an unbroken tenure of nearly three hundred +years."</p> +<p>"Old acres," her ladyship admitted, cautiously, "always make for +respectability."</p> +<p>"Besides," John carelessly threw out, "he's a baronet."</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain sat up. "A baronet?" she said. "An +American?"</p> +<p>"Alas, yes," said John, "a mere American. And one of the +earliest creations,—by James the First, no less. His patent +dates from 1612. But he doesn't use the title. He regards it, he +pretends, as merged in a higher dignity."</p> +<p>"What higher dignity?" asked the lady, frowning.</p> +<p>"That of an American citizen, he says," chuckled John.</p> +<p>"Brrr!" she breathed, impatient.</p> +<p>"And moreover," John gaily continued, "besides being descended +from the Pilgrim Fathers, he's descended in other lines from half +the peerage of Seventeenth Century England. And to top up with, if +you please, he's descended from Alfred the Great. He's only an +American, but he can show a clear descent bang down from Alfred the +Great! I think the most exquisite, the most subtle and delicate +pleasure I have ever experienced has been to see English people, +people of yesterday, cheerfully patronizing him."</p> +<p>"You've enlarged my sphere of knowledge," said Lady Blanchemain, +grimly. "I had never known that there was blood in America. Does +this prodigious personage talk through his nose?"</p> +<p>"Worse luck, no," said John. "I wish he did—a +little—just enough to smack of his soil, to possess local +colour. No, he talks for all the world like you or me,—which +exposes him to compliments in England. 'An American? Really?' our +tactful people cry, when he avows his nationality 'Upon my word, I +should never have suspected it.'"</p> +<p>"I suppose, with all the rest, he's rich?" asked Lady +Blanchemain.</p> +<p>"Immensely," assented John. "Speaking of Fortune and her +favours, she's withheld none from him."</p> +<p>"Then he's good-looking, too?"</p> +<p>"He looks like a Man," said John.</p> +<p>"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain, moving. "If <i>I</i> had received +a wire from a creature of such proportions, I've a feeling I'd +answer it."</p> +<p>"I've a very similar feeling myself," laughed John. "When we +turn back, if you think your coachman can be persuaded to stop at +the telegraph office in the village, I'll give my feeling +effect."</p> +<p>"I think we might turn back now," said Lady Blanchemain. "It's +getting rather gloomy here." She looked round, with a little +shudder, and then gave the necessary order. The valley had narrowed +to what was scarcely more than a defile between two dark and rugged +hillsides, —pine-covered hillsides that shut out the sun, +smiting the air with chill and shadow, and turning the Rampio, +whose brawl seemed somehow to increase the chill, turning the +sparkling, sportive Rampio to the colour of slate. "It puts one in +mind of brigands," she said, with another little shudder. But +though the air was chilly, it was wonderfully, keenly fragrant with +the incense of the pines.</p> +<p>"Well," she asked, when they were facing homewards, "and your +woman? What of her?"</p> +<p>"Nothing," said John. "Or, anyhow, very little." (It would be +extremely pleasant, he felt suddenly, to talk of her; but at the +same time he felt an extreme reluctance to let his pleasure be +seen.)</p> +<p>"But your private detective?" said Lady Blanchemain. "Weren't +her investigations fruitful?"</p> +<p>"Not very," said he. "She learnt little beyond her name and +age."</p> +<p>"And what <i>is</i> her name?" asked the lady.</p> +<p>"Her name is Maria Dolores," answered John, (and he experienced +a secret joy, strange to him, in pronouncing it).</p> +<p>"Maria Dolores?" said Lady Blanchemain, (and he experienced a +secret joy in hearing it). "Maria Dolores—what?"</p> +<p>"My detective didn't discover her Pagan name," said John.</p> +<p>"So that you are still in doubt whether she's the daughter of a +miller?" Lady Blanchemain raised her eyebrows.</p> +<p>"Oh, no: I think she's a miller's daughter safely enough," said +he. "But she's an elaborately chiselled and highly polished one. +Her voice is like ivory and white velvet; and to hear her speak +English is a revelation of the hidden beauties of that +language."</p> +<p>"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain, eyeing him. "So you've advanced to +the point of talking with her?"</p> +<p>"Well," answered John, weighing his words, "I don't know whether +I can quite say that. But accident threw us together for a minute +or two this afternoon, and we could scarcely do less, in civility, +than exchange the time of day."</p> +<p>"And are you in love with her?" asked Lady Blanchemain.</p> +<p>"I wonder," said he. "What do <i>you</i> think? Is it possible +for a man to be in love with a woman he's seen only half a dozen +times all told, and spoken with never longer than a minute or two +at a stretch?"</p> +<p>"<i>Was</i> it only a minute or two—<i>really</i>?" asked +Lady Blanchemain, wooing his confidence with a glance.</p> +<p>"No," said John. "It was probably ten minutes, possibly fifteen. +But they passed so quickly, it's really nearer the truth to +describe them as one or two."</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain shifted her sunshade, and screwed herself half +round, so as to face him, her soft old eyes full of smiling +scrutiny and suspicion.</p> +<p>"I never can tell whether or not you're serious," she +complained. "If you <i>are</i> serious,—well, <i>à +quand le mariage</i>?"</p> +<p>"The marriage?" cried John. "How could I marry her? Such a +thing's out of all question.</p> +<p>"Why?" asked she.</p> +<p>"A miller's daughter!" said John. "Would you have me marry the +daughter of a miller?"</p> +<p>"You said yourself yesterday—" the lady reminded him.</p> +<p>"Ah, yes," said he. "But night brings counsel."</p> +<p>"If she's well educated," said Lady Blanchemain, "if she's +well-bred, what does it matter about her father? Though a nobody in +Austria, where nothing counts but quarterings, he's probably what +we'd call a gentleman in England. Suppose he's a barrister? Or the +editor of a newspaper? Or—"</p> +<p>She paused, thoughtful-eyed, to think of respectable +professions. At last she gave up the effort.</p> +<p>"Well, anything decent," she concluded, "so long as he had +plenty of money."</p> +<p>"Ah," said John, sadly, and with perhaps mock humility. "If he +had plenty of money, he'd never consent to his daughter marrying a +son of poverty like me."</p> +<p>"Pooh! For a title?" cried Lady Blanchemain. "Besides, you have +prospects. Isn't your name Prospero?"</p> +<p>"I have precious little faith in oracles," said John.</p> +<p>"I advise you to have more," said Lady Blanchemain, with a smile +that seemed occult.</p> +<p>And now her carriage entered the village, and she put him down +at the telegraph office.</p> +<p>"Don't wait," said John. "The walk from here to the Castle is +nothing, and it would take you out of your way."</p> +<p>"Well, good-bye, then," said she. "And cultivate more faith in +oracles—when they're auspicious."</p> +<p>Alone, she drew from some recondite fold of her many draperies a +letter, an unsealed letter, which she opened, spread out, and +proceeded to read. It was a long letter in her ladyship's own +handsome, high-bred, old-fashioned handwriting; and it was +addressed to Messrs. Farrow, Bernscot, and Tisdale, Solicitors, +Lincoln's Inn Fields, London. She read it twice through, and at +last (with a smile that seemed occult) restored it to its envelope. +"Stop at the Post Office," she said to her coachman, as they +entered Roccadoro; and to her footman, giving him the letter, "Have +that registered, please."</p> +<p>Annunziata lay in wait for John in the garden. She ran up, and +seized him by the arm. Then, skipping beside him, as he walked on, +"Who was she? Where did she come from? Where did she take you? Whom +was the telegram from?" she demanded in a breath, nestling her +curls against his coat-sleeve.</p> +<p>"<i>Piano, piano</i>," remonstrated John. "One question at a +time. Now, begin again."</p> +<p>"Whom was the telegram from?" she obeyed, beginning at the +end.</p> +<p>"Ah," said he, "the telegram was from <i>my</i> friend Prospero. +He's coming here to-morrow. We must ask your uncle whether he can +give him a bed."</p> +<p>"And the old lady?" pursued Annunziata. "Who was she?"</p> +<p>"The old lady was my fairy godmother," said John, building +better than he knew.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PART_FOURTH" id="PART_FOURTH"></a>PART FOURTH</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>I</h2> +<p>Pacing together backwards and forwards, as they talked, John and +his friend Winthorpe presented a striking and perhaps interesting +contrast. John was tall, but Winthorpe seemed a good deal +taller—though, (trifles in these matters looming so large), +had actual measurements been taken, I dare say half an inch would +have covered the difference. John was lean and sinewy, but rounded +off at the joints, and of a pliant carriage, so that it never +occurred to you to think of him as <i>thin</i>. Winthorpe's spare +figure, spare and angular, with its greater height, held +unswervingly to the plane of the perpendicular, appeared absolutely +to be constructed of nothing but bone and tendon. John's head, with +its yellow hair, its curly beard verging towards red, its pink +skin, and blue eyes full of laughter, might have served a painter +as a model for the head of Mirth. Winthorpe's,—with brown +hair cropped close, and showing the white of the scalp; +clean-shaven, but of a steely tint where the razor had passed; with +a marked jaw-bone and a salient square chin; with a high-bridged +determined nose, and a white forehead rising vertical over thick +black eyebrows, and rather deep-set grey eyes,—well, clap a +steeple-crowned hat upon it, and you could have posed him for one +of his own Puritan ancestors. The very clothes of the men carried +on their unlikeness,—John's loose blue flannels and red +sailor's knot, careless-seeming, but smart in their effect, and +showing him careful in a fashion of his own; Winthorpe's black tie +and dark tweeds, as correct as Savile Row could turn them out, yet +somehow, by the way he wore them, proclaiming him immediately a man +who never gave two thoughts to his dress. If, however, Winthorpe's +face was the face of a Puritan, it was the face of a Puritan with a +sense of humour—the lines about the mouth were clearly the +footprints of smiles. It seemed the face of a sensitive Puritan, as +well, and (maugre that high-bridged nose) of a gentle—the +light in his clear grey eyes was a kindly and gentle light. After +all, Governor Bradford, as his writings show,—though he tried +hard, perhaps, not to let them show it—was a Puritan with a +sense of humour; John Alden and Priscilla were surely sensitive and +gentle: and Winthorpe was descended from Governor Bradford, and +from John Alden and Priscilla. The two friends walked backwards and +forwards in the great open space before the Castle, and talked. +They had not met for nearly two years, and had plenty to talk +about.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>II</h2> +<p>Seated at one of the open windows of the pavilion beyond the +clock, Maria Dolores (in a pale green confection of I know not what +airy, filmy tissue) looked down, and somewhat vaguely watched +them,—herself concealed by the netted curtain, which, +according to Italian usage, was hung across the casement, to +mitigate the heat and shut out insects. She watched them at first +vaguely, and only from time to time, for the rest going on with +some needlework she had in her lap. But by-and-by she dropped her +needlework altogether, and her watching became continuous and +absorbed.</p> +<p>"What a singular-looking man!" she thought, studying Winthorpe. +"What an ascetic-looking man! He looks like an early Christian +martyr. He looks like a priest. I believe he <i>is</i> a priest. +English priests," she remembered, "when they travel, often dress as +laymen. Yes, he is a priest, and a terribly austere one—I +shouldn't like to go to him for confession. But in spite of his +austerity, he seems to be extraordinarily happy about something +just at present. That light in his eyes,—it is almost a light +of ecstasy. It is a light I have never seen in any eyes, save those +of priests and nuns."</p> +<p>Winthorpe, while that "almost ecstatic" light shone in his eyes, +had been speaking.</p> +<p>Now, as he paused, John, with a glance of gay astonishment, +halted, and turned so as to face him. John's lips moved, and it was +perfectly plain that he was exclaiming, delightedly, "Really? +<i>Really</i>?"</p> +<p>Winthorpe joyously nodded: whereupon John held out both hands, +got hold of his friend's, and, his pink face jubilant, shook them +with tremendous heartiness.</p> +<p>"The priest has received advancement—he is probably to be +made a bishop," inferred Maria Dolores; "and Signor Prospero is +congratulating him."</p> +<p>The men resumed their walk; but for quite a minute John kept his +hand on Winthorpe's shoulder, and again and again gently patted it, +murmuring, "I am so glad, so immensely glad." Maria Dolores was +quite sure that this was what he murmured, for, though no word +could reach her, John's beaming face spoke louder than his +voice.</p> +<p>At last John let his hand drop, and, eyebrows raised a little, +asked a question.</p> +<p>"But how did it happen? But tell me all about it," was what he +seemed to say.</p> +<p>And Winthorpe (always with something of that ecstatic light in +his eyes) proceeded to answer. But it was a longish story, and +lasted through half a dozen of their forward and backward +ambulations. Apparently, furthermore, it was a story which, as it +developed, became less and less agreeable to the mind of John; for +his face, at first all awake with interest, all aglow with +pleasure, gradually sobered, gradually darkened, took on a frown, +expressed dissent, expressed disapprobation, till, finally, with an +impatient movement, he interrupted, and began—speaking +rapidly, heatedly—to protest, to remonstrate.</p> +<p>"Ah," thought Maria Dolores, "the priest is to be made a bishop, +sure enough,—but a missionary bishop. It isn't for nothing +that he looks like an early Christian martyr. He is going to some +outlandish, savage part of the world, where he will be murdered by +the natives, or die of fever or loneliness. He is a man who has +listened to the Counsels of Perfection. But his unascetic friend +Prospero (one would say June remonstrating with December) can't +bring himself to like it."</p> +<p>John remonstrated, protested, argued. Winthorpe, calmly, +smilingly, restated his purpose and his motives. John pleaded, +implored, appealed (so the watcher read his gesture) to earth, to +heaven. Winthorpe took his arm, and calmly, smilingly, tried to +soothe, tried to convince him. John drew his arm free, and, +employing it to add force and persuasiveness to his speech, renewed +his arguments, pointed out how unnecessary, inhuman, impossible the +whole thing was. "It's monstrous. It's against all nature. There's +no <i>reason</i> in it. What does it <i>rhyme</i> with? It's +wilfully going out of your way to seek, to create, wretchedness. My +mind simply refuses to accept it." It was as if Maria Dolores could +hear the words. But Winthorpe, calm and smiling, would not be +moved. John shook his head, muttered, shrugged his shoulders, threw +up his hands, muttered again. "Was ever such pig-headed obstinacy! +Was ever such arbitrary, voluntary blindness! I give you up, for a +perverse, a triple-pated madman!" And so, John muttering and +frowning, Winthorpe serenely smiling, reiterating, they passed +round the corner of the Castle buildings, and were lost to Maria +Dolores' view.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>III</h2> +<p>That afternoon, seated on the moss, under a tall eucalyptus tree +near to Frau Brandt's pavilion, Maria Dolores received a visit from +Annunziata.</p> +<p>Annunziata's pale little face was paler, her big grave eyes were +graver, even than their wont. She nodded her head, slowly, +portentously; and her glance was heavy with significance.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores smiled. "What is the matter?" she cheerfully +inquired.</p> +<p>"Ah," sighed Annunziata, deeply, with another portentous +head-shake, "I wish I knew."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores laughed. "Sit down," she suggested, making room +beside her on the moss, "and try to think."</p> +<p>Annunziata sat down, curled herself up. "Something has happened +to Prospero," she said, <i>de profundis</i>.</p> +<p>"Oh?" asked Maria Dolores. "What?" She seemed heartlessly +cheerful, and even rather amused.</p> +<p>"Ah," sighed Annunziata, "that is what I wish I knew. He has had +a friend to pass the day with him."</p> +<p>"Yes?" said Maria Dolores. "I expect I saw his friend walking +with him this morning?"</p> +<p>"<i>Già</i>," said Annunziata. "They have been walking +about all day. <i>His</i> friend Prospero he calls him. But he +doesn't look very prosperous. He looks like a slate-pencil. He is +long and thin, and dark and cold, and hard, just like a +slate-pencil. He would not stay the night, though we had a bed +prepared for him. He is going to Rome, and Prospero has driven him +to the railway station at Cortello. I hate him," wound up +Annunziata, simply.</p> +<p>"Mercy!" exclaimed Maria Dolores, opening her eyes. "Why do you +hate him?"</p> +<p>"Because he must have said or done something very unkind to +Prospero," answered Annunziata. "Oh, you should see him. He is so +sad—so sad and so angry. He keeps scowling, and shaking his +head, and saying things in English, which I cannot understand, but +I am sure they are sad things and angry things. And he would not +eat any dinner,—no, not that much," (Annunziata measured off +an inch on her finger), "he who always eats a great +deal,—<i>eh, ma molto, molto</i>," and, separating her hands, +she measured off something like twenty inches in the air.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores couldn't help laughing a little at this. But +afterwards she said, on a key consolatory, "Ah, well, he has gone +away now, so let us hope your friend Prospero will promptly recover +his accustomed appetite."</p> +<p>"Yes," said Annunziata, "I hope so. But oh, that old +slate-pencil man, how I hate him! I would like +to—<i>uhhh!</i>" She clenched her little white fist, and +shook it, threateningly, vehemently, while her eyes fiercely +flashed. ... Next instant, however, her mien entirely changed. Like +a light extinguished, all the fierceness went out of her face, +making way for what seemed pain and terror. "There," she cried, +pain and terror in her voice, "I have offended God. Oh, I am so +sorry, so sorry. My sin, my sin, my sin," she murmured, bowing her +head, and thrice striking her breast.</p> +<p>"I take back every word I said. I do not hate him. I would not +hurt him—I would not even stick a pin in him—if I had +him at my mercy. No—I would do anything I could to help him. +I would give him anything I had that he could want. I would give +him my coral rosary. I would give him"—she hesitated, +struggled, and at last, drawing a deep breath, gritting her teeth, +in supreme renunciation—"yes, I would give him my tame kid," +she forced herself to pronounce, with a kind of desperate firmness. +"But see," she wailed, her little white brow a mesh of painful +wrinkles, "it is all no good. God is still angry. Oh, what shall I +do?" And, to the surprise and distress of Maria Dolores, she burst +into a sudden passion of tears, sobbing, sobbing, with that +abandonment of grief which only children know.</p> +<p>"My dear, my dear," exclaimed Maria Dolores, drawing her to her. +"My dearest, you mustn't cry like that. Dear little Annunziata. +What is it? Why do you cry so, dear one? Answer me. Tell me."</p> +<p>But Annunziata only buried her face in Maria Dolores' sleeve, +and moaned, while long, tremulous convulsions shook her frail +little body. Maria Dolores put both arms about her, hugged her +close, and laid her cheek upon her hair.</p> +<p>"Darling Annunziata, don't cry. Why should you cry so, dearest? +God is not angry with you. Why should you think that God is angry +with you? God loves you, darling. Everyone loves you. There, +there—dearest—don't cry. Sweet one, dear one."</p> +<p>Transitions, with Annunziata, were sometimes inexplicably rapid. +All at once her sobbing ceased; she looked up, and smiled, smiled +radiantly, from a face that was wet and glistening with tears. +"Thanks be to God," she piously exulted; "God is not angry any +more."</p> +<p>"Of course He isn't," said Maria Dolores, tightening her hug, +and touching Annunziata's curls lightly with her lips. "But He was +never angry. What made you think that God was angry?"</p> +<p>Annunziata's big eyes widened. "Didn't you notice?" she asked, +in a hushed voice, amazed.</p> +<p>"No," wondered Maria Dolores. "What was there to notice?"</p> +<p>"He made them draw a cloud over the sun," Annunziata whispered. +"Didn't you notice that when I said I would like to—when I +said what I said about that friend of Prospero's—just then +they drew a cloud across the sun? That is a sign that God is angry. +The sun, you know, is the window in Heaven through which God looks +down on the world, and through which the light of Heaven shines on +the world. And when the window is open, we feel happy and thankful, +and wish to sing and laugh. But when we have done something to make +God angry with us, then He sends angels to draw clouds over the +window, so that we may be shut out of His sight, and the light of +Heaven may be shut off from us. And then we are lonely and cold, +and we could quarrel with anything, even with the pigs. God wishes +to show us how bad it would be always to be shut off from His +sight. But now they have drawn the cloud away, so God is not angry +any more. I made a good act of contrition, and He has forgiven +me."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores smiled, but under her smile there was a look of +seriousness, a look of concern.</p> +<p>"My dear," she said smiling, and looking concerned, "you should +try to control your vivid little imagination. If every time a cloud +crosses the sun, you are going to assume the responsibility for it, +and to fancy that you have offended God, I'm afraid you'll have +rather an agitated life."</p> +<p>"Oh, no; not <i>every</i> time," exclaimed Annunziata, and she +was manifestly on the point of making a fine distinction, when +abruptly the current of her ideas was diverted. "Sh-h! There comes +Prospero," she cried, starting up. "I can see the top of his white +hat above the rhododendron bushes. He has driven his friend to +Cortello, and come home. I must run away, or he will see that I've +been crying. Don't tell him," she begged, putting her finger on her +lips; and she set off running, towards the presbytery, just as John +stepped forth from behind the long hedge of rhododendrons.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>IV</h2> +<p>John stepped forth from behind the rhododendrons, with a kind of +devil-may-care, loose, aimless gait, the brim of his Panama pulled +brigandishly down over one ear, his hands in the pockets of his +coat, his head bent, his brow creased, his eyes sombre, every line +and fibre of his person advertising him the prey of morose disgust. +But when he saw Maria Dolores, he hastily straightened up, +unpocketed his hands, took off his hat (giving it a flap that set +the brim at a less truculent angle), and smiled. And when, the +instant after, he caught sight of the flying form of Annunziata, +his smile turned into a glance of wonder.</p> +<p>"What is the matter with Annunziata? Why is she running with all +her legs like that?" he asked.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores had the tiniest catch of laughter. "She is running +away from you," she answered.</p> +<p>"From <i>me</i>?" marvelled John. "<i>Je suis donc un foudre de +guerre?</i> What on earth is she running away from me for?"</p> +<p>Maria Dolores smiled mysteriously.</p> +<p>"Ah," she said, "she asked me not to tell you. I am in the +delicate position of confidante."</p> +<p>"And therefore I hope you'll tell me with the less reluctance," +said John, urbanely unprincipled. "A confidante always betrays her +confidence to some one,—that's the part of the game that +makes it worth while."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores' smile deepened.</p> +<p>"In that pale green frock, on that bank of dark-green moss, with +her complexion and her hair,—by Jove, how stunning she is!" +thought John, in a commotion.</p> +<p>"Well," she said, "Annunziata ran away because she didn't want +you to see that she'd been crying."</p> +<p>John raised his eyebrows, the blue eyes under them becoming +expressive of dismay.</p> +<p>"Crying?" he echoed. "The poor little kiddie! What had she been +crying about!"</p> +<p>"That is a long story, and involves some of her peculiar +theological tenets," said Maria Dolores. "But, in a single word, +about your friend."</p> +<p>John's eyebrows descended to their normal level, and drew +together.</p> +<p>"Crying about my friend? What friend?" he puzzled.</p> +<p>"Your friend the priest—the man who has been passing the +day here with you," explained Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>John gave a start, threw back his head, and eyed her with +astonishment.</p> +<p>"That is extraordinary," he exclaimed.</p> +<p>"What?" asked she, lightly glancing up.</p> +<p>"That you should call him my friend the priest," said John, +wagging a bewildered head.</p> +<p>"Why? Isn't he a priest? He has all the air of one," said Maria +Dolores.</p> +<p>"No; he's an American millionaire," said John, succinctly.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores moved in her place, and laughed.</p> +<p>"Dear me!" she said, "I did strike wide of the mark. An American +millionaire should cultivate a less deceptive appearance. With that +thin, shaven face of his, and that look of an early Christian +martyr in his eyes, and the dark clothes he wears, wherever he goes +he's sure to be mistaken for a priest."</p> +<p>"Yes," said John, with a kind of grimness; "that's what's +extraordinary. He comes of a long line of bigoted Protestants, he's +a reincarnation of some of his stern old Puritan forebears, and you +find that he looks like their pet abomination, a Romish priest. +Well, you have a prophetic eye."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores gazed up inquiringly. "A prophetic eye?" she +questioned.</p> +<p>"I merely mean," said John, with thaumaturgic airiness, "that +the man is on his way to Rome to study for the priesthood." And he +gave a thaumaturgic toss to his bearded chin.</p> +<p>"Oh!" cried Maria Dolores, and leaned back against her +eucalyptus tree, and laughed again.</p> +<p>John, however, dejectedly shook his head, and gloomed.</p> +<p>"Laugh if you will," he said, "though it seems to me as far as +possible from a laughing matter, and I think Annunziata chose the +better part when she cried."</p> +<p>"I beg your pardon," said Maria Dolores, perhaps a trifle +stiffly. "I was only laughing at the coincidence of my having +supposed him to be a priest, and then learning that, though he +isn't, he is going to become one. I was not laughing at the fact +itself. Nor was it," she added, her stiffness leaving her, and a +little glimmer of amusement taking its place, "that fact which made +Annunziata cry."</p> +<p>"I dare say not," responded John, "seeing that she couldn't +possibly have known it. But it might well have done so. It's enough +to bring tears to the eyes of a brazen image." He angrily jerked +his shoulders.</p> +<p>"What?" cried Maria Dolores, surprised, rebukeful. "That a man +is to become a holy priest?"</p> +<p>"Oh, no," said John. "That fact alone, detached from special +circumstances, might be a subject for rejoicing. But the fact that +this particular man, <i>in</i> his special circumstances, is to +become a priest—well, I simply have no words to express my +feeling." He threw out his arms, in a gesture of despair. "I'm +simply sick with rage and pity. I could gnash my teeth and rend my +garments."</p> +<p>"Mercy!" cried Maria Dolores, stirring. "What are the special +circumstances?"</p> +<p>"Oh, it's a grisly history," said John. "It's a tale of the +wanton, ruthless, needless, purposeless sacrifice of two lives. +It's his old black icy Puritan blood. Winthorpe—that's his +name—had for years been a freethinker, far too intellectual +and enlightened, and that sort of thing, you know, to believe any +such old wives' tale as the Christian Religion. He and I used to +have arguments, tremendous ones, in which, of course, neither in +the least shook the other. Darwin and Spencer, with a dash of his +native Emerson, were religion enough for him. Then this morning he +arrived here, and said, 'Congratulate me. A month ago I was +received into the Church.'"</p> +<p>Maria Dolores looked up, animated, her dark eyes sparkling.</p> +<p>"How splendid!" she said.</p> +<p>"Yes," agreed John, "so I thought. 'Congratulate me,' he said. I +should think I did congratulate him,—with all my heart and +soul. But then, naturally, I asked him how it had happened, what +had brought it to pass."</p> +<p>"Yes—?" prompted Maria Dolores, as he paused.</p> +<p>"Well," said John, his face hardening, "he thereupon proceeded +to tell me in his quiet way, with his cool voice (it's like +smooth-flowing cold water), absolutely the most inhuman story I +have ever had to keep my patience and listen to."</p> +<p>"What was the story?" asked Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"If you can credit such inhumanity, it was this," answered John. +"It seems that he fell in love—with a girl in Boston, where +he lives. And what's more, and worse, the girl fell in love with +him. So there they were, engaged. But she was a Catholic, and his +state of unbelief was a cause of great grief to her. So she pleaded +with him, and persuaded, till, merely to comfort her, and without +the faintest suspicion that his scepticism could be weakened, he +promised to give the Catholic position a thorough reconsideration, +to read certain books, and to put himself under instruction with a +priest: which he did. Which he did, if you please, with the result, +to his own unutterable surprise, that one fine day he woke up and +discovered that he'd been convinced, that he <i>believed</i>."</p> +<p>"Yes?" said Maria Dolores, eagerly. "Yes—? And then? And +the girl?"</p> +<p>"Ah," said John, with a groan, "the girl That's the pity of it. +That's where his black old Puritan blood comes in. Blood? It isn't +blood—it's some fluid form of stone—it's flint +dissolved in vinegar. The girl! Mind you, she loved him, they were +engaged to be married. Well, he went to her, and said, 'I have been +converted. I believe in the Christian religion—your religion. +But I can't believe a thing like that, and go on living as I lived +when I didn't believe it,—go on living as if it weren't true, +or didn't matter. It does matter—it matters +supremely—it's the only thing in the world that matters. I +can't believe it, and <i>marry</i>—marry, and live in +tranquil indifference to it. No, I must put aside the thought of +marriage, the thought of personal happiness. I must sell all I have +and give it to the poor, take up my cross and follow Him. I am +going to Rome to study for the priesthood.' Imagine," groaned John, +stretching out his hands, "<i>imagine</i> talking like that to a +woman you are supposed to love, to a woman who loves you." And he +wrathfully ground his heel into the earth.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores looked serious.</p> +<p>"After all, he had to obey his conscience," she said. "After +all, he was logical, he was consistent."</p> +<p>"Oh, his conscience! Oh, consistency!" cried John, with an +intolerant fling of the body. "At bottom it's nothing better than +common self-indulgence, as I took the liberty of telling him to his +face. It's the ardour of the convert, acting upon that acid +solution of flint which takes the place of blood in his veins, and +causing sour puritanical impulses, which (like any other +voluptuary) he immediately gives way to. It's nothing better than +unbridled passion. Conscience, indeed! Where was his conscience +when it came to <i>her</i>? Think of that poor girl—that poor +pale girl—who <i>loved</i> him. Oh, Mother of Mercy!"</p> +<p>He moved impatiently three steps to the left, three steps to the +right, beating the palm of one hand with the back of the other.</p> +<p>"What did she do? How did she take it?" asked Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"What she ought to have done," said John, between his teeth, +"was to scratch his eyes out. What she did do, as he informed me +with a seraphic countenance, was not merely to approve of +everything he said, but to determine to do likewise. So, while he's +on his way to Rome, to get himself tonsured and becassocked, she's +scrubbing the floors of an Ursuline convent, as a novice. And there +are two lives spoiled." He shrugged his shoulders.</p> +<p>"Oh, no, no," contended Maria Dolores, earnestly, shaking her +head, "not spoiled. On the contrary. It is sad, in a way, if you +like, but it is very beautiful, it is heroic. Their love must have +been a very beautiful love, that could lead them to such +self-sacrifice. Two lives given to God."</p> +<p>"Can't people give their lives to God without ceasing to +<i>live</i>?" cried John. "If marriage is a sacrament, how can they +better give their lives to God than by living sanely and sweetly in +Christian marriage? But these people withdraw from life, renounce +life, shirk and evade the life that God had prepared for them and +was demanding of them. It's as bad as suicide. Besides, it implies +such a totally perverted view of religion. Religion surely is given +to us to help us to <i>live</i>, to show us <i>how</i> to live, to +enable us to meet the difficulties, emergencies, responsibilities +of life. But these people look upon their religion as a mandate to +turn their backs on the responsibilities of life, and scuttle away. +And as for <i>love</i>! Well, she no doubt did love, poor lady. But +Winthorpe! No. When a man loves he doesn't send his love into a +convent, and go to Rome to get himself becassocked." He gave his +head a nod of finality.</p> +<p>"That, I fancy, is a question of temperament," said Maria +Dolores. "Your friend has the ascetic temperament. And it does not +by any means follow that he loves less because he resigns his love. +What you call an inhuman story seems to me a wonderfully noble one. +I saw your friend this morning, when he and you were walking +together, and I said to myself, 'That man looks as if he had +listened to the Counsels of Perfection. His vocation shines through +him.' I think you should reconcile yourself to his accepting +it."</p> +<p>"Well," said John, on the tone of a man ready to change the +subject, "I owe him at least one good mark. His account of his +'heart-state' led me to examine my own, and I discovered that I am +in love myself,—which is a useful thing to know."</p> +<p>"Oh?" said Maria Dolores, with a little effect of reserve.</p> +<p>"Yes," said John, nothing daunted, "though unlike his, mine is +an unreciprocated flame, and unavowed."</p> +<p>"Ah?" said Maria Dolores, reserved indeed, but not without an +undertone of sympathy.</p> +<p>"Yes," said John, playing with fire, and finding therein a heady +mixture of fearfulness and joy. "The woman I love doesn't dream I +love her, and dreams still less of loving me,—for which +blessed circumstance may Heaven make me truly thankful."</p> +<p>The sentiment sounding unlikely, Maria Dolores raised doubtful +eyes. They shone into John's; his drank their light; and something +violent happened in his bosom.</p> +<p>"Oh—?" she said.</p> +<p>"Yes," said he, thinking what adorable little hands she had, as +they lay loosely clasped in her lap, thinking how warm they would +be, and fragrant; thinking too what fun it was, this playing with +fire, how perilous and exciting, and how egotistical he must seem +to her, and how nothing on earth should prevent him from continuing +the play. "Yes," he said, "it's a circumstance to be thankful for, +because, like Winthorpe himself, though for different reasons, I'm +unable to contemplate marriage." His voice sank sorrowfully, and he +made a sorrowful movement.</p> +<p>"Oh—?" said Maria Dolores, her sympathy becoming more +explicit.</p> +<p>"Winthorpe's too beastly puritanical—and I'm too beastly +poor," said he.</p> +<p>"Oh," she murmured. Her eyes softened; her sympathy deepened to +compassion.</p> +<p>"She must certainly put me down as the most complacent egotist +in two hemispheres, so to regale her with unsolicited information +about myself," thought John; "but surely it would need six +hemispheres to produce another pair of eyes as beautiful as +hers."—"Yes," he said, "I should be 'looking up' if I asked +even a beggar-maid to marry me."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores' beautiful eyes became thoughtful as well as +compassionate.</p> +<p>"But men who are poor work and earn money," she said, on the +tone that young women adopt when the spirit moves them to preach to +young men. And when the spirit does move them to that, things may +be looked upon as having advanced an appreciable distance, the ball +may be looked upon as rolling.</p> +<p>"So I've heard," said John, his head in the clouds. "It must be +dull business."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores dimly smiled. "Do <i>you</i> do no work?" she +asked.</p> +<p>"I've never had time," said John. "I've been too busy enjoying +life."</p> +<p>"Oh," said Maria Dolores, with the intonation of reproach.</p> +<p>"Yes," said he, "enjoying the Humour, the Romance, the Beauty of +it,—and combine the three together, make a chord of 'em, you +get the Divinity. Or, to take a lower plane, the world's a stage, +and life's the drama. I could never leave off watching and +listening long enough to do any work."</p> +<p>"But do you not wish to play a part in the drama, to be one of +the actors?" asked his gentle homilist. "Have you no ambition?"</p> +<p>"Not an atom," he easily confessed. "The part of spectator seems +to me by far the pleasantest. To sit in the stalls and watch the +incredible jumble-show, the reason-defying topsy-turvydom of it, +the gorgeous, squalid, tearful, and mirthful pageantry, the +reckless inconsequences, the flagrant impossibilities; to watch the +Devil ramping up and down like a hungry lion, and to hear the +young-eyed cherubim choiring from the skies: what better +entertainment could the heart of man desire?"</p> +<p>"But are we here merely to be entertained?" she sweetly +preached, while John's blue eyes somewhat mischievously laughed, +and he felt it hard that he couldn't stop her rose-red mouth with +kisses. "Aren't we here to be, as the old-fashioned phrase goes, of +use in the world? Besides, now that you are in love, surely you +will never sit down weakly, and say, 'I am too poor to marry,' and +so give up your love,—like your friend Winthorpe indeed, but +for ignoble instead of noble motives. Surely you will set to work +with determination, and earn money, and make it possible to marry. +Or else your love must be a very poor affair." And her adorable +little hands, as they lay ("like white lilies," thought John) upon +the pale-green fabric of her gown, unclasped themselves, opened +wide for an instant, showing the faint pink of their palms, then +lightly again interlaced their fingers.</p> +<p>He laughed. "You are delicious," he said to her fervently, in +silence. "My love is all right," he said aloud. "I love her as much +as it is humanly possible to love. I love her with passion, with +tenderness; with worship, with longing; I love her with wonder; I +love her with sighs, with laughter. I love her with all I have and +with all I am. And I owe one to Winthorpe for having unwittingly +opened my eyes to my condition. But earning money? I've a notion +it's difficult. What could I do?"</p> +<p>"Have you no profession?" she asked.</p> +<p>"Not the ghost of one," said he, with nonchalance.</p> +<p>"But is there no profession that appeals to you—for which +you feel that you might have a taste?" Her dark eyes were very +earnest.</p> +<p>"Not the ghost of one," said he, dissembling his amusement. +"Professions—don't they all more or less involve sitting shut +up in stuffy offices, among pigeon-holes full of dusty and futile +papers, doing tiresome tasks for the greater glory of other people, +like a slave in the hold of a galley? No, if I'm to work, I must +work at something that will keep me above decks—something +that will keep me out of doors, in touch with the air and the +earth. I might become an agricultural labourer,—but that's +not very munificently paid; or a farmer,—but that would +require perhaps more capital than I could command, and anyhow the +profits are uncertain. I've an uncle who's a bit of a farmer, and +year in, year out, I believe he makes a loss. 'Well, what's left? +... Ah, a gardener. I don't think I should half mind being a +gardener."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores looked as if she weren't sure whether or not to +take him seriously.</p> +<p>"A gardener? That's not very munificently paid either, is it?" +she suggested, trying her ground.</p> +<p>"Alas, I fear not," sighed John. Then he made a grave face. "But +would you have me entirely mercenary? Money isn't everything here +below."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores smiled. She saw that for the moment at least he +was not to be taken seriously.</p> +<p>"True," she agreed, "though it ran in my mind that to earn +money, so that you might marry, was your only motive for going to +work at all."</p> +<p>"I had forgotten that," said the light-minded fellow. "I was +thinking of occupations that would keep one in touch with the +earth. A gardener's occupation keeps him constantly in the +charmingest possible sort of touch with her, and the most +intimate."</p> +<p>"Do they call the earth <i>her</i> in English?" asked Maria +Dolores. "I thought they said <i>it</i>."</p> +<p>"I'm afraid, for the greater part, they do," answered John. "But +it's barbarous of them, it's unfilial. Our brown old +mother,—fancy begrudging her the credit of her sex! Our brown +and green old mother; our kindly, bounteous mother; our radiant, +our queenly mother, old, and yet perennially, radiantly young. Look +at her now," he cried, circling the garden with his arm, and +pointing to the farther landscape, "look at her, shining in her +robes of pearl and gold, shining and smiling,—one would say a +bride arrayed for the altar. Such is her infinite variety. Her +infinite variety, her infinite abundance, the fragrance and the +sweetness of her,—oh, I could fall upon my face and worship +her, like a Pagan of Eld. The earth and all that grows and lives +upon her, the blossoming tree, the singing bird,—I could +build temples to her."</p> +<p>"And the crawling snake?" put in Maria Dolores, a gleam at the +bottom of her eyes.</p> +<p>"The crawling snake," quickly retorted John, "serves a most +useful purpose. He establishes the <i>raison d'être</i> of +man. Man and his heel are here to crush the serpent's head."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores leaned back, softly laughing.</p> +<p>"Your infatuation for the earth is so great," she said, +"mightn't your lady-love, if she suspected it, be jealous?"</p> +<p>"No," said John, "it is the earth that might be jealous, for, +until I saw my lady-love, she was the undivided mistress of my +heart. For the rest, my lady-love enjoys, upon this point, my +entire confidence. I have kept nothing from her."</p> +<p>"That is well," approved Maria Dolores. "And the sky and the +sea," still softly laughing, she asked, "have they no place in your +affections?</p> +<p>"The sky is her tiring-maiden, and I love the sky for that," +said John. "'Tis the sky that clothes her in her many-coloured +raiment, and holds the light whereby her beauty is made manifest. +And the sea is a jewel that she bears upon her bosom,—a +magical jewel, whence, with the sky's aid, she draws the soft rain +that is her scent and her cosmetic. 'Fragrant the fertile earth +after soft showers.' Do you know, I could almost forgive the dour +and detestable Milton everything for the sake of those seven words. +They show that in the sense of smell he had at least one attribute +of humanity."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores' dark eyes were quizzical.</p> +<p>"The dour and detestable Milton?" she exclaimed. "Poor Milton! +What has he done to merit such anathema?</p> +<p>"It isn't what he has done, but what he was," said John. "That +he was dour nobody will deny, dour and sour and inhuman. Ask those +unfortunate, long-suffering daughters of his, if you doubt it. +<i>They</i> could tell you stories. But he was worse. He was a +scribe and a Pharisee, a pragmatical, self-righteous, canting old +scribe and Pharisee. And he was worse still, and still worse yet. +He was—what seems to me to-day the worstest thing +unhung—he was a Puritan. Like Winthorpe's, his blood was +black and icy and vinegarish. Like Winthorpe—But there. I +mustn't abuse Winthorpe any more, and I must try to forgive Milton. +Milton wrote seven good words, and Winthorpe unwittingly opened a +lover's eyes to his condition."</p> +<p>He paused, and smiled down upon her, and his newly opened (and +very blue) blue eyes said much. Her eyes were dreaming on the +landscape, where it shone in pearl and gold. However, as she gave +no sign of finding his conversation wearisome, he took heart, and +continued.</p> +<p>"For when he told me how he had put his love away, never again +to see her, and how at that moment she would be scrubbing floors +(or taking the discipline, perhaps?) in a convent of Ursulines, +suddenly, and without any action of the will on my part, there rose +before me the vision of a certain woman;—a woman I knew a +little, admired immensely, very much liked, but didn't for an +instant suppose I was seriously in love with. And involuntarily, +with the vision of her before me, I asked myself whether, +<i>mutatis mutandis</i>, I could have done as he had, and in a +flash I saw that I could not,—that not for the wealth of +Ormus and of Ind could I or would I give her up, if once I had her. +So, by that token, and by the uncommon wrath with which his tale +inflamed me," John, with a rhetorical flourish, perorated, "I +discovered that I loved." And again his eyes said much.</p> +<p>Hers were still on the prospect.</p> +<p>"Yet if you only know her a little, how can you love her?" she +asked, in a musing voice.</p> +<p>"Did I say I only know her a little?" asked John. "I know her a +great deal. I know her through and through. I know that she is pure +gold, pure crystal; that she is made of all music, all light, all +sweetness, and of all shadow and silence and mystery too, as women +should be. I know that earth holds naught above her. I do not care +to employ superlatives, so, to put it in the form of an +understatement, I know that she is simply and absolutely perfect. +If you could see her! If you could see her eyes, her deep-glowing, +witty, humorous, mischievous, innocent eyes, with the soul that +burns in them, the passion that sleeps. If you could see the black +soft masses of her hair, and her white brow, and the pale-rose of +her cheeks, and the red-rose of her lovely smiling mouth. If you +could see her figure, slender and strong, and the grace and pride +of her carriage,—the carriage of an imperial princess. If you +could see her hands,—they lie in her lap like languid lilies. +And her voice,—'tis the colour of her mouth and the glow of +her eyes made audible. And if you could whisper to yourself her +melodious and thrice adorable name. I know her a great deal. When I +said that I only knew her a little, I meant it in the sense that +she only knows me a little,—which after all, alas, for +practical purposes comes to the same thing."</p> +<p>He had spoken with emphasis, with fervour, his pink face +animated and full of intention. Maria Dolores kept her soft-glowing +eyes resolutely away from him, but I think the soul that burned in +them (if not the passion that slept) was vaguely troubled. <i>Qui +pane d'amour</i>—how does the French proverb run? Did she +vaguely feel perhaps that the seas they were sailing were perilous? +Anyhow, as John saw with sinking heart, she was at the point of +putting an end to their present conjunction,—she was +preparing to rise. He would have given worlds to offer a helping +hand, but (however rich in worlds) he was, for the occasion, poor +in courage. When love comes in at the door, assurance as like as +not will fly out of the window. So she rose unaided.</p> +<p>"Let us hope," she said, giving him a glance in which he +perceived an under-gleam as of not unfriendly mockery, "that she +will soon come to know you better."</p> +<p>"Heaven forbid!" cried he, with a fine simulation of alarm. "It +is upon her ignorance of my true character that I base such faint +hopes as I possess of some day winning her esteem."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores laughed, nodded, and lightly moved away.</p> +<p>"My son," said John to himself, "you steered precious close to +the wind. You had best be careful."</p> +<p>And then he was conscious of a sudden change in things. The +garden smiled about him, the valley below laughed in the breeze, +the blackcaps sang, the many windows of the Castle glistened in the +sun; but their beauty and their pleasantness had departed, had +retired with her into the long, low, white-walled, red-roofed +pavilion. He was conscious of a sudden change in things, and of a +sudden acute and bitter depression within himself.</p> +<p>"These are great larks," he said; "great larks while they +last,—but what's the good of them in the end? What do they +lead to? What's the good of coquetting with blisses that can't be +yours?" And he breathed a prodigious sigh. "When shall I see her +again?" he asked, and thereupon was seized by his old +terror—his terror of yesterday, though it seemed to him a +terror he had known all his life—lest he should never see her +again. "She's only a visitor. What's to prevent her leaving this +very night?"</p> +<p>The imagination was intolerable. He entered the Castle court, +and climbed the staircase of honour, and rambled through the long +suites of great empty rooms, empty of everything save the memory of +the past and the portraits of the dead, there, if he might, for a +time at least, to lose himself and to forget her.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>V</h2> +<p>"Who is the young man you have been talking with so long?" asked +Frau Brandt, as Maria Dolores came into her sitting-room, a vast, +square, bare room, with a marble floor and a painted ceiling, with +Venetian blinds to shelter it from the sun, and a bitter-sweet +smell, as of rosemary or I know not what other aromatic herb, upon +its cool air.</p> +<p>"Oh? You saw us?" said Maria Dolores, answering the question +with question.</p> +<p>"Him I have seen many times—every day for a week at +least," said Frau Brandt. "But I never before saw you talking with +him. Who is he?" She was a small, brown, square-built, +black-haired, homely-featured old woman, in a big, round starched +white cap and a flowing black silk gown. She sat in an uncushioned +oaken armchair by the window, with some white knitting in her bony, +blunt-fingered brown hands, and tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles on +her nose. But the spectacles couldn't hide the goodness or the +soundness or the sweetness that looked forth from her motherly old +honest brown eyes.</p> +<p>"He is a young man who lives <i>en pension</i> at the +presbytery," said Maria Dolores, "a young Englishman."</p> +<p>"So?" said Frau Brandt. "What is his name?"</p> +<p>"I don't know," said Maria Dolores, with disengagement real or +feigned. "His Christian name, I believe, is John."</p> +<p>"But his family name?" persisted Frau Brandt.</p> +<p>"It is probably Brown, Jones, or Robinson," said Maria Dolores. +"Or it may even be Black, Smith, or Johnson. Most Englishmen are +named one or the other."</p> +<p>"So?" said Frau Brandt. "But is it prudent or seemly for you to +talk familiarly with a young man whose name is unknown to you?"</p> +<p>"Why not?" asked Maria Dolores, raising her eyebrows, as if +surprised. "He seems a very harmless young man. I don't think he +will eat me. And he is English,—and I like English people. +And he is intelligent,—his conversation amuses me. And he has +nice easy, impetuous manners,—so different from the formality +and restraint of Austrian young men. What can his name matter?"</p> +<p>"But"—Frau Brandt looked up impressively over her +spectacles, and her voice was charged with gravity, for she was +about to ask a question to the Teutonic mind of quite supreme +importance—"but is he noble?" It was to her what—nay, +more than what—the question, "Is he respectable?" would have +been to an Englishwoman.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores laughed.</p> +<p>"Oh, no," she said. "At least I have every reason to believe +not, and I devoutly hope not. He belongs I expect to what they call +in England the middle class. He has an uncle who is a farmer."</p> +<p>Frau Brandt's good old brown eyes showed her profoundly shocked, +and expressed profound reprehension.</p> +<p>"But you were speaking with him familiarly—you were +speaking with him almost as an equal," she pronounced in bated +accents, in accents of consternation.</p> +<p>Again Maria Dolores laughed.</p> +<p>"True," she assented gaily, "and that is exactly what I couldn't +do if he <i>were</i> noble. Then I should have to remember our +respective positions. But where the difference of rank is so great, +one can talk familiarly without fear. <i>Ça n'engage +à rien</i>."</p> +<p>Frau Brandt nodded her head, for full half a minute, with many +meanings; she nodded it now up and down, and now shook it +sidewise.</p> +<p>"I do not like it," she said, at last. "Your brother would not +like it. It is not becoming. Well, thanks be to Heaven, he is only +English."</p> +<p>"Oh, of course," agreed Maria Dolores, "if he were Austrian, it +would be entirely different."</p> +<p>"But is it fair to the young man himself?" pursued Frau Brandt. +"Is he aware that he is hobanobbing with a Serene Highness? You +treat him as an equal. What if he should fall in love with +you?"</p> +<p>"What indeed! But he won't," laughed Maria Dolores, possibly +with a mental reservation.</p> +<p>"Who can tell?" said Frau Brandt. "His eyes, when he looked at +you, had an expression. But there is a greater danger still. You +are both at the dangerous age. He is good-looking. What if your +heart should become interested in him?"</p> +<p>"Oh, in that case," answered Maria Dolores, lightly, her chin a +little in the air, "I should marry him—if he asked me."</p> +<p>"What!" cried Frau Brandt, half rising from her chair.</p> +<p>"Yes," said Maria Dolores, cheerfully unexcited. "He is a man of +breeding and education, even if he isn't noble. If I loved a man, I +shouldn't give one thought to his birth. I'm tired of all our +Austrian insistence upon birth, upon birth and quarterings and +precedencies. If ever I love, I shall love some one just for what +he is, for what God has made him, and for nothing else. It wouldn't +matter if his father were a cobbler—if I loved him, I'd marry +him." Her chin higher in the air, she had every appearance of +meaning what she said.</p> +<p>Frau Brandt had sunk back in her chair, and was nodding her +white-capped old head again.</p> +<p>"Oh, my child, my child," she grieved. "Will you never rid your +fancy of these high-flown, unpractical, romantic whimsies? It all +comes of reading poetry." She herself, good woman, read little but +her prayers.</p> +<p>"Oh, my dear true Heart," responded Maria Dolores, laughing. She +crossed the room, and placed her hand affectionately upon Frau +Brandt's shoulder. "My dearest old Nurse! Do not distress yourself. +This is not yet a question of actuality. Let us not cry before we +are hurt." And she stooped, and kissed her nurse's brown old +brow.</p> +<p>But afterwards she stood looking with great pensiveness out of +the window, stood so for a long while; and I fancy there was a +softer glow than ever in her soft-glowing eyes, and perhaps a +livelier rose in her pale-rose cheeks.</p> +<p>"What are you thinking so deeply about?" Frau Brandt asked +by-and-by.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores woke with a little start, and turned from the +window, and laughed again.</p> +<p>"Oh, thinking about my cobbler's son, of course," she said.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>VI</h2> +<p>Annunziata, seeking him to announce that supper was ready, found +John, seated in his chamber of dead ladies, his arms folded, his +legs crossed, his eyes fixed, a frown upon his prone brow; his +spirit apparently rapt in a brown study.</p> +<p>"Eh! Prospero!" she called.</p> +<p>Whereat he came to himself glanced up, glanced round, changed +his posture, and finally, rising, blew his preoccupations from him +in a deep, deep sigh.</p> +<p>"Oh, what a sigh!" marvelled Annunziata, making big eyes. "What +are you sighing so hard for?"</p> +<p>John looked at her, and smiled.</p> +<p>"Sighing for my miller's daughter, my dear," he said.</p> +<p>And, as he followed her to the presbytery, he sang softly to +himself—</p> +<div class="blockquot"><i>"It is the miller's daughter,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And she is grown so dear, so +dear,</span><br /> +That I would be the jewel<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That trembles in her +ear."</span></i></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PART_FIFTH" id="PART_FIFTH"></a>PART FIFTH</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>I</h2> +<p>It was Sunday. It was early morning. It was raining,—a +fine quiet, determined rain, that blurred the lower reaches of the +valley, and entirely hid the mountain-tops, so that one found it +hard not to doubt a little whether they were still there. Near at +hand the garden was as if a thin web of silver had been cast over +it, pale and dim, where wet surfaces reflected the diffused +daylight. And just across the Rampio, on the olive-clad hillside +that rose abruptly from its brink, rather an interesting process +was taking place,—the fabrication of clouds, no less. The +hillside, with its rondure of blue-grey foliage, would lie for a +moment quite bare and clear; then, at some high point, a mist would +begin to form, would appear indeed to issue from the earth, as +smoke from a subterranean fire, white smoke with pearly shadows; +would thicken and spread out; would draw together and rise in an +irregular spiral column, curling, swaying, poising, as if uncertain +what to do next; and at last, all at once making up its mind, (how +like a younker or a prodigal!), would go sailing away, straggling +away, amorphous, on a puff of wind, leaving the hillside clear +again;—till, presently, the process would recommence <i>da +capo</i>.</p> +<p>John and Annunziata, seated together on a marble bench in the +shelter of the great cloister, with its faded frescoes, at the +north-eastern extremity of the castle buildings, had been watching +this element-play for some minutes in silence. But by-and-by +Annunziata spoke.</p> +<p>"What makes the cloud come out of the hill like that?" she +asked, her eyes anxiously questioning his. "I have seen it happen +many times, but I could never understand it. There cannot be a fire +underneath?"</p> +<p>"If <i>you</i> can't understand it, Mistress Wisdom," responded +John, smiling on her, "you surely mustn't expect a featherpate like +me to. Between ourselves, I don't believe any one can really +understand it, though there's a variety of the human species called +scientists who might pretend they could. It's all a part of that +great scheme of miracles by which God's world goes on, Nature, +which nobody can really understand in the very least. All that the +chaps called scientists can really do is to observe and more or +less give names to the miracles. They can't explain 'em."</p> +<p>"It is great pleasure to watch such things," said Annunziata. +"It is a great blessing to be allowed to see a miracle performed +with your own eyes."</p> +<p>"So it is," agreed John. "And if you keep your eyes well open, +there's not a minute of the livelong day when you mayn't see +one."</p> +<p>"It is very strange," said Annunziata, "but when the sun shines, +then I love the sunny weather, and am glad that it does not rain. +Yet when it does rain, then I find that I love the rain too, that I +love it just as much as the sun,—it is so fresh, it smells so +good, the raindrops are so pretty, and they make such a pretty +sound where they fall, and the grey light is so pleasant."</p> +<p>"Our loves," said John, "are always very strange. Love is the +rummest miracle of them all. It is even more difficult to account +for than the formation of clouds on the hillside."</p> +<p>"We love the things that give us pleasure," said Annunziata.</p> +<p>"And the people, sometimes, who give us pain," said John.</p> +<p>"We love the people, first of all, who are related to us," said +Annunziata, "and then the people we see a great deal of—just +as I love, first of all, my uncle, and then you and Marcella the +cook."</p> +<p>"Who brings in the inevitable veal," said John. "Thank you, +Honeymouth." He bowed and laughed, while Annunziata's grave eyes +wondered what he was laughing at. "But it isn't every one," he +pointed out, "who has your solid and well-balanced little +head-piece. It isn't every one who keeps his love so neatly +docketed, or so sanely submitted to the sway of reason. Some of us +love first of all people who aren't related to us in the remotest +degree, and people we've seen hardly anything of and know next to +nothing about."</p> +<p>Annunziata deprecatingly shook her head.</p> +<p>"It is foolish to love people we know nothing about," she +declared, in her deep voice, and looked a very sage delivering +judgment.</p> +<p>"True enough," said John. "But what would you have? Some of us +are born to folly, as the sparks fly upward. You see, there's a +mighty difference between love and love. There's the love which is +affection, there's the love which is cupboard-love, and there's the +love which is just simply love-love and nothing else. The first, as +you have truly observed, has its roots in consanguinity or +association, the second in a lively hope of future comfits, and +either is sufficiently explicable. But the third has its roots +apparently in mere haphazard and causelessness, and isn't +explicable by any means whatsoever, and yet is far and away the +violentest of the three. It falls as the lightning from the clouds, +and strikes whom it will. Though I mix my metaphors fearlessly, +like a man, I trust, with your feminine intuition, you follow +me?"</p> +<p>"No," said Annunziata, without compunction, her eyes on the +distance. "I don't know what you mean."</p> +<p>"Thank Heaven you don't, pray Heaven you never may," said her +inconsequential friend. "For love-love is a plague. You meet a +person, for example, in a garden. You know nothing whatever about +her, not even her name, though you fear it may be Schmidt. You meet +her not more than half a dozen times all told. And suddenly one +morning you wake up to discover that she has become to you the +person of first importance in the world. She is practically a total +stranger to you, she's of a different nationality, a different +rank, yet she's infinitely the most precious and important person +in the world. When you're absent from her you can do nothing but +think of her, gloating with throes of aromatic pain over the memory +of your last meeting with her, longing with soul-hunger for your +next. The merest flutter of her gown, modulation of her voice, +glance of her eye, will throw your heart into a palpitation. You +look in the direction of the house that she inhabits, and you feel +the emotions of a Peri looking at the gate of Eden. And it gives +you the strangest sort of strange joy to talk about her, though of +course you take pains to talk about her in veiled terms, obliquely, +so that your listener shan't guess <i>whom</i> you are talking +about. In short, she is the be-all and the end-all of your +existence,—and you don't even know her name, though you fear +it may be Schmidt."</p> +<p>He lolled back at ease on the marble bench, and twirled his +yellow-red moustaches, fancy free.</p> +<p>"But you do know her name," said Annunziata, simply, in her +deepest voice, holding him with a gaze, lucent and serious, that +seemed almost reproachful. "Her name is Maria Dolores."</p> +<p>The thing was tolerably unexpected. What wonder if it put my +hero out of countenance? His attitude grew rigid, his pink skin +three shades pinker; his blue eyes stared at her, startled. So for +a second; then he relaxed, and laughed, laughed long and heartily, +perhaps a little despitefully too, at his own expense. ... But he +must try, if he might, to repair the mischief.</p> +<p>"My poor child," he said, resting his hand on her curls, and +gently smoothing them. "You are what the French call an <i>enfant +terrible</i>. You are what the English call a deuced sharp little +pickle. And I must try, if I can, without actually lying, to +persuade you that you are utterly mistaken, utterly and absolutely +mistaken,"—he raised his voice, for greater +convincingness,—"and that her name is nothing distantly +resembling the name that you have spoken, and that in fact her name +is Mrs. Harris, and that in fine there is no such person, and that +I was merely talking hypothetically, in abstractions; I must draw a +herring across the trail, I must raise a dust, and throw a lot of +it into your amazingly clear-sighted little eyes. Now, is it +definitely impressed upon you that her name is <i>not</i>—the +thrice-adorable name you mentioned?"</p> +<p>"I thought it was," answered Annunziata. "I am sorry it is not." +And then she dismissed the subject. "See, it is raining harder. See +how the rain comes down in long strings of beads,—see how it +is like a network of long strings of glass beads falling through +the air. When the rain comes down like that, it means that after +the rain stops it will be very hot. To-morrow it will be very +hot."</p> +<p>The bell in the clock-tower tolled out seven solemn strokes; +then the lighter-toned and nimbler-tongued bell of the church began +to ring.</p> +<p>"Come," peremptorily said Annunziata, jumping up. "Mass."</p> +<p>She held out her hand, took John's, and, like a mother, led the +meek and unquestioning young man to his duties.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>II</h2> +<p>Of course there are no such heretical inventions as pews in the +parish church of Sant' Alessina. You sit upon orthodox +rush-bottomed chairs, you kneel upon orthodox bare stones. But at +the Epistle side of the altar, at an elevation of perhaps a yard +from the pavement, there is a recess in the wall, enclosed by a +marble balustrade, and hung with faded red curtains, which looks, +I'm afraid, a good deal like a private box at a theatre, and is in +fact the tribune reserved for the masters of the Castle. (In former +days those masters were the Sforzas. So, from this tribune, the +members of that race of iron and blood, of fierceness and of guile, +have assisted at the mystical sacrifice of the Lamb of God!) +Heretofore, during John's residence at the presbytery, the tribune +had stood vacant. To-day it was occupied by Maria Dolores and Frau +Brandt. Maria Dolores, instead of wearing a hat, had adopted the +ancient and beautiful use of draping a long veil of black lace over +her dark hair.</p> +<p>John knelt in the middle of the church, in the thick of the +ragged, dirty, unsavoury villagers. When Mass was over, he returned +to the cloisters, and there, face to face, he met the lady of his +dreams.</p> +<p>She graciously inclined her head.</p> +<p>"Good morning," she said, smiling, in a voice that seemed to him +full of morning freshness.</p> +<p>"Good morning," he responded, wondering whether she could hear +the tremor of his heart. "Though, in honest truth, it's rather a +bad morning, isn't it?" he submitted, posing his head at an angle, +dubious and reflective, that seemed to raise the question to a +level of philosophic import.</p> +<p>"Oh, with these cloisters, one shouldn't complain," said she, +glancing indicatively round. "One can still be out of doors, and +yet not get the wetting one deserves. And the view is so fine, and +these faded old frescoes are so droll."</p> +<p>"Yes," said he, his wits, for the instant, in a state of +suspended animation. "The view is fine, the frescoes are +droll."</p> +<p>She looked as if she were thinking about something.</p> +<p>"Don't you find it," she asked, after a moment, with the +slightest bepuzzled drawing together of her eyebrows, "a trifle +unpleasant, hearing Mass from where you do?"</p> +<p>John looked blank.</p> +<p>"Unpleasant? No. Why?" he asked.</p> +<p>"I should think it might be disagreeable to be hemmed in and +elbowed by those extraordinarily ragged and dirty people," she +explained. "It's a pity they shouldn't clean themselves up a little +before coming to church."</p> +<p>"Ah, yes," he assented, "a little cleaning up wouldn't hurt +them; that's very certain. But," he set forth, in extenuation, +"it's not the custom of the country, and the fact that it isn't has +its good significance, as well as its bad. It's one of the many +signs of how genuinely democratic and popular the Church is in +Italy,—as it ought to be everywhere. It is here essentially +the Church of the people, the Church of the poor. It is the one +place where the poorest man, in all his rags, and with the soil of +his work upon him, feels perfectly at ease, perfectly at home, +perfectly equal to the richest. It is the one place where a reeking +market-woman, with her basket on her arm, will feel at liberty to +take her place beside the great lady, in her furs and velvets, and +even to ask her, with a nudge, to move up and make room. That is as +it should be, isn't it?"</p> +<p>"No doubt, no doubt," agreed Maria Dolores, beginning to pace +backwards and forwards over the lichen-stained marble pavement, +(stained as by the hand of an artist, in wavy veins of yellow or +pale-green, with here and there little rosettes of scarlet), while +John kept beside her. "All the same, I should not like to kneel +quite in the very heart of the crowd, as you do."</p> +<p>"You are a delicate and sensitive woman," he reminded her. "I am +a man, and a moderately tough one. However, I must admit that until +rather recently I had exactly your feeling. But I got a lesson." He +broke off and gave a vague little laugh, vaguely rueful, as at a +not altogether pleasant reminiscence.</p> +<p>"What was the lesson?" she asked.</p> +<p>"Well," said he, "if you care to know, it was this. The first +time that I attended Mass here, desiring to avoid the people, I +sought out a far corner of the church, behind a pillar, where there +was no one. But as soon as I had got myself well established there, +up hobbled a deformed and lame old man, and plumped himself down +beside me, so close that our coat-sleeves touched. I think he was +the most repulsive-looking old man I have ever seen; he was +certainly the dirtiest, the grimiest, and his rags were +extravagantly foul. I will spare you a more circumstantial +portrait. And all through Mass I was sick with disgust and sore +with resentment. Why should he come and rub his coat-sleeve against +mine, when there was room in plenty for him elsewhere? The next +time I went to church, I chose a different corner, as remote as +might be from my former one; but again, no sooner was I well +installed, than, lo and behold, the same unspeakable old man limped +up and knelt with me, cheek by jowl. And so, if you can believe it, +the next time, and so the next. It didn't matter where I placed +myself, there he was sure to place himself too. You will suppose +that, apart from my annoyance, I was vastly perplexed. Why should +he pursue me so? Who was he? What was he after? And for +enlightenment I addressed myself to Annunziata. 'Who is the hideous +old man who always kneels beside me?' I asked her. She had not +noticed any one kneeling beside me, she said; she had noticed, on +the contrary, that I always knelt alone, at a distance. 'Well,' +said I, 'keep your eyes open to-day, and you will see the man I +mean.' So we went to Mass, and sure enough, no sooner had I found a +secluded place, than my old friend appeared and joined me, dirtier +and more hideous and if possible more deformed than ever.</p> +<p>"Yes?" said Maria Dolores, with interest, as he paused.</p> +<p>"When we came out of church, I asked Annunziata who he was," +continued John. "And she said that though she had kept her eyes +open, according to my injunction, she had failed to see any one +kneeling beside me—that, on the contrary, she had seen me," +he concluded, with an insouciance that was plainly assumed for its +dramatic value, "kneeling alone, at a distance from every one."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores' face was white. She frowned her +mystification.</p> +<p>"What!" she exclaimed, in a half-frightened voice.</p> +<p>"That is precisely the ejaculation that fell from my own lips at +the time," said John. "Then I gave her a minute description of the +old man, in all his ugliness. And then she administered my lesson +to me."</p> +<p>"Yes? What was it?" questioned Maria Dolores, her interest +acute.</p> +<p>"Speaking in that oracular vein of hers, her eyes very big, her +face very grave, she assured me that my horrible old man had no +objective existence. She informed me cheerfully and calmly that he +was an image of my own soul, as it appeared, corrupted and aged and +deformed by the sins of a lifetime, to God and to the Saints. And +she added that he was sent to punish me for my pride in thinking +myself different to the common people, and in seeking to hold +myself aloof. Since then," John brought his anecdote to a term, "I +have always knelt in the body of the church, and I have never again +seen my Doppelgänger."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores was silent for a little. They had come to the +southern end of the cloisters, where the buttresses of the Castle +walls, all shaggy-mantled in a green overgrowth of creepers, fall +precipitously away, down the steep face of a natural cliff. They +stopped here, and stood looking off. The rain had held up, though +the valley was still misty with its vapours. Whiffs of velvety air, +warm and sweet, blew in their faces, lightly stirred the dark hair +about her brow, and, catching the flowery edge of her black lace +mantilla, set it fluttering.</p> +<p>"That is a very good story," she said, by-and-by, with a sober +glance, behind which there was the glint of laughter. "In view of +it, however, I suppose there will be no use in my delivering a +message I am charged with for you from my friend Frau Brandt."</p> +<p>"Oh?" questioned John. "What message?"</p> +<p>"Frau Brandt has received from the owner of the Castle the +privilege of hearing Mass from the tribune; and she wished me to +invite you in her name hereafter to hear Mass from there with us. +But I suppose, in view of your 'lesson,' that is an invitation +which you will decline?" The glint of laughter shone brighter in +her eyes, and her mouth had a tiny pucker, amiably derisive.</p> +<p>John looked at her, his blue eyes bold.</p> +<p>"That is an invitation which I am terribly tempted to accept," +he said, in a voice of unconcealed emotion, of patent meaning; and +beneath his bold gaze, her dark eyes dropped, while I think a blush +faintly swept her cheeks. "And first of all," he added, "pray +express to Frau Brandt my grateful thanks for it—and let me +thank you also for your kindness in conveying it. If, in spite of +my temptation, I <i>don't</i> accept it, that will be for a very +special reason, and one quite unconnected with my 'lesson.'"</p> +<p>Maria Dolores probably knew her danger. She turned, and began to +walk backwards, towards the point where you can pass from the +cloisters, through the great porte-cochère, into the garden, +and so on to the pavilion beyond the clock. She probably knew her +danger; but she was human, but she was a woman. Besides, she had +reached the porte-cochère, and thus commanded a clear means +of escape. So, coming to a standstill here, "What is the very +special reason?" she asked, in a low voice, keeping her eyes from +his.</p> +<p>His were bolder than ever. Infinite admiration of her burned in +them, infinite delight in her, desire for her; at the same time a +kind of angry hopelessness darkened them, and a kind of bitter +amusement, as of one amused at his own sad plight.</p> +<p>"I wish I were rich," he exclaimed, irritably, between his +teeth.</p> +<p>"Oh? Is <i>that</i> the very special reason?" asked she, with +two notes of laughter.</p> +<p>"No," said he, "but it has a connection with it. You see, I'm in +love."</p> +<p>"Yes," said she. "I remember your telling me so."</p> +<p>"Well, I wish I were rich," said he. "Then I might pluck up +courage to ask the woman I love to be my wife."</p> +<p>"Money isn't everything here below," said she. "I have your own +word for that."</p> +<p>"What else counts," said he, "when you wish to ask a woman to +marry you?"</p> +<p>"Oh, many things," said she. "Difference of rank, for +example."</p> +<p>"That wouldn't count with me," said the democratic fellow, +handsomely. "I shouldn't give two thoughts to differences of +rank."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores smiled—at her secret reflections, I +suppose.</p> +<p>"But poverty puts it out of all question," John moodily went on. +"I couldn't ask a woman to come and share with me an income of +sixpence a week. Especially as I have grounds for believing that +she's in rather affluent circumstances herself. Oh, I wish I were +rich!" He repeated this aspiration in a groan.</p> +<p>"Poor, poor young man!" she commiserated him, while her eyes, +which she held perseveringly averted, were soft with sympathy and +gay with mirth. "When do you begin your gardening?"</p> +<p>"Oh, don't mock me!" he cried, with an imploring gesture. "You +know, joking apart, that it's child's play for a man of my age, +with no profession and no special talent, to fancy he can turn to +and earn money. I might, if I made supernatural exertions, and if +Fortune went out of her way to favour me, add a maximum of another +sixpence to my weekly budget. No, there's never a hope for me on +sea or land. I must e'en bear it, though I cannot grin withal."</p> +<p>"Ah, well," said Maria Dolores, to comfort him, "these attacks, +I have read, are often as short as they are sharp. Let us trust +you'll soon rally from this one. How long have they generally +lasted in the past?"</p> +<p>John's face grew dark with upbraiding; the sea-blue of his eyes, +the gold of his hair and beard, the pink of his complexion visibly +grew dark.</p> +<p>"You are so needlessly unkind," he said, "that you don't deserve +to hear the true answer to your question."</p> +<p>She studied the half-obliterated fresco on the wall beside +her.</p> +<p>"All the same," said he, "you <i>shall</i> hear it. If falling +in love were my habit, no doubt I shouldn't take it so hard. But +the simple truth, though I am thirty years old, is that I have +never before felt so much as a heart-flutter for any woman. And, +since you cite your reading, <i>I</i> have read that a fire which +may merely singe the surface of green wood, will entirely consume +the dry."</p> +<p>She continued to study the ancient painting. Her fingers were +playing with the ends of her lace veil.</p> +<p>"Besides," he went on, "if I had been in love a dozen times, it +wouldn't signify. For I should have been in love with ordinary +usual human women. They're the only sort I ever met—till I +met her. She's of a totally different order—as distinct from +them as ... What shall I say? Oh, as unlike them as starfire is +unlike dull clay. Starfire—starfire—the wonderful, +high, white-burning starfire of her spirit, that's the thing that +strikes you most in her. It shines through her. It shines in her +eyes, it shines in her hair, her adorable, soft, dark, warm and +fragrant hair; it shines in her very voice; it shines in every word +she utters, even in the unkindest."</p> +<p>"Dear me! what an alarmingly refulgent person you depict!" +laughed Maria Dolores, her eyes still on the wall.</p> +<p>"I have no gift for word-painting," said John; "though I doubt +if the words are yet invented that could fitly paint my lady. She +grows in beauty day by day. It's a literal fact—every fresh +time I see her, she is perceptibly more lovely than the last, more +love-compelling in her loveliness. But 'tis a thing unpaintable, +indescribable, as indescribable as the perfume of a rose. Oh, why +haven't I five thousand a year?"</p> +<p>"You harp so persistently upon your desire for money," suggested +Maria Dolores, "one might infer she was a commodity, to be bought +and sold. You begin at the wrong end. What good would five or fifty +thousand a year do you, if you had not begun by winning her +love?</p> +<p>"No, I begin at the proper end, worse luck," John answered, +glooming. "For, without a decent income, I have no right even to +try to win her love.</p> +<p>"And that being so," questioned Maria Dolores, "I hope you +conscientiously avoid her society, or, when you meet, make yourself +consistently disagreeable to her?</p> +<p>"There's no need for such precautions," John replied. "There's +no fear for her. She regards me as a casual and passing +acquaintance. So I make myself no more disagreeable than I am by +nature. And if I avoided her society, (which I am far from doing), +it would be not for her sake, but for my own. For, though her +society is to me a kind of anticipation of the joys of Heaven, yet +when I leave it and find myself alone, the reaction is dreary in +the superlative degree; and the fear, which perpetually haunts me +(for I know nothing of her plans), lest I shall never see her +again, is agonizing as a foretaste of—Heaven's antipode. Oh, +I love her!"</p> +<p>He took, involuntarily I dare say, a step in her direction. She +retreated under the vaulting of the +<i>porte-cochère</i>.</p> +<p>"You seem," she commented, "to be getting a good deal of +emotional experience,—which doubtless some day you will find +of value. Why not, instead of gardener, embark as novelist or poet? +Here is material you could then turn to account."</p> +<p>"Ah, there you are," he complained, piteously, "mocking me +again. Ah, well, if you must have your laugh, have it, and welcome. +A man can learn to take the bitter with the sweet."</p> +<p>"To spare you that discomfort," said she, moving deeper into the +archway, while John's face fell, "I will bid you good-bye. I am to +report, then, that you decline my friend's invitation with +thanks?"</p> +<p>"With my most grateful thanks," he was able intensively to +rejoin, in spite of his dismay at the imminence of her +departure.</p> +<p>"And for a very special reason?" she harked back, now, suddenly, +for the first time since they had touched thin ice, giving him a +glance.</p> +<p>It was the fleetingest of fleeting glances, it was merry and +ironic, but there was something in it which brought a flame to his +blue eyes.</p> +<p>"For the very special reason," he answered, with vehemence, +"that I fear the presence near me of—" He held his breath for +a second, the flame in his eyes enveloping her; then, with an +abrupt change of tone and mien, he ended, "—of Frau Brandt +might distract my attention from the sermon."</p> +<p>She laughed, and said, "Good-bye."</p> +<p>"Good-bye," said John. And when she was halfway through the +tunnel-like passage, "I suppose you know you are leaving me to a +day as barren as the Desert of Sahara?" he called after her.</p> +<p>"Oh, who can tell what a day may bring forth?" called she, but +without looking back.</p> +<p>For a long while John's faculties were kept busy, trying to +determine whether that was a promise, a menace, or a mere word in +the air.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>III</h2> +<p>"Rain before seven, clear before eleven," is as true, or as +untrue, in Lombardy as it is in other parts of the world. The rain +had held up, and now, in that spirited phrase of Corvo's, "here +came my lord the Sun," splendidly putting the clouds to flight, or +chaining them, transfigured, to his chariot-wheels; clothing the +high snow-peaks in a roseate glory, (that seemed somehow, I don't +know why, to accent their solitude and their remoteness); flooding +the valley with ethereal amber; turning the swollen Rampio to a +river of fire while the nearer hillsides, the olive woods, the +trees in the Castle garden, glistened with a million million +crystals, and the petals of the flowers were crystal-tipped; while +the breath of the earth rose in long streamers of luminous incense, +and the sky gleamed with every tender, every brilliant, tint of +blue, from the blue of pale forgetmenots to the blue of +larkspur.</p> +<p>John, contemplating this spectacle, (and thinking of Maria +Dolores? revolving still her cryptic valediction?), all at once, as +his eye rested on the shimmer at the valley's end which he knew to +be the lake, lifted up his hand and clapped his brow. "By Jove," he +muttered, "if I wasn't within an ace of clean forgetting!" The +sight of the lake had fortunately put him in mind that he was +engaged to-day to lunch with Lady Blanchemain at Roccadoro.</p> +<p>He found her ladyship, in a frock all concentric whirls of crisp +white ruffles, vigorously wielding a fan, and complaining of the +heat. (Indeed, as Annunziata had predicted, it had grown markedly +warmer.) "I shall fly away, if this continues; I shall fly straight +to town, and set my house in order for the season. When do +<i>you</i> come?" she asked, smiling on him from her benign old +eyes.</p> +<p>"I don't come," answered John. "I rather like town in autumn and +winter, when it's too dark to see its ugliness, but save me from it +in the clear light of summer."</p> +<p>"Fudge," said Lady Blanchemain. "London's the most beautiful +capital in Europe—it's grandiose. And it's the only place +where there are any people.</p> +<p>"Yes," said John, "but, as at Nice and Homburg, too many of them +are English. And there's a liberal scattering, I've heard, of +Jews?"</p> +<p>"Oh, Jews are all right—when they aren't Jewy," said Lady +Blanchemain, with magnanimity. "I know some very nice ones. I was +rather hoping you would be a feature of my Sunday afternoons."</p> +<p>"I'm not a society man," said John. "I've no aptitude myself for +patronizing or toadying, and I don't particularly enjoy being +patronized or toadied to."</p> +<p>"Is that the beginning and end of social life in England?" Lady +Blanchemain inquired, delicately sarcastic.</p> +<p>"As I have seen it, yes," asseverated John. "The beginning, end, +and middle of social life in England, as in Crim-Tartary, is +worship of the longest pigtail,—a fetichism sometimes +grosser, sometimes subtler, sometimes deliberate, often unconscious +and instinctive. Every one you meet is aware that his pigtail is +either longer or shorter than yours, and accordingly, more or less +subtly, grossly, unconsciously or deliberately, swaggers or bends +the knee. It's a state of things I've tried in vain to find +diverting."</p> +<p>"It's a state of things you'll find prevailing pretty well in +all places where the human species breeds," said Lady Blanchemain. +"The only difference will be a question of what constitutes the +pigtail. And are you, then, remaining at Sant' Alessina?"</p> +<p>"For the present," answered John.</p> +<p>"Until—?" she questioned.</p> +<p>"Oh, well, until she sends me away, or leaves herself," said he, +"and so my fool's paradise achieves its inevitable end."</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain laughed—a long, quiet laugh of amused +contentment.</p> +<p>"Come in to luncheon," she said, putting her soft white hand +upon his arm, "and tell me all about it." And when they were +established at her table, a round table, gay with flowers, in a +window at the far end of the cool, terazza-paved, stucco-columned +dining-room of the Hotel Victoria, "Why do you call it a fool's +paradise?" she asked.</p> +<p>"Well, you see, I'm in love," said he.</p> +<p>"You really are?" she doubted, with sprightliness, looking +gleeful.</p> +<p>"All too really," he assured her, in a sinking voice.</p> +<p>"What an old witch I was!" mused she, with satisfaction. "Accept +my heart-felt felicitations." She beamed upon him.</p> +<p>"I should prefer your condolences," said he, in a voice from the +depths.</p> +<p>"<i>Allons donc!</i> Cheer up," laughed she, dallying with her +bliss. "Men have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for +love."</p> +<p>"I wonder," said John. "That is a statement, it seems to me, +which would be the better for some proving."</p> +<p>"At all events," said she, "you, for one, are not dead yet."</p> +<p>"No," admitted he; "though I could almost wish I was."</p> +<p>"Do you mean to say she has definitely rejected you?" she +demanded, alarmed.</p> +<p>"Fortune has spared her that necessity," said John. "I haven't +asked her, and I never shall. I haven't any money."</p> +<p>"Pooh! Is that all?" scoffed her ladyship, relieved. "You have +prospects."</p> +<p>"Remote ones—the remoter the better. I won't count on dead +men's shoes," said John.</p> +<p>"What is it your little fortune-teller at the Castle calls you?" +asked Lady Blanchemain, shrewdly, her dark old eyebrows up.</p> +<p>"She calls me <i>lucus a non lucendo</i>," was John's quick +riposte; and the lady laughed.</p> +<p>But in a moment she pulled a straight face. "I seriously counsel +you to have more faith," she said. "Go home and ask her to marry +you; and if she accepts,—you'll see. Money will come. +Besides, your rank and your prospective rank are assets which you +err in not adding to the balance. Go home, and propose to her."</p> +<p>"'Twould do no good," said John, dejectedly. "She regards me +with imperturbable indifference. I've made the fieriest avowals to +her, and she's never turned a hair."</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain looked bewildered. "You've made +avowals—?" she falteringly echoed.</p> +<p>"I should rather think so," John affirmed. "Indirect ones, of +course, and I hope inoffensive, but fiery as live coals. In the +third person, you know. I've given her two and two; she has, you +may be sure, enough skill in mathematics to put 'em together."</p> +<p>"And she never turned a hair?" the lady marvelled.</p> +<p>"She jeered at me, she mocked me, she laughed and rode away," +said he.</p> +<p>"She's probably in love with you," said Lady Blanchemain. "If a +woman will listen, if a woman will laugh! If you don't propose to +her now, having ensnared her young affections, you'll be something +worse than the wicked nobleman of song and story."</p> +<p>"Oh, well," John responded, conciliatory, "I dare say some of +these days a proposal will slip out when I least intend it. So I +shall have done the honourable thing—and I'm sure I can trust +her to play fair and say me nay."</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain slowly shook her head. "I'm glad you're not +<i>my</i> lover," she devoutly murmured, plying her fan.</p> +<p>"Oh, but I am," cried John, with a bow, and an admiring flash of +the eyes.</p> +<p>Her soft old face lighted up; then it took on an expression of +resolution, and she set her strong old jaws.</p> +<p>"In that case," she remarked, "you will have the less reluctance +in granting a favour I'm about to ask you."</p> +<p>"What's the favour?" said John, in a tone of readiness.</p> +<p>"I want you to buy a pig in a poke," said she.</p> +<p>"Oh?" questioned he.</p> +<p>"Yes," said she. "I want you to make me a promise blindfold. I +want you to promise in the dark that you will do something. What it +is that you're to do you're not to know till the time comes. Will +you promise?"</p> +<p>"Dearest lady," said the trustful young man, "I'm perfectly +confident that you would never ask me to do anything that I +couldn't do with profit to myself. Buy a pig in a poke? From you, +without a moment's hesitation. Of course I promise."</p> +<p>"Bravo, bravo," applauded Lady Blanchemain, glowing at her easy +triumph. "In a few days you'll receive a letter. That will tell you +what it is you're pledged to. And now, to reward you, come with me +to my sitting-room, and I will make you a little present."</p> +<p>When they had reached her sitting-room (dim and cool, with its +half-drawn blinds and the straw-coloured linen covers of its +furniture), she put into his hands a small case of shagreen, small +and hard, and at the edges white with age.</p> +<p>"Go to the window and see what's in it," she said.</p> +<p>And obeying, "By Jove, what a stunner!" he exclaimed. The case +contained a ring, a light circle of gold, set with a ruby, +surrounded by a row of diamonds,—for my part, I think the +most beautiful ruby I have ever seen. It was as big as a hazel-nut, +or almost; it was cut, with innumerable facets, in the shape of a +heart; and it quivered and burned, and flowed and rippled, +liquidly, with the purest, limpidest red fire.</p> +<p>"'Tis the spirit of a rose, distilled and crystallized," said +Lady Blanchemain.</p> +<p>"'Tis a drop of liquid light," said John. "But why do you give +it to me? I can't wear it. I don't think I ought to accept it."</p> +<p>"Nobody asks you to wear it," said Lady Blanchemain. "It's a +woman's ring, of course. But as for accepting it, you need have no +scruples. It's an old Blanchemain gem, that was in the family a +hundred years before I came into it. It's properly an heirloom, and +you're the heir. I give it to you for a purpose. Should you ever +become engaged, I desire you to placcit upon the finger of the +adventurous woman."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>IV</h2> +<p>Under a gnarled old olive, by the river's brim, Annunziata sat +on the turf, head bowed, so that her curls fell in a tangle all +about her cheeks, and gazed fixedly into the green waters, the +laughing, dancing, purling waters, green, and, where the sun +reached them, shot with seams and cleavages of light, like +fluorspar. In the sun-flecked, shadow-dappled grass near by, +violets tried to hide themselves, but were betrayed by their truant +sweetness. The waters purled, a light breeze rustled the +olive-leaves, and birds were singing loud and wild, as birds will +after rain.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores, coming down the path that followed the river's +windings, stood for a minute, and watched her small friend without +speaking. But at last she called out, "<i>Ciao</i>, Annunziata. Are +you dreaming dreams and seeing visions?"</p> +<p>Annunziata started and looked up. "Sh-h!" she whispered, with an +admonitory gesture. She stole a wary glance roundabout, and then +spoke as one fearful of being overheard. "I was listening to the +music of Divopan," she said.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores, who had come closer, appeared at a loss. "The +music of—what?" she questioned.</p> +<p>"Sh-h!" whispered Annunziata. "I would not dare to say it aloud. +The music of Divopan."</p> +<p>"Divopan?" Maria Dolores puzzled, compliantly guarding her tone. +"What is that?"</p> +<p>"Divo—Pan," said Annunziata, dividing the word in two, and +always with an air of excessive caution.</p> +<p>But Maria Dolores helplessly shook her head. "I'm afraid I don't +understand. What is Divo—Pan?"</p> +<p>"Don't you know what a <i>divo</i> is?" asked Annunziata, her +clear grey eyes surprised.</p> +<p>"Oh, a <i>divo?</i>" said Maria Dolores, getting a glimmer of +light. "Ah, yes, a divo is a saint, I think?</p> +<p>"Not exactly," Annunziata discriminated, "but something like +one. The saints, you see, are always very good, and <i>divi</i> are +sometimes bad. But they are powerful, like saints. They can do +anything they wish. Divo Pan is the divo who makes all the music +that you hear out of doors,—the music of the wind and the +water and the bird-songs. But you must be careful never to praise +his music aloud, lest Divo Apollone should hear you. He is the divo +that makes all the music you hear on instruments—on harps and +violins and pianos. He is very jealous of Divo Pan, and if he hears +you praising him, will do something to you. You know what he did to +King Mida, don't you?"</p> +<p>"What did he do?" asked Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>Annunziata stole another wary glance about.</p> +<p>"Once upon a time," she recounted, always in her lowest voice, +"many years ago, hundreds of years ago, the King of this country +was named Mida. And he loved very much the music of Divo Pan. He +loved to sit by the river here, and to listen to the music of the +water, and of the leaves, and of the birds. I love to do it too, +and I think he was quite right. But one day, in his house, there +came a musician with a harp, and began to play to him. And the King +listened for a while, and then he told the musician to stop. 'Your +music is very good,' he said, 'but now I am going into the fields +and by the river, where I can hear a music I like better.' But the +musician with the harp was really Divo Apollone himself; disguised. +And this made him very angry and jealous. And to punish King Mida +he changed his ears to long hairy ears, like an ass's. So, if you +love the music of Divo Pan, you must be very careful not to let +Divo Apollone hear you praise it, or he will do something to +you."</p> +<p>And to drive home this application of her theme, she held up a +warning finger.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores had listened, smiling. Now she gave a gay little +laugh, and then for a moment mused. "That is a very curious bit of +history," she said, in the end. "How ever did it come to your +knowledge?"</p> +<p>Annunziata shrugged. "Oh," she answered, "everybody knows that. +I have known it for years. My grandmother who lived in Milan told +it to me. Doesn't the water look cool and pleasant?" was her abrupt +digression, as she returned her gaze to the Rampio. "When it is hot +like this, I should like to lie down in the water, and go to sleep. +Wouldn't you?"</p> +<p>"I'm not so sure," said Maria Dolores. "I should rather fear I +might be drowned."</p> +<p>"Oh, but that wouldn't hurt," said Annunziata, with security. +"To be drowned in such beautiful green water, among all those beams +of light, would be nice."</p> +<p>"Perhaps you are not aware," said Maria Dolores, "that when +people are drowned they die?"</p> +<p>"Oh, yes, I know that," said Annunziata. "But"—she raised +calm pellucid eyes—"wouldn't you like to die?"</p> +<p>"Certainly not," said Maria Dolores, a shadow on her face.</p> +<p>"I would," said Annunziata, stoutly. "It must be lovely to +die."</p> +<p>"Hush," Maria Dolores rebuked her, frowning. "You must not say +such things."</p> +<p>"Why not say them, if you think them?" asked Annunziata.</p> +<p>"You mustn't think them either," said Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"Oh, I can't help thinking them," said Annunziata, with a +movement. "It surely must be lovely to die and go to Heaven. If I +were perfectly sure I should go to Heaven, I would shut my eyes and +die now. But I should probably have to wait some time in Purgatory. +And, of course, I might go to Hell."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores' face was full of trouble. "You must not talk like +that," she said. "You must not. It is wicked of you."</p> +<p>"Then, if I am wicked, I <i>should</i> go to Hell?" inquired +Annunziata, looking alertly up.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores looked about her, looked across the river, down +the valley, as one in distress scanning the prospect for aid. "Of +course you would not," she said. "My dear child, can't we find +something else to talk of?"</p> +<p>"Do you think I shall have a very long and hard Purgatory?" +asked Annunziata.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores threw a despairing glance at the horizon.</p> +<p>"No, no, dear," she answered uneasily. "You will have a very +short and gentle one. Anyhow, you'll not have to consider that for +years to come. Now shall we change the subject?"</p> +<p>"Well," said Annunziata, with an air of deliberation, "if you +are perfectly sure I shall not go to Hell, and that my Purgatory +will not be long and hard, I think I will do what I said. I will +lie down in the water and go to sleep, and the water will drown me, +and I shall die."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores' face was terrified. "Annunziata!" she cried. "You +don't know what you are saying. You are cruel. You won't do +anything of the sort. You must give me your solemn word of honour +that you won't do anything of the sort. It would be a most dreadful +sin. Come. Come with me now, away from here, away from the sight of +the river. You must never come here alone again. Give me your hand, +and come away."</p> +<p>Annunziata got up, gave her hand, and moved off at Maria +Dolores' side, towards the Castle. "Of course," she said, "if I +want to die, I don't need to lie down in the water. I can die at +any moment I wish, by just shutting my eyes, and holding my breath, +and telling my heart seven times to stop beating. Heart, stop +beating; heart, stop beating;—that way, seven times."</p> +<p>"For the love of Mercy," wailed poor Maria Dolores, almost +writhing in her misery.... Then, suddenly, she breathed a deep sigh +of relief, and fervently exclaimed, "Thank God." John was advancing +towards them, down the rugged pathway.</p> +<p>"Do please come and help me with this perverse and maddening +child," she called to him, in English. "She's frightening me half +out of my wits by threatening to die. She even threatened to drown +herself in the Rampio."</p> +<p>"Children of her complexion can't die," said John, in Italian, +(and Annunziata pricked up her ears). "They can only turn into +monkeys, and then they have to live in the forests of Africa, where +it is always dark, and all the men and women are negro savages, and +all the other animals (except the mosquitos and the snakes) are +lions and tigers. Besides, if Annunziata were to turn into a +monkey, she couldn't have the sugared chestnuts that somebody or +other has brought her from Roccadoro. On the chest of drawers in my +room there has mysteriously appeared a box of sugared chestnuts. I +thought they were for her, but they're not, unless she will promise +never to turn into a monkey."</p> +<p>Annunziata's eyes had clouded.</p> +<p>"Of course I won't turn into a monkey," she said, in accents at +once of disillusion and disdain. "I did not know there was any such +danger. I should hate to be a monkey." Then her eyes brightened +again. "May I go and get them now?" she asked, wistful and +impatient.</p> +<p>"Yes," said John; "be off with you." And she went running +lightly up the hill.</p> +<p>He turned to Maria Dolores. Her face (clear-cut, with its dark +hair, against the red background of her sunshade) was white and +drawn with pain. But she smiled, rather wanly, as her gaze met his, +and said, in a weak voice, "Oh, I am so glad you came. I can't tell +you how she was frightening me." And all at once her eyes filled +with tears.</p> +<p>I needn't say whether John was moved, whether it was his impulse +to take her in his arms and dry her tears with kisses. He did +actually, on that impulse, give a perceptible start towards her, +but then he restrained himself. "The child ought to be whipped," he +broke out angrily. "You must not take her prattle so +seriously."</p> +<p>"But <i>she</i> was so serious," said Maria Dolores. "Oh, when +she threatened to lie down in the river, and let herself be +drowned—!" Her voice failed her, as at the inexpressible.</p> +<p>"No fear of that," said John. "The first touch of the cold water +(and icy-cold it is, a glacier-stream, you know) would bring her to +her senses. But come! You must not think of it any more. You have +had a bad shock, but no bones are broken, and now you must try to +banish it all from your mind."</p> +<p>"What an unaccountable child she is!" said Maria Dolores. +"Surely it is unnatural and alarming for a child to have her head +so teeming with strange freaks and fancies. Oh, I pray God to grant +that nothing may happen to her."</p> +<p>"The most serious evil that's likely to happen to her for the +present," said John, "will be an indigestion of marrons +glacés."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores' tears had gone now. She smiled. But afterwards +she looked grave again. "Oh, I wish I could get the dread of +something happening to her out of my heart. I wish she wasn't so +pale and fragile-looking," she said. Then there came a gleam in her +eyes. "But you were going for a walk, and I am detaining you."</p> +<p>"The object of my walk has been accomplished," said John.</p> +<p>"Oh?" questioned she.</p> +<p>"I was walking in the hope, on the chance, that I might meet +you," he hardily explained. "It's such an age since I've seen you. +Are you making for the garden? I pray you to be kind, and let me go +with you. I've been an exile and a wanderer—I've been to +Roccadoro."</p> +<p>She had rebegun her ascension of the hill. The path was steep, +as well as rugged. Sometimes John had to help her over a hard bit. +The touch of her hand, soft and warm, and firm too, in his; the +sense of her closeness; the faint fragrance of her garments, of her +hair,—these things, you may be sure, went to his head, went +to his heart. The garden lay in a white blaze of sunshine, that +seemed almost material, like an incandescent fluid; but the +entrance to the avenue was dark and inviting. "Let us," he +proposed, "go and sit on a marble bench under the glossy leaves of +the ilexes, in the deep, cool shade; and let's play that it's a +thousand years ago, and that you're a Queen (white Queen Blanche, +like a queen of lilies), and that I'm your minstrel-man."</p> +<p>"What song will you sing me?" asked she gaily, as they took +their places on the marble bench. It was semicircular, with a high +carved back, (carved with the armorials of the Sforzas), and of +course it was lichen-stained, grey and blue and green, yellow and +scarlet.</p> +<div class="blockquot">"<i>White Queen Blanche, like a queen of +lilies,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fairer and dearer than dearest and +fairest,</span><br /> +To hear me sing, if it her sweet will is,—<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sing, minstrel-man, of thy love, an +thou darest,"</span></i></div> +<p>trolled John, in his light barytone, to a tune, I imagine, +improvised for the occasion. "But if it's a thousand years ago," he +laughed, "that song smacks too much perhaps of actuality, and I had +best choose another."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores joined in his laugh. "I did not know you sang," +she said. "Let me hear the other."</p> +<p>"A song," reflected he, "that I could sing with a good deal of +feeling and conviction, would be 'Give her but the least excuse to +love me.'"</p> +<p>Maria Dolores all at once looked sober.</p> +<p>"Oughtn't you to be careful," she said, "to give her no excuse +at all to love you, if you are really resolved never to ask her to +be your wife?"</p> +<p>"That is exactly what I have given her," answered John, "no +excuse at all. I should sing in a spirit purely academic,—my +song would be the utterance of a pious but hopeless longing, of the +moth's desire for the star."</p> +<p>"But she, I suppose, isn't a star," objected Maria Dolores. +"She's probably just a weak human woman. You may have given her +excuses without meaning to." There was the slightest quaver in her +voice.</p> +<p>John caught his breath; he turned upon her almost violently. But +she was facing away from him, down the avenue, so that he could not +get her eyes.</p> +<p>"In that case," she said, "wouldn't you owe her something?"</p> +<p>"I should owe myself a lifetime's penance with the discipline," +John on a solemn tone replied, hungrily looking at her cheek, at +the little tendrils of dark hair about her brow. "God knows what I +should owe to her."</p> +<p>"You would owe it to her," said Maria Dolores, always facing +away, "to tell her your love straightforwardly, and to ask her to +marry you."</p> +<p>John thrilled, John ached. His blue eyes burned upon her. "What +else do you think I dream of, night and day? But how could I, with +honour? You know my poverty," he groaned.</p> +<p>"But if she has enough, more than enough, for two?" softly urged +Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"Ah, that's the worst of it," cried he. "If we were equals in +penury, if she had nothing, then I might honourably ask her, and we +could live on herbs together in a garret, and I could keep her +respect and my own. Oh, garret-paradise! But to marry a woman who +is rich, to live in luxury with her, and to try to look unconscious +while she pays the bills,—she would despise me, I should +abhor myself."</p> +<p>"Why should she despise you?" asked Maria Dolores. "The +possession of wealth is a mere accident. If people are married and +love each other, I can't see that it matters an atom whether their +money belonged in the first place to the man or to the +woman,—it would belong henceforward to them both +equally."</p> +<p>"That is a very generous way of looking at it, but it is a +woman's way. No decent man could accept it," said John.</p> +<p>"Up to a certain point," said Maria Dolores, slowly, "I +understand your scruples. I understand that a poor man might feel +that he would not like to make the advances, if the woman he loved +was rich. But suppose the woman loved him, and knew that he loved +her, and knew that it was only his poverty which held him back, +then <i>she</i> might make the advances. She might put aside her +pride, and go halfway to meet him, and to remove his difficulties +and embarrassments. If, after that, he still did not ask her, I +think his scruples would have become mere vanity,—I think it +would show that he cared more for his mere vanity than for her +happiness."</p> +<p>Her voice died out. John could see that her lip quivered a +little. His throat was dry. The pulses were pounding in his +temples. His brain was all a confusion. He hardly knew what had +befallen him, he hardly knew what she had said. He only knew that +there was a great ball of fire in his breast, and that the pain of +it was half an immeasurable joy.</p> +<p>"God forgive me," the absurd and exaggerated stickler for the +dignity of his sex wildly cried. "God knows how I love her, how I +care for her happiness. But to go to her empty-handed,—but to +put myself in the position of being kept by a woman,—God +knows how impossible it is."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores stood up, still looking away from him.</p> +<p>"Well, let us hope," she said, changing her tone to one of +unconcerned detachment, "that we have been discussing baseless +suppositions. Let us hope that her heart is quite untouched. And +for both your sakes," she concluded, her head in the air, "let us +hope that you and she will never meet again. Good-bye."</p> +<p>She gave him a curt little nod, and walked lightly, rapidly up +the avenue.</p> +<p>John's brain was all a confusion. He looked after her +helplessly. He only knew that there was a great ball of fire in his +breast, and that the pain of it was now unmixed.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>V</h2> +<p>Maria Dolores tripped into Frau Brandt's sitting-room, merrily +singing a snatch of song.</p> +<div class="blockquot">"<i>Gardez vous d'être +sévère<br /> +Quand on vous park d'amour</i>,"</div> +<p>she carolled. Then she stopped singing, and blithely +laughed.</p> +<p>Frau Brandt raised her good brown face from her knitting, and +her good brown eyes looked anxiously upwards, slantwise over her +tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles.</p> +<p>"What is the matter now?" she asked. "What has happened to vex +you now?"</p> +<p>"To vex me!" cried Maria Dolores, in apparent astonishment. +"Wasn't I singing aloud from sheer exuberance of high spirits?"</p> +<p>"No," said Frau Brandt, with a very positive shake of her +white-capped head. "You were singing to conceal your low spirits. +What has happened?"</p> +<p>"Ah, well, then, if you know so much and must know all," said +Maria Dolores, "I've just proposed to the man I'm in love with, and +been sent about my business."</p> +<p>"What do you mean?" asked Frau Brandt, phlegmatic. "What +nonsense is this?"</p> +<p>"I mean my cobbler's son," Maria Dolores answered. "I, a +Princess of the Empire, humbly offered him, a cobbler's son, my +hand, heart, and fortune,—and the graceless man rejected them +with scorn."</p> +<p>"That is a likely story," said Frau Brandt, wagging her chin. +Her blunt brown fingers returned to their occupation. "I see your +Serene Highness offering her hand."</p> +<p>"At all events, will you kindly tell Josephine to pack our +boxes. To-morrow we'll be flitting," her Serene Highness in a +casual way announced.</p> +<p>"What say you?" cried Frau Brandt, dropping her knitting into +her lap.</p> +<p>"Yes—to Mischenau, to my brother," the Princess pursued. +"Of course you'll have to come with us, poor dear. You can't let me +travel alone with Josephine."</p> +<p>"No," said Frau Brandt. "I will go with you."</p> +<p>"And you can remain for my wedding," Maria Dolores added. "I am +going home to meet my brother's wishes, and to marry my second +cousin, the high and mighty Maximilian, Prince of Zelt-Zelt."</p> +<p>"Herr Gott!" said Frau Brandt, glancing with devotion at the +ceiling.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>VI</h2> +<p>John, wild-eyed, was still where she had left him, in the +avenue, savouring and resavouring his woe. "If only," he brooded, +"she were of one's own rank in the world, then her wealth might +perhaps not be such an absolutely hopeless impediment as it is. But +to marry, as they say, beneath one, and to marry money into the +bargain,—that would be a little too much like the +fortune-hunter of tradition." He still sat where she had left him, +on the marble bench, disconsolate, when the parroco approached +hurriedly, from the direction of the house.</p> +<p>"Signore," the parroco began, out of breath, "I offer a thousand +excuses for venturing to disturb you, but my niece has suddenly +fallen ill. I am going to the village to telephone for a doctor. My +cook is away, for her Sunday afternoon. Might I pray you to have +the extreme kindness to stay with the child till I return? I don't +know what is the matter, but she fainted, and now is delirious, +and, I'm afraid, very ill indeed."</p> +<p>"Good Heavens!" gasped John, forgetting everything else. "Of +course, of course."</p> +<p>And he set off hotfoot for the presbytery.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PART_SIXTH" id="PART_SIXTH"></a>PART SIXTH</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>I</h2> +<p>I would rather not dwell upon the details of Annunziata's +illness. By the mercy of Providence, she got well in the end; but +in the mean time those details were sufficiently painful. John, for +example, found it more than painful to hear her cry out piteously, +as she often would in her delirium, that she did not wish to be +turned into a monkey; he hung his head and groaned, and cursed the +malinspired moment which had given that chimæra birth. +However, he had his compensations. Maria Dolores, whom he had +thought never to see again, he saw every day. "Let us hope that you +and she may never meet again." In his despairing heart the words +became a refrain. But an hour later the news of trouble at the +presbytery had travelled to the pavilion, and she flew straight to +Annunziata's bedside. Ever since, (postponing those threatened +nuptials at Mischenau), she had shared with John, and the parroco, +and Marcella the cook, the labours of nurse. And though it was +arranged that the men, turn and turn about, should watch by night, +and the women by day, John, by coming early and leaving late, +contrived to make a good part of his vigil and of hers coincident. +And the strange result is that now, looking backwards upon that +period of pain and dread, when from minute to minute no one knew +what awful change the next minute might bring,—looking +backwards, and seeing again the small bare room, cell-like, with +its whitewashed walls, its iron cot, its Crucifix, its narrow +window (through which wide miles of valley shone), and then the +little white face and the brown curls tossing on the pillow, and +the woman of his love sitting near to him, in the intimacy of a +common care and common duties,—the strange result is that +John feels a glow in his heart, as at the memory of a period of +joy.</p> +<p>"Oh, do not let them turn me into a monkey. Oh, Holy Mother, I +am so afraid. Oh, do not let them!" Annunziata cried, shuddering, +and shrinking deeper into bed, towards the wall.</p> +<p>John hung his head and wrung his hands. "My God, my God!" he +groaned.</p> +<p>"You should not blame yourself," Maria Dolores said in a low +voice, while she bathed the child's forehead, and fanned her face. +"Your intention was good, you could not foresee what has happened, +and it may be for the best, after all,—it may strengthen her +'will to live,' which is the great thing, the doctor says."</p> +<p>She had spoken English, but Annunziata's next outcry was like a +response.</p> +<p>"Oh, to live, to live—I want to live, to live Oh, let me +live!"</p> +<p>But at other times her wandering thoughts took quite a different +turn.</p> +<p>Gazing solemnly up into Maria Dolores' face, she said, "He does +not even know her name, though he fears it may be Smitti. I thought +it was Maria Dolores, but he fears it may be Smitti."</p> +<p>John looked out of the window, pretending not to hear, and +praying, I expect, that Maria Dolores' eyes might be blinded and +her counsel darkened. At the same time, (Heaven having sent me a +laughing hero), I won't vouch that his shoulders didn't shake a +little.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>II</h2> +<p>Apropos of their ignorance of each other's patronymics. ... One +afternoon Maria Dolores was taking the air at the open door of the +presbytery, when, to a mighty clattering of horses' hoofs, a big +high-swung barouche came sweeping into the court-yard, described a +bold half-circle, and abruptly drew up before her. In the barouche +sat a big old lady, a big soft, humorous-eyed old lady, in cool +crêpe-de-chine, cream-coloured, with beautiful white hair, a +very gay light straw bonnet, and a much befurbelowed lavender-hued +sunshade. Coachman and footman, bolt upright, stared straight +before them, as rigid as if their liveries were of +papier-maché. The horses, with a full sense of what they +owed to appearances, fierily champed their bits, tossed their +manes, and pawed the paving-stones. The old lady smiled upon Maria +Dolores with a look of great friendliness and interest, softly +bowed, and wished her, in a fine, warm, old high-bred voice, "Good +afternoon."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores (feeling an instant liking, as well as curiosity +and admiration) smiled in her turn, and responded, "Good +afternoon."</p> +<p>"You enjoy a fine view from here," the old lady remarked, +ducking her sunshade in the direction of the valley.</p> +<p>"A beautiful view," agreed Maria Dolores, following the sunshade +with her eyes.</p> +<p>Those of the stranger had a gleam. "But don't you think, if the +unvarnished truth may be whispered, that it's becoming the merest +trifle too hot?" she suggested.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores lightly laughed. "I think it is decidedly too +hot," she said.</p> +<p>"I'm glad to find we're of the same opinion," declared the old +lady, fanning herself. "You can positively <i>see</i> the heat +vibrating there in the distance. We children of the North should +fly such weather. For my part, I'm off to-morrow for England, where +I can shiver through the summer comfortably in my +chimney-corner."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores laughed out again.</p> +<p>"So I've driven over from Roccadoro," the newcomer continued, +"to have a farewell look at a young man of my acquaintance who's +staying here. I dare say you may know him. He has blue eyes and a +red beard, a flattering manner and a pretty wit, and his name is +Blanchemain."</p> +<p>"Oh?" said Maria Dolores, her eyebrows going up. "Is that his +name? You mean the young Englishman who lives with the +parroco?"</p> +<p>The old lady's eyebrows, which were thick and dark, went up +too.</p> +<p>"Is it possible you didn't know his name?" was her surprised +ejaculation. Then she said, "I wonder whether he is anywhere +about?"</p> +<p>"I fancy he's asleep," said Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"Asleep? At this hour?" The dark eyebrows frowned their protest. +"That sounds like a sad slugabed."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores looked serious. "He was up all night. We have a +child ill here, and he was up all night, watching."</p> +<p>The stranger's grey eyes filled with concern and sympathy. "I +hope, I'm sure, it's not that pretty little girl, the niece of the +parroco?" she said.</p> +<p>"Unhappily, it is," said Maria Dolores. "She has been very ill +indeed."</p> +<p>"I am extremely sorry to hear it, extremely sorry," the old lady +declared, with feeling. "If I can be of any sort of use—if I +can send anything—or in any way help—" Her eyes +completed the offer.</p> +<p>"Oh, thank you, thank you," replied Maria Dolores. "You are most +kind, but I don't think there is anything any one can do. Besides, +she is on the mend now, we hope. The doctor says the worst is +probably over."</p> +<p>"Well, thank God for that," exclaimed the visitor, with a will. +She considered for a moment, and then reverted to the previous +question. "So you did not know that my vivid young friend's name +was Blanchemain?"</p> +<p>"No," said Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"It is a good name—there's none better in England," +averred the old lady, with a nod of emphasis that set the +wheat-ears in her bonnet quivering.</p> +<p>"Oh—?" said Maria Dolores, looking politely +interested.</p> +<p>"He's the nephew and heir of Lord Blanchemain of Ventmere," her +instructress went on. "That is one of our most ancient +peerages."</p> +<p>"Really?" said Maria Dolores. (What else did she say in her +heart? Where now was her cobbler's son?)</p> +<p>"And I'm glad to be able to add that I'm his sort of +connection—I'm the widow of the late Lord Blanchemain." The +lady paused; then, with that smile of hers which we know, that +smile which went as an advance-guard to disarm resentment, "People +of my age are allowed to be inquisitive," she premised. "I have +introduced myself to you—won't you introduce yourself to +me?"</p> +<p>"My name is Maria Dolores of Zelt-Neuminster," answered the +person questioned, also smiling.</p> +<p>The widow of the late Lord Blanchemain inwardly gasped, but she +was quick to suppress all outward symptoms of that circumstance. +The daughter of Eve in her gasped, but the practised old +Englishwoman of the world affably and imperturbably pronounced, +with a gracious movement of the head, "Ah, indeed? You are then, of +course, a relation of the Prince?"</p> +<p>"I am the Prince's sister," said Maria Dolores. And, as if an +explanation of her presence was in order, she added, "I am here +visiting my old nurse and governess, to whom my brother has given a +pavilion of the Castle for her home."</p> +<p>Lady Blanchemain fanned herself. "A miller's daughter!" she +thought, with a silent laugh at John's expense and her own. "I am +very glad to have made your acquaintance," she said, "and I hope +this may not be our last meeting. I'm afraid I ought now to be +hastening back to Roccadoro. I wonder whether you will have the +kindness, when you see him, to convey my parting benediction to Mr. +Blanchemain. Oh, no, I would not let him be wakened, not for +worlds. Thank you. Good-bye."</p> +<p>And with a great effect of majesty and importance, like a +conscious thing, her carriage rolled away.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>III</h2> +<p>"My romance is over, my April dream is ended," said the +Princess, with an air, perhaps a feint, of listless melancholy, to +Frau Brandt.</p> +<p>"What mean you?" asked Frau Brandt, unmoved.</p> +<p>"My cobbler's son has disappeared—has vanished in a blaze +of glory," her Serene Highness explained, and laughed.</p> +<p>"I don't understand," said Frau Brandt. "He has not left Sant' +Alessina?"</p> +<p>"No, but he isn't a cobbler's son at all—he's merely been +masquerading as one—his name is not Brown, Jones, or +Robinson—his name is the high-sounding name of Blanchemain, +and he's heir to an English peerage."</p> +<p>"Ah, so? He is then noble?" Frau Brandt inferred, raising her +eyes, with satisfaction.</p> +<p>"As noble as need be. An English peer is marriageable. So here's +adieu to my cottage in the air."</p> +<p>"Here's good riddance to it," said Frau Brandt.</p> +<p>That evening, at the hour of sunset, Maria Dolores met John in +the garden.</p> +<p>"You had a visitor this afternoon," she announced. "A most +inspiritingly young old lady, as soft and white as a powder-puff, +in a carriage that was like a coach-and-four. Lady Blanchemain. She +is leaving to-morrow for England. She desired me to give you her +farewell blessing."</p> +<p>"It will be doubly precious to me by reason of the medium +through which it comes," said John, with his courtliest +obeisance.</p> +<p>There was a little pause, during which she looked at the western +sky. But presently, "Why did you tell me you had an uncle who was a +farmer?" she asked, beginning slowly to pace down the pathway.</p> +<p>"Did I tell you that? I suppose I had a boastful fit upon me," +John replied.</p> +<p>"But it very much misled me," said Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"Oh, it's perfectly true," said John.</p> +<p>"You are the heir to a peerage," said Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>John had a gesture.</p> +<p>"There you are," he said; "and my uncle, the peer, spends much +of his time and most of his money breeding sheep and growing +turnips. If that isn't a farmer, I should like to know what +is."</p> +<p>"I hope you displayed less reticence regarding your station in +the world to that woman you were in love with," said she.</p> +<p>"That woman I <i>was</i> in love with?" John caught her up. +"That woman I <i>am</i> in love with, please."</p> +<p>"Oh? Are you still in love with her?" Maria Dolores wondered. +"It is so long since you have spoken of her, I thought your heart +was healed."</p> +<p>"If I have not spoken of her, it has been because I was under +the impression that you had tacitly forbidden me to do so," John +informed her.</p> +<p>"So I had," she admitted. "But I find that there is such a +thing—as being too well obeyed."</p> +<p>She brought out her last words, after the briefest possible +suspension, hurriedly, in a voice that quailed a little, as if in +terror of its own audacity. John, with tingling pulses, turned upon +her. But she, according to her habit at such times, refused him her +eyes. He could see, though, that her eyelashes trembled.</p> +<p>"Oh," he cried, "I love her so much, I need her so, I suppose I +shall end by doing the dishonourable thing."</p> +<p>"Did you ever tell her that you were Lord Blanchemain's heir?" +she asked.</p> +<p>"I never thought of it. Why should I?" said John.</p> +<p>"When you were bemoaning your poverty, as an obstacle to +marriage, you might have remembered that your birth counted for +something. With us Austrians, for example, birth counts for almost +everything,—for infinitely more than money."</p> +<p>"I think," said John, as one impersonally generalizing, "that a +fortune-hunter with a tuft is the least admirable variety of that +animal. I wish you could see what beautiful little rose-white ears +she has, and the lovely way in which her dark hair droops about +them."</p> +<p>"How long ago was it," mused she, "that love first made people +fancy they saw beauties which had no real existence?"</p> +<p>"Oh, the moment you see a thing, it acquires real existence," +John returned. "The act of seeing is an act of creation. The thing +you see has real existence on your retina and in your mind, if +nowhere else, and that is the realest sort of real existence."</p> +<p>"Then she must thank you as the creator of her 'rose-white' +ears," laughed Maria Dolores. "I wonder whether that sunset has any +real existence, and whether it is really as splendid as it +seems."</p> +<p>The west had become a vast sea of gold, a pure and placid sea of +many-tinted gold, bounded and intersected and broken into +innumerable wide bays and narrow inlets by great +cloud-promontories, purple and rose and umber. Directly opposite, +just above the crest-line of the hills, hung the nearly full moon, +pale as a mere phantom of itself. And from somewhere in the boscage +at the garden's end came a lool-lool-lool-lioo-liô, deep and +long-drawn, liquid and complaining, which one knew to be the +preliminary piping-up of Philomel.</p> +<p>"If some things," said John, "derive their beauty from the eye +of the beholder, the beauty of other things is determined by the +presence or absence of the person you long to share all beautiful +visions with. The sky, the clouds, the whole air and earth, this +evening, seem to me beauty in its ultimate perfection."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores softly laughed, softly, softly. And for a long +time, by the marble balustrade that guarded this particular terrace +of the garden, they stood in silence. The western gold burned to +red, and more sombre red; the cloud-promontories gloomed purpler; +the pale moon kindled, and shone like ice afire, with its intense +cold brilliancy; the olive woods against the sky lay black; a score +of nightingales, near and far, were calling and sobbing and +exulting; and two human spirits yearned with the mystery of +love.</p> +<p>"My income," said John, all at once, brusquely coming to earth, +"is exactly six hundred pounds a year. I suppose two people +<i>could</i> live on that, though I'm dashed if I see how. Of +course we couldn't live in England, where that infernal future +peerage would put us under a thousand obligations; but I dare say +we might find a garret here in Italy. The question is, would she be +willing, or have I any right to ask her, to marry me, on the +condition of leaving her own money untouched, and living with me on +mine?</p> +<p>"Apropos of future peerages and things," said Maria Dolores, "do +you happen to know whether she has any rank of her own to keep +up?"</p> +<p>"I don't care twopence about her rank," said John.</p> +<p>"Do you happen to know her name?" she asked.</p> +<p>"I know what I wish her name was," John promptly answered. "I +wish to Heaven it was Blanchemain."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores gazed, pensive, at the moon. "He does not even +know her name," she remarked, on a key of meditation, "though he +fears," she sadly shook her head, "he fears it may be Smitti."</p> +<p>"Oh, I say!" cried John, wincing, with a kind of sorry giggle; +and I don't know whether he looked or felt the more sheepish. His +face showed every signal of humiliation, he tugged nervously at his +beard, but his eyes, in spite of him, his very blue blue eyes were +full of vexed amusement.</p> +<p>The bell in the clock-tower struck eight.</p> +<p>"There—it is your hour for going to Annunziata," said +Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"You have not answered my question?" said John.</p> +<p>"I will think about it," said she.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>IV</h2> +<p>Annunziata's delirium had passed, but in spite of all their +efforts to persuade her not to talk, talk she would.</p> +<p>"This is the month of May, isn't it?" she asked, next +morning.</p> +<p>"Yes, dear one," said Maria Dolores, whose watch it was.</p> +<p>"And that is the month of Mary. San Luca ought to hurry up and +make me well, so that I can keep flowers on the Lady Altar."</p> +<p>"Then if you wish to get well quickly," said Maria Dolores, "you +must try not to talk,—nor even to think, if you can help it. +You know the doctor does not want you to talk."</p> +<p>"All right. I won't talk. A going clock may be always wrong, but +a stopped clock is right twice a day. So stop your tongue, and +avoid folly. My uncle told me that. He never talks."</p> +<p>"And now shall you and I imitate his example?" proposed Maria +Dolores. Her lips, compressed, were plainly the gaolers of a +laugh.</p> +<p>"Yes," said Annunziata. "But I can't help thinking of those poor +flowers. All May flowers are born to be put on the Lady Altar. +Those poor flowers are missing what they were born for. They must +be very sad."</p> +<p>"This afternoon, every afternoon," Maria Dolores promised, "I +will put flowers on the Lady Altar. Now see if you can't shut your +eyes, and rest for a little while."</p> +<p>"I once found a toad on the Lady Altar. What do you think he was +there for?" asked Annunziata.</p> +<p>"I can't think, I'm sure," said Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"Well, when I first saw him I was angry, and I was going to get +a broom and sweep him away. But then I thought it must be very hard +to be a toad, and that you can't help being a toad if you are born +one, and I thought that perhaps that toad was there praying that he +might be changed from a toad to something else. So I didn't sweep +him away. Have you ever heard of the little Mass of Corruption that +lay in a garden?"</p> +<p>"No," said Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"Well," said Annunziata, "once upon a time a little Mass of +Corruption lay in a garden. But it did not know it was a Mass of +Corruption, and it did not wish to be a Mass of Corruption, and it +never did any harm or wished any harm to any one, but just lay +there all day long, and thought how beautiful the sky was, and how +good and warm the sun, and how sweet the flowers were and the +bird-songs, and thanked God with all its heart for having given it +such a lovely place to lie in. Yet all the while, you know, it +couldn't help being what it was, a little Mass of Corruption. And +at the close of the day some people who were walking in the garden +saw it, and cried out, 'Oh, what a horrible little Mass of +Corruption!' and they called the gardener, and had it buried in the +earth. But the little Mass of Corruption, when it heard that it +<i>was</i> a little Mass of Corruption, felt very, very sad, and it +made a supplication to Our Lady. 'I do not wish to be a Mass of +Corruption,' it said. 'Queen of Heaven, pray for me, that I may be +purified, and made clean, and not be a Mass of Corruption any +longer, and that I may then go back to the garden, out of this dark +earth.' So Our Lady prayed for it, and it was cleansed with water +and purified, and—what do you think the Little Mass of +Corruption became? It became a rose—a red rose in that very +garden, just where they had buried it. From which we see—But +I don't quite remember what we see from it," she broke off the pain +of baffled effort on her brow. "My uncle could tell you that."</p> +<p>Afterwards, for a few minutes, she was silent, lying quite +still, with her eyes on the ceiling.</p> +<p>"Why do sunny lands produce dark people, and dark lands light +people?" she asked all at once.</p> +<p>"Ah, don't begin to talk again, dear," Maria Dolores pleaded. +"The doctor will he coming soon now, and he will be angry if he +finds that I have let you talk."</p> +<p>"Oh, I will tell him that it isn't your fault," said Annunziata. +"I will tell him that you didn't let me, but that I talked because +it is so hard to lie here and think, think, think, and not be +allowed to say what you are thinking. Prospero asked me that +question about sunny lands a long time ago. I've been thinking and +thinking, but I can't think it out. Have you a great deal of money? +Are you very rich?"</p> +<p>"Darling, won't you please not talk any more?" Maria Dolores +implored her.</p> +<p>"I'll stop pretty soon," said Annunziata. "I think you are very +rich. I think, in spite of his saying her name is not Maria +Dolores, that you are the dark woman whom Prospero is to marry. He +is to marry a dark woman who will be very rich. But then he will +also he very rich himself. Is Austria a sunny land? England must be +a dark land, for Prospero is light. Let me see your left hand, +please, and I will tell you whether you are to marry a light +man.</p> +<p>"Hush!" said Maria Dolores, trying not to laugh. "That shall be +some other time."</p> +<p>"Wouldn't you like to marry Prospero? I would," said +Annunziata.</p> +<p>"I think I hear the wheels of the doctor's gig," said Maria +Dolores. "Now we shall both be scolded."</p> +<p>"But of course, if you do marry him, I can't," Annunziata +pursued, undaunted by this menace. "A man isn't allowed to have two +wives,—unless he is a king. He may have two sisters or two +daughters, but not two wives or two mothers. There was once a king +named Salomone who had a thousand wives, but even he had only one +mother, I think. I hope you will live at Sant' Alessina after your +marriage. Will you?"</p> +<p>Maria Dolores bit her lip and vouchsafed no answer; and again +for a minute or two Annunziata lay silent. But presently, "Have you +ever waked up in the middle of the night, and felt terribly +frightened?" she asked.</p> +<p>"Yes, dear, sometimes. I suppose every one has," said Maria +Dolores.</p> +<p>"Well, do you know why people feel so frightened when they wake +like that?" pursued the child.</p> +<p>"No," said Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"I do," said Annunziata. "The middle of the night is the Devil's +Noon. Nobody is awake in the middle of the night except wicked +people, like thieves or roysterers, or people who are suffering. +All people who are good, and who are well and happy, are sound +asleep. So it is the time the Devil likes best, and he and all his +evil spirits come to the earth to enjoy the great pleasure of +seeing people wicked or suffering. And that is why we feel so +frightened when we wake. The air all round us is full of evil +spirits, though we can't see them, and they are watching us, to run +and tell the Devil if we do anything wicked or suffer any pain. But +it is foolish of us to feel frightened, because our Guardian Angels +are always there too, and they are a hundred times stronger than +the evil spirits. Angels, you know, are very big, very much bigger +than men. Some of them are as tall as mountains, but even the quite +small ones are as tall as trees."</p> +<p>"This time I really do hear wheels," said Maria Dolores, with an +accent of thanksgiving.</p> +<p>And she rose to meet the doctor.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>V</h2> +<p>John sat in his room, absorbed in contemplation of a tiny +lace-edged pocket-handkerchief. He spread it out upon his knee, and +laughed. He crumpled it up in his palm, and pressed it to his face, +and drank deep of its faint perfume,—faint, but powerfully +provocative of visions and emotions. He had found it during the +night on the floor of the sick-room, and had captured and borne it +away like a treasure. He spread it out on his knee again, and was +again about to laugh at its small size and gauzy texture, when his +eye was caught by something in its corner. He held it nearer to the +window. The thing that had caught his eye was a cypher surmounted +by a crown, embroidered so minutely as almost to call for a +magnifying glass. But without a glass he could see that the cypher +was composed of the initials M and D, and that the crown was not a +coronet, but a closed crown, of the pattern worn by mediatised +princes.</p> +<p>"What on earth can be the meaning of this?" he wondered, +frowning, and breathing quick.</p> +<p>But he was stopped from further speculation for the moment by a +knock at the door. The postman entered with two letters, for one of +which, as it was registered, John had to sign. When he had tipped +the postman and was alone again, he put his registered letter on +the dressing-table (with a view to disciplining curiosity and +exercising patience, possibly) and turned his attention to the +other. In a handsome, high old hand, that somehow reminded him of +the writer's voice, it ran as follows:—</p> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>"DEAR JOHN,</p> +<br /> +<p>"I was heart-broken not to see you when I drove over to say +good-bye this afternoon, but chance favoured me at least to the +extent of letting me see your miller's daughter, and you may +believe that I was glad of an opportunity to inspect her at close +quarters. My dear boy, she is no more a miller's daughter than you +are. Her beauty—there's <i>race</i> in it. Her manner and +carriage, her voice, accent, her way of dressing, (I'd give a +sovereign for the name of her dressmaker), the fineness of her +skin, her hair, everything—there's race in 'em all, race and +consciousness of race, pride, dignity, distinction. These things +don't come to pass in a generation. I'm surprised at your lack of +perspicacity. And those blue eyes of yours look so sharp, too. But +perhaps your wish was father to your thought. You felt (well, and +so to some extent did I) that it would be more <i>romantic</i>. +She's probably a very great swell indeed, and I expect the Frau +What's-her-name she's staying with will turn out to be her old +governess or nurse or something. When those Austrians <i>can</i> +show quarterings, (of course you must bar recent +creations—they're generally named Cohen), they can show them +to some effect. They think nothing of thirty-two. All of which, +<i>au fond</i>, rather rejoices me, for if she really had been a +miller's daughter, it would have seemed a good deal like throwing +yourself away, and who knows what your rusty, crusty old uncle B. +might have said? I've long had a rod in pickle for <i>him</i>, and +t'other day I applied it. <i>Attendez</i>.</p> +<p>"Don't forget the pig you purchased—so gallantly and +confidingly. I would not to the marriage of true minds admit +impediments—your pig will gobble 'em up. You should by this +have received a communication from my solicitors. Remember, you +have pledged your sacred promise. There must be no question of +trying to shirk or burke it. Remember that I am quite outrageously +rich. I have no children of my own, and no very near relatives, +(and my distant ones are intensely disagreeable), and I can't help +looking upon the heir of the Blanchemains as a kind of spiritual +son. In your position there's no such thing as having too much +money. Take all that comes, and never mind the quarter whence. +They're Plymouth Brethren, and send me tracts.</p> +<p>"Good-bye now till August, if not before. For of course in +August you must come to me at Fring. Will you bring your bride? +When and where the wedding? I suppose they'll want it in Austria. +Beware of long engagements—or of too short ones. The autumn's +the time,—the only pretty ring-time. You see, you'll need +some months for the preparation of your trousseau. I love a man to +be smart. Well, good-bye. I was so sorry about that child's +illness, but thankful to hear she was mending.</p> +<p>"Yours affectionately,</p> +<p>"LINDA BLANCHEMAIN."</p> +</div> +<p>And his registered letter, when at last he opened it, ran +thus:—</p> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>"DEAR SIR:—Pursuant to instructions received from our +client Lady Blanchemain, we beg to hand you herewith our cheque for +Seven hundred and fifty pounds (£750 stg.), and to request +the favour of your receipt for the same, together with the address +of your bankers, that we may pay in quarterly a like sum to your +account, it being her ladyship's intention, immediately upon her +return to England, to effect a settlement upon yourself and heirs +of £100,000 funded in Bk. of Eng. stock.</p> +<p>"We are further to have the pleasure to inform you that by the +terms of a will just prepared by us, and to be executed by Lady +Blanchemain at the earliest possible date, you are constituted her +residuary legatee.</p> +<p>"With compliments and respectful congratulations,</p> +<p>"We have the honour, dear Sir, to be,</p> +<p>"Your obedient servants,</p> +<p>"FARROW, BERNSCOT, AND TISDALE."</p> +</div> +<p>And then there came another tap at the door, and it was the +postman who had returned, with a third letter which, like the true +Italian postman that he was, he had forgotten,—and I fancy, +if it hadn't been for that tip still warm in his pocket, the +easy-going fellow would have allowed it to stand over till +to-morrow. He made, at any rate, a great virtue of having +discovered it and of having retraced his steps.</p> +<p>The letter was written in black, angular, uncompromising +characters, that looked rather like sabre-thrusts and bayonets. It +read:—</p> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>"DEAR JACK:—I have received the enclosure from Linda Lady +Blanchemain. She is an exceedingly impertinent and meddlesome old +woman. But she is right about the allowance. I don't know why I +never thought of it myself. I don't know why you never suggested +it. I extremely regret it. As next in succession, you are certainly +entitled to an annuity from the estate. I have to-day remitted +£500 to your bankers, and am instructing my agents to pay in +a like amount quarterly.</p> +<p>"I hope I shall soon be seeing you at Ventmere. We are having a +grand lambing season, but there's a nasty spread of swine-fever, +and the whole country's papered with handbills. I got a goodish bit +of hunting down at Wilsborough during the winter. Now there's +nothing to do but play golf. I never could find any fun in shooting +rooks.</p> +<p>"Your affectionate uncle,</p> +<p>"B of V."</p> +</div> +<p>And the enclosure:—</p> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>"Linda Lady Blanchemain presents her compliments to Lord +Blanchemain of Ventmere, and begs to apprise him that she has +lately had the pleasure of meeting his lordship's nephew John, and +has discovered to her amazement that his lordship makes him no +allowance. This situation, for the heir to the barony of +Blanchemain, is of course absurd, and must, Lady Blanchemain is +sure, be due entirely to an oversight on his lordship's part. She +ventures, therefore, with all respect, to bring it to his +notice."</p> +</div> +<p>So! Here sat a young man with plenty to think about; a young +man, whose income, yesterday a bare six hundred, had sprung up over +night to something near six thousand. Six thousand a year isn't +opulence, if you like, but a young man possessing it can hardly +look upon himself as quite empty-handed, either. This young man, +however, had other things as well to think of. What of that +embroidered handkerchief? What of those shrewd suspicions of Lady +Blanchemain's? What of his miller's daughter?</p> +<p>And there was another thing still. What of his proud old honest +Spartan of an unimaginative uncle? He thought of him, and "Oh, the +poor old boy," he cried. "Not for ten times the money would I have +had the dear old woman write to him like that. How hard it must +have hit him!"</p> +<p>"M, D, and a princely crown," he reflected. "I wish I had an +Almanach de Gotha."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>VI</h2> +<p>"Who was it said of some one that he dearly loved a lord?" Maria +Dolores, her chin in the air, asked of Frau Brandt.</p> +<p>"I do not know," Frau Brandt replied, knitting.</p> +<p>"Well, at least, you know whether it would be possible for a man +and wife to live luxuriously on sixpence a week. Would it?" pursued +her tease.</p> +<p>"You are well aware that it would not," said Frau Brandt.</p> +<p>"How about six hundred pounds a year?"</p> +<p>"Six hundred pounds—?" Frau Brandt computed. "That would +be six thousand florins, no? It would depend upon their station in +the world."</p> +<p>"Well, suppose their station were about my station—and my +lord's?"</p> +<p>"You," said Frau Brandt, with a chuckle of contentment, swaying +her white-bonneted head. "You would need twice that for your dress +alone."</p> +<p>"One could dress more simply," said Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"No," said Frau Brandt, her good eyes beaming, "you must always +dress in the very finest that can be had."</p> +<p>"But then," Maria Dolores asked with wistfulness, "what am I to +do? For six hundred pounds is the total of his income."</p> +<p>"You have, unless I am mistaken, an income of your own," Frau +Brandt remarked.</p> +<p>"Yes—but he won't let me use it," said Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"He? Who?" demanded Frau Brandt, bridling. "Who is there that +dares to say let or not let to you?</p> +<p>"My future husband," said Maria Dolores. "He has peculiar ideas +of honour. He does not like the notion of marrying a woman who is +richer than himself. So he will marry me only on the condition that +I send my own fortune to be dropped in the middle of the sea."</p> +<p>"What nonsense is this?" said Frau Brandt, composed.</p> +<p>"No, it is the truth," said Maria Dolores, "the true truth. He +is too proud to live in luxury at his wife's expense."</p> +<p>"I like a man making conditions, when it is a question of +marrying you," said Frau Brandt, with scorn.</p> +<p>"So do I," said Maria Dolores, with heartiness.</p> +<p>"Well, at any rate, I am glad to see that he is not after you +for your money," Frau Brandt reflected.</p> +<p>"I suppose we shall have to dress in sackcloth and dine on +lentils," said Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"Of course you will tell him to take his conditions to the Old +One," said Frau Brandt. "It is out of the question for you to +change the manner of your life."</p> +<p>"I feel indeed as if it were," admitted Maria Dolores. "But if +he insists?"</p> +<p>"Then tell him to go to the Old One himself," was Frau Brandt's +blunt advice.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores laughed. "It seems like an <i>impasse</i>," she +said. "Who is to break the news to my brother?"</p> +<p>"We will wait until there is some news to break," the old woman +amiably grumbled.</p> +<p>Again at the sunset hour Maria Dolores met him in the garden. He +was seated on one of their marble benches, amongst marble columns, +(rose-tinted by the western light, and casting long purple +shadows), in a vine-embowered pergola. He was leaning forward, legs +crossed, brow wrinkled, as one deep in thought. But of course at +the sound of her footstep he jumped up.</p> +<p>"What mighty problem were you revolving?" she asked. "You looked +like Rembrandt's <i>philosophe en méditation</i>."</p> +<p>"I was revolving the problem of human love," he answered. "I was +mutilating Browning.</p> +<div class="blockquot">'<i>Was it something said,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Something done,</span><br /> +Was it touch of hand,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Turn of head?'</span></i></div> +<p>I was also thinking about you. I was wondering whether it would +be my cruel destiny not to see you this evening, and thinking of +the first time I ever saw you."</p> +<p>"Oh," said she, lightly, "that morning among the +olives,—when you gathered the windflowers for me?"</p> +<p>"No," said he. "That was the second time."</p> +<p>"Indeed?" said she, surprised. She sat down on the marble bench. +John stood before her.</p> +<p>"Yes," said he. "The first time was the day before. You were +crossing the garden—you were bending over the +sun-dial—and I spied upon you from a window of the <i>piano +nobile</i>. Lady Blanchemain was there with me, and she made a +prediction."</p> +<p>"What did she predict?" asked Maria Dolores, unsuspicious.</p> +<p>"She predicted that I would fall—" But he dropped his +sentence in the middle. "She predicted what has happened."</p> +<p>"Oh," murmured Maria Dolores, and looked at the horizon. +By-and-by, "That morning among the olives was the first time that I +saw you—when you dashed like a paladin to my assistance. I +feel that I have never sufficiently thanked you."</p> +<p>"A paladin oddly panoplied," said John. "Tell me honestly, +weren't you in two minds whether or not to reward me with largesse? +You had silver in your hand."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores laughed. I think she coloured a little.</p> +<p>"Perhaps I was, for half a second," she confessed. "But your +grand manner soon put me in one mind."</p> +<p>John also laughed. He took a turn backwards and forwards. "I +have waked in the dead of night, and grown hot and cold to remember +the figure of fun I was."</p> +<p>"No," said Maria Dolores, to console him. "You weren't a figure +of fun. Your costume had the air of being an impromptu, but," she +laughed, "your native dignity shone through."</p> +<p>"Thank you," said John, bowing. "The next time I saw you was +that same afternoon. You were with Annunziata in the avenue. I +carried my vision of you, like a melody, all the way to +Roccadoro-and all the way home again."</p> +<p>"I had just made Annunziata's acquaintance," said Maria +Dolores.</p> +<p>"You had a white sunshade and a lilac frock," said John. "The +next time was that night in the moonlight. You were all in white, +with a scarf of white lace over your hair. You threw me a white +rose from your balcony—and I have carried that rose with me +ever since."</p> +<p>"I threw you a white rose?" doubted Maria Dolores, looking up, +at fault.</p> +<p>"Yes," said John. "Have you forgotten it?"</p> +<p>"I certainly have," said she, with emphasis.</p> +<p>"You threw me a smile that was like a white rose," said he.</p> +<p>She laughed.</p> +<p>"I think I just distantly acknowledged your bow," she said.</p> +<p>"Well, some people's distant acknowledgments are like white +roses," said he. "I hope, at least, you remember what a glorious +night it was, and how the nightingales were singing?"</p> +<p>"Yes," said she. "I remember that."</p> +<p>"I have a fancy," he declared, "that it will be a more glorious +night still to-night, and that the nightingales will sing better +than they have ever sung before."</p> +<p>Maria Dolores did not speak.</p> +<p>"Do you happen," John asked, after a long silence, while they +gazed at the deepening colours in the west, "do you happen to +possess such a thing as a copy of the Almanach de Gotha?"</p> +<p>"Yes," said she.</p> +<p>"Really? I wonder whether you will lend it to me?"</p> +<p>"I am sorry—it is in Vienna." And after an instant's +pause, she ventured, "What, if it isn't indiscreet to inquire, do +you wish to look up?"</p> +<p>"I wish to look up a lady—a dream lady—a lady who +walks in beauty like the night of cloudless climes—and whose +pocket-handkerchiefs are embroidered with the initials M.D., in a +cypher, under a princely crown."</p> +<p>"I should think," said Maria Dolores, considering, "that she +would probably be a member of one of the mediatised princely +houses. But if you have nothing more than her initials to go by, +you would find it difficult to trace her in the Almanach de +Gotha."</p> +<p>"No doubt," said John. "But to a man of spirit a difficulty is a +challenge."</p> +<p>"Do you make a practice," asked she, "of appropriating people's +handkerchiefs?"</p> +<p>"Certain people's—yes," unblushing, he promptly owned.</p> +<p>"M.D. under a princely crown, I think you said?" she mused. "It +occurs to me that Maria Dolores of Zelt-Neuminster's +pocket-handkerchiefs might be so embroidered."</p> +<p>"Ah?" said John. "Zelt-Neuminster? That would be a daughter of +the man who owns this Castle?"</p> +<p>"No, she is a sister of the man who owns this Castle."</p> +<p>"I understand," said John. "I wonder that the sister of the man +who owns this Castle never comes here to see how fine it is."</p> +<p>"She has been here quite recently," said Maria Dolores. "She has +been here visiting her foster-mother, who lives in the pavilion +beyond the clock. She came to make a sort of retreat—to think +something over."</p> +<p>"Yes—?" questioned he.</p> +<p>"Her brother is very anxious to marry her off. He is anxious +that she should marry her second cousin, the Prince of Zelt-Zelt. +She came here to make up her mind."</p> +<p>"Has she made it up?" he asked.</p> +<p>"I am not sure," said she.</p> +<p>"Yet you seem to be deep in her confidence," said he.</p> +<p>"Yes—but she is not quite sure herself."</p> +<p>"Oh—?" said John.</p> +<p>"She is one of those foolish women who dream of marriage as a +high romance."</p> +<p>"Wise men," said John, "dream of it as the highest."</p> +<p>She shook her head.</p> +<p>"A marriage with her cousin would be an end to all romance for +ever. She was thinking a little while ago, I believe, of marrying a +plain commoner, the nephew of a farmer. That would have been indeed +romantic. Now, I hear, she is considering, a future member of your +English House of Lords."</p> +<p>"Wouldn't even that be rather romantic—if a step down +constitutes romance?" John suggested.</p> +<p>"Oh, a British peer is scarcely a step down," she returned. +"Besides, there are people who don't care—what is the +expression?—twopence about rank."</p> +<p>"When I said that," John explained, "I had no inkling that her +rank was so exalted."</p> +<p>"Did you think she was the daughter of a cobbler?" Maria Dolores +quickly, with some haughtiness, inquired.</p> +<p>"I thought she was a daughter of the stars," John answered.</p> +<p>"And you feared her name was Smitti," she said, haughtiness +dissolving in mirth. "I will never tell you what she feared that +yours was."</p> +<p>"See," said John, "how they are hanging the heavens with +banners. It must be in honour of some great impending event."</p> +<p>Yesterday the west had been a sea. To-day it was a city, a vast +grey and violet city, with palaces and battlemented towers, and +countless airy spires and pinnacles; and here, there, everywhere, +its walls were gay with gold and crimson, as with drooping +banners.</p> +<p>"'Tis a city <i>en fête</i>," said John. "'Tis the city +where marriages are made. They must have one in hand."</p> +<p>"Hark," said she, putting up a finger. "There are your +nightingales beginning."</p> +<p>But the raised finger reminded him of something. "Have you a +rooted objection to rings?" he asked.</p> +<p>"Why?" asked she.</p> +<p>"I notice that you don't wear any."</p> +<p>"Oh, sometimes I wear many," she said. "Then one has moods in +which one leaves them off."</p> +<p>"I have a ring in my pocket which I think belongs to you," said +he.</p> +<p>"Really? I don't know that any of my rings are missing."</p> +<p>"Here it is," said he. He produced the little old shagreen case +he had received from Lady Blanchemain, opened, and offered it.</p> +<p>"It is a singularly beautiful ring," said she, her eyes +admiring. "But it doesn't belong to me."</p> +<p>"I think it does," said he. "May I try it on your finger?"</p> +<p>She put forth her right hand.</p> +<p>"No—your left hand, please," he said. He dropped upon one +knee before her, and when the delicate white hand was surrendered, +I imagine he made of getting the ring upon the alliance finger a +longer business by a good deal than was necessary. "There," he said +in the end, "you see. It looks as if it had grown there. Of course +it belongs to you." He still held her hand, warm and firm and +velvet-soft. I think in another second he would have touched it +with his lips. But she drew it away.</p> +<p>She gazed into the depths of the heart-shaped ruby, tremulous +with liquid light, and smiled as at secret thoughts.</p> +<p>"But I don't see," said John, getting to his feet, "how any man +can ask a Princess of the House of Zelt to marry him and live on +six hundred pounds a year."</p> +<p>"She would have to modify her habits a good deal, that is very +certain," said Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"She would have to modify them utterly," said John. "Six hundred +a year is poverty even for a single man. For a married couple it +would be beggary. She would have to live like the wife of a petty +employé. She would have to travel second class and stay at +fourth-rate hotels. She would have to turn her old dresses and trim +her own bonnets. She would have to do without a maid. And all this +means that she would have virtually to renounce her caste, to give +up the society of her equals, who demand a certain scale of +appearances, and to live among pariahs or to live in isolation. +Don't you think a man would be a monster of selfishness to exact +such sacrifices?"</p> +<p>"Oh, some men have excessively far-fetched and morbid notions of +honour," said she.</p> +<p>"Do you think the Princess, with all this brought to her +attention, would ever dream of consenting?"</p> +<p>"Women in love are weak—they will consent to almost +anything," said she, her dark eyes smiling for an instant into +his.</p> +<p>Why didn't he take her in his arms? Hope deferred maketh the +heart sick, but to defer the consummation of a joy assured +(observes the Persian poet) giveth the heart a peculiar sweet +excitement.</p> +<p>"Well," said John. "I'm glad to think she is weak; but I'll +never ask my wife to consent to anything so unpleasant. A Princess +and a future peeress, living on six hundred pounds a year! It's +unheard of."</p> +<p>She looked at him, puzzled, incredulous.</p> +<p>"Oh—? Can you possibly mean—that you will—take +back your condition?"</p> +<p>"Yes," said he, humbly. "Who am I to make conditions?"</p> +<p>"You will let her spend as much of her own money as she likes?" +she wondered, wide-eyed.</p> +<p>"As a lover of thrift, I shall deprecate extravagance," said +John. "But as a submissive husband, I shall let her do in all +things as her fancy dictates."</p> +<p>"Well," marvelled she, "here is a surprise—here is a +volte-face indeed."</p> +<p>And she looked at the city in the sky, and appeared to turn +things over.</p> +<p>John was mysteriously chuckling.</p> +<p>"Haven't you your opinion," he asked, "of men who eat their +words and put their scruples in their pockets?"</p> +<p>"I don't understand," said she, looking wild. "There is, of +course, some joke."</p> +<p>"There is a joke, indeed," said he; "the joke is that I'm ten +times richer than I told you I was."</p> +<p>She started back, and fixed him with a glance.</p> +<p>"Then all that about your being poor was only humbug?" There was +reproach in her voice, I'm not sure there wasn't +disappointment.</p> +<p>"No," said he, "it was the exact and literal truth. But I have +come into a modest competency over-night."</p> +<p>"I don't understand," said she.</p> +<p>"My own part in the story is a sufficiently inglorious one," +said he. "I'm the benefactee. Lady Blanchemain and my uncle have +put their heads together, and endowed me. I feel rather small at +letting them, but it enables me to look my affianced boldly in the +money-eye."</p> +<p>"Oh? You are affianced? Already?" she asked gaily.</p> +<p>"No—not unless you are," gaily answered John.</p> +<p>She looked down at her ring.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>VII</h2> +<p>The quiet-coloured end of evening smiled fainter, fainter. The +aerial city, its cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces, had +crumbled into ruins, and stars twinkled among their shattered and +darkened walls. The moon burned icily above the eastern hills. The +nightingales (or John was no true prophet) sang better than they +had ever sung before, while bats, hither, thither, flew in +startling zig-zags, as if waltzing to the music. And all the air +was sweet with the breath of dew-wet roses.</p> +<p>The clock struck eight.</p> +<p>"There—you must go," said Maria Dolores.</p> +<p>"Go? Where to?" asked John, feigning vagueness.</p> +<p>"This is no subject for jest," said she, feigning severity.</p> +<p>"I can't go yet—I can't leave you yet," said he. "Besides, +it is an education in æsthetics to watch the moonlight on +these marble columns, and the pale shadows of the vine-leaves."</p> +<p>"Well, then," said she, "stay you here and pursue your +education. I will go in your place. For Marcella Cuciniera must be +relieved." She rose, and moved towards the darkling front of the +Castle.</p> +<p>"Hang education! I'll go with you," said John, following.</p> +<p>"I shall only stop a moment, to see how she is," said Maria +Dolores. "Then I must hurry home, to get my packing begun."</p> +<p>"Your packing?" faltered John.</p> +<p>"To-morrow morning Frau Brandt and I are leaving for +Austria—for Schloss Mischenau, where my brother lives."</p> +<p>"Good Lord!" said John. "Ah, well, I suppose it is what they +would call the proper course," he admitted with gloomy resignation. +"But think how dreadfully you'll be missed—by +Annunziata."</p> +<p>"Annunziata is so much better, I can easily be spared," said +Maria Dolores; "and anyhow—'tis needs must. I think you will +probably soon receive a letter from my brother, asking you to visit +him. Mischenau is a place worth seeing, in its northern style. And, +in his northern style, my brother is a man worth meeting. I counsel +you to go."</p> +<p>"I shall certainly go," said John. "I shall linger here at Sant' +Alessina like a soul in durance, counting the hours till my +release. I shall be particularly glad to meet your brother, as I +have matters of importance to arrange with him."</p> +<p>"Until then," said she, smiling, "I think we must do with +those—matters of importance"—her voice quavered on the +word—"what is it that the Pope sometimes does with +Cardinals?"</p> +<p>"Yes," moodily consented John, "I suppose we must. But oh me, +what a dreary, blank, stale, and unprofitable desolation this +garden will become,—and at every turn the ghost of some past +joy!"</p> +<p>Annunziata looked up with eyes that seemed omniscient.</p> +<p>"I was thinking about you," she greeted them.</p> +<p>"About which of us?" asked John.</p> +<p>"About both of you. I always now, since a long while, think of +you both together. I think Maria Dolores is the dark woman whom +Prospero is to marry."</p> +<p>John laughed. Maria Dolores looked out of the window.</p> +<p>"And I was thinking," Annunziata went on, "how strange it was +that if you hadn't both at the same time just happened to come to +Sant' Alessina, you might have lived and died and never have known +each other."</p> +<p>"Perish that thought," laughed John. "But I have sometimes +thought it myself."</p> +<p>"And then," Annunziata rounded out her tale, "I thought that +perhaps you had not just happened—that probably you had been +led."</p> +<p>"That is a thing I haven't a doubt of," John with energy +affirmed.</p> +<p>"You look as if you were very glad about something—both of +you," said Annunziata, those omniscient eyes of hers studying their +faces. "What is it that you are both so glad of?"</p> +<p>"We are so glad to find you feeling so well," answered Maria +Dolores.</p> +<p>But Annunziata shook her head, as one who knew better. +"No—that is not the only thing. You are glad of something +else besides."</p> +<p>"There's no taking you in," said John. "But we are under bonds +to treat that Something Else as the Pope sometimes treats Princes +of the Church."</p> +<p>"He gives them red hats," said Annunziata.</p> +<p>"I shall give this thing a crown of myrtle," said John.</p> +<p>"You sometimes say things that sound as if they hadn't any +sense," Annunziata informed him, with patient indulgence, nodding +at the ceiling.</p> +<p>Maria Dolores leaned over the bed, and kissed Annunziata's brow. +"Good night, carina," she murmured.</p> +<p>Annunziata put up her little white arms, and encircled Maria +Dolores' neck. Then she kissed her four times—on the brow, on +the chin, on the left cheek, on the right. "That is a cross of +kisses," she explained. "It is the way my mother used to kiss me. +It means may the four Angels of Peace, Grace, Holiness, and Wisdom +watch over your sleep."</p> +<p>But early next morning, John being still on duty, Maria Dolores +came back,—booted and spurred for her journey, in tailor-made +tweeds, with a little felt toque and a veil: a costume of which +Annunziata's eyes were quick to catch the suggestion.</p> +<p>"Why are you dressed like that?" she asked, uneasily. "I never +saw you dressed like that before. You look as if you were going +away somewhere."</p> +<p>"I have got to go away—I have got to go to my home, in +Austria. I have come to bid you good-bye," Maria Dolores +answered.</p> +<p>Annunziata's eyes were dark with pain. "Oh," she said, in a +voice of deep dismay.</p> +<p>"We shan't be separated long, though," Maria Dolores promised. +"I have asked your uncle to lend you to me. As soon as you are +strong enough to travel, you are coming to Austria to pay me a long +visit. Then I will come back with you to Sant' Alessina. And +then—well, wherever I go you will always go with me. For of +course I can never live happily again without you."</p> +<p>"One moment, please," put in John. "Here is a small difficulty. +I can never live happily without her, either. I also have asked her +uncle to lend her to me. And wherever <i>I</i> go, she is always to +go with me. How are we to adjust our rival claims?"</p> +<p>Annunziata's eyes lighted up.</p> +<p>"Oh, that will be easy enough," she pointed out. "You will have +to go everywhere together."</p> +<h3>THE END</h3> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of My Friend Prospero, by Henry Harland + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY FRIEND PROSPERO *** + +***** This file should be named 14682-h.htm or 14682-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/6/8/14682/ + +Produced by Rick Niles, Charlie Kirschner and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: My Friend Prospero + +Author: Henry Harland + +Release Date: January 13, 2005 [EBook #14682] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY FRIEND PROSPERO *** + + + + +Produced by Rick Niles, Charlie Kirschner and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + +MY FRIEND +PROSPERO + + +By HENRY HARLAND + +_Author of_ + +THE CARDINAL'S SNUFF-BOX. +Illustrated by G.C. Wilmshurst. +_One Hundred and Fifth Thousand_. + +THE LADY PARAMOUNT. +_Fifty-fifth Thousand_. + +COMEDIES AND ERRORS. +_Third Edition_. + +GREY ROSES. _Third Edition_. + +MADEMOISELLE MISS. _Second Edition_. + + + + +JOHN LANE: THE BODLEY HEAD + +LONDON & NEW YORK. MDCCCCIV + +1903 + + + + +PART FIRST + + + + +My Friend Prospero + + + + +I + + +The coachman drew up his horses before the castle gateway, where their +hoofs beat a sort of fanfare on the stone pavement; and the footman, +letting himself smartly down, pulled, with a peremptory gesture that was +just not quite a swagger, the bronze hand at the end of the dangling +bell-cord. + +Seated alone in her great high-swung barouche, in the sweet April +weather, Lady Blanchemain gave the interval that followed to a +consideration of the landscape: first, sleeping in shadowy stillness, +the formal Italian garden, its terraced lawns and metrical parterres, +its straight dark avenues of ilex, its cypresses, fountains, statues, +balustrades; and then, laughing in the breeze and the sun, the wild +Italian valley, a forest of blossoming fruit-trees, with the river +winding and glinting in its midst, with olive-clad hills blue-grey at +either side, and beyond the hills, peering over their shoulders, the +snow-peaks of mountains, crisp against the sky, and in the level +distance the hazy shimmer of the lake. + +"It is lovely," she exclaimed, fervently, in a whisper, "lovely.--And +only a generation of blind-worms," was her after-thought, "could discern +in it the slightest resemblance to the drop-scene of a theatre." + + + + +II + + +Big, humorous, emotional, imperious, but, above all, interested and +sociable Lady Blanchemain: do you know her, I wonder? Her billowy white +hair? Her handsome soft old face, with its smooth skin, and the good +strong bony structure underneath? Her beautiful old grey eyes, full of +tenderness and shrewdness, of curiosity, irony, indulgence, overarched +and emphasized by regular black eyebrows? Her pretty little plump +pink-white hands, (like two little elderly Cupids), with their shining +panoply of rings? And her luxurious, courageous, high-hearted manner of +dressing? The light colours and jaunty fashion of her gowns? Her laces, +ruffles, embroideries? Her gay little bonnets? Her gems? Linda Baroness +Blanchemain, of Fring Place, Sussex; Belmore Gardens, Kensington; and +Villa Antonina, San Remo: big, merry, sociable, sentimental, +worldly-wise, impetuous Linda Blanchemain: do you know her? If you do, +I am sure you love her and rejoice in her; and enough is said. If you +don't, I beg leave to present and to commend her. + +I spoke, by the bye, of her "old" face, her "old" eyes. She is, to be +sure, in so far as mere numbers of years tell, an old woman. But I once +heard her throw out, in the heat of conversation, the phrase, "a young +old thing like me;" and I thought she touched a truth. + + + + +III + + +Well, then, the footman, in his masterful way, pulled the bell-cord; +Lady Blanchemain contemplated the landscape, and had her opinion of a +generation that could liken it to the drop-scene of a theatre; and in +due process of things the bell was answered. + +It was answered by a man in a costume that struck my humorous old friend +as pleasing: a sallow little man whose otherwise quite featureless suit +of tweeds was embellished by scarlet worsted shoulder-knots. With +lack-lustre eyes, from behind the plexus of the grille, he rather +stolidly regarded the imposing British equipage, and waited to be +addressed. + +Lady Blanchemain addressed him in the language of Pistoja. Might one, +she inquired, with her air of high affability, in her distinguished old +voice, might one visit the castle?--a question purely of convention, for +she had not come hither without an assurance from her guide-book. + +Shoulder-knots, however,--either to flaunt his attainments, or because +indeed Pistoiese (what though the polyglot races of Italy have agreed +upon it as a lingua franca) offered the greater difficulties to his +Lombardian tongue,--replied in French. + +"I do not think so, Madame," was his reply, in a French sufficiently +heavy and stiff-jointed, enforced by a dubious oscillation of the head. + +Lady Blanchemain's black eyebrows shot upwards, marking her surprise; +then drew together, marking her determination. + +"But of course one can--it's in the guide-book," she insisted, and held +up the red-bound volume. + +The sceptic gave a shrug, as one who disclaimed responsibility and +declined discussion. + +"Me, I do not think so. But patience! I will go and ask," he said; and, +turning his back, faded from sight in the depths of the dark tunnel-like +porte-cochere. + +Vexed, perplexed, Lady Blanchemain fidgeted a little. To have taken this +long drive for nothing!--sweet though the weather was, fair though the +valley: but she was not a person who could let the means excuse the end. +She neither liked nor was accustomed to see her enterprises balked,--to +see doors remain closed in her face. Doors indeed had a habit of flying +open at her approach. Besides, the fellow's manner,--his initial stare +and silence, his tone when he spoke, his shrug, his exhortation to +patience, and something too in the conduct of his back as he +departed,--hadn't it lacked I don't know what of becoming deference? to +satisfy her amour-propre, at any rate, that the mistake, if there was a +mistake, sprang from no malapprehension of her own, she looked up +chapter and verse. Yes, there the assurance stood, circumstantial, in +all the convincingness of the sturdy, small black type:-- + +"From Roccadoro a charming excursion may be made, up the beautiful Val +Rampio, to the mediaeval village of Sant' Alessina (7 miles), with its +magnificent castle, in fine grounds, formerly a seat of the Sforzas, now +belonging to the Prince of Zelt-Neuminster, and containing the +celebrated Zelt-Neuminster collection of paintings. Incorporated in the +castle buildings, a noticeable peculiarity, are the parish church and +presbytery. Accessible daily, except Monday, from 10 to 4; attendant 1 +fr." + +So then! To-day was Wednesday, the hour between two and three. So--! Her +amour-propre triumphed, but I fancy her vexation mounted.... + + + + +IV + + +"I beg your pardon. It's disgraceful you should have been made to wait. +The porter is an idiot. You wish, of course, to see the house--?" + +The English words, on a key of spontaneous apology, with a very zealous +inflection of concern--yet, at the same time, with a kind of entirely +respectful and amiable abruptness, as of one hailing a familiar +friend,--were pronounced in a breath by a brisk, cheerful, unmistakably +English voice. + +Lady Blanchemain, whose attention had still been on the incriminated +page, looked quickly up, and (English voice and spontaneous apology +notwithstanding) I won't vouch that the answer at the tip of her +impulsive tongue mightn't have proved a hasty one--but the speaker's +appearance gave her pause: the appearance of the tall, smiling, +unmistakably English young man, by whom Shoulder-knots had returned +accompanied, and who now, having pushed the grille ajar and issued +forth, stood, placing himself with a tentative obeisance at her service, +beside the carriage: he was so clearly, first of all--what, if it hadn't +been for her preoccupation, his voice, tone, accent would have warned +her to expect--so visibly a gentleman; and then, with the even pink of +his complexion, his yellowish hair and beard, his alert, friendly, very +blue blue eyes--with his very blue blue flannels too, and his brick-red +knitted tie--he was so vivid and so unusual. + +His appearance gave her a pause; and in the result she in her turn +almost apologized. + +"This wretched book," she explained, pathetically bringing forward her +_piece justificative_, "said that it was open to the public." + +The vivid young man hastened to put her in the right. + +"It is--it _is_," he eagerly affirmed. "Only," he added, with a vaguely +rueful modulation, and always with that amiable abruptness, as a man +very much at his ease, while his blue eyes whimsically brightened, "only +the blessed public never comes--we're so off the beaten path. And I +suppose one mustn't expect a Scioccone"--his voice swelled on the word, +and he cast sidelong a scathing glance at his summoner--"to cope with +unprecedented situations. Will you allow me to help you out?" + +"Ah," thought Lady Blanchemain, "Eton," his tone and accent now nicely +appraised by an experienced ear. "Eton--yes; and probably--h'm? Probably +Balliol," her experience led her further to surmise. But what--with her +insatiable curiosity about people, she had of course immediately begun +to wonder--what was an Eton and Balliol man doing, apparently in a +position of authority, at this remote Italian castle? + + + + +V + + +He helped her out, very gracefully, very gallantly; and under his +guidance she made the tour of the vast building: its greater court and +lesser court; its cloisters, with their faded frescoes, and their +marvellous outlook, northwards, upon the Alps; its immense rotunda, +springing to the open dome, where the sky was like an inset plaque of +turquoise; its "staircase of honour," guarded, in an ascending file, by +statues of men in armour; and then, on the _piano nobile_, its endless +chain of big, empty, silent, splendid state apartments, with their +pavements of gleaming marble, in many-coloured patterns, their painted +and gilded ceilings, tapestried walls, carved wood and moulded stucco, +their pictures, pictures, pictures, and their atmosphere of stately +desolation, their memories of another age, their reminders of the power +and pomp of people who had long been ghosts. + +He was tall (with that insatiable curiosity of hers, she was of course +continuously studying him), tall and broad-shouldered, but not a bit +rigid or inflexible--of a figure indeed conspicuously supple, suave in +its quick movements, soft in its energetic lines, a figure that could +with equal thoroughness be lazy in repose and vehement in action. His +yellow hair was thick and fine, and if it hadn't been cropped so close +would have curled a little. His beard, in small crinkly spirals, did +actually curl, and toward the edge its yellow burned to red. And his +blue eyes were so very very blue, and so very keen, and so very frank +and pleasant--"They are like sailors' eyes," thought Lady Blanchemain, +who had a sentiment for sailors. He carried his head well thrown back, +as a man who was perfectly sure of himself and perfectly +unselfconscious; and thus unconsciously he drew attention to the +vigorous sweep of his profile, the decisive angles of his brow and nose. +His voice was brisk and cheerful and masculine; and that abruptness with +which he spoke--which seemed, as it were, to imply a previous +acquaintance--was so tempered by manifest good breeding and so coloured +by manifest good will, that it became a positive part and parcel of what +one liked in him. It was the abruptness of a man very much at his ease, +very much a man of the world, yet it was somehow, in its essence, +boyish. It expressed freshness, sincerity, conviction, a boyish +wholesale surrender of himself to the business of the moment; it +expressed, perhaps above all, a boyish thorough good understanding with +his interlocutor. "It amounts," thought his present interlocutrice, "to +a kind of infinitely sublimated bluffness." + +And then she fell to examining his clothes: his loose, soft, very blue +blue flannels, with vague stripes of darker blue; his soft shirt, with +its rolling collar; his red tie, knitted of soft silk, and tied in a +loose sailor's-knot. She liked his clothes, and she liked the way he +wore them. They suited him. They were loose and comfortable and +unconventional, but they were beautifully fresh and well cared for, and +showed him, if indifferent to the fashion-plate of the season, +meticulous in a fashion of his own. "It's hard to imagine him dressed +otherwise," she said, and instantly had a vision of him dressed for +dinner. + +But what--what--what was he doing at Castel Sant' Alessina? + + + + +VI + + +Meanwhile he plainly knew a tremendous lot about Italian art. Lady +Blanchemain herself knew a good deal, and could recognize a pundit. He +illumined their progress by a running fire of exposition and commentary, +learned and discerning, to which she encouragingly listened, and, as +occasion required, amiably responded. But Boltraffios, Bernardino +Luinis, even a putative Giorgione, could not divert her mind from its +human problem. What was he doing at Castel Sant' Alessina, the property, +according to her guide-book, of an Austrian prince? What was his status +here, apparently (bar servants) in solitary occupation? Was he its +tenant? He couldn't, surely, this well-dressed, high-bred, cultivated +young compatriot, he couldn't be a mere employe, a steward or curator? +No: probably a tenant. Antecedently indeed it might seem unlikely that a +young Englishman should become the tenant of an establishment so huge +and so sequestered; but was it conceivable that this particular young +Englishman should be a mere employe? And was there any other +alternative? She hearkened for a word, a note, that might throw light; +but of such notes, such words, a young man's conversation, in the +circumstances, would perhaps naturally yield a meagre crop. + +"You mustn't let me tire you," he said presently, as one who had +forgotten and suddenly remembered that looking at pictures is exhausting +work. "Won't you sit here and rest a little?" + +They were in a smaller room than any they had previously traversed, an +octagonal room, which a single lofty window filled with sunshine. + +"Oh, thank you," said Lady Blanchemain, and seated herself on the +circular divan in the centre of the polished terrazza floor. She wasn't +really tired in the least, the indefatigable old sight-seer; but a +respite from picture-gazing would enable her to turn the talk. She put +up her mother-of-pearl lorgnon, and glanced round the walls; then, +lowering it, she frankly raised her eyes, full of curiosity and +kindness, to her companion's. + +"It's a surprise, and a delightful one," she remarked, "having pushed so +far afield in a foreign land, to be met by the good offices of a +fellow-countryman--it's so nice of you to be English." + +And her eyes softly changed, their curiosity being veiled by a kind of +humorous content. + +The young man's face, from its altitude of six-feet-something, beamed +responsively down upon her. + +"Oh," he laughed, "you mustn't give me too much credit. To be English +nowadays is so ingloriously easy--since foreign lands have become merely +the wider suburbs of London." + +Lady Blanchemain's eyes lighted approvingly. Afterwards she looked half +serious. + +"True," she discriminated, "London has spread pretty well over the whole +of Europe; but England, thanks be to goodness, still remains mercifully +small." + +"Yes," agreed the young man, though with a lilt of dubiety, and a frown +of excogitation, as if he weren't sure that he had quite caught her +drift. + +"The mercy of it is," she smilingly pointed out, "that English folk, +decent ones, have no need to fight shy of each other when they meet as +strangers. We all know more or less about each other by hearsay, or +about each other's people; and we're all pretty sure to have some common +acquaintances. The smallness of England makes for sociability and +confidence." + +"It ought to, one would think," the young man admitted. "But does it, in +fact? It had somehow got stuck in my head that English folk, meeting as +strangers, were rather apt to glare. We're most of us in such a funk, +you see, lest, if we treat a stranger with civility, he should turn out +not to be a duke." + +"Oh," cried Lady Blanchemain, with merriment, "you forget that I said +_decent_. I meant, of course, folk who _are_ dukes. We're all dukes--or +bagmen." + +The young man chuckled; but in a minute he pulled a long face, and made +big, ominous eyes. + +"I feel I ought to warn you," he said in a portentous voice, "that some +of us are mere marquises--of the house of Carabas." + +Lady Blanchemain, her whole expansive person, simmered with enjoyment. + +"Bless you," she cried, "those are the ducalest, for marquises--of the +house of Carabas--are men of dash and spirit, born to bear everything +before them, and to marry the King's daughter." + +With that, she had a moment of abstraction. Again, her eyeglass up, she +glanced round the walls--hung, in this octagonal room, with dim-coloured +portraits of women, all in wonderful toilets, with wonderful hair and +head-gear, all wonderfully young and pleased with things, and all four +centuries dead. They caused her a little feeling of uneasiness, they +were so dead and silent, and yet somehow, in their fixed postures, with +their unblinking eyes, their unvarying smiles, so--as it seemed to +her--so watchful, so intent; and it was a relief to turn from them to +the window, to the picture framed by the window of warm, breathing, +heedless nature. But all the while, in her interior mind, she was busy +with the man before her. "He looks," she considered, "tall as he is, and +with his radiant blondeur--with the gold in his hair and beard, and the +sea-blue in his eyes--he looks like a hero out of some old Norse saga. +He looks like-what's his name?--like Odin. I must really compel him to +explain himself." + +It very well may be, meantime, that he was reciprocally busy with her, +taking her in, admiring her, this big, jolly, comely, high-mannered old +woman, all in soft silks and drooping laces, who had driven into his +solitude from Heaven knew where, and was quite unquestionably Someone, +Heaven knew who. + +She had a moment of abstraction; but now, emerging from it, she used her +eyeglass as a pointer, and indicatively swept the circle of painted +eavesdroppers. + +"They make one feel like their grandmother, their youth is so flagrant," +she sighed, "these grandmothers of the Quattrocento. Ah, well, we can +only be old once, and we should take advantage of the privileges of age +while we have 'em. Old people, I am thankful to say, are allowed, +amongst other things, to be inquisitive. I'm brazenly so. Now, if one of +our common acquaintances were at hand--for with England still mercifully +small, we're sure to possess a dozen, you and I--what do you think is +the question I should ask him?--I should ask him," she avowed, with a +pretty effect of hesitation, and a smile that went as an advance-guard +to disarm resentment, "to tell me who you are, and all about you--and to +introduce you to me." + +"Oh," cried the young man, laughing. He laughed for a second or two. In +the end, pleasantly, with a bow, "My name," he said, "if you can +possibly care to know, is Blanchemain." + +His visitor caught her breath. She sat up straight, and gazed hard at +him. + +"Blanchemain?" she gasped. + + + + +VII + + +There were, to be sure, reasons and to spare why the name should make +her sit up straight. Her curiosity had turned the key, and lo, with a +click, here was an entirely changed, immensely complicated, intensely +poignant situation. But our excitable old friend was an Englishwoman: +dissimulation would be her second nature; you could trust her to pull +the wool over your eyes with a fleet and practised hand. Instinctively, +furthermore, she would seek to extract from such a situation all the fun +it promised. Taken off her guard, for the span of ten heart-beats she +sat up straight and stared; but with the eleventh her attitude relaxed. +She had regained her outward nonchalance, and resolved upon her system +of fence. + +"Ah," she said, on a tone judiciously compounded of feminine artlessness +and of forthright British candour, and with a play of the eyebrows that +attributed her momentary suscitation to the workings of memory, "of +course--Blanchemain. The Sussex Blanchemains. I expect there's only one +family of the name?" + +"I've never heard of another," assented the young man. + +"The Ventmere Blanchemains," she pursued pensively. "Lord Blanchemain of +Ventmere is your titled head?" + +"Exactly," said he. + +"I knew the late Lord Blanchemain--I knew him fairly well," she +mentioned, always with a certain pensiveness. + +"Oh--?" said he, politely interested. + +"Yes," said she. "But I've never met his successor. The two were not, I +believe, on speaking terms. Of course,"--and her forthright British +candour carried her trippingly over the delicate ground,--"it's common +knowledge that the family is divided against itself--hostile branches--a +Protestant branch and a Catholic. The present lord, if I've got it +right, is a Catholic, and the late lord's distant cousin?" + +"You've got it quite right," the young man assured her, with a nod, and +a little laugh. "They had the same great-great-grandfather. The last +few lords have been Protestants, but in our branch the family have never +forsaken the old religion." + +"I know," said she. "And wasn't it--I've heard the story, but I'm a bit +hazy about it--wasn't it owing to your--is 'recusancy' the word?--that +you lost the title? Wasn't there some sort of sharp practice at your +expense in the last century?" + +The young man had another little laugh. + +"Oh, nothing," he answered, "that wasn't very much the fashion. The late +lord's great-grandfather denounced his elder brother as a Papist and a +Jacobite--nothing more than that. It was after the 'Forty-five. So the +cadet took the title and estates. But with the death of the late lord, a +dozen years or so ago, the younger line became extinct, and the title +reverted." + +"I see," said my lady. She knitted her eyebrows, computing. After an +instant, "General Blanchemain," she resumed, "as the present lord was +called for the best part of his life, is a bachelor. You will be one of +his nephews?" She raised her eyes inquiringly. + +"The son of his brother Philip," said the young man. + +Lady Blanchemain sat up straight again. + +"But then," she cried, forgetting to conceal her perturbation, "then +you're the heir. Philip Blanchemain had but one son, and was the +General's immediate junior. You're John Blanchemain--John Francis Joseph +Mary. You're the heir." + +The young man smiled--at her eagerness, perhaps. + +"The heir-presumptive--I suppose I am," he said. + +Lady Blanchemain leaned back and gently tittered. + +"See how I know my Peerage!" she exclaimed. Then, looking grave, "You're +heir to an uncommonly good old title," she informed him. + +"I hope it may be many a long day before I'm anything else," said he. + +"Your uncle is an old man," she suggestively threw out. + +"Oh, not so very old," he submitted. "Only seventy, or thereabouts, and +younger in many respects than I am. I hope he'll live for ever." + +"Hum!" said she, and appeared to fall a-musing. Absently, as it seemed, +and slowly, she was pulling off her gloves. + +"Feuds in families," she said, in a minute, "are bad things. Why don't +you make it up?" + +The young man waved his hand, a pantomimic _non-possumus_. + +"There's no one left to make it up with--the others are all dead." + +"Oh?" she wondered, her eyebrows elevated, whilst automatically her +fingers continued to operate upon her gloves. "I thought the last lord +left a widow. I seem to have heard of a _Lady_ Blanchemain somewhere." + +The young man gave still another of his little laughs. + +"Linda Lady Blanchemain?" he said. "Yes, one hears a lot of her. A +highly original character, by all accounts. One hears of her +everywhere." + +Linda Lady Blanchemain's lip began to quiver; but she got it under +control. + +"Well?" she questioned--eyes fixing his, and brimming with a kind of +humorous defiance, as if to say, "Think me an impertinent old meddler +if you will, and do your worst,"--"Why don't you make it up with _her_?" + +But he didn't seem to mind the meddling in the least. He stood at ease, +and plausibly put his case. + +"Why don't I? Or why doesn't my uncle? My uncle is a temperamental +conservative, a devotee to his traditions--the sort of man who will +never do anything that hasn't been the constant habit of his forebears. +He would no more dream of healing a well-established family feud than of +selling the family plate. And I--well, surely, it would never be for me +to make the advances." + +"No, you're right," acknowledged Lady Blanchemain. "The advances should +come from her. But people have such a fatal way--even without being +temperamental conservatives--of leaving things as they find them. +Besides, never having seen you, she couldn't know how nice you are. All +the same, I'll confess, if you insist upon it, that she ought to be +ashamed of herself. Come--let's make it up." + +She rose, a great soft glowing vision of benignancy, and held out her +hand, now gloveless, her pretty little smooth plump right hand, with +its twinkling rings. + +"Oh!" cried the astonished young man, the astonished, amused, moved, +wondering, and entirely won young man, his sea-blue eyes wide open, and +a hundred lights of pleasure and surprise dancing in them. + +The benignant vision floated towards him, and he took the little white +hand in his long lean brown one. + + + + +VIII + + +When the first stress of their emotion had in some degree spent itself +Lady Blanchemain, returning to her place on the ottoman, bade John sit +down beside her. + +"Now," she said, genially imperative, whilst all manner of kindly and +admiring interest shone in her face, "there are exactly nine million and +ninety-nine questions that you'll be obliged to answer before I've done +with you. But to begin, you must clear up at once a mystery that's been +troubling me ever since you dashed to my rescue at the gate. What in the +name of Reason is the cause of your residence in this ultramundane +stronghold?" + +John--convict me of damnable iteration if you must: Heaven has sent me a +laughing hero--John laughed. + +"Oh," he said, "there are several causes--there are exactly nine million +and ninety-eight." + +"Name," commanded Lady Blanchemain, "the first and the last." + +"Well," obeyed he, pondering, "I should think the first, the last, and +perhaps the chief intermediate, would be--the whole blessed thing." And +his arm described a circle which comprehended the castle and all within +it, and the countryside without. + +"It has a pleasant site, I'll not deny," said Lady Blanchemain. "But +don't you find it a trifle far away? And a bit up-hill? I'm staying at +the Victoria at Roccadoro, and it took me an hour and a half to drive +here." + +"But since," said John, with a flattering glance, "since you _are_ here, +I have no further reason to deplore its farawayness. So few places are +far away, in these times and climes," he added, on a note of melancholy, +as one to whom all climes and times were known. + +"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain, matter-of-fact. "Have you been here long?" + +"Let me see," John answered. "To-day is the 23rd of April. I arrived +here--I offer the fact for what it may be worth--on the Feast of All +Fools." + +"_Absit omen_," cried she. "And you intend to stay?" + +"Oh, I'm at least wise enough not to fetter myself with intentions," +answered John. + +She looked about, calculating, estimating. + +"I suppose it costs you the very eyes of your head?" she asked. + +John giggled. + +"Guess what it costs--I give it to you in a thousand." + +She continued her survey, brought it to a period. + +"A billion a week," she said, with finality. John exulted. + +"It costs me," he told her, "six francs fifty a day--wine included." + +"What!" cried she, mistrusting her ears. + +"Yes," said he. + +"Fudge!" said she, not to be caught with chaff. + +"It sounds like a traveller's tale, I know; but that's so often the +bother with the truth," said he. "Truth is under no obligation to be +_vraisemblable_. I'm here _en pension_." + +Lady Blanchemain sniffed. + +"Does the Prince of Zelt-Neuminster take in boarders?" she inquired, +her nose in the air. + +"Not exactly," said John. "But the Parroco of Sant' Alessina does. I +board at the presbytery." + +"Oh," said Lady Blanchemain, beginning to see light, while her eyebrows +went up, went down. "You board at the presbytery?" + +"For six francs fifty a day--wine included," chuckled John. + +"Wine, and apparently the unhindered enjoyment of--the whole blessed +thing," supplemented she, with a reminder of his comprehensive gesture. + +"Yes--the run of the house and garden, the freedom of the hills and +valley." + +"I understand," she said, and was mute for a space, readjusting her +impressions. "I had supposed," she went on at last, "from the handsome +way in which you snubbed that creature in shoulder-knots, and proceeded +to do the honours of the place, that you were little less than its +proprietor." + +"Well, and so I could almost feel I am," laughed John. "I'm alone +here--there's none my sway to dispute. And as for the creature in +shoulder-knots, what becomes of the rights of man or the bases of civil +society, if you can't snub a creature whom you regularly tip? For five +francs a week the creature in shoulder-knots cleans my boots +(indifferent well), brushes my clothes, runs my errands (indifferent +slow),--and swallows my snubs as if they were polenta." + +"And tries to shoo intrusive trippers from your threshold--and gets an +extra plateful for his pains," laughed the lady. "Where," she asked, +"does the Prince of Zelt-Neuminster keep himself?" + +"In Vienna, I believe. Anyhow, at a respectful distance. The parroco, +who is also his sort of intendant, tells me he practically never comes +to Sant' Alessina." + +"Good easy man," quoth she. "Yes, I certainly supposed you were his +tenant-in-fee, at the least. You have an air." And her bob of the head +complimented him upon it. + +"Oh, we Marquises of Carabas!" cried John, with a flourish. + +She regarded him doubtfully. + +"Wouldn't you find yourself in a slightly difficult position, if the +Prince or his family should suddenly turn up?" she suggested. + +"I? Why?" asked John, his blue eyes blank. + +"A young man boarding with the parroco for six francs a day--" she +began. + +"Six francs fifty, please," he gently interposed. + +"Make it seven if you like," her ladyship largely conceded. "Wouldn't +your position be slightly false? Would they quite realize who you were?" + +"What could that possibly matter? wondered John, eyes blanker still. + +"I could conceive occasions in which it might matter furiously," said +she. "Foreigners can't with half an eye distinguish amongst us, as we +ourselves can; and Austrians have such oddly exalted notions. You +wouldn't like to be mistaken for Mr. Snooks?" + +"I don't know," John reflected, vistas opening before him. "It might be +rather a lark." + +"Whrrr!" said Lady Blanchemain, fanning herself with her +pocket-handkerchief. Then she eyed him suspiciously. "You're hiding the +nine million other causes up your sleeve. It isn't merely the 'whole +blessed thing' that's keeping an eaglet of your feather alone in an +improbable nest like this--it's some one particular thing. In my time," +she sighed, "it would have been a woman." + +"And no wonder," riposted John, with a flowery bow. + +"You're very good--but you confuse the issue," said she. "In my time the +world was young and romantic. In this age of prose and prudence--_is_ it +a woman?" + +"The world is still, is always, young and romantic," said John, +sententious. "I can't admit that an age of prose and prudence is +possible. The poetry of earth is never dead, and no more is its folly. +The world is always romantic, if you have the three gifts needful to +make it so." + +"_Is_ it a woman?" repeated Lady Blanchemain. + +"And the three gifts are," said he, "Faith, and the sense of Beauty, and +the sense of Humour." + +"And I should have thought, an attractive member of the opposite sex," +said she. "_Is_ it a woman?" + +"Well," he at last replied, appearing to take counsel with himself, "I +don't know why I should forbid myself the relief of owning up to you +that in a sense it is." + +"Hurray!" cried she, moving in her seat, agog, as one who scented her +pet diversion. "A love affair! I'll be your confidante. Tell me all +about it." + +"Yes, in a sense, a love affair," he confessed. + +"Good--excellent," she approved. "But--but what do you mean by 'in a +sense'?" + +"Ah," said he, darkly nodding, "I mean whole worlds by that." + +"I don't understand," said she, her face prepared to fall. + +"It isn't one woman--it's a score, a century, of the dear things," he +announced. + +Her face fell. "Oh--?" she faltered. + +"It's a love affair with a type," he explained. + +She frowned upon him. "A love affair with a type--?" + +"Yes," said he. + +She shook her head. "I give you up. In one breath you speak like a +Mohammedan, in the next like--I don't know what." + +"With these," said John, his band stretched towards the wall. "With the +type of the Quattrocento." + +He got upon his feet, and moved from picture to picture; and a fire, +half indeed of mischief; but half it may be of real enthusiasm, +glimmered in his eyes. + +"With these lost ladies of old years; these soft-coloured shadows, that +were once rosy flesh; these proud, humble, innocent, subtle, brave, shy, +pious, pleasure-loving women of the long ago. With them; with their hair +and eyes and jewels, their tip-tilted, scornful, witty little noses, +their 'throats so round and lips so red,' their splendid raiment; with +their mirth, pathos, passion, kindness and cruelty, their infinite +variety, their undying youth. Ah, the pity of it! Their undying +youth--and they so irrevocably dead. Peace be to their souls! See," he +suddenly declaimed, laughing, "how the sun, the very sun in heaven, is +contending with me, as to which of us shall do them the greater homage, +the sun that once looked on their living forms, and remembers--see how +he lights memorial lamps about them," for the sun, reflected from the +polished floor, threw a sheen upon the ancient canvases, and burned +bright in the bosses of the frames. "Give me these," he wound up, "a +book or two, and a jug of the parroco's 'included wine'--my wilderness +is paradise enow." + +Lady Blanchemain's eyes, as she listened, had become deep wells of +disappointment, then gushing fountains of reproach. + +"Oh, you villain!" she groaned, when he had ended, shaking her pretty +fist. "So to have raised my expectations, and so to dash them!--Do you +_really_ mean," still clinging to a shred of hope, she pleaded, "really, +really mean that there's no--no actual woman?" + +"I'm sorry," said John, "but I'm afraid I really, really do." + +"And you're not--not really in love with any one?" + +"No--not really," he said, with a mien that feigned contrition. + +"But at your age--how old are you?" she broke off to demand. + +"Somewhere between twenty-nine and thirty, I believe," he laughed. + +"And in such a romantic environment, and not on account of a woman! It's +downright unnatural," she declared. "It's flat treason against the +kingly state of youth." + +"I'm awfully sorry," said John. "Yet, after all, what's the good of +repining? Nothing could happen even if there were a woman." + +Lady Blanchemain looked alarmed. + +"Nothing could happen? What do you mean? You're not _married_? If you +are, it must be secretly, for you're put down as single in Burke." + +"To the best of my knowledge," John reassured her, laughing, "Burke is +right. And I prayerfully trust he may never have occasion to revise his +statement." + +"For mercy's sake," cried she, "don't tell me you're a woman-hater!" + +"That's just the point," said he. "I'm an adorer of the sex." + +"Well, then?" questioned she, at a loss. "How can you 'prayerfully' wish +to remain a bachelor? Besides, aren't you heir to a peerage? What of the +succession?" + +"That's just the point," he perversely argued. "And you know there are +plenty of cousins." + +"Just the point! just the point!" fretted Lady Blanchemain. "What's just +the point? Just the point that you aren't a woman-hater?--just the point +that you're heir to a peerage? You talk like Tom o' Bedlam." + +"Well, you see," expounded John, unruffled, "as an adorer of the sex, +and heir to a peerage, I shouldn't want to marry a woman unless I could +support her in what they call a manner becoming her rank--and I +couldn't." + +"Couldn't?" the lady scoffed. "I should like to know why not?" + +"I'm too--if you will allow me to clothe my thought in somewhat homely +language--too beastly poor." + +"_You--poor?_" ejaculated Lady Blanchemain, falling back. + +"Ay--but honest," asseverated John, to calm her fears. + +She couldn't help smiling, though she resolutely frowned. + +"Be serious," she enjoined him. "Doesn't your uncle make you a suitable +allowance?" + +"I should deceive you," answered John, "if I said he made me an +_un_suitable one. He makes me, to put it in round numbers, exactly no +allowance whatsoever." + +"The--old--curmudgeon!" cried Lady Blanchemain, astounded, and fiercely +scanning her words. + +"No," returned John, soothingly, "he isn't a curmudgeon. But he's a +very peculiar man. He's a Spartan, and he lacks imagination. It has +simply never entered his head that I could _need_ an allowance. And, if +you come to that, I can't say that I positively do. I have a tiny +patrimony--threepence a week, or so--enough for my humble necessities, +though scarcely perhaps enough to support the state of a future peeress. +No, my uncle isn't a curmudgeon; he's a very fine old boy, of whom I'm +immensely proud, and though I've yet to see the colour of his money, +we're quite the best of friends. At any rate, you'll agree that it would +be the deuce to pay if I were to fall in love. + +"Ffff," breathed Lady Blanchemain, fanning. "What did I say of an age of +prose and prudence? Yet you don't _look_ cold-blooded. What does money +matter? _Dominus providebit_. Go read Browning. What's 'the true end, +sole and single' that we're here for? Besides, have you never heard that +there are such things as marriageable heiresses in the world?" + +"Oh, yes, I've heard that," John cheerfully assented. "But don't they +almost always squint or something? I've heard, too, that there are such +things as tufted fortune-hunters, but theirs is a career that requires a +special vocation, and I'm afraid I haven't got it." + +"Then you're no true Marquis of Carabas," the lady took him smartly up. + +"You've found me out--I'm only a _faux-marquis_," he laughed. + +"Thrrr!" breathed Lady Blanchemain, and for a little while appeared lost +in thought. By-and-by she got up and went to the window, and stood +looking out. "I never saw a lovelier landscape," she said, musingly. +"With the grey hills, and the snow-peaks, and the brilliant sky, with +the golden light and the purple shadows, and the cypresses and olives, +with the river gleaming below there amongst the peach-blossoms, +and--isn't that a blackcap singing in the mimosa? It only needs a pair +of lovers to be perfect--it _cries_ for a pair of lovers. And instead of +them, I find--what? A hermit and celibate. Look here. Make a clean +breast of it. _Are_ you cold-blooded?" she asked from over her shoulder. + +John merely giggled. + +"It would serve you right," said she, truculently, "if some one were to +rub your eyes with love-in-idleness, to make you dote upon the next +live creature that you see." + +John merely chuckled. + +"I'll tell you what," she proceeded, "I'm a bit of an old witch, and +I'll risk a soothword. As there isn't already a woman, there'll shortly +be one--my thumbs prick. The stage is set, the scene is too appropriate, +the play's inevitable. It was never in the will of Providence that a +youth of your complexion should pass the springtime in a spot all +teeming with romance like this, and miss a love adventure. A castle in a +garden, a flowering valley, and the Italian sky--the Italian sun and +moon! Your portraits of these smiling dead women too, if you like, to +keep your imagination working. And blackcaps singing in the mimosa. No, +no. The lady of the piece is waiting in the wings--my thumbs prick. Give +her but the least excuse, she'll enter, and ... Good Heavens, my +prophetic soul!" she suddenly, with a sort of catch in her throat, broke +off. + +She turned and faced him, cheeks flushed, eyes flashing. + +"Oh, you hypocrite! You monstrous fibber!" she cried, on a tone of +jubilation, looking daggers. + +"Why? What's up? What's the matter?" asked John, at fault. + +"How _could_ you have humbugged me so?" she wailed, in delight, +reverting to the window. "Anyhow, she's charming. She's made for the +part. I couldn't pray for a more promising heroine." + +"She? Who?" asked he, crossing to her side. + +"Who? Fie, you slyboots!" she crowed with glee. + +"Ah, I see," said John. + +For, below them, in the garden, just beyond the mimosa (all powdered +with fresh gold) where the blackcap was singing, stood a woman. + + + + +IX + + +She stood in the path, beside a sun-dial, from which she appeared to be +taking the time of day, a crumbling ancient thing of grey stone, green +and brown with mosses; and she was smiling pleasantly to herself the +while, all unaware of the couple who watched her from above. She wore a +light-coloured garden-frock, and was bare-headed, as one belonging to +the place. She was young--two or three and twenty, by her aspect: young, +slender, of an excellent height, and, I hope you would have agreed, a +beautiful countenance. She studied the sun-dial, and smiled; and what +with her dark eyes and softly chiselled features, the pale rose in her +cheeks and the deeper rose of her mouth, with her hair too, almost black +in shadow, but where the sun touched it turning to sombre red,--yes, I +think you would have agreed that she was beautiful. Lady Blanchemain, at +any rate, found her so. + +"She's quite lovely," she declared. "Her face is exquisite--so +sensitive, so spiritual; so distinguished, so aristocratic. And so +_clever_," she added, after a suspension. + +"Mm!" said John, his forehead wrinkled, as if something were puzzling +him. + +"She has a figure--she holds herself well," said Lady Blanchemain. + +"Mm!" said John. + +"I suppose," said she, "you're too much a mere man to be able to +appreciate her frock? It's the work of a dressmaker who knows her +business. And that lilac muslin (that's so fashionable now) really does, +in the open air, with the country for background, show to immense +advantage. Come--out with it. Tell me all about her. Who _is_ she?" + +"That's just what I'm up a tree to think," said John. "I can't imagine. +How long has she been there? From what direction did she come?" + +"Don't try to hoodwink me any longer," remonstrated the lady, +unbelieving. + +"I've never in my life set eyes on her before," he solemnly averred. + +She scrutinized him sharply. + +"Hand on heart?" she doubted. + +And he, supporting her scrutiny without flinching, answered, "Hand on +heart." + +"Well, then," concluded she, with a laugh, "it looks as if I were even +more of an old witch than I boasted--and my thumbs pricked to some +purpose. Here's the lady of the piece already arrived. There, she's +going away. How well she walks! Have after her--have after her quick, +and begin your courtship." + +The smiling young woman, her lilac dress softly bright in the sun, was +moving slowly down the garden path, towards the cloisters; and now she +entered them, and disappeared. But John, instead of "having after her," +remained at his counsellor's side, and watched. + +"She came from that low doorway, beyond there at the right, where the +two cypresses are; and she came at the very climax of my vaticination," +said her ladyship. "Without a hat, you'll hardly dispute it's probable +she's staying in the house." + +"No--it certainly would seem so," said John. "I'm all up a tree." + +"The garden looks rather dreary and empty, now that she has left, +doesn't it?" she asked. "Yet it looked jolly enough before her advent. +And see--the lizards (there are four of them, aren't there?) that +whisked away from the dial at her approach, have come back. Well, _your_ +work's cut out. I suppose it wouldn't be possible for you to give a poor +woman a dish of tea?" + +"I was on the very point of proposing it," said John. "May I conduct you +to my quarters?" + + + + +PART SECOND + + + + +I + + +Rather early next morning John was walking among the olives. He had gone +(straight from his bed, and in perhaps the least considered of toilets: +an old frieze ulster, ornamented with big buttons of mother-of-pearl, a +pair of Turkish slippers, a bathing-towel over his shoulder, and for +head-covering just his uncombed native thatch) he had gone for a swim, +some half a mile upstream, to a place he knew where the Rampio--the +madcap Rampio, all shallows and rapids--rests for a moment in a pool, +wide and deep, translucent, inviting, and, as you perceive when you have +made your plunge, of a most assertive chill. Now he was on his leisurely +way home, to the presbytery and what passed there for breakfast. + +The hill-side rose from the river's bank in a series of irregular +terraces, upheld by rough stone walls. The gnarled old trees bent +towards each other and away like dwarfs and crook-backs dancing a +fantastic minuet; and in the grass beneath them, where the sun shot his +fiery darts and cast his net of shadows, Chloris had scattered +innumerable wildflowers: hyacinths, the colour of the sky; violets, that +threaded the air for yards about with their sentiment-provoking +fragrance; tulips, red and yellow; sometimes a tall, imperial iris; here +and there little white nodding companies of jonquils. Here and there, +too, the dusty-green reaches were pointed by the dark spire of a +cypress, alone, in a kind of glooming isolation; here and there a +blossoming peach or almond, gaily pink, sent an inexpressible little +thrill of gladness to one's heart. The air was sweetened by many +incense-breathing things besides the violets,--by moss and bark, the +dew-laden grass, the moist brown earth; and it was quick with music: +bees droned, leaves whispered, birds called, sang, gossiped, disputed, +and the Rampio played a crystal accompaniment. + +John swung onwards at ease, while lizards, with tails that seemed +extravagantly long, fled from before his feet, terrible to them, no +doubt, as an army with banners, for his Turkish slippers, though not in +their pristine youth, were of scarlet leather embroidered in a rich +device with gold. And presently (an experience unusual at that hour in +the olive wood) he became aware of a human voice. + +"Ohe! My good men, there! Will you be so kind as to gather me some of +those anemones? Here is a lira for your pains." + +It was a feminine voice; it was youthful and melodious; it was finished, +polished, delicately modulated. And its inflection was at once confident +and gracious,--clearly the speaker took it for granted that she would +receive attention, and she implied her thanks abundantly beforehand. It +was a voice that evoked in the imagination a charming picture of fresh, +young, confident, and gracious womanhood. + +"Hello!" said John to himself. "Who is there in this part of the world +with a voice like that?" + +And he felt it would not be surprising if on glancing round he should +behold--as, in fact, he did--the stranger of yesterday, the Unknown of +the garden. + + + + +II + + +She stood on one of the higher terraces, (a very charming picture +indeed, bright and erect, in the warm shadow of the olives), and was +calling down to a couple of peasants at work on the other side of the +stream. Between the thumb and forefinger of an ungloved fair right hand, +she held up a silver lira. + +Anemones, said she! Near to where the men were working, by the river's +brink, there was a space of level ground, perhaps a hundred feet long, +and tapering from half that breadth to a point. And this was simply +crimson and purple with a countless host of anemones. + +She called to the men, and one seeing and hearing her would have thought +they must abandon everything, and spring to do her bidding. But they +didn't. Pausing only long enough to give her a phlegmatic stare, as if +in doubt whether conceivably she could have the impertinence to be +addressing _them_, and vouchsafing not a word, each went calmly on with +his employment;--very, very calmly, _piano_, _piano_, gently, languidly, +filling small baskets with fallen olives, and emptying them upon +outspread canvas sheets. There are, and more's the pity, two types of +Italian peasant. There's the old type, which we knew in our youth, and +happily it still survives in some numbers,--the peasant who, for all his +rags and tatters, has manners that will often put one's own to shame, +and, with a _simpatia_ like second-sight, is before one's wishes, in his +eagerness to serve and please. And there is the new type, which we know +to our disgust, and unhappily it multiplies like vermin,--the peasant +who has lent his ear to the social democrat, and, his heart envenomed by +class hatred, meets your civility with black glances and the behaviour +of a churl in the sulks. + +So, though her voice was sweet to hear, and though, standing there in +the warm penumbra of the olive orchard, tall and erect and graceful, in +her bright frock, she made a charming picture, and though she offered a +silver lira as a prize, the men merely stared at her churlishly, and +went on with their work--languidly, sluggishly, as men who deemed the +necessity to work an outrage, and weren't going to condone it by working +with anything like a will. + +Now, John Blanchemain, as I have previously mentioned, was an +unselfconscious sort of fellow. In his unselfconsciousness, forgetting +several trifles that might properly have weighed with him, (forgetting +the tarnished gorgeousness of his Turkish slippers for example, and his +towzled head, and the bathing-towel that flowed like a piece of classic +drapery from his shoulder), obeying impulse and instinct, he flung +himself into the breach. + +"Brutes," he muttered between his teeth. Then, in his easiest +man-of-the-worldy accents, "If you can wait two minutes," he called +aloud to her. And therewith he went scrambling down the terraces and +picked his way from stone to stone across the shallows, to the field of +anemones, where their satiny petals, like crisping wavelets, all +a-ripple in the moving air, shimmered with constantly changing lights. +And in a twinkling he had gathered a great armful, and was clambering +back. + +"I beg of you," he said, in his abrupt fashion, holding them out to +her, and slightly bowing, with that nothing-doubting assurance of his, +while his blue eyes (to put her entirely at her ease) smiled, frank and +friendly and serene, into her dark ones. + +But hers seemed troubled. She looked at the flowers, she looked at John, +I think she even looked at her lira. Her eyes seemed undecided. + +"Do pray take them," said he, still smiling, still frank and assured, +but as if a little puzzled, a little amused, by her hesitation, and more +airily a man-of-the-world than ever, his tone one of high detachment, to +spare her any possible feeling of personal obligation, and to place his +performance in the light of a matter of course,--as if indeed he had +done nothing more than pick up and return, say, a handkerchief she might +have dropped. "You were right," he owned to his thought of Lady +Blanchemain; "she is beautiful." Here, at close quarters with her, one's +perception of her beauty became acute,--here, under the grey old trees, +in the leafy dimness, alone with her, at two paces from her, where the +birds sang and the violets gave forth their fragrant breath. He saw that +her eyes were beautiful (soft and deep and luminous, despite their +trouble), and her low white brow, and the dark masses of her hair, under +her garden-hat, and the rose in her cheeks, and the red-rose of her +mouth. And he saw and felt the beauty and the vitality of her strong +young body. + +But meanwhile she had stretched forth, rather timidly, that ungloved +fair hand of hers, and taken the flowers. + +"You are very good, I am sure. Thank you very much," she said, rather +faintly, with a grave little inclination of the head. + +John, always with magnificent assurance, put up his hand, to doff a +man-of-the-worldy hat, and bow himself away;--and it encountered his +bare locks, bare, and still wet from recent ducking. Whereupon, +suddenly, the trifles he had forgotten were remembered, and at last (in +the formula of the criminologist) "he realized his position:" hatless +and uncombed, with the bathing-towel slung from his shoulder, in that +weather-beaten old frieze coat with its ridiculous buttons, in those +awful Turkish slippers,--offering, with his grand manner, flowers to a +woman he didn't know, and smiling, to put her at her ease! His pink +face burned to a livelier pink, his ears went hot, his heart went cold. +The bow he finally accomplished was the blighted bud of the bow he had +projected; and, as the earth didn't, of its charity, open and engulf +him, he hastened as best he could, and with a painful sense of slinking, +to remove his crestfallen person from her range of view. + +When these unselfconscious fellows are startled into selfconsciousness, +I fancy they take it hard. I don't know how long it was before John had +done heaping silent curses, silent but savage, upon himself; his luck, +his "beastly officiousness," upon the whole afflicting incident: curses +that he couldn't help diversifying now and then with a catch of +splenetic laughter, as a vision of the figure he had cut would +recurrently + + "--_flash upon that inward eye + Which is the bliss of solitude_." + +"Oh, you _ape!_" he groaned. "Rigged out like Pudding Jack, and, with +your ineffable simagrees, offering a strange woman flowers!" + +If _she_ had only laughed, had only smiled, it wouldn't have been so +bad, it would have shown that she understood. "But through it all," he +writhed to recollect, "she was as solemn as a mourner. I suppose she was +shocked--perhaps she was frightened--very likely she took me for a +tramp. I wonder she didn't crown my beatitude by giving me her lira. +These foreigners do so lack certain discernments." + +And with that rather an odd detail came back to him. _Was_ she a +foreigner? For it came vaguely back that he, impulsive and unthinking, +had spoken to her throughout in English. "And anyhow,"--this came +distinctly back,--"it was certainly in English that she thanked me." + + + + +III + + +What passed for breakfast at the presbytery was the usual Continental +evasion of that repast,--bread and coffee, despatched in your apartment. +But at noon the household met to dine. + +The dining-room, on the ground floor, long and low, with a vaulted +ceiling, whitewashed, and a pavement of worn red tiles, was a clean, +bare room, that (pervaded by a curious, dry, not unpleasant odour) +seemed actually to smell of bareness, as well as of cleanliness. There +was a table, there was a dresser, there were a few unpainted deal +chairs, rush-bottomed (exactly like the chairs in the church, in all +Italian churches), and there was absolutely nothing else, save a great +black and white Crucifix attached to the wall. But, by way of +compensation, its windows opened southwards, flooding it with sunshine, +and commanding the wonderful perspective of the valley,--the blue-grey +hills, the snow-peaks, the blossoming low-lands, and the far-away +opalescence that you knew to be the lake. + +At noon the parroco, his niece Annunziata, and his boarder met to dine. + +The parroco was a short, stout, florid, black-haired, hawk-nosed, +fierce-looking, still youngish man, if five-and-forty may be reckoned +youngish, with a pair of thin lips and powerful jaws which, for purposes +of speech, he never opened if he could help it. Never,--till Sunday +came: when, mounting the pulpit, he opened them indeed, and his pent-up +utterance burst forth in a perfect torrent of a sermon, a wild gush of +words, shouted at the topmost stress of a remarkably lusty voice, +arresting for a minute or two by reason of the sheer physical energy it +represented, and then for a long half hour exquisitely tiresome. But on +week-days he maintained a prodigious silence, and this (as, though +fierce-looking, he wasn't in the least really fierce) it would often be +John's malicious study to tempt him to break. Besides, to-day, John was +honestly concerned with the pursuit of knowledge. + +Accordingly, grace being said, "You never told me," he began, assuming a +mien of intelligent interest, "that the castle was haunted." He looked +at the Napoleonic profile of Don Ambrogio, but from the tail of his eye +he kept a watch as well upon Annunziata, and he saw that that wise +little maiden became attentive. + +"No," said Don Ambrogio, between two spoonfuls of soup. + +"You will conceive my astonishment, then," continued John, urbanely, +"when I discovered that it was." + +"It isn't," said Don Ambrogio. He gave himself diligently to the +business of the hour; his spoon flew backwards and forwards like a +shuttle. His napkin, tucked into his Roman collar, protected his bosom, +an effective white cuirass. + +"Oh? Not the castle?" questioned John. "Only the garden? And the olive +wood? True, on reflection, I've never seen it in the house." + +"Nothing here is haunted," said the parroco. He made a signal to +Annunziata, who rose to change the plates. Her big eyes were alight, her +serious little face was alert; but she would never dream of speaking in +the presence of her uncle. Marcella, the cook, brought in the inevitable +veal. + +"Oh, for that," insisted John, courteous but firm, "I beg your pardon. I +myself have seen it on two occasions; and, lest you should fancy it a +subjective illusion, I may tell you that it was yesterday seen +simultaneously by another." + +"It? It? What is _it_?" asked the parroco, his beaked and ensanguined +visage fiercer-looking than ever, as he fell upon the inevitable veal +with a somewhat dull carving-knife. + +"Ah," said John, "now you make me regret that I haven't a talent for +word-painting. It's the form of a woman, a young woman, tall, slender, +in some pale diaphanous garment, that appears here, appears there, +remaining distinctly visible for some minutes, and then disappears. No, +it isn't a subjective illusion. And it isn't, either," the unscrupulous +creature added, after a pause, raising his voice, and speaking with +emphasis, as if to repel the insinuation, while the darkness of +disenchantment swept the face of Annunziata, "it isn't, either, as some +imaginative people might too hastily conclude, a wraith, a phantom, an +insubstantial vapour. It's a real material form, that lives and +breathes, and even, if driven to it, speaks. There's nothing +supernatural about it,--unless, indeed, we take the transcendental view +that Nature herself is supernatural. I was wondering, Don Ambrogio, +whether, without violating a confidence, you could tell me whose form it +is?" + +"Nossignore," said Don Ambrogio, economizing his breath. + +"Ah," sighed John, nodding resignedly, "I feared as much. Divining that +I would institute inquiries, she has stolen a march upon me, and pledged +you to secrecy." + +"Nossignore," disavowed Don Ambrogio, raising eyes the sincerity of +which there could be no suspecting. + +John's face took on an expression of aggrieved surprise. + +"But then why won't you tell me?" + +"I cannot tell you because I do not know," said Don Ambrogio. + +"Oh, I see," said John. "And yet," he argued meditatively, "that's hard +to conceive. I don't for a moment mean that I doubt it--but it's hard to +conceive, like the atomic theory, and some of the articles of religion. +(I hear, by-the-by, that the scientists are throwing the atomic theory +over. Oh, fickle scientists! Oh, shifting sands of science!) Surely +there can't be many such tall slender forms, in diaphanous garments, +appearing and disappearing here and there in your parish? And one would +suppose, antecedently, that you'd know them all." + +"A peasant, a villager," said Don Ambrogio. + +"I put it to you as an observer of life," said John, "do peasants, do +villagers, wear diaphanous garments?" + +"A visitor, a sight-seer, from some place on the lake," said Don +Ambrogio. + +"I put it to you as a student of probabilities," said John, "would a +visitor, would a sight-seer, from some place on the lake, walk in the +garden of the castle without a hat? And would she appear at Sant' +Alessina on two days in succession?" + +But Don Ambrogio had finished his veal, and when he had finished his +veal he always left the table, first twice devoutly making the sign of +the Cross, and then with a bow to John, pronouncing the formula, "You +will graciously permit? My affairs call me. A thousand regrets." To-day +he slightly amplified that formula. "A thousand regrets," he said, "and +as many excuses for my inability to afford the information desired." + +After his departure, John turned to Annunziata, where, in her grey +cotton pinafore, her lips parted, her big eyes two lively points of +interrogation, she sat opposite to him, impatient to take up the theme. + +"Well, Mistress Wisdom!" he saluted her, smiling, and waving his hand. +"It is a good and wholesome thing for the young to witness the +discomfiture of the wicked. Your uncle retreats with flying colours. He +made, to be sure, a slender dinner, but that's his daily habit. If you +have tears to shed, shed them for me. I have made none at all." + +From points of interrogation, Annunziata's eyes changed to abysses of +wonder, and, big as they were, seemed to grow measurably bigger. + +"You have made no dinner?" she protested, in that strangely deep voice +of hers, with its effect of immense solemnity. + +"No, poor dear," said John, with pathos, "no, I have made no dinner." + +"But you have eaten a great deal," exclaimed Annunziata, frowning, +nonplussed. "And you are still eating." + +"Quite so," responded John, "though I think it's perhaps the merest +trifle unhandsome of you to fling it in my face. I have eaten a great +deal, and I am still eating. That is what I come to table for. In an +orderly life like mine there is a place for everything. I come to table +to eat, just as I go to bed to sleep and to church to say my prayers. +Would you have me sleep at table, eat in church, and say my prayers in +bed? Eating, however, has nothing to do with the case. I spoke of +dining--I said I had not dined. Now you shall be the judge. The question +is, can a Christian man dine twice on the same day? Answer me that." + +"Oh, no," answered Annunziata, her pale face very sober, and she +lengthened out her vowels in deprecation of the idea. "At least, it +would be gluttony if he did." + +"There you are," cried John. "And gluttony is not the undeadliest of the +Seven Deadly Sins. So, then, unless you would have me guilty of the +deadly sin of gluttony, you must agree that I have not dined. For I am +going to dine this evening. I am going to dine at the Hotel Victoria at +Roccadoro. I am going to dine with a lady. I am going to dine in all the +pomp and circumstance of my dress-suit, with a white tie and pumps. And +you yourself have said it, a Christian man may not, without guilt of +gluttony, dine twice on the same day. Therefore it is the height of +uncharitableness, it's a deliberate imputation of sin, to contend that I +have dined already." + +Annunziata followed his reasoning thoughtfully, and then gravely set him +right. + +"No," she said, with a drop of the eyelids and a quick little shake of +the head, "you do not understand. I will explain." Her eyes were wide +open again, and bright with zeal for his instruction. "You have dined +already. That is a certain truth, because this meal is dinner, and you +have eaten it. But to-night you are going to a dinner of ceremony--and +that is different. A dinner of ceremony does not count. It is the same +as a supper. My uncle himself once went to a dinner of ceremony at +Bergamo. No, it will not be gluttony for you to go to a dinner of +ceremony." + +"You speak like a little pope," said John, with enthusiasm. "In matters +of Faith and Morals I believe you are infallible. If you could guess the +load you have lifted from my conscience!" And he pushed a hearty ouf. + +"I am glad," said Annunziata. And then she attempted to hark back. +Curiosity again lighting her eyes, "This form that you have seen in the +garden--" she began. + +"Don't try to change the subject," John interrupted. "Let us cultivate +sequence in our ideas. What I am labouring with hammer and tongs to drag +from you is the exact date at which, somewhere between the years of our +salvation 1387 and 1455, you sat for your portrait to the beatified +painter Giovanni of Fiesole. Now, be a duck, and make a clean breast of +it." + +Annunziata's eyes clouded. A kind of scorn, a kind of pity, and a kind +of patient longanimity looked from them. + +"That is folly," she said, on the deepest of her deep notes, with a +succession of slow, reflective, side-wise nods. + +"Folly--?" repeated John, surprised, but bland. "Oh? Really?" + +"Sit for my portrait between the years 1387 and 1455,--how could I?" +scoffed Annunziata. + +"Why? What was to prevent you?" innocently questioned he. + +"_Ma come!_ I was not yet alive," said she. + +John looked at her with startled eyes, and spoke with animation. + +"Weren't you? Word of honour? Are you sure? How do you know? Have you +any definite recollection that you weren't? Can you clearly recall the +period in question, and then, reviewing it in detail, positively attest +that you were dead? For there's no third choice. A person must either be +alive or dead. And how, if you weren't alive, how ever did it come to +pass that there should be a perfect portrait of you from Giovanni's +brush in the Convent of Saint Mark at Florence? Your grave little white +face, and your wise little big eyes, and your eager little inquisitive +profile, and your curls flowing about your shoulders, and your pinafore +that's so like a peplum,--there they all are, precisely as I see them +before me now. And how was Giovanni able to do them if you weren't +alive? Perhaps you were pre-mortally alive in Heaven? Giovanni's cell, +as is well known, had a window that opened straight into Heaven. Perhaps +he saw you through that window, and painted you without your knowing it. +The name they give your portrait, by-the-by, would rather seem to +confirm that theory. What do you think they call it? They call it an _un +angiolo_. I've got a copy of it in England. When you come to London to +visit the Queen I'll show it to you." + +Annunziata gave her flowing curls a toss. + +"The form of the young woman which you have seen in the garden--" she +began anew. + +"Ah," said John, "observe how differently the big fish and the little +fish will be affected by the same bait." + +"When you first spoke of it," said she, "I thought you had seen a holy +apparition." + +"Yes," said he. "That was because I couched my communication in language +designedly misleading. I employed the terminology of ghost-lore. I said +'haunted' and 'appear,' and things like that. And you were very properly +and naturally deceived. I confidently expected that you would be. No, it +is not given to world-stained and world-worn old men like me to see holy +apparitions." + +"Old men? You are not an old man," said Annunziata. + +"Oh? Not? What am I, then?" said John. + +"You are a middle-aged man," said she. + +"Thank you, Golden Tongue," said he, with a bow. + +"And you are sure that it was merely a real person?" she pursued. + +"No," said he. "I am too profoundly imbued with the basic principles of +metaphysics ever to be sure of the objective reality of phenomena. I can +only swear to my impression. My impression was and is that it was merely +a real person." + +"Then," said Annunziata, with decision, "it must be the person who is +visiting the Signora Brandi." + +"The Signora Brandi?" repeated John. "What a nice name! Who is the +Signora Brandi?" + +"She is an Austrian," said Annunziata. + +"Oh--?" said John. + +"She lives in the pavilion beyond the clock-tower," said Annunziata. + +"I wasn't aware," said John, "that the pavilion beyond the clock-tower +was inhabited. I wasn't aware that any part of this castle was +inhabited, except the porter's lodge and the part that we inhabit. Why +have I been left till now in this state of outer darkness?" + +"The Signora Brandi has been absent," said Annunziata. "She has been in +her own country--in Austria. But the other day she returned. And with +her came a person to visit her. That is the person whose form you have +seen in the garden." + +"How do you know it wasn't the form of the Signora Brandi herself?" John +said. + +"Oh, no," said Annunziata. "The Signora Brandi is not young. She is old. +She is as old as--" + +"Methuselah? Sin? The hills?" suggested John, Annunziata having paused +to think. + +"No," said Annunziata, repudiating the suggestion with force. "No one is +so old as Methuselah. She is as old as--well, my uncle." + +"I see," said John. "Yes, it's all highly mysterious." + +"Mysterious?" said Annunziata. + +"I should think so," asseverated he. "Cryptic, enigmatic, esoteric to +the last degree. To begin with, how does the Signora Brandi, being an +Austrian, come by so characteristically un-Austrian a name? Is that +mysterious? And in the next place, why does an Austrian Signora Brandi +so far forget what is due to her nationality as to live, not in Austria, +but in Lombardy? And--as if that were not enough--at Castel Sant' +Alessina? And--as if that were not more than enough--in the pavilion +beyond the clock? Come, come! Mysterious!" + +"You are living in Lombardy, you are living at Castel Sant' Alessina, +yourself," said Annunziata. + +"I hardly think so," said John. "You can scarcely with precision call +this living--this is rather what purists call sojourning. But even were +it otherwise, there's all the difference in the world between my case +and the Signora Brandi's. I am middle-aged and foolish, but she is as +old as your uncle. Don't you see the mysterious significance of that +coincidence? And I haven't a young woman visiting me. _Who is the young +woman?_ Is that a mystery? My sweet child, we tread among mysteries. We +are at the centre of a coil of mysteries. _Who is the young woman?_ And +how--consider well upon this--how does it happen that the young woman +speaks English? Mysterious, indeed!" + +He rose, and bowed, with ceremony. + +"But we burn daylight. I must not detain you longer. Suffer me to +imprint upon your hand of velvet a token of my high regard." + +And taking Annunziata's frail little white hand, he bent low to kiss it; +and though his blue eyes were full of laughter, I think that behind the +laughter there was a great deal of real fondness and admiration. + + + + +IV + + +Half-way down the long straight avenue of ilex-trees that led from the +castle to the principal entrance of the garden, Annunziata, in her +pale-grey pinafore (that was so like a peplum), with her hair waving +about her shoulders, was curled up in the corner of a marble bench, +gazing with great intentness at a white flower that lay in her lap. It +was the warmest and the peacefullest moment of the afternoon. The sun +shone steadily; not a leaf stirred, not a shadow wavered; and the +intermittent piping of a blackbird, somewhere in the green world +overhead, seemed merely to give a kind of joyous rhythm to the silence. + +"Mercy upon me! Who ever saw so young a maiden so deeply lost in +thought!" exclaimed a voice. + +Annunziata, her reverie thus disturbed, raised a pair of questioning +eyes. + +A lady was standing before her, smiling down upon her, a lady in a frock +of lilac-coloured muslin, with a white sunshade. + +Annunziata, who, when she liked, could be the very pink of formal +politeness, rose, dropped a courtesy, and said: "Buon giorno, +Signorina." + +"Buon giorno," responded the smiling lady. "Buon giorno--and a penny for +your thoughts. But I'm sure you could never, never tell what it was you +were thinking so hard about." + +"Scusi," said Annunziata. "I was trying to think of the name of this +flower." She stooped and picked up the flower, which had slipped from +her lap to the ground when she rose. Then she held it at arm's length, +for inspection. + +"Oh?" asked the lady, smiling at the flower, as she had smiled at its +possessor. "Isn't it a narcissus?" + +"Yes," said Annunziata. "It is a narcissus. But I was trying to think of +its particular name." + +The lady looked as if she did not quite understand. "Its particular +name?" + +"It is a narcissus," explained Annunziata, "just as I am a girl. But it +must also have its particular name, just as I have mine. It is a soul +doing its Purgatory--a very good soul. If you are very good, then, when +you die, you do your Purgatory as a flower. But it is not such an easy +Purgatory--oh, no. For look: the flower is beautiful, but it is blind, +and cannot see; and it is fragrant, but it cannot smell; and people +admire it and praise it, but it is deaf, and cannot hear. It can only +wait, wait, wait, and think of God. But it is a short Purgatory. A few +days, and the flower will fade, and the soul will be released. I think +this flower's name is Cecilia, it is so white." + +The smile in the lady's eyes had brightened, as she listened; and now +she gave a little laugh, a little, light, musical, pleased and friendly +laugh. + +"Yes," she said. "I have sometimes wondered myself whether flowers might +not be the Purgatory of very good souls. I am glad to learn from you +that it is true. And yes, I should think that this flower's name was +sure to be Cecilia. Cecilia suits it perfectly. What, if one may ask, is +_your_ particular name?" + +"Mariannunziata," said its bearer, not to make two bites of a cherry. + +The lady's eyes grew round. "Dear me! A little short name like that?" +she marvelled. + +"No," returned Annunziata, with dignity. "My name in full is longer. My +name in full is Giuliana Falconieri Maria Annunziata Casalone. Is that +not long enough?" + +"Yes," the lady admitted, "that is just long enough." And she laughed +again. + +"What is _your_ name?" inquired Annunziata. + +"My name is Maria Dolores," the lady answered. "You see, we are both +named Maria." + +"Of course," said Annunziata. "All Christians should be named Maria." + +"So they should," agreed the lady. "Do you ever tell people how old you +are?" + +"Yes," said Annunziata, "if they wish to know. Why not?" + +The smile in the lady's eyes shone brighter than ever. "Do you think you +could be persuaded to tell me?" + +"With pleasure," said Annunziata. "I am eleven years and five months. +And you?" + +"I am just twice as old. I am twenty-two years and ten months. So, when +you are fifty, how old shall I be?" + +"No," said Annunziata, shaking her head. "That trick has been tried with +me before. My friend Prospero has tried it with me. You hope I will say +that you will be a hundred. But it is not so. When I am fifty, you will +be sixty-one, going on sixty-two." + +Still again the lady laughed, apparently with great amusement. + +"What a little bundle of wisdom you are!" she exclaimed. + +"Yes. My friend Prospero also says that I am wise," answered Annunziata. +"I like to see you laugh," she mentioned, looking critically at the face +above her. "You have beautiful teeth, they are so white and shining, and +so small, and your lips are so red." + +"Oh," said the lady, laughing more merrily than ever. "Then you must be +very entertaining, and I will laugh a great deal." + +Still looking critically at the lady's face, "Are you not," demanded +Annunziata, "the person who has come to visit the Signora Brandi?" + +"Signora Brandi?" The lady considered. "Yes, I suppose I must be. At any +rate, I am the person who has come to visit Frau Brandt." + +"Frao Branta? We call her Signora Brandi here," said Annunziata. "Are +you related to her?" + +"No," said the lady, who always seemed inclined to laugh, though +Annunziata had no consciousness of being very entertaining. "I am not +related to her. I am only her friend." + +"She is an Austrian," said Annunziata. "This castle belongs to +Austrians. Once upon a time, very long ago, before I was born, all this +country belonged to Austrians. Are you, too, an Austrian?" + +"Yes." The lady nodded. "I, too, am an Austrian." + +"And yet," remarked Annunziata, "you speak Italian just as I do." + +"It is very good of you to say so," laughed the lady. + +"No--it is the truth," said Annunziata. + +"But is it not good to tell the truth?" the lady asked. + +"No," said Annunziata. "It is only a duty." And again she shook her +head, slowly, darkly, with an effect of philosophic melancholy. "That is +very strange and very hard," she pointed out. "If you do not do that +which is your duty, it is bad, and you are punished. But if you do do +it, that is not good,--it is only what you ought to do, and you are not +rewarded." And she fetched her breath in the saddest of sad little +sighs. Then, briskly covering her cheerfulness, "And you speak English, +besides," she said. + +"Oh?" wondered the lady. "Are you a clairvoyante? How do you know that I +speak English?" + +"My friend Prospero told me so," said Annunziata. + +"Your friend Prospero?" the lady repeated. "You quote your friend +Prospero very often. Who is your friend Prospero?" + +"He is a signore," said Annunziata. "He has seen you, he has seen your +form, in the garden and in the olive wood." + +"Oh," said the lady. + +"And I suppose he must have heard you speak English," Annunziata added. +"He lives at the presbytery." + +"And where, by-the-by, do _you_ live?" asked the lady. + +"I live at the presbytery too," said Annunziata. "I am the niece of the +parroco. I am the orphan of his only brother. My friend Prospero lives +with us as a boarder. He is English." + +"Indeed?" said the lady. "Prospero is a very odd name for an +Englishman." + +"Prospero is not his name," said Annunziata. "His name is Gian. That is +English for Giovanni." + +"But why, then," the lady puzzled, "do you call him Prospero?" + +"Prospero is a name I have given him," explained Annunziata. "One day I +told his fortune. I can tell fortunes--with olive-stones, with +playing-cards, or from the lines of the hand. I will tell you yours, if +you wish. Well, one day, I told Prospero's, and everything came out so +prosperously for him, I have called him Prospero ever since. He will be +rich, though he is poor; and he will marry a dark woman, who will also +be rich; and they will have many, many children, and live in peace to +the end of their lives. But there!" Annunziata cried out suddenly, with +excitement, waving the hand that held her narcissus. "There is my friend +Prospero now, coming in the gig." + +Down the avenue, sure enough, a gig was coming, a sufficiently shabby, +ancient gig, drawn, however, at a very decent pace by a very +decent-looking horse, and driven by John Blanchemain. + +"_Ciao_, Prospero!" called Annunziata, as he passed. + +And John took off his hat, a modish Panama, and bowed and smiled to her +and to the lady. And one adept in reading the meaning of smiles might +have read three or four separate meanings in that smile of his. It +seemed to say to Annunziata, "Ah, you rogue! So already you have waylaid +her, and made her acquaintance." To the lady: "I congratulate you upon +your companion. Isn't she a diverting little monkey?" To himself: "And I +congratulate _you_, my dear, upon being clothed and in your right mind, +and upon having a proper hat to make your bow with." And to the universe +at large "By Jove, she _is_ good-looking. Standing there before that +marble bench, in the cool green light, under the great ilexes, with her +lilac frock and her white sunshade, and Annunziata all in grey beside +her,--what a subject for a painting, if only there were any painters +who knew how to paint!" + +"He is going to a dinner at Roccadoro," said Annunziata, while John's +back grew small and smaller in the distance. "Did you see, he had a +portmanteau under the seat? He is going to a dinner of ceremony, and he +will have his costume of ceremony in the portmaneau. I wonder what he +will bring back with him for me. When he goes to Roccadoro he always +brings something back for me. Last time it was a box of chocolate +cigars. I should like to see him in his costume of ceremony. Wouldn't +you?" + +But the lady merely laughed. And then, taking Annunziata's chin in her +hand, she looked down into her big clear eyes, and said, "I must be off +now, to join Signora Brandi. But I cannot leave without telling you how +glad I am to have met you, and what pleasure I have derived from your +conversation. I hope we shall meet often. Good-bye." + +"Good-bye, Signorina," said Annunziata, becoming formally polite again. +"I shall always be at your service." And she dropped another courtesy. +"If you will come to see me at the presbytery," she hospitably added, +"I will show you my tame kid." + +"You are all that is most kind," responded the lady, and went off +smiling towards the castle. + +Annunziata curled herself up in her old corner of the marble bench, and +appeared to relapse into profound thought. + + + + +V + + +A curious little intimate inward glow, a sense, somewhere deep down in +his consciousness, of elation and well-being, accompanied John all the +way to Roccadoro, mingling with and sweetening whatever thoughts or +perceptions occupied his immediate attention. This was a "soul-state" +that he knew of old, and he had no difficulty in referring it to its +cause. It was the glow and the elation which he was fortunate enough +always to experience when his eye had been fed with a fresh impression +of beauty; and he knew that he owed it to-day to the glimpse he had had, +in the cool light under the ilexes, of a slender figure in lilac and a +tiny figure in grey, beside a soft-complexioned old marble bench in the +midst of a shadowy, sunny, brown and green Italian garden. + +The drive to Roccadoro from Sant' Alessina is a pleasant drive. The road +follows for the most part the windings of the Rampio, so that you are +seldom out of sight of its gleaming waters, and the brawl of it, now +louder, now less loud, is perpetually in your ears. To right and left +you have the tender pink of blossoming almonds, with sometimes the +scarlet flame of a pomegranate; and then the blue-grey hills, mantled in +a kind of transparent cloth-of-gold, a gauze of gold, woven of haze and +sunshine; and then, rosy white, with pale violet shadows, the +snow-peaks, cut like cameos upon the brilliant azure of the sky. And +sometimes, of course, you rattle through a village, with its crumbling, +stained, and faded yellow-stuccoed houses, its dazzling white canvas +awnings, its church and campanile, and its life that seems to pass +entirely in the street: men in their shirt sleeves, lounging, smoking, +spitting (else the land were not Italy!), or perhaps playing cards at a +table under the leafless bush of the wine-shop; women gossiping over +their needlework, or, gathered in sociable knots, combing and binding up +their sleek black hair; children sprawling in the kindly dirt; the +priest, biretta on head, nose in breviary, drifting slowly upon some +priestly errand, and "getting through his office;" and the immemorial +goatherd, bare-legged, in a tattered sugar-loaf hat, followed by his +flock, with their queer anxious faces, blowing upon his Pan's-pipes +(shrill strains, in minor mode and plagal scale, a music older than +Theocritus), or stopping, jealously watched by the customer's avid +Italian eyes, to milk "_per due centesimi_"--say, a farthing's +worth--into an outstretched, close-clutched jug. Sometimes the almond +orchards give place to vineyards, or to maize fields, or to dusky groves +of walnut, or to plantations of scrubby oak where lean black pigs forage +for the delectable acorn. Sometimes the valley narrows to a ravine, and +signs of cultivation disappear, and the voice of the Rampio swells to a +roar, and you become aware, between the hills that rise gloomy and +almost sheer beside you, of a great solitude: a solitude that is +intensified rather than diminished by the sight of some +lonely--infinitely lonely--grange, perched far aloft, at a height that +seems out of reach of the world. What possible manner of human beings, +you wonder, can inhabit there, and what possible dreary manner of +existence can they lead? But even in the most solitary places you are +welcomed and sped on by a chorus of bird-songs. The hillsides resound +with bird-songs continuously for the whole seven miles,--and +continuously, at this season, for the whole four-and-twenty hours. +Blackbirds, thrushes, blackcaps, goldfinches, chaffinches, sing from the +first peep of dawn till the last trace of daylight has died out, and +then the nightingales begin and keep it up till dawn again. And +everywhere the soft air is aromatic with a faint scent of rosemary, for +rosemary grows everywhere under the trees. And everywhere you have the +purity and brilliancy and yet restraint of colour, and the crisp economy +of line, which give the Italian landscape its look of having been +designed by a conscious artist. + +In and through his enjoyment of all these pleasantnesses, John felt that +agreeable glow which he owed to his glimpse of the woman in the garden; +and when at last he reached the Hotel Victoria, and, having dressed, +found himself alone for a few moments with Lady Blanchemain, in the dim +and cool sitting-room where she awaited her guests, he hastened to let +her know that he shared her own opinion of the woman's charms. + +"Your beauty decidedly _is_ a beauty," he declared. "I wish you could +have seen her as I saw her an hour ago, with a white sunshade, against a +background of ilexes. It's a thousand pities that painting should be a +forgotten art." + +But Lady Blanchemain (magnificent in purple velvet, with diamonds round +her throat and in her hair) didn't seem interested. + +"Do you know," she said, "I made yesterday one of the most ridiculous +blunders of my life. It's been preying upon my mind ever since. I +generally have pretty trustworthy perceptions, and perhaps this is a +symptom of failing powers. I told myself positively that you were an +Eton and Balliol man. It never occurred to me till I was halfway home +that, as a Papist, you'd be nothing of the sort." + +"No," said John; "I'm afraid I'm Edgbaston and Paris. The way her hair +grows low about her brow, and swoops upwards and backwards in a sort of +tidal wave, and breaks loose in little curling tendrils,--it's +absolutely lyrical. And the smile at the bottom of her eyes is exactly +like silent music. And her mouth is a couplet in praise of love, with +two red lips for rhymes. And her chin is a perfect epithalamium of a +chin. And then her figure! And then her lilac frock! Oh, it's a +thousand, thousand pities that painting should he a forgotten art." + +"What, the same lilac frock?" said Lady Blanchemain, absently. "Yet you +certainly have the Eton voice," she mused. "And if I don't pay you the +doubtful compliment of saying that you have the Balliol manner, you have +at least a kind of subtilized reminiscence of it." + +"I must keep a guard upon myself," said John. "She's visiting an +Austrian woman who lives in a remote wing of the castle,--the pavilion +beyond the clock, in fact,--an Austrian woman of the exhilarating name +of Brandi." + +"I'm rather in luck for my dinner to-night," said Lady Blanchemain. +"I've got Agnes Scope, the niece of the Duke of Wexmouth. She arrived +here this morning with her aunt, Lady Louisa. Of course I'm putting you +next to her. As, besides being an extremely nice girl and an heiress, +she's an ardent pervert to Romanism,--well, a word to the wise." + +"Yes, I know her," said John. "We don't get on a bit. She moves on far +too high a plane for a groundling like me. She's intellectual and +earnest, and my ignorance and light-mindedness wound her to the quick. +She'll end, as I've told her to her face, by writing books,--serious +novels, probably,--which she'll illuminate with beautiful irrelevant +quotations from Browning and Cardinal Newman." + +"Bother," said Lady Blanchemain. "You're perverse." + +"Besides," said John, "she's engaged." + +"Engaged--?" faltered Lady Blanchemain. + +"Yes--to an intellectual and earnest man, named Blake--Bernard Blake--a +grandson of the famous Blake of Cambridge." + +Lady Blanchemain fixed him with darkening eyes. + +"Are you sure?" she pleaded. + +"I saw it officially stated in the _Morning Post_," was John's +relentless answer. + +"What a nuisance," said Lady Blanchemain, fanning. Her fan was of amber +tortoise-shell, with white ostrich feathers, and the end sticks bore her +cypher and coronet in gold. + +"What a jolly fan," said John. + +"Well, well," said Lady Blanchemain, reconciling herself. Then, after an +instant of pensiveness, "So you're already laid low by her beauty. But +you haven't found out yet who she is?" + +"Who who is?" said John, looking all at sea. + +"Tut. Don't tease. Your woman at the castle." + +"My woman at the castle appeared to leave you cold," he complained. "I +arrived full of her, and you wouldn't listen." + +"So you're already in love with her?" said Lady Blanchemain. + +"No--not yet," said he. "As yet I merely recognize in her admirable +material for a painting, and regret that such material should go begging +for the lack of a painter. But by this time to-morrow--who can tell?" + +"Have you found out who she is?" asked Lady Blanchemain. + +"No--not yet," said he. "As yet I've merely found out that she's +visiting an Austrian Signora Brandi, who lives (I can't think why) in +the pavilion beyond the clock. But by this time to-morrow!" His gesture +spoke volumes of prospective information. + +"She looked like a gentlewoman," reflected his friend. + +"For all the world," said he. + +"Yet, if she's an Austrian--" She paused and pondered. + +"Why? What's the difficulty?" said he. + +"To know whether she is _born_," said Lady Blanchemain. "Among +Austrians, unless you're born, you're impossible, you're nowhere. Brandi +doesn't sound born, does it? We mustn't let you become enamoured of her +if she isn't born." + +"Brandi sounds tremendously _un_born," assented John. "And if like +visits like, Signora Brandi's visitor will probably be unborn too. But +to me that would rather add an attraction,--provided she's _bred_. I'm +not an Austrian. I'm a Briton and a democrat. I feel it is my destiny, +if ever I am to become enamoured at all, to become enamoured of the +daughter of a miller,--of a rising miller, who has given his daughter +advantages. 'Bred, not Born: or the Lady of the Mill'--that shall be the +title of my humble heart-history. If this woman could prove to me that +she was the daughter of a miller, I'm not sure I shouldn't become +enamoured of her on the spot. Well, I shall know to-morrow. By this time +to-morrow I shall possess her entire _dossier_. It may interest you to +learn that I am employing a detective to investigate her." + +"A detective? What do you mean?" said Lady Blanchemain. + +"A private detective, a female detective, whom, the next time you come +to Sant' Alessina, I'll introduce to you," said John. + +"What on earth do you mean?" said Lady Blanchemain. + +"The most amusing, the most adorable little detective unhung," said he. +"People are all love and laughter whenever they look at her. She'll worm +its inmost secrets from my sphinx's heart." + +"What pleasure can you take in practising upon a poor old woman who only +by a sort of fluke isn't your grandmother?" said she. + +"Lady Louisa FitzStephen, Miss Scope," said her servant, opening the +door. + + + + +VI + + +The nightingales sang him home, and the moon lighted him, the liquid +moon of April and Italy. As he approached the castle, through the purple +and silver garden, amid the mysterious sweet odours of the night, he +glanced up vaguely at the pavilion beyond the clock. He glanced up +vaguely, but next second he was no longer vague. + +There, on a low-hung balcony, not ten feet above him, full in the +moonlight, stood a figure in white--all in white, with a scarf of white +lace thrown over her dark hair. The nightingales sang and sobbed, the +moon rained its amethystine fire upon the earth, the earth gave forth +its mysterious sweet night odours, and she stood there motionless, and +breathed and gazed and listened. + +But at the sound of wheels in the avenue, she turned slightly, and +looked down. Her face was fair and delicate and pure in the moonlight, +and her eyes shone darkly bright. + +She turned, and looked down, and her eyes met John's. + +"Given the hour and the place, I wonder whether I ought to bow," he +thought. + +Before he could make up his mind, however, his hand had automatically +raised his hat. + +She inclined her head in acknowledgment, and something softly changed in +her face. + +"She smiled!" he said, and caught his breath, with a kind of astonished +exultancy. + +That soft change in her face came and went and came again through all +his dreams. + + + + +PART THIRD + + + + +I + + +"Good morning, Prospero," said Annunziata. + +"Good morning, Wide-awake," responded John. + +He was in the octagonal room on the _piano nobile_ of the castle, where +his lost ladies of old years smiled on him from their frames. He had +heard an approaching patter of feet on the pavement of the room beyond; +and then Annunziata's little grey figure, white face, and big grave +eyes, had appeared, one picture the more, in the vast carved and gilded +doorway. + +"I have been looking everywhere for you," she said, plaintive. + +"Poor sweetheart," he commiserated her. "And can't you find me?" + +"I couldn't," said Annunziata, bearing on the tense. "But I have found +you _now_." + +"Oh? Have you? Where?" asked he. + +"_Where?_" cried she, with a disdainful movement. "But _here_, of +course." + +"I wouldn't be too cocksure of that," he cautioned her. "_Here_ is a +mighty evasive bird. For, suppose we were elsewhere, then _there_ would +be here, and here would be somewhere else." + +"No," said Annunziata, with resolution. "Where a person is, that is +always _here_." + +"You speak as if a person carried his here with him, like his hat," said +John. + +"Yes, that is how it is," said Annunziata, nodding. + +"You have a remarkably solid little head,--for all its curls, there's no +confusing it," said he. "Well, have you your report, drawn up, signed, +sealed, sworn to before a Commissioner for Oaths, and ready to be +delivered?" + +"My report--?" questioned Annunziata, with a glance. + +"About the Form," said John. "I caught you yesterday red-handed in the +fact of pumping it." + +"Yes," said Annunziata. "Her name is Maria Dolores." + +"A most becoming name," said he. + +"She is very nice," said Annunziata. + +"She looks very nice," said he. + +"She is twenty-two years and ten months old," continued his informant. + +"Fancy. As middle-aged as that," commented he. + +"Yes. She is an Austrian." + +"Ah." + +"And as I told you, she is visiting the Signora Brandi. Only, she calls +her Frao Branta." + +"Frao Branta?" John turned the name on his tongue. "Branta? Branta?" +What familiar German name, at the back of his memory, did it half evoke? +Suddenly he had a flash. "Can you possibly mean Frau Brandt?" + +Annunziata gave a gesture of affirmation. + +"Yes, that is it," she said. "You sound it just as she did!" + +"I see," said John. "And Brandt, if there are degrees of unbirth, is +even more furiously unborn than Brandi." + +"Unborn--?" said Annunziata, frowning. + +"Not noble--not of the aristocracy," John explained. + +"Very few people are noble," said Annunziata. + +"All the more reason, then, why you and I should be thankful that we +are," said he. + +"You and I?" she expostulated, with a shrug of her little grey +shoulders. "_Mache!_ We are not noble." + +"Aren't we? How do you know?" asked John. "Anyhow," he impressively +moralized, "we can try to be." + +"No," said she, with conclusiveness, with fatalism. "It is no good +trying. Either you are noble or simple,--God makes you so,--you cannot +help it. If I were noble, I should be a contessina. If you were noble, +you would be a gransignore. + +"And my unassuming appearance assures you that I'm not?" said he, +smiling. + +"If you were a gransignore," she instructed him, "you would never be +such friends with me--you would be too proud." + +John laughed. + +"You judge people by the company they keep. Well, I will apply the same +principle of judgment to your gossip, Maria Dolores. By-the-by," he +broke off to inquire, "what is her Pagan name?" + +"Her Pagan name? What is that?" asked Annunziata. + +"Maria Dolores, I take it, is her Christian name, come by in Holy +Baptism," said John. "But I suppose she will have a Pagan name, come by +in the way of the flesh, to round it off with,--just as, for instance, a +certain flame of mine, whose image, when I die, they'll find engraved +upon my heart, has the Pagan name of Casalone." + +Annunziata looked up, surprised. "Casalone? That is my name," she said. + +"Yes," said John. "Yours will be the image." + +Annunziata gave her head a toss. "Maria Dolores did not tell me her +Pagan name," she said. + +"At any rate," said he, "to judge by the company she keeps, we may +safely classify her as unborn. She is probably the daughter of a +miller,--of a miller (to judge also a little by the frocks she wears) in +rather a large way of business, who (to judge finally by her cultivated +voice, her knowledge of languages, and her generally distinguished air) +has spared no expense in the matter of her education. I shouldn't +wonder a bit if she could even play the piano." + +"No," agreed Annunziata, "that is very likely. But why"--she tilted +upwards her inquisitive little profile--"why should you think she is the +daughter of a miller?" + +"Miller," said John, "I use as a generic term. Her father may be a +lexicographer or a dry-salter, a designer of dirigible balloons or a +manufacturer of air-pumps; he may even be a person of independent means, +who lives in a big, new, stuccoed villa in the suburbs of Vienna, and +devotes his leisure to the propagation of orchids: yet all the while a +miller. By miller I mean a member of the Bourgeoisie: a man who, though +he be well to do, well educated, well bred, does not bear coat-armour, +and is therefore to be regarded by those who do with their noses in the +air,--especially in Austria. Among Austrians, unless you bear +coat-armour, you're impossible, you're nowhere. We mustn't let you +become enamoured of her if she doesn't bear coat-armour." + +Annunziata's eyes, during this divagation, had wandered to the window, +the tall window with its view of the terraced garden, where the mimosa +bloomed and the blackcaps carolled. Now she turned them slowly upon +John, and he saw from their expression that at last she was coming to +what for her (as he had known all along) was the real preoccupation of +the moment. They were immensely serious, intensely concerned, and at the +same time, in their farther recesses, you felt a kind of fluttering +shyness, as if _I dare not_ were hanging upon _I would_. + +"Tell me," she began, on a deep note, a deep coaxing note.... Then _I +dare not_ got the better, and she held back.... Then _I would_ took his +courage in both hands, and she plunged. "What have you brought for me +from Roccadoro?" And after one glance of half-bashful, all-impassioned +supplication, she let her eyes drop, and stood before him suspensive, as +one awaiting the word of destiny. + +John's "radiant blondeur," his yellow beard, pink face, and sea-blue +eyes, lighted up, more radiant still, with subcutaneous laughter. + +"The shops were shut," he said. "I arrived after closing time." + +But something in his tone rendered this grim announcement nugatory. +Annunziata drew a long breath, and looked up again. "You have brought +me something, all the same," she declared with conviction; and eagerly, +eyes gleaming, "What is it? What is it?" she besought him. + +John laughed. "You are quite right," he said. "If one can't buy, beg, or +borrow, in this world, one can generally steal." + +Annunziata drew away, regarded him with misgiving. "Oh, no; you would +never steal," she protested. + +"I'm not so sure--for one I loved," said he. "What would you have liked +me to bring you?" + +Annunziata thought. "I liked those chocolate cigars," she said, her face +soft with reminiscence of delight. + +"Ah, but we mustn't have it _toujours perdrix_," said John. "Do you, by +any chance, like marchpane?" + +"Marchpane?--I adore it," she answered, in an outburst of emotion. + +"You have your human weaknesses, after all," John laughed. "Well, I +stole a pocketful of marchpane." + +Annunziata drew away again, her little white forehead furrowed. +"Stole?" she repeated, reluctant to believe. + +"Yes," said he, brazenly, nodding his head. + +"Oh, that was very wrong," said Annunziata, sadly shaking hers. + +"No," said he. "Because, in the first place, it's a matter of proverbial +wisdom that stolen marchpane's sweetest. And, in the next place, I stole +it quite openly, under the eye of the person it belonged to, and she +made no effort to defend her property. Seeing which, I even went so far +as to explain to her _why_ I was stealing it. 'There's a young limb o' +mischief with a sweet tooth at Sant' Alessina,' I explained, 'who +regularly levies blackmail upon me. I'm stealing this for her.' And then +the lady I was stealing from told me I might steal as much as ever I +thought good." + +"Oh-h-h," said Annunziata, a long-drawn _Oh_ of relief. "Then you didn't +steal it--she _gave_ it to you." + +"Well," said John, "if casuistry like that can ease your conscience--if +you feel that you can conscientiously receive it--" And he allowed his +inflection to complete the sentence. + +"Give it to me," said Annunziata, holding out her hands, and dancing up +and down in glee and in impatience. + +"Nenni-da," said John. "Not till after dinner. I'm not going to be a +party to the spoiling of a fair, young, healthy appetite." + +Pain wrote itself upon Annunziata's brow. "Oh," she grieved, "must I +wait till after dinner?" + +"Yes," said John. + +For a breathing-space she struggled. "Would it be bad of me," she asked, +"if I begged for just a _little_ now?" + +"Yes," said John, "bad and bootless. You'd find me as unyielding as +adamant." + +"Ah, well," sighed Annunziata, a deep and tremulous sigh. "Then I will +wait." + +And, like a true philosopher, she proceeded to occupy her mind with a +fresh interest. She looked round the room, she looked out of the window. +"Why do you stay here? It is much pleasanter in the garden," she +remarked. + +"I came here to seek for consolation. To-day began for me with a tragic +misadventure," John replied. + +Annunziata's eyes grew big, compassionating him, and, at the same time, +bespeaking a lively curiosity. + +"Poor Prospero," she gently murmured. "What was it?" on tip-toe she +demanded. + +"Well," he said, "when I rose, to go for my morning swim, I made an +elaborate toilet, because I hoped to meet a certain person whom, for +reasons connected with my dignity, I wished to impress. But it was +love's labour lost. The certain person is an ornament of the uncertain +sex, and didn't turn up. So, to console myself, I came here." + +Annunziata looked round the room again. "What is there here that can +console you?" + +"These," said John. His hand swept the pictured walls. + +"The paintings?" said she, following his gesture. "How can they console +you?" + +"They're so well painted," said he, fondly studying the soft-coloured +canvases. "Besides, these ladies are dead. I like dead ladies." + +Annunziata looked critically at the pictures, and then at him with +solemn meaning. "They are very pretty--but they are not dead," she +pronounced in her deepest voice. + +"Not dead?" echoed John, astonished. "Aren't they?" + +"No," said she, with a slow shake of the head. + +"Dear me," said he. "And, when they're alone here and no one's looking, +do you think they come down from their frames and dance? It must be a +sight worth seeing." + +"No," said Annunziata. "These are only their pictures. They cannot come +down from their frames. But the ladies themselves are not dead. Some of +them are still in Purgatory, perhaps. We should pray for them." She +made, in parenthesis as it were, a pious sign of the Cross. "Some are +perhaps already in Heaven. We should ask their prayers. And others are +perhaps in Hell," she pursued, inexorable theologian that she was. "But +none of them is dead. No one is dead. There's no such thing as being +dead." + +"But then," puzzled John, "what is it that people mean when they talk of +Death?" + +"I will tell you," said Annunziata, her eyes heavy with thought. +"Listen, and I will tell you." She seated herself on the big round +ottoman, and raised her face to his. "Have you ever been at a +pantomime?" she asked. + +"Yes," said John, wondering what could possibly be coming. + +"Have you been at the pantomime," she continued earnestly, "when there +was what they call a transformation-scene?" + +"Yes," said John. + +"Well," said she, "last winter I was taken to the pantomime at Bergamo, +and I saw a transformation-scene. You ask me, what is Death? It is +exactly like a transformation-scene. At the pantomime the scene was just +like the world. There were trees, and houses, and people, common people, +like any one. Then suddenly click! Oh, it was wonderful. Everything was +changed. The trees had leaves of gold and silver, and the houses were +like fairy palaces, and there were strange lights, red and blue, and +there were great garlands of the most beautiful flowers, and the people +were like angels, with gems and shining clothes. Well, you understand, +at first we had only seen one side of the scene;--then click! everything +was turned round, and we saw the other side. That is like life and +death. Always, while we are alive, we can see only one side of things. +But there is the other side, the under side. Never, so long as we are +alive, we can never, never see it. But when we die,--click! It is a +transformation-scene. Everything is turned round, and we see the other +side. Oh, it will be very different, it will be wonderful. That is what +they call Death." + +It was John's turn to be grave. It was some time before he spoke. He +looked down at her, with a kind of grave laughter in his eyes, admiring, +considering. What could he say? ... What he did say, at last, was +simply, "Thank you, my dear." + +Annunziata jumped up. + +"Oh, come," she urged. "Let's go into the garden. It is so much nicer +there than here. There are lots of cockchafers. Besides"--she held out +as an additional inducement--"we might meet Maria Dolores." + +"No," said John. "Though the cockchafers are a temptation, I will stop +here. But go you to the garden, by all means. And if you do meet Maria +Dolores, tell her what you have just told me. I think she would like to +hear it." + +"All right," consented Annunziata, moving towards the door. "I'll see +you at dinner. You won't forget the marchpane?" + + + + +II + + +John was in a state of mind that perplexed and rather annoyed him. Until +the day before yesterday, his detachment here at Sant' Alessina from +ordinary human society, the absence of people more or less of his own +sort, had been one of the elements of his situation which he had +positively, consciously, rejoiced in,--had been an appreciable part of +what he had summarized to Lady Blanchemain as "the whole blessed thing." +He had his castle, his pictures, his garden, he had the hills and +valley, the birds, the flowers, the clouds, the sun, he had the Rampio, +he had Annunziata, he even had Annunziata's uncle; and with all this he +had a sense of having stepped out of a world that he knew by heart, that +he knew to satiety, a world that was stale and stuffy and threadbare, +with its gilt rubbed off and its colours tarnished, into a world where +everything was fresh and undiscovered and full of savour, a great cool +blue and green world that from minute to minute opened up new +perspectives, made new promises, brought to pass new surprises. And this +sense, in some strange way, included Time as well as space. It was as if +he had entered a new region of Time, as if he had escaped from the +moving current of Time into a stationary moment. Alone here, where +modern things or thoughts had never penetrated, alone with the earth and +the sky, the mediaeval castle, the dead ladies, with Annunziata, and the +parroco, and the parroco's Masses and Benedictions--to-day, he would +please himself by fancying, might be a yesterday of long ago that had +somehow dropped out of the calendar and remained, a fragment of the Past +that had been forgotten and left over. The presence of a person of his +own sort, a fellow citizen of his own period, wearing its clothes, +speaking its speech, would have broken the charm, would have seemed as +undesirable and as inappropriate as the introduction of an English +meadow into the Italian landscape. + +Yet now such a person had come, and behold, her presence, so far from +breaking the charm, merged with and intensified it,--supplied indeed +the one feature needed to perfect it. A person of his own sort? The +expression is convenient. A fellow citizen, certainly, of his period, +wearing its clothes, speaking its speech. But a person, happily, not of +his own sex, a woman, a beautiful woman; and what her presence supplied +to the poetry of Sant' Alessina, making it complete, was, if you like, +the Eternal Feminine. As supplied already by the painted women on the +walls about him, this force had been static; as supplied by a woman who +lived and breathed, it became dynamic. That was all very well; if he +could have let it rest at that, if he could have confined his interest +in her, his feeling about her, to the plane of pure aesthetics, he would +have had nothing to complain of. But the mischief was that he couldn't. +The thing that perplexed and annoyed him,--and humiliated him too, in +some measure,--was a craving that had sprung up over-night, and was now +strong and constant, to get into personal touch with her, to make her +acquaintance, to talk with her; to find out a little what manner of soul +she had, to establish some sort of human relation with her. It wasn't +in the least as yet a sentimental craving; or, if it was, John at any +rate didn't know it. In its essence, perhaps, it was little more than +curiosity. But it was disturbing, upsetting, it destroyed the peace and +the harmonious leisure of his day. It perplexed him, it was outside his +habits, it was unreasonable. "Not unreasonable to think it might be fun +to talk to a pretty woman," he discriminated, "but unreasonable to yearn +to talk to her as if your life hung in the balance." And in some +measure, too, it humiliated him: it was a confession of weakness, of +insufficiency to himself, of dependence for his contentment upon +another. He tried to stifle it; he tried to fix his mind on subjects +that would lead far from it. Every subject, all subjects, subjects the +most discrepant, seemed to possess one common property, that of leading +straight back to it. Then he said, "Well, if you can't stifle it, yield +to it. Go down into the garden--hunt her up--boldly engage her in +conversation." Assurance was the note of the man; but when he pictured +himself in the act of "boldly engaging her in conversation," his +assurance oozed away, and he was conscious of a thrice-humiliating +shyness. Why? What _was_ there in the woman that should turn a brave man +shy? + +However, the stars were working for him. That afternoon, coming home +from a stroll among the olives, he met her face to face at the gate of +the garden, whither she had arrived from the direction of the village. +Having made his bow, which she accepted with a smile, he could do no +less than open the gate for her; and as their ways must thence lie +together, up the long ilex-shaded avenue to the castle, it would be an +awkward affectation not to speak. And yet (he ground his teeth at having +to admit it) his heart had begun to pound so violently, (not from +emotion, he told himself,--from a mere ridiculous sort of nervous +excitement: what _was_ there in the woman that should excite a sane man +like that?) he was afraid to trust his voice, lest it should quaver and +betray him. But fortunately this pounding of the heart lasted only a few +seconds. The short business of getting the gate open, and of closing it +afterwards, gave it time to pass. So that now, as they set forwards +towards the house, he was able to look her in the eye, and to observe, +with impressiveness, that it was a fine day. + +She had accepted his bow with a smile, amiable and unembarrassed; and at +this, in quite the most unembarrassed manner, smiling again,--perhaps +with just the faintest, just the gentlest shade of irony, and with just +the slightest quizzical upward tremor of the eyebrows,--"Isn't it a day +rather typical of the land and season?" she inquired. + +It was the first step that had cost. John's assurance was coming swiftly +back. Her own air of perfect ease in the circumstances very likely +accelerated it. "Yes," he answered her. "But surely that isn't a reason +for begrudging it a word of praise?" + +By this he was lucky enough to provoke a laugh, a little light gay +trill, sudden and brief like three notes on a flute. + +"No," she admitted. "You are right. The day deserves the best we can say +of it." + +"Her voice," thought John, availing himself of a phrase that had struck +him in a book he had lately read, "her voice is like ivory and white +velvet." And the touch, never so light, of a foreign accent with which +she spoke, rendered her English piquant and pretty,--gave to each +syllable a crisp little clean-cut outline. They sauntered on for a +minute or two in silence, with half the width of the road-way between +them, the shaded road-way, where the earth showed purple through a thin +green veil of mosses, and where irregular shafts of sunlight, here and +there, turned purple and green to red and gold. The warm air, woven of +garden-fragrances, hung round them palpable, like some infinitely +subtile fabric. And of course blackbirds were calling, blackcaps and +thrushes singing, in all the leafy galleries overhead. A fine day +indeed, mused John, and indeed worthy of the best that they could say. +His nervousness, his excitement, had entirely left him, his assurance +had come completely back; and with it had come a curious deep +satisfaction, a feeling that for the moment at any rate the world left +nothing to be wished for, that the cup of his desire was full. He didn't +even, now that he might do so, wish to talk to her. To walk with her was +enough,--to enjoy her companionship in silence. Yes, that was +it--companionship. He caught at the word. "That is what I have been +unconsciously needing all along. I flattered myself that I was +luxuriating in the very absence of it. But man is a gregarious animal, +and I was deceived." So he could refer the effect of her propinquity to +the mere gregarious instinct, not suspecting that a more powerful +instinct was already awake. Anyhow, his sense of that propinquity,--his +consciousness of her, gracefully moving beside him in the sweet weather, +while her summery garments fluttered, and some strange, faint, elusive +perfume was shaken from them,--filled him with a satisfaction that for +the moment seemed ultimate. He had no wish to talk. Their progress side +by side was a conversation without words. They were getting to know each +other, they were breaking the ice. Each step they took was as good as a +spoken sentence, was a mutual experience, drawing them closer, helping +to an understanding. They walked slowly, as by a tacit agreement. + +Silence, however, couldn't in the nature of things last for ever. It was +she who presently broke it. + +"I owe you," she said, in her ivory voice, with her clean-cut +enunciation, "a debt of thanks." And still again she smiled, as she +looked over towards him, her dark eyes glowing, her dark hair richly +drooping, in the shadow of a big hat of wine-coloured straw. + +John's eyes were at a loss. "Oh--?" he wondered. + +"For a pleasure given me by our friend Annunziata," she explained. "This +morning she told me a most interesting parable about Death. And she +mentioned that it was you who had suggested to her to tell it me." + +"Oh," said John, laughing, while the pink of his skin deepened a shade. +"She mentioned that, did she? I'm glad if you don't feel that I took a +good deal upon myself. But she had just told the same parable to me, and +it seemed a pity it shouldn't have a larger audience." + +Then, after a few more paces taken again in silence, "What a marvellous +little person she is, Annunziata!" said Maria Dolores. + +"She's to a marvellous degree the right product of her milieu," said +John. + +Maria Dolores did not speak, but her eyes questioned, "Yes? How do you +mean?" + +"I mean that she's a true child of the presbytery," he replied, "and at +the same time a true child of this Italy, where Paganism has never +perfectly died. She has been carefully instructed in her catechism, and +she has fed upon pious legends, she has breathed an ecclesiastical +atmosphere, until the things of the Church have become a part of her +very bone. She sees everything in relation to them, translates +everything in terms of them. But at the same time odd streaks of +Paganism survive in her. They survive a little--don't they?--in all +Italians. Wherever she goes her eye reads omens. She will cast your +fortune for you with olive-stones. The woods are peopled for her by +fauns and dryads. When she takes her walks abroad, I've no doubt, she +catches glimpses of Proteus rising from the lake, and hears old Triton +blow his wreathed horn." + +Maria Dolores looked interested. + +"Yes," she said, slowly, thoughtfully, and meditated for an interval. +By-and-by, "You know," she recommenced, "she's a sort of little person +about whom one can't help feeling rather frightened." And her eyes +looked to his for sympathetic understanding. + +But his were interrogative. "No? Why should one feel frightened about +her?" + +"Oh," said Maria Dolores, with a movement, "it isn't exactly easy to +tell why. One's fears are vague. But--well, for one thing, she thinks so +much about Death. Death and what comes after,--they interest her so +much. It doesn't seem natural, it makes one uneasy. And then she's so +delicate-looking. Sometimes she's almost transparent. In every way she +is too serious. She uses her mind too much, and her body too little. She +ought to have more of the gaiety of childhood, she ought to have other +children to romp with. She's too much like a disembodied spirit. It all +alarms one." + +John, as she spoke, frowned, pondering. When she had done, his frown +cleared, he shook his head. + +"I don't think it need," he said. "Her delicacy, her frailness, have +never struck me as indicating weakness,--they seem simply the proper +physical accompaniments of her crystalline little soul,--she's made of a +fine and delicate clay. She thinks about Death, it is true, but not in a +morbid way,--and that's a part of her ecclesiastical tradition; and she +thinks quite as much about life,--she thinks about everything. I agree +with you, it's a pity she has no other children. But she isn't by any +means deficient in the instincts of childhood. She can enjoy a chocolate +cigar, for instance, as well as another; and as for marchpane, I have +her own word that she adores it." + +Maria Dolores gave another light trill of laughter. + +"Yes, I'm aware of her passion for marchpane. She confided it to me this +morning. And as, in reply to her questions, I admitted that I rather +liked it myself, she very generously offered to bring me some this +afternoon,--which, to be sure, an hour ago, she did." + +She laughed again, and John laughed too. + +"All the same" she insisted, "I can't help that feeling of uneasiness +about her. Sometimes, when I look at her, I can almost see her wings. +What will be her future, if she grows up? One would rather not think of +her as married to some poor Italian, and having to give herself to the +prosaic sort of existence that would mean." + +"The sordid sort of existence," augmented John. "No, one would decidedly +rather not. But she will never marry. She will enter religion. Her +uncle has it all planned out. He destines her for the Servites." + +"Oh? The Servites--the Mantellate? I am glad of that," exclaimed Maria +Dolores. "It is a most beautiful order. They have an especial devotion +to Our Lady of Sorrows." + +"Yes," said John, and remembered it was for Our Lady of Sorrows that she +who spoke was named. + +Slow though their march had been, by this time they had come to the end +of the avenue, and were in the wide circular sweep before the castle. +They stopped here, and stood looking off over the garden, with its +sombre cypresses and bright beds of geranium, down upon the valley, dim +and luminous in a mist of gold. Great, heavy, fantastic-shaped clouds, +pearl-white with pearl-grey shadows, piled themselves up against the +scintillant dark blue of the sky. In and out among the rose-trees near +at hand, where the sun was hottest, heavily flew, with a loud +bourdonnement, the cockchafers promised by Annunziata,--big, blundering, +clumsy, the scorn of their light-winged and business-like competitors, +the bees. Lizards lay immobile as lizards cast in bronze, only their +little glittering, watchful pin-heads of eyes giving sign of life. And +of course the blackcaps never for a moment left off singing. + +They stood side by side, within a yard of each other, in silent +contemplation of these things, during I don't know how many long and, +for John, delicious seconds. Yes, he owned it to himself; it was +delicious to feel her standing there beside him, in silent communion +with him, contemplating the same things, enjoying the same +pleasantnesses. Companionship--companionship: it was what he had been +unconsciously needing all along! ... At last she turned, and, +withdrawing her eyes lingeringly from the landscape, looked into his, +with a smile. She did not speak, but her smile said, just as explicitly +as her lips could have done, "What a scene of beauty!" + +And John responded aloud, with fervour, "Indeed, indeed it is." + +"And so romantic," she added. "It is like a scene out of some old high +musical romance." + +"The most romantic scene I know," said he. "All my life I have thought +so." + +"Oh?" said she, looking surprise. "Have you known it all your life?" + +"Well,--very nearly," said he, with half a laugh. "I saw it first when I +was ten. Then for long years I lost it,--and only recovered it, by +accident, a month ago." + +Her face showed her interest. "Oh? How was that? How did it happen?" + +"When I was ten," John recounted, half laughing again, "I was travelling +with my father, and, among the many places we visited, one seemed to me +a very vision of romance made real. A vast and stately castle, in a +garden, in a valley, with splendid halls and chambers, and countless +beautiful pictures of women. All my life I remembered it, dreamed of it, +longed to see it again. But I hadn't a notion where it was, save vaguely +that it was somewhere in Italy; and, my poor father being dead, there +was no one I could ask. Then, wandering in these parts a month ago, I +stumbled upon it, and recognized it. Though shrunken a good deal in +size, to be sure, it was still recognizable, and as romantic as ever." + +Maria Dolores listened pensively. When he had reached his period, her +eyes lighted up. "What a charming adventure!" she said. "And so, for +you, besides its general romance, the place has a personal one, all your +own. I, too, have known it for long years, but only from photographs. I +suppose I should never have seen the real thing, except for a friend of +mine coming to live here." + +"I wonder," said John, "that the people who own it never live here." + +"The Prince of Zelt-Neuminster?" said she. "No,--he doesn't like the +Italian Government. Since Lombardy passed from Austria to Italy, the +family have entirely given up staying at Sant' Alessina." + +"In those circumstances," said John, "practical-minded people, I should +think, would get rid of the place." + +"Oh," said she, laughing, "the Prince, in some ways, is practical-minded +enough. He has this great collection of Italian paintings, which, by +Italian law, he mayn't remove from Italian soil; and if he were to get +rid of Sant' Alessina, where could he house them? In other ways, though, +he is perhaps not so practical. He is one of those Utopians who believe +that the present Kingdom of Italy must perforce before long make +shipwreck; and I think he holds on to Sant' Alessina in the dream of +coming here in triumph, and grandly celebrating that event." + +"I see," said John, nodding. "That is a beautiful ideal." + +"Good-bye," said she, flashing a last quick smile into his eyes; and she +moved away, down a garden path, towards the pavilion beyond the clock. + + + + +III + + +And now, I should have imagined, for a single session, (and that an +initial one), he had had enough. I should have expected him to spend the +remainder of his day, a full man, in thankful tranquillity, in agreeable +retrospective rumination. But no. Indulgence, it soon appeared, had but +whetted his appetite. After a quarter-hour of walking about the garden, +during which his jumble of sensations and impressions,--her soft-glowing +eyes, her soft-drooping hair, under her wine-red hat; her slender +figure, in its fluttering summery muslin, and the faint, faint perfume +(like a far-away memory of rose-leaves) that hovered near her; her +smile, and the curves, when she smiled, of her rose-red lips, and the +gleam of her snow-white teeth; her laugh, her voice, her ivory voice; +her pretty crisp-cut English; her appreciation of Annunziata, her +disquieting presentiments concerning her; and his deep satisfaction in +her propinquity, her "companionship;" and the long shaded fragrant +avenue, and the bird-songs, and the gentle weather,--after a +quarter-hour of anything but thankful tranquillity, a quarter-hour of +unaccountable excitement and exaltation, during which his jumble of +impressions and sensations settled themselves, from ebullition, into +some sort of quiescence, he began to grow restlessly aware that, so far +from having had enough, he had had just a sufficient taste to make him +hunger keenly for more and more. It was ridiculous, but he couldn't help +it. And as there seemed no manner of likelihood that his hunger would +soon be fed, it was trying. At the best, he could not reasonably hope to +see her again before to-morrow; and even then--? What ghost of a reason +had he to hope that even then he could renew their conversation? He had +owed that to-day to the bare hazard of their ways lying together. +To-morrow, very likely, at the best, he might get a bow and a smile. +Very likely it might be days before he should again have anything +approaching a real talk with her. And what--a new consideration, that +struck a sudden terror to his soul--what if her visit to Frau Brandt +was to be a short one? What if to-morrow even, she were to depart? "Her +very ease in talking with me, a stranger, may quite well have been due +to the fact that she knew she would never see me again," he argued. ... +So he was working himself into a fine state of despondency, and the +world was rapidly being resolved into dust and ashes, when Heaven sent +him a diversion. Nay, indeed, Heaven sent him two diversions. + + + + +IV + + +There was a sound of wheels on gravel, of horses' hoofs on stone, and +Lady Blanchemain's great high-swung barouche, rolling superbly forth +from the avenue, drew up before the Castle, Lady Blanchemain +herself, big and soft and sumptuous in silks and laces, under a +much-befurbelowed, much-befringed, lavender-hued silk sunshade, +occupying the seat of honour. John hastened across the garden, hat in +hand, to welcome her. + +"Jump in," she commanded, with a smile, and an imperious sweep of the +arm. "I have come to take you for a drive." + +The footman (proud man) held open the door, and John jumped in. But just +as the footman (with an air) had closed the door behind him, and before +the coachman had touched up his horses, there came a rhythm of running +footsteps, and the voice of Annunziata called, insistently, "Prospero! +Prospero!" Then, all out of breath, her pale cheeks pink, her curls in +disarray, Annunziata arrived beside the carriage, and, no wise abashed +by that magnificent equipage, nor by the magnificent old lady throning +in it, (no wise abashed, but, from the roundness of her eyes, a good +deal surprised and vastly curious), she explained, gasping, "A +telegram," and held up to John a straw-coloured envelope. + +"Thank you," said he, taking it, and waving a friendly hand. "But you +should not run so fast," he admonished her, with concern. + +Whereupon the carriage drove off, Annunziata standing and watching, +always round-eyed, till it was out of sight. + +"What an interesting-looking child!" said Lady Blanchemain. + +"Yes," said John. "I should have liked to introduce her to you." + +"Who is she?" asked the lady. + +"She's the private detective I told you of. She's my affinity. She's the +young limb o' mischief for whom I ravaged your stores of marchpane. +She's the niece of the parroco." + +"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain. "Why does she call you--what was +it?--Prospero?" + +"She's an optimist. She's a bird of good omen," answered John. "She's +satisfied herself, by consulting an oracle, that Fortune has favours up +her sleeve for me. She encouragingly anticipates them by calling me +Prospero before the fact." + +Lady Blanchemain softly laughed. "That's very nice of her, and very +wise. Aren't you going to read your telegram?" + +"I didn't know whether you'd permit," said John. + +"Oh pray," said she, with a gesture. + +The carriage by this time had left the garden, and the coachman had +turned his horses' heads northwards, away from the lake, towards the +Alps, where their snowy summits, attenuated by the sun and the distance +and the blue air, looked like vapours rising into the sky. + +John tore open his envelope, read, frowned, and uttered a half-stifled +ejaculation,--something that sounded rather like "I say!" and vaguely +like "By Jove!" + +"No bad news, I hope?" inquired the lady, sympathetic, and trying to +speak as if she didn't know what curiosity meant. + +"Excellent news, on the contrary," said John, "but a bolt from the +blue." And he offered her the paper. + +"Am on my way to Rome," she read aloud. "Could I come to you for a day? +Winthorpe, Hotel Cavour, Milan."--"Winthorpe?" She pursed her lips, as +one tasting something. "I don't know the name. Who is he? What's his +County?" she demanded,--she, who carried the County Families in her +head. + +John chuckled. "He hasn't got a County--he's only an American," he said, +pronouncing that genial British formula with intention. + +"Oh," sighed Lady Blanchemain, her expectations dashed; and drawing in +her skirts, she sank a little deeper into her corner. + +"He hasn't got a County," repeated John. "But he's far and away the +greatest swell I know." + +"A swell? An American?" Lady Blanchemain pressed down her lips, and gave +a movement to her shoulders. + +"An aristocrat, a patrician," said John. + +"Fudge!" said Lady Blanchemain. "Americans and Australians--they're +anything you like, but they're never that." + +John laughed. "I adore," he said, "our light and airy British way of +tarring Americans and Australians with the same brush,--the descendants +of transported convicts and the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers!" + +"Is your Winthorpe man a descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers?" asked Lady +Blanchemain, dryly. + +"Indeed he is," said John. "He's descended from ten separate individuals +who made the first voyage in the _Mayflower_. And he holds, by-the-by, +intact, the lands that were ceded to his family by the Indians the year +after. That ought to recommend him to your Ladyship,--an unbroken tenure +of nearly three hundred years." + +"Old acres," her ladyship admitted, cautiously, "always make for +respectability." + +"Besides," John carelessly threw out, "he's a baronet." + +Lady Blanchemain sat up. "A baronet?" she said. "An American?" + +"Alas, yes," said John, "a mere American. And one of the earliest +creations,--by James the First, no less. His patent dates from 1612. But +he doesn't use the title. He regards it, he pretends, as merged in a +higher dignity." + +"What higher dignity?" asked the lady, frowning. + +"That of an American citizen, he says," chuckled John. + +"Brrr!" she breathed, impatient. + +"And moreover," John gaily continued, "besides being descended from the +Pilgrim Fathers, he's descended in other lines from half the peerage of +Seventeenth Century England. And to top up with, if you please, he's +descended from Alfred the Great. He's only an American, but he can show +a clear descent bang down from Alfred the Great! I think the most +exquisite, the most subtle and delicate pleasure I have ever experienced +has been to see English people, people of yesterday, cheerfully +patronizing him." + +"You've enlarged my sphere of knowledge," said Lady Blanchemain, grimly. +"I had never known that there was blood in America. Does this prodigious +personage talk through his nose?" + +"Worse luck, no," said John. "I wish he did--a little--just enough to +smack of his soil, to possess local colour. No, he talks for all the +world like you or me,--which exposes him to compliments in England. 'An +American? Really?' our tactful people cry, when he avows his nationality +'Upon my word, I should never have suspected it.'" + +"I suppose, with all the rest, he's rich?" asked Lady Blanchemain. + +"Immensely," assented John. "Speaking of Fortune and her favours, she's +withheld none from him." + +"Then he's good-looking, too?" + +"He looks like a Man," said John. + +"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain, moving. "If _I_ had received a wire from a +creature of such proportions, I've a feeling I'd answer it." + +"I've a very similar feeling myself," laughed John. "When we turn back, +if you think your coachman can be persuaded to stop at the telegraph +office in the village, I'll give my feeling effect." + +"I think we might turn back now," said Lady Blanchemain. "It's getting +rather gloomy here." She looked round, with a little shudder, and then +gave the necessary order. The valley had narrowed to what was scarcely +more than a defile between two dark and rugged hillsides, +--pine-covered hillsides that shut out the sun, smiting the air with +chill and shadow, and turning the Rampio, whose brawl seemed somehow to +increase the chill, turning the sparkling, sportive Rampio to the colour +of slate. "It puts one in mind of brigands," she said, with another +little shudder. But though the air was chilly, it was wonderfully, +keenly fragrant with the incense of the pines. + +"Well," she asked, when they were facing homewards, "and your woman? +What of her?" + +"Nothing," said John. "Or, anyhow, very little." (It would be extremely +pleasant, he felt suddenly, to talk of her; but at the same time he felt +an extreme reluctance to let his pleasure be seen.) + +"But your private detective?" said Lady Blanchemain. "Weren't her +investigations fruitful?" + +"Not very," said he. "She learnt little beyond her name and age." + +"And what _is_ her name?" asked the lady. + +"Her name is Maria Dolores," answered John, (and he experienced a secret +joy, strange to him, in pronouncing it). + +"Maria Dolores?" said Lady Blanchemain, (and he experienced a secret joy +in hearing it). "Maria Dolores--what?" + +"My detective didn't discover her Pagan name," said John. + +"So that you are still in doubt whether she's the daughter of a miller?" +Lady Blanchemain raised her eyebrows. + +"Oh, no: I think she's a miller's daughter safely enough," said he. "But +she's an elaborately chiselled and highly polished one. Her voice is +like ivory and white velvet; and to hear her speak English is a +revelation of the hidden beauties of that language." + +"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain, eyeing him. "So you've advanced to the +point of talking with her?" + +"Well," answered John, weighing his words, "I don't know whether I can +quite say that. But accident threw us together for a minute or two this +afternoon, and we could scarcely do less, in civility, than exchange the +time of day." + +"And are you in love with her?" asked Lady Blanchemain. + +"I wonder," said he. "What do _you_ think? Is it possible for a man to +be in love with a woman he's seen only half a dozen times all told, and +spoken with never longer than a minute or two at a stretch?" + +"_Was_ it only a minute or two--_really_?" asked Lady Blanchemain, +wooing his confidence with a glance. + +"No," said John. "It was probably ten minutes, possibly fifteen. But +they passed so quickly, it's really nearer the truth to describe them as +one or two." + +Lady Blanchemain shifted her sunshade, and screwed herself half round, +so as to face him, her soft old eyes full of smiling scrutiny and +suspicion. + +"I never can tell whether or not you're serious," she complained. "If +you _are_ serious,--well, _a quand le mariage_?" + +"The marriage?" cried John. "How could I marry her? Such a thing's out +of all question. + +"Why?" asked she. + +"A miller's daughter!" said John. "Would you have me marry the daughter +of a miller?" + +"You said yourself yesterday--" the lady reminded him. + +"Ah, yes," said he. "But night brings counsel." + +"If she's well educated," said Lady Blanchemain, "if she's well-bred, +what does it matter about her father? Though a nobody in Austria, where +nothing counts but quarterings, he's probably what we'd call a gentleman +in England. Suppose he's a barrister? Or the editor of a newspaper? +Or--" + +She paused, thoughtful-eyed, to think of respectable professions. At +last she gave up the effort. + +"Well, anything decent," she concluded, "so long as he had plenty of +money." + +"Ah," said John, sadly, and with perhaps mock humility. "If he had +plenty of money, he'd never consent to his daughter marrying a son of +poverty like me." + +"Pooh! For a title?" cried Lady Blanchemain. "Besides, you have +prospects. Isn't your name Prospero?" + +"I have precious little faith in oracles," said John. + +"I advise you to have more," said Lady Blanchemain, with a smile that +seemed occult. + +And now her carriage entered the village, and she put him down at the +telegraph office. + +"Don't wait," said John. "The walk from here to the Castle is nothing, +and it would take you out of your way." + +"Well, good-bye, then," said she. "And cultivate more faith in +oracles--when they're auspicious." + +Alone, she drew from some recondite fold of her many draperies a letter, +an unsealed letter, which she opened, spread out, and proceeded to read. +It was a long letter in her ladyship's own handsome, high-bred, +old-fashioned handwriting; and it was addressed to Messrs. Farrow, +Bernscot, and Tisdale, Solicitors, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London. She +read it twice through, and at last (with a smile that seemed occult) +restored it to its envelope. "Stop at the Post Office," she said to her +coachman, as they entered Roccadoro; and to her footman, giving him the +letter, "Have that registered, please." + +Annunziata lay in wait for John in the garden. She ran up, and seized +him by the arm. Then, skipping beside him, as he walked on, "Who was +she? Where did she come from? Where did she take you? Whom was the +telegram from?" she demanded in a breath, nestling her curls against his +coat-sleeve. + +"_Piano, piano_," remonstrated John. "One question at a time. Now, begin +again." + +"Whom was the telegram from?" she obeyed, beginning at the end. + +"Ah," said he, "the telegram was from _my_ friend Prospero. He's coming +here to-morrow. We must ask your uncle whether he can give him a bed." + +"And the old lady?" pursued Annunziata. "Who was she?" + +"The old lady was my fairy godmother," said John, building better than +he knew. + + + + +PART FOURTH + + + + +I + + +Pacing together backwards and forwards, as they talked, John and his +friend Winthorpe presented a striking and perhaps interesting contrast. +John was tall, but Winthorpe seemed a good deal taller--though, (trifles +in these matters looming so large), had actual measurements been taken, +I dare say half an inch would have covered the difference. John was lean +and sinewy, but rounded off at the joints, and of a pliant carriage, so +that it never occurred to you to think of him as _thin_. Winthorpe's +spare figure, spare and angular, with its greater height, held +unswervingly to the plane of the perpendicular, appeared absolutely to +be constructed of nothing but bone and tendon. John's head, with its +yellow hair, its curly beard verging towards red, its pink skin, and +blue eyes full of laughter, might have served a painter as a model for +the head of Mirth. Winthorpe's,--with brown hair cropped close, and +showing the white of the scalp; clean-shaven, but of a steely tint where +the razor had passed; with a marked jaw-bone and a salient square chin; +with a high-bridged determined nose, and a white forehead rising +vertical over thick black eyebrows, and rather deep-set grey +eyes,--well, clap a steeple-crowned hat upon it, and you could have +posed him for one of his own Puritan ancestors. The very clothes of the +men carried on their unlikeness,--John's loose blue flannels and red +sailor's knot, careless-seeming, but smart in their effect, and showing +him careful in a fashion of his own; Winthorpe's black tie and dark +tweeds, as correct as Savile Row could turn them out, yet somehow, by +the way he wore them, proclaiming him immediately a man who never gave +two thoughts to his dress. If, however, Winthorpe's face was the face of +a Puritan, it was the face of a Puritan with a sense of humour--the +lines about the mouth were clearly the footprints of smiles. It seemed +the face of a sensitive Puritan, as well, and (maugre that high-bridged +nose) of a gentle--the light in his clear grey eyes was a kindly and +gentle light. After all, Governor Bradford, as his writings +show,--though he tried hard, perhaps, not to let them show it--was a +Puritan with a sense of humour; John Alden and Priscilla were surely +sensitive and gentle: and Winthorpe was descended from Governor +Bradford, and from John Alden and Priscilla. The two friends walked +backwards and forwards in the great open space before the Castle, and +talked. They had not met for nearly two years, and had plenty to talk +about. + + + + +II + + +Seated at one of the open windows of the pavilion beyond the clock, +Maria Dolores (in a pale green confection of I know not what airy, filmy +tissue) looked down, and somewhat vaguely watched them,--herself +concealed by the netted curtain, which, according to Italian usage, was +hung across the casement, to mitigate the heat and shut out insects. She +watched them at first vaguely, and only from time to time, for the rest +going on with some needlework she had in her lap. But by-and-by she +dropped her needlework altogether, and her watching became continuous +and absorbed. + +"What a singular-looking man!" she thought, studying Winthorpe. "What an +ascetic-looking man! He looks like an early Christian martyr. He looks +like a priest. I believe he _is_ a priest. English priests," she +remembered, "when they travel, often dress as laymen. Yes, he is a +priest, and a terribly austere one--I shouldn't like to go to him for +confession. But in spite of his austerity, he seems to be +extraordinarily happy about something just at present. That light in his +eyes,--it is almost a light of ecstasy. It is a light I have never seen +in any eyes, save those of priests and nuns." + +Winthorpe, while that "almost ecstatic" light shone in his eyes, had +been speaking. + +Now, as he paused, John, with a glance of gay astonishment, halted, and +turned so as to face him. John's lips moved, and it was perfectly plain +that he was exclaiming, delightedly, "Really? _Really_?" + +Winthorpe joyously nodded: whereupon John held out both hands, got hold +of his friend's, and, his pink face jubilant, shook them with tremendous +heartiness. + +"The priest has received advancement--he is probably to be made a +bishop," inferred Maria Dolores; "and Signor Prospero is congratulating +him." + +The men resumed their walk; but for quite a minute John kept his hand on +Winthorpe's shoulder, and again and again gently patted it, murmuring, +"I am so glad, so immensely glad." Maria Dolores was quite sure that +this was what he murmured, for, though no word could reach her, John's +beaming face spoke louder than his voice. + +At last John let his hand drop, and, eyebrows raised a little, asked a +question. + +"But how did it happen? But tell me all about it," was what he seemed to +say. + +And Winthorpe (always with something of that ecstatic light in his eyes) +proceeded to answer. But it was a longish story, and lasted through half +a dozen of their forward and backward ambulations. Apparently, +furthermore, it was a story which, as it developed, became less and less +agreeable to the mind of John; for his face, at first all awake with +interest, all aglow with pleasure, gradually sobered, gradually +darkened, took on a frown, expressed dissent, expressed disapprobation, +till, finally, with an impatient movement, he interrupted, and +began--speaking rapidly, heatedly--to protest, to remonstrate. + +"Ah," thought Maria Dolores, "the priest is to be made a bishop, sure +enough,--but a missionary bishop. It isn't for nothing that he looks +like an early Christian martyr. He is going to some outlandish, savage +part of the world, where he will be murdered by the natives, or die of +fever or loneliness. He is a man who has listened to the Counsels of +Perfection. But his unascetic friend Prospero (one would say June +remonstrating with December) can't bring himself to like it." + +John remonstrated, protested, argued. Winthorpe, calmly, smilingly, +restated his purpose and his motives. John pleaded, implored, appealed +(so the watcher read his gesture) to earth, to heaven. Winthorpe took +his arm, and calmly, smilingly, tried to soothe, tried to convince him. +John drew his arm free, and, employing it to add force and +persuasiveness to his speech, renewed his arguments, pointed out how +unnecessary, inhuman, impossible the whole thing was. "It's monstrous. +It's against all nature. There's no _reason_ in it. What does it _rhyme_ +with? It's wilfully going out of your way to seek, to create, +wretchedness. My mind simply refuses to accept it." It was as if Maria +Dolores could hear the words. But Winthorpe, calm and smiling, would not +be moved. John shook his head, muttered, shrugged his shoulders, threw +up his hands, muttered again. "Was ever such pig-headed obstinacy! Was +ever such arbitrary, voluntary blindness! I give you up, for a perverse, +a triple-pated madman!" And so, John muttering and frowning, Winthorpe +serenely smiling, reiterating, they passed round the corner of the +Castle buildings, and were lost to Maria Dolores' view. + + + + +III + + +That afternoon, seated on the moss, under a tall eucalyptus tree near to +Frau Brandt's pavilion, Maria Dolores received a visit from Annunziata. + +Annunziata's pale little face was paler, her big grave eyes were graver, +even than their wont. She nodded her head, slowly, portentously; and her +glance was heavy with significance. + +Maria Dolores smiled. "What is the matter?" she cheerfully inquired. + +"Ah," sighed Annunziata, deeply, with another portentous head-shake, "I +wish I knew." + +Maria Dolores laughed. "Sit down," she suggested, making room beside her +on the moss, "and try to think." + +Annunziata sat down, curled herself up. "Something has happened to +Prospero," she said, _de profundis_. + +"Oh?" asked Maria Dolores. "What?" She seemed heartlessly cheerful, and +even rather amused. + +"Ah," sighed Annunziata, "that is what I wish I knew. He has had a +friend to pass the day with him." + +"Yes?" said Maria Dolores. "I expect I saw his friend walking with him +this morning?" + +"_Gia_," said Annunziata. "They have been walking about all day. _His_ +friend Prospero he calls him. But he doesn't look very prosperous. He +looks like a slate-pencil. He is long and thin, and dark and cold, and +hard, just like a slate-pencil. He would not stay the night, though we +had a bed prepared for him. He is going to Rome, and Prospero has driven +him to the railway station at Cortello. I hate him," wound up +Annunziata, simply. + +"Mercy!" exclaimed Maria Dolores, opening her eyes. "Why do you hate +him?" + +"Because he must have said or done something very unkind to Prospero," +answered Annunziata. "Oh, you should see him. He is so sad--so sad and +so angry. He keeps scowling, and shaking his head, and saying things in +English, which I cannot understand, but I am sure they are sad things +and angry things. And he would not eat any dinner,--no, not that much," +(Annunziata measured off an inch on her finger), "he who always eats a +great deal,--_eh, ma molto, molto_," and, separating her hands, she +measured off something like twenty inches in the air. + +Maria Dolores couldn't help laughing a little at this. But afterwards +she said, on a key consolatory, "Ah, well, he has gone away now, so let +us hope your friend Prospero will promptly recover his accustomed +appetite." + +"Yes," said Annunziata, "I hope so. But oh, that old slate-pencil man, +how I hate him! I would like to--_uhhh!_" She clenched her little white +fist, and shook it, threateningly, vehemently, while her eyes fiercely +flashed. ... Next instant, however, her mien entirely changed. Like a +light extinguished, all the fierceness went out of her face, making way +for what seemed pain and terror. "There," she cried, pain and terror in +her voice, "I have offended God. Oh, I am so sorry, so sorry. My sin, my +sin, my sin," she murmured, bowing her head, and thrice striking her +breast. + +"I take back every word I said. I do not hate him. I would not hurt +him--I would not even stick a pin in him--if I had him at my mercy. +No--I would do anything I could to help him. I would give him anything I +had that he could want. I would give him my coral rosary. I would give +him"--she hesitated, struggled, and at last, drawing a deep breath, +gritting her teeth, in supreme renunciation--"yes, I would give him my +tame kid," she forced herself to pronounce, with a kind of desperate +firmness. "But see," she wailed, her little white brow a mesh of painful +wrinkles, "it is all no good. God is still angry. Oh, what shall I do?" +And, to the surprise and distress of Maria Dolores, she burst into a +sudden passion of tears, sobbing, sobbing, with that abandonment of +grief which only children know. + +"My dear, my dear," exclaimed Maria Dolores, drawing her to her. "My +dearest, you mustn't cry like that. Dear little Annunziata. What is it? +Why do you cry so, dear one? Answer me. Tell me." + +But Annunziata only buried her face in Maria Dolores' sleeve, and +moaned, while long, tremulous convulsions shook her frail little body. +Maria Dolores put both arms about her, hugged her close, and laid her +cheek upon her hair. + +"Darling Annunziata, don't cry. Why should you cry so, dearest? God is +not angry with you. Why should you think that God is angry with you? God +loves you, darling. Everyone loves you. There, there--dearest--don't +cry. Sweet one, dear one." + +Transitions, with Annunziata, were sometimes inexplicably rapid. All at +once her sobbing ceased; she looked up, and smiled, smiled radiantly, +from a face that was wet and glistening with tears. "Thanks be to God," +she piously exulted; "God is not angry any more." + +"Of course He isn't," said Maria Dolores, tightening her hug, and +touching Annunziata's curls lightly with her lips. "But He was never +angry. What made you think that God was angry?" + +Annunziata's big eyes widened. "Didn't you notice?" she asked, in a +hushed voice, amazed. + +"No," wondered Maria Dolores. "What was there to notice?" + +"He made them draw a cloud over the sun," Annunziata whispered. "Didn't +you notice that when I said I would like to--when I said what I said +about that friend of Prospero's--just then they drew a cloud across the +sun? That is a sign that God is angry. The sun, you know, is the window +in Heaven through which God looks down on the world, and through which +the light of Heaven shines on the world. And when the window is open, we +feel happy and thankful, and wish to sing and laugh. But when we have +done something to make God angry with us, then He sends angels to draw +clouds over the window, so that we may be shut out of His sight, and the +light of Heaven may be shut off from us. And then we are lonely and +cold, and we could quarrel with anything, even with the pigs. God wishes +to show us how bad it would be always to be shut off from His sight. But +now they have drawn the cloud away, so God is not angry any more. I made +a good act of contrition, and He has forgiven me." + +Maria Dolores smiled, but under her smile there was a look of +seriousness, a look of concern. + +"My dear," she said smiling, and looking concerned, "you should try to +control your vivid little imagination. If every time a cloud crosses the +sun, you are going to assume the responsibility for it, and to fancy +that you have offended God, I'm afraid you'll have rather an agitated +life." + +"Oh, no; not _every_ time," exclaimed Annunziata, and she was manifestly +on the point of making a fine distinction, when abruptly the current of +her ideas was diverted. "Sh-h! There comes Prospero," she cried, +starting up. "I can see the top of his white hat above the rhododendron +bushes. He has driven his friend to Cortello, and come home. I must run +away, or he will see that I've been crying. Don't tell him," she begged, +putting her finger on her lips; and she set off running, towards the +presbytery, just as John stepped forth from behind the long hedge of +rhododendrons. + + + + +IV + + +John stepped forth from behind the rhododendrons, with a kind of +devil-may-care, loose, aimless gait, the brim of his Panama pulled +brigandishly down over one ear, his hands in the pockets of his coat, +his head bent, his brow creased, his eyes sombre, every line and fibre +of his person advertising him the prey of morose disgust. But when he +saw Maria Dolores, he hastily straightened up, unpocketed his hands, +took off his hat (giving it a flap that set the brim at a less truculent +angle), and smiled. And when, the instant after, he caught sight of the +flying form of Annunziata, his smile turned into a glance of wonder. + +"What is the matter with Annunziata? Why is she running with all her +legs like that?" he asked. + +Maria Dolores had the tiniest catch of laughter. "She is running away +from you," she answered. + +"From _me_?" marvelled John. "_Je suis donc un foudre de guerre?_ What +on earth is she running away from me for?" + +Maria Dolores smiled mysteriously. + +"Ah," she said, "she asked me not to tell you. I am in the delicate +position of confidante." + +"And therefore I hope you'll tell me with the less reluctance," said +John, urbanely unprincipled. "A confidante always betrays her confidence +to some one,--that's the part of the game that makes it worth while." + +Maria Dolores' smile deepened. + +"In that pale green frock, on that bank of dark-green moss, with her +complexion and her hair,--by Jove, how stunning she is!" thought John, +in a commotion. + +"Well," she said, "Annunziata ran away because she didn't want you to +see that she'd been crying." + +John raised his eyebrows, the blue eyes under them becoming expressive +of dismay. + +"Crying?" he echoed. "The poor little kiddie! What had she been crying +about!" + +"That is a long story, and involves some of her peculiar theological +tenets," said Maria Dolores. "But, in a single word, about your +friend." + +John's eyebrows descended to their normal level, and drew together. + +"Crying about my friend? What friend?" he puzzled. + +"Your friend the priest--the man who has been passing the day here with +you," explained Maria Dolores. + +John gave a start, threw back his head, and eyed her with astonishment. + +"That is extraordinary," he exclaimed. + +"What?" asked she, lightly glancing up. + +"That you should call him my friend the priest," said John, wagging a +bewildered head. + +"Why? Isn't he a priest? He has all the air of one," said Maria Dolores. + +"No; he's an American millionaire," said John, succinctly. + +Maria Dolores moved in her place, and laughed. + +"Dear me!" she said, "I did strike wide of the mark. An American +millionaire should cultivate a less deceptive appearance. With that +thin, shaven face of his, and that look of an early Christian martyr in +his eyes, and the dark clothes he wears, wherever he goes he's sure to +be mistaken for a priest." + +"Yes," said John, with a kind of grimness; "that's what's extraordinary. +He comes of a long line of bigoted Protestants, he's a reincarnation of +some of his stern old Puritan forebears, and you find that he looks like +their pet abomination, a Romish priest. Well, you have a prophetic eye." + +Maria Dolores gazed up inquiringly. "A prophetic eye?" she questioned. + +"I merely mean," said John, with thaumaturgic airiness, "that the man is +on his way to Rome to study for the priesthood." And he gave a +thaumaturgic toss to his bearded chin. + +"Oh!" cried Maria Dolores, and leaned back against her eucalyptus tree, +and laughed again. + +John, however, dejectedly shook his head, and gloomed. + +"Laugh if you will," he said, "though it seems to me as far as possible +from a laughing matter, and I think Annunziata chose the better part +when she cried." + +"I beg your pardon," said Maria Dolores, perhaps a trifle stiffly. "I +was only laughing at the coincidence of my having supposed him to be a +priest, and then learning that, though he isn't, he is going to become +one. I was not laughing at the fact itself. Nor was it," she added, her +stiffness leaving her, and a little glimmer of amusement taking its +place, "that fact which made Annunziata cry." + +"I dare say not," responded John, "seeing that she couldn't possibly +have known it. But it might well have done so. It's enough to bring +tears to the eyes of a brazen image." He angrily jerked his shoulders. + +"What?" cried Maria Dolores, surprised, rebukeful. "That a man is to +become a holy priest?" + +"Oh, no," said John. "That fact alone, detached from special +circumstances, might be a subject for rejoicing. But the fact that this +particular man, _in_ his special circumstances, is to become a +priest--well, I simply have no words to express my feeling." He threw +out his arms, in a gesture of despair. "I'm simply sick with rage and +pity. I could gnash my teeth and rend my garments." + +"Mercy!" cried Maria Dolores, stirring. "What are the special +circumstances?" + +"Oh, it's a grisly history," said John. "It's a tale of the wanton, +ruthless, needless, purposeless sacrifice of two lives. It's his old +black icy Puritan blood. Winthorpe--that's his name--had for years been +a freethinker, far too intellectual and enlightened, and that sort of +thing, you know, to believe any such old wives' tale as the Christian +Religion. He and I used to have arguments, tremendous ones, in which, of +course, neither in the least shook the other. Darwin and Spencer, with a +dash of his native Emerson, were religion enough for him. Then this +morning he arrived here, and said, 'Congratulate me. A month ago I was +received into the Church.'" + +Maria Dolores looked up, animated, her dark eyes sparkling. + +"How splendid!" she said. + +"Yes," agreed John, "so I thought. 'Congratulate me,' he said. I should +think I did congratulate him,--with all my heart and soul. But then, +naturally, I asked him how it had happened, what had brought it to +pass." + +"Yes--?" prompted Maria Dolores, as he paused. + +"Well," said John, his face hardening, "he thereupon proceeded to tell +me in his quiet way, with his cool voice (it's like smooth-flowing cold +water), absolutely the most inhuman story I have ever had to keep my +patience and listen to." + +"What was the story?" asked Maria Dolores. + +"If you can credit such inhumanity, it was this," answered John. "It +seems that he fell in love--with a girl in Boston, where he lives. And +what's more, and worse, the girl fell in love with him. So there they +were, engaged. But she was a Catholic, and his state of unbelief was a +cause of great grief to her. So she pleaded with him, and persuaded, +till, merely to comfort her, and without the faintest suspicion that his +scepticism could be weakened, he promised to give the Catholic position +a thorough reconsideration, to read certain books, and to put himself +under instruction with a priest: which he did. Which he did, if you +please, with the result, to his own unutterable surprise, that one fine +day he woke up and discovered that he'd been convinced, that he +_believed_." + +"Yes?" said Maria Dolores, eagerly. "Yes--? And then? And the girl?" + +"Ah," said John, with a groan, "the girl That's the pity of it. That's +where his black old Puritan blood comes in. Blood? It isn't blood--it's +some fluid form of stone--it's flint dissolved in vinegar. The girl! +Mind you, she loved him, they were engaged to be married. Well, he went +to her, and said, 'I have been converted. I believe in the Christian +religion--your religion. But I can't believe a thing like that, and go +on living as I lived when I didn't believe it,--go on living as if it +weren't true, or didn't matter. It does matter--it matters +supremely--it's the only thing in the world that matters. I can't +believe it, and _marry_--marry, and live in tranquil indifference to it. +No, I must put aside the thought of marriage, the thought of personal +happiness. I must sell all I have and give it to the poor, take up my +cross and follow Him. I am going to Rome to study for the priesthood.' +Imagine," groaned John, stretching out his hands, "_imagine_ talking +like that to a woman you are supposed to love, to a woman who loves +you." And he wrathfully ground his heel into the earth. + +Maria Dolores looked serious. + +"After all, he had to obey his conscience," she said. "After all, he was +logical, he was consistent." + +"Oh, his conscience! Oh, consistency!" cried John, with an intolerant +fling of the body. "At bottom it's nothing better than common +self-indulgence, as I took the liberty of telling him to his face. It's +the ardour of the convert, acting upon that acid solution of flint which +takes the place of blood in his veins, and causing sour puritanical +impulses, which (like any other voluptuary) he immediately gives way to. +It's nothing better than unbridled passion. Conscience, indeed! Where +was his conscience when it came to _her_? Think of that poor girl--that +poor pale girl--who _loved_ him. Oh, Mother of Mercy!" + +He moved impatiently three steps to the left, three steps to the right, +beating the palm of one hand with the back of the other. + +"What did she do? How did she take it?" asked Maria Dolores. + +"What she ought to have done," said John, between his teeth, "was to +scratch his eyes out. What she did do, as he informed me with a seraphic +countenance, was not merely to approve of everything he said, but to +determine to do likewise. So, while he's on his way to Rome, to get +himself tonsured and becassocked, she's scrubbing the floors of an +Ursuline convent, as a novice. And there are two lives spoiled." He +shrugged his shoulders. + +"Oh, no, no," contended Maria Dolores, earnestly, shaking her head, "not +spoiled. On the contrary. It is sad, in a way, if you like, but it is +very beautiful, it is heroic. Their love must have been a very beautiful +love, that could lead them to such self-sacrifice. Two lives given to +God." + +"Can't people give their lives to God without ceasing to _live_?" cried +John. "If marriage is a sacrament, how can they better give their lives +to God than by living sanely and sweetly in Christian marriage? But +these people withdraw from life, renounce life, shirk and evade the life +that God had prepared for them and was demanding of them. It's as bad as +suicide. Besides, it implies such a totally perverted view of religion. +Religion surely is given to us to help us to _live_, to show us _how_ to +live, to enable us to meet the difficulties, emergencies, +responsibilities of life. But these people look upon their religion as +a mandate to turn their backs on the responsibilities of life, and +scuttle away. And as for _love_! Well, she no doubt did love, poor lady. +But Winthorpe! No. When a man loves he doesn't send his love into a +convent, and go to Rome to get himself becassocked." He gave his head a +nod of finality. + +"That, I fancy, is a question of temperament," said Maria Dolores. "Your +friend has the ascetic temperament. And it does not by any means follow +that he loves less because he resigns his love. What you call an inhuman +story seems to me a wonderfully noble one. I saw your friend this +morning, when he and you were walking together, and I said to myself, +'That man looks as if he had listened to the Counsels of Perfection. His +vocation shines through him.' I think you should reconcile yourself to +his accepting it." + +"Well," said John, on the tone of a man ready to change the subject, "I +owe him at least one good mark. His account of his 'heart-state' led me +to examine my own, and I discovered that I am in love myself,--which is +a useful thing to know." + +"Oh?" said Maria Dolores, with a little effect of reserve. + +"Yes," said John, nothing daunted, "though unlike his, mine is an +unreciprocated flame, and unavowed." + +"Ah?" said Maria Dolores, reserved indeed, but not without an undertone +of sympathy. + +"Yes," said John, playing with fire, and finding therein a heady mixture +of fearfulness and joy. "The woman I love doesn't dream I love her, and +dreams still less of loving me,--for which blessed circumstance may +Heaven make me truly thankful." + +The sentiment sounding unlikely, Maria Dolores raised doubtful eyes. +They shone into John's; his drank their light; and something violent +happened in his bosom. + +"Oh--?" she said. + +"Yes," said he, thinking what adorable little hands she had, as they lay +loosely clasped in her lap, thinking how warm they would be, and +fragrant; thinking too what fun it was, this playing with fire, how +perilous and exciting, and how egotistical he must seem to her, and how +nothing on earth should prevent him from continuing the play. "Yes," he +said, "it's a circumstance to be thankful for, because, like Winthorpe +himself, though for different reasons, I'm unable to contemplate +marriage." His voice sank sorrowfully, and he made a sorrowful movement. + +"Oh--?" said Maria Dolores, her sympathy becoming more explicit. + +"Winthorpe's too beastly puritanical--and I'm too beastly poor," said +he. + +"Oh," she murmured. Her eyes softened; her sympathy deepened to +compassion. + +"She must certainly put me down as the most complacent egotist in two +hemispheres, so to regale her with unsolicited information about +myself," thought John; "but surely it would need six hemispheres to +produce another pair of eyes as beautiful as hers."--"Yes," he said, "I +should be 'looking up' if I asked even a beggar-maid to marry me." + +Maria Dolores' beautiful eyes became thoughtful as well as +compassionate. + +"But men who are poor work and earn money," she said, on the tone that +young women adopt when the spirit moves them to preach to young men. And +when the spirit does move them to that, things may be looked upon as +having advanced an appreciable distance, the ball may be looked upon as +rolling. + +"So I've heard," said John, his head in the clouds. "It must be dull +business." + +Maria Dolores dimly smiled. "Do _you_ do no work?" she asked. + +"I've never had time," said John. "I've been too busy enjoying life." + +"Oh," said Maria Dolores, with the intonation of reproach. + +"Yes," said he, "enjoying the Humour, the Romance, the Beauty of +it,--and combine the three together, make a chord of 'em, you get the +Divinity. Or, to take a lower plane, the world's a stage, and life's the +drama. I could never leave off watching and listening long enough to do +any work." + +"But do you not wish to play a part in the drama, to be one of the +actors?" asked his gentle homilist. "Have you no ambition?" + +"Not an atom," he easily confessed. "The part of spectator seems to me +by far the pleasantest. To sit in the stalls and watch the incredible +jumble-show, the reason-defying topsy-turvydom of it, the gorgeous, +squalid, tearful, and mirthful pageantry, the reckless inconsequences, +the flagrant impossibilities; to watch the Devil ramping up and down +like a hungry lion, and to hear the young-eyed cherubim choiring from +the skies: what better entertainment could the heart of man desire?" + +"But are we here merely to be entertained?" she sweetly preached, while +John's blue eyes somewhat mischievously laughed, and he felt it hard +that he couldn't stop her rose-red mouth with kisses. "Aren't we here to +be, as the old-fashioned phrase goes, of use in the world? Besides, now +that you are in love, surely you will never sit down weakly, and say, 'I +am too poor to marry,' and so give up your love,--like your friend +Winthorpe indeed, but for ignoble instead of noble motives. Surely you +will set to work with determination, and earn money, and make it +possible to marry. Or else your love must be a very poor affair." And +her adorable little hands, as they lay ("like white lilies," thought +John) upon the pale-green fabric of her gown, unclasped themselves, +opened wide for an instant, showing the faint pink of their palms, then +lightly again interlaced their fingers. + +He laughed. "You are delicious," he said to her fervently, in silence. +"My love is all right," he said aloud. "I love her as much as it is +humanly possible to love. I love her with passion, with tenderness; with +worship, with longing; I love her with wonder; I love her with sighs, +with laughter. I love her with all I have and with all I am. And I owe +one to Winthorpe for having unwittingly opened my eyes to my condition. +But earning money? I've a notion it's difficult. What could I do?" + +"Have you no profession?" she asked. + +"Not the ghost of one," said he, with nonchalance. + +"But is there no profession that appeals to you--for which you feel that +you might have a taste?" Her dark eyes were very earnest. + +"Not the ghost of one," said he, dissembling his amusement. +"Professions--don't they all more or less involve sitting shut up in +stuffy offices, among pigeon-holes full of dusty and futile papers, +doing tiresome tasks for the greater glory of other people, like a slave +in the hold of a galley? No, if I'm to work, I must work at something +that will keep me above decks--something that will keep me out of +doors, in touch with the air and the earth. I might become an +agricultural labourer,--but that's not very munificently paid; or a +farmer,--but that would require perhaps more capital than I could +command, and anyhow the profits are uncertain. I've an uncle who's a bit +of a farmer, and year in, year out, I believe he makes a loss. 'Well, +what's left? ... Ah, a gardener. I don't think I should half mind being +a gardener." + +Maria Dolores looked as if she weren't sure whether or not to take him +seriously. + +"A gardener? That's not very munificently paid either, is it?" she +suggested, trying her ground. + +"Alas, I fear not," sighed John. Then he made a grave face. "But would +you have me entirely mercenary? Money isn't everything here below." + +Maria Dolores smiled. She saw that for the moment at least he was not to +be taken seriously. + +"True," she agreed, "though it ran in my mind that to earn money, so +that you might marry, was your only motive for going to work at all." + +"I had forgotten that," said the light-minded fellow. "I was thinking of +occupations that would keep one in touch with the earth. A gardener's +occupation keeps him constantly in the charmingest possible sort of +touch with her, and the most intimate." + +"Do they call the earth _her_ in English?" asked Maria Dolores. "I +thought they said _it_." + +"I'm afraid, for the greater part, they do," answered John. "But it's +barbarous of them, it's unfilial. Our brown old mother,--fancy +begrudging her the credit of her sex! Our brown and green old mother; +our kindly, bounteous mother; our radiant, our queenly mother, old, and +yet perennially, radiantly young. Look at her now," he cried, circling +the garden with his arm, and pointing to the farther landscape, "look at +her, shining in her robes of pearl and gold, shining and smiling,--one +would say a bride arrayed for the altar. Such is her infinite variety. +Her infinite variety, her infinite abundance, the fragrance and the +sweetness of her,--oh, I could fall upon my face and worship her, like a +Pagan of Eld. The earth and all that grows and lives upon her, the +blossoming tree, the singing bird,--I could build temples to her." + +"And the crawling snake?" put in Maria Dolores, a gleam at the bottom of +her eyes. + +"The crawling snake," quickly retorted John, "serves a most useful +purpose. He establishes the _raison d'etre_ of man. Man and his heel are +here to crush the serpent's head." + +Maria Dolores leaned back, softly laughing. + +"Your infatuation for the earth is so great," she said, "mightn't your +lady-love, if she suspected it, be jealous?" + +"No," said John, "it is the earth that might be jealous, for, until I +saw my lady-love, she was the undivided mistress of my heart. For the +rest, my lady-love enjoys, upon this point, my entire confidence. I have +kept nothing from her." + +"That is well," approved Maria Dolores. "And the sky and the sea," still +softly laughing, she asked, "have they no place in your affections? + +"The sky is her tiring-maiden, and I love the sky for that," said John. +"'Tis the sky that clothes her in her many-coloured raiment, and holds +the light whereby her beauty is made manifest. And the sea is a jewel +that she bears upon her bosom,--a magical jewel, whence, with the sky's +aid, she draws the soft rain that is her scent and her cosmetic. +'Fragrant the fertile earth after soft showers.' Do you know, I could +almost forgive the dour and detestable Milton everything for the sake of +those seven words. They show that in the sense of smell he had at least +one attribute of humanity." + +Maria Dolores' dark eyes were quizzical. + +"The dour and detestable Milton?" she exclaimed. "Poor Milton! What has +he done to merit such anathema? + +"It isn't what he has done, but what he was," said John. "That he was +dour nobody will deny, dour and sour and inhuman. Ask those unfortunate, +long-suffering daughters of his, if you doubt it. _They_ could tell you +stories. But he was worse. He was a scribe and a Pharisee, a +pragmatical, self-righteous, canting old scribe and Pharisee. And he was +worse still, and still worse yet. He was--what seems to me to-day the +worstest thing unhung--he was a Puritan. Like Winthorpe's, his blood was +black and icy and vinegarish. Like Winthorpe--But there. I mustn't +abuse Winthorpe any more, and I must try to forgive Milton. Milton wrote +seven good words, and Winthorpe unwittingly opened a lover's eyes to his +condition." + +He paused, and smiled down upon her, and his newly opened (and very +blue) blue eyes said much. Her eyes were dreaming on the landscape, +where it shone in pearl and gold. However, as she gave no sign of +finding his conversation wearisome, he took heart, and continued. + +"For when he told me how he had put his love away, never again to see +her, and how at that moment she would be scrubbing floors (or taking the +discipline, perhaps?) in a convent of Ursulines, suddenly, and without +any action of the will on my part, there rose before me the vision of a +certain woman;--a woman I knew a little, admired immensely, very much +liked, but didn't for an instant suppose I was seriously in love with. +And involuntarily, with the vision of her before me, I asked myself +whether, _mutatis mutandis_, I could have done as he had, and in a flash +I saw that I could not,--that not for the wealth of Ormus and of Ind +could I or would I give her up, if once I had her. So, by that token, +and by the uncommon wrath with which his tale inflamed me," John, with a +rhetorical flourish, perorated, "I discovered that I loved." And again +his eyes said much. + +Hers were still on the prospect. + +"Yet if you only know her a little, how can you love her?" she asked, in +a musing voice. + +"Did I say I only know her a little?" asked John. "I know her a great +deal. I know her through and through. I know that she is pure gold, pure +crystal; that she is made of all music, all light, all sweetness, and of +all shadow and silence and mystery too, as women should be. I know that +earth holds naught above her. I do not care to employ superlatives, so, +to put it in the form of an understatement, I know that she is simply +and absolutely perfect. If you could see her! If you could see her eyes, +her deep-glowing, witty, humorous, mischievous, innocent eyes, with the +soul that burns in them, the passion that sleeps. If you could see the +black soft masses of her hair, and her white brow, and the pale-rose of +her cheeks, and the red-rose of her lovely smiling mouth. If you could +see her figure, slender and strong, and the grace and pride of her +carriage,--the carriage of an imperial princess. If you could see her +hands,--they lie in her lap like languid lilies. And her voice,--'tis +the colour of her mouth and the glow of her eyes made audible. And if +you could whisper to yourself her melodious and thrice adorable name. I +know her a great deal. When I said that I only knew her a little, I +meant it in the sense that she only knows me a little,--which after all, +alas, for practical purposes comes to the same thing." + +He had spoken with emphasis, with fervour, his pink face animated and +full of intention. Maria Dolores kept her soft-glowing eyes resolutely +away from him, but I think the soul that burned in them (if not the +passion that slept) was vaguely troubled. _Qui pane d'amour_--how does +the French proverb run? Did she vaguely feel perhaps that the seas they +were sailing were perilous? Anyhow, as John saw with sinking heart, she +was at the point of putting an end to their present conjunction,--she +was preparing to rise. He would have given worlds to offer a helping +hand, but (however rich in worlds) he was, for the occasion, poor in +courage. When love comes in at the door, assurance as like as not will +fly out of the window. So she rose unaided. + +"Let us hope," she said, giving him a glance in which he perceived an +under-gleam as of not unfriendly mockery, "that she will soon come to +know you better." + +"Heaven forbid!" cried he, with a fine simulation of alarm. "It is upon +her ignorance of my true character that I base such faint hopes as I +possess of some day winning her esteem." + +Maria Dolores laughed, nodded, and lightly moved away. + +"My son," said John to himself, "you steered precious close to the wind. +You had best be careful." + +And then he was conscious of a sudden change in things. The garden +smiled about him, the valley below laughed in the breeze, the blackcaps +sang, the many windows of the Castle glistened in the sun; but their +beauty and their pleasantness had departed, had retired with her into +the long, low, white-walled, red-roofed pavilion. He was conscious of a +sudden change in things, and of a sudden acute and bitter depression +within himself. + +"These are great larks," he said; "great larks while they last,--but +what's the good of them in the end? What do they lead to? What's the +good of coquetting with blisses that can't be yours?" And he breathed a +prodigious sigh. "When shall I see her again?" he asked, and thereupon +was seized by his old terror--his terror of yesterday, though it seemed +to him a terror he had known all his life--lest he should never see her +again. "She's only a visitor. What's to prevent her leaving this very +night?" + +The imagination was intolerable. He entered the Castle court, and +climbed the staircase of honour, and rambled through the long suites of +great empty rooms, empty of everything save the memory of the past and +the portraits of the dead, there, if he might, for a time at least, to +lose himself and to forget her. + + + + +V + + +"Who is the young man you have been talking with so long?" asked Frau +Brandt, as Maria Dolores came into her sitting-room, a vast, square, +bare room, with a marble floor and a painted ceiling, with Venetian +blinds to shelter it from the sun, and a bitter-sweet smell, as of +rosemary or I know not what other aromatic herb, upon its cool air. + +"Oh? You saw us?" said Maria Dolores, answering the question with +question. + +"Him I have seen many times--every day for a week at least," said Frau +Brandt. "But I never before saw you talking with him. Who is he?" She +was a small, brown, square-built, black-haired, homely-featured old +woman, in a big, round starched white cap and a flowing black silk gown. +She sat in an uncushioned oaken armchair by the window, with some +white knitting in her bony, blunt-fingered brown hands, and +tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles on her nose. But the spectacles +couldn't hide the goodness or the soundness or the sweetness that looked +forth from her motherly old honest brown eyes. + +"He is a young man who lives _en pension_ at the presbytery," said Maria +Dolores, "a young Englishman." + +"So?" said Frau Brandt. "What is his name?" + +"I don't know," said Maria Dolores, with disengagement real or feigned. +"His Christian name, I believe, is John." + +"But his family name?" persisted Frau Brandt. + +"It is probably Brown, Jones, or Robinson," said Maria Dolores. "Or it +may even be Black, Smith, or Johnson. Most Englishmen are named one or +the other." + +"So?" said Frau Brandt. "But is it prudent or seemly for you to talk +familiarly with a young man whose name is unknown to you?" + +"Why not?" asked Maria Dolores, raising her eyebrows, as if surprised. +"He seems a very harmless young man. I don't think he will eat me. And +he is English,--and I like English people. And he is intelligent,--his +conversation amuses me. And he has nice easy, impetuous manners,--so +different from the formality and restraint of Austrian young men. What +can his name matter?" + +"But"--Frau Brandt looked up impressively over her spectacles, and her +voice was charged with gravity, for she was about to ask a question to +the Teutonic mind of quite supreme importance--"but is he noble?" It was +to her what--nay, more than what--the question, "Is he respectable?" +would have been to an Englishwoman. + +Maria Dolores laughed. + +"Oh, no," she said. "At least I have every reason to believe not, and I +devoutly hope not. He belongs I expect to what they call in England the +middle class. He has an uncle who is a farmer." + +Frau Brandt's good old brown eyes showed her profoundly shocked, and +expressed profound reprehension. + +"But you were speaking with him familiarly--you were speaking with him +almost as an equal," she pronounced in bated accents, in accents of +consternation. + +Again Maria Dolores laughed. + +"True," she assented gaily, "and that is exactly what I couldn't do if +he _were_ noble. Then I should have to remember our respective +positions. But where the difference of rank is so great, one can talk +familiarly without fear. _Ca n'engage a rien_." + +Frau Brandt nodded her head, for full half a minute, with many meanings; +she nodded it now up and down, and now shook it sidewise. + +"I do not like it," she said, at last. "Your brother would not like it. +It is not becoming. Well, thanks be to Heaven, he is only English." + +"Oh, of course," agreed Maria Dolores, "if he were Austrian, it would be +entirely different." + +"But is it fair to the young man himself?" pursued Frau Brandt. "Is he +aware that he is hobanobbing with a Serene Highness? You treat him as an +equal. What if he should fall in love with you?" + +"What indeed! But he won't," laughed Maria Dolores, possibly with a +mental reservation. + +"Who can tell?" said Frau Brandt. "His eyes, when he looked at you, had +an expression. But there is a greater danger still. You are both at the +dangerous age. He is good-looking. What if your heart should become +interested in him?" + +"Oh, in that case," answered Maria Dolores, lightly, her chin a little +in the air, "I should marry him--if he asked me." + +"What!" cried Frau Brandt, half rising from her chair. + +"Yes," said Maria Dolores, cheerfully unexcited. "He is a man of +breeding and education, even if he isn't noble. If I loved a man, I +shouldn't give one thought to his birth. I'm tired of all our Austrian +insistence upon birth, upon birth and quarterings and precedencies. If +ever I love, I shall love some one just for what he is, for what God has +made him, and for nothing else. It wouldn't matter if his father were a +cobbler--if I loved him, I'd marry him." Her chin higher in the air, she +had every appearance of meaning what she said. + +Frau Brandt had sunk back in her chair, and was nodding her white-capped +old head again. + +"Oh, my child, my child," she grieved. "Will you never rid your fancy of +these high-flown, unpractical, romantic whimsies? It all comes of +reading poetry." She herself, good woman, read little but her prayers. + +"Oh, my dear true Heart," responded Maria Dolores, laughing. She crossed +the room, and placed her hand affectionately upon Frau Brandt's +shoulder. "My dearest old Nurse! Do not distress yourself. This is not +yet a question of actuality. Let us not cry before we are hurt." And she +stooped, and kissed her nurse's brown old brow. + +But afterwards she stood looking with great pensiveness out of the +window, stood so for a long while; and I fancy there was a softer glow +than ever in her soft-glowing eyes, and perhaps a livelier rose in her +pale-rose cheeks. + +"What are you thinking so deeply about?" Frau Brandt asked by-and-by. + +Maria Dolores woke with a little start, and turned from the window, and +laughed again. + +"Oh, thinking about my cobbler's son, of course," she said. + + + + +VI + + +Annunziata, seeking him to announce that supper was ready, found John, +seated in his chamber of dead ladies, his arms folded, his legs crossed, +his eyes fixed, a frown upon his prone brow; his spirit apparently rapt +in a brown study. + +"Eh! Prospero!" she called. + +Whereat he came to himself glanced up, glanced round, changed his +posture, and finally, rising, blew his preoccupations from him in a +deep, deep sigh. + +"Oh, what a sigh!" marvelled Annunziata, making big eyes. "What are you +sighing so hard for?" + +John looked at her, and smiled. + +"Sighing for my miller's daughter, my dear," he said. + +And, as he followed her to the presbytery, he sang softly to himself-- + + _"It is the miller's daughter, + And she is grown so dear, so dear, + That I would be the jewel + That trembles in her ear."_ + + + + +PART FIFTH + + + + +I + + +It was Sunday. It was early morning. It was raining,--a fine quiet, +determined rain, that blurred the lower reaches of the valley, and +entirely hid the mountain-tops, so that one found it hard not to doubt a +little whether they were still there. Near at hand the garden was as if +a thin web of silver had been cast over it, pale and dim, where wet +surfaces reflected the diffused daylight. And just across the Rampio, on +the olive-clad hillside that rose abruptly from its brink, rather an +interesting process was taking place,--the fabrication of clouds, no +less. The hillside, with its rondure of blue-grey foliage, would lie for +a moment quite bare and clear; then, at some high point, a mist would +begin to form, would appear indeed to issue from the earth, as smoke +from a subterranean fire, white smoke with pearly shadows; would thicken +and spread out; would draw together and rise in an irregular spiral +column, curling, swaying, poising, as if uncertain what to do next; and +at last, all at once making up its mind, (how like a younker or a +prodigal!), would go sailing away, straggling away, amorphous, on a puff +of wind, leaving the hillside clear again;--till, presently, the process +would recommence _da capo_. + +John and Annunziata, seated together on a marble bench in the shelter of +the great cloister, with its faded frescoes, at the north-eastern +extremity of the castle buildings, had been watching this element-play +for some minutes in silence. But by-and-by Annunziata spoke. + +"What makes the cloud come out of the hill like that?" she asked, her +eyes anxiously questioning his. "I have seen it happen many times, but I +could never understand it. There cannot be a fire underneath?" + +"If _you_ can't understand it, Mistress Wisdom," responded John, smiling +on her, "you surely mustn't expect a featherpate like me to. Between +ourselves, I don't believe any one can really understand it, though +there's a variety of the human species called scientists who might +pretend they could. It's all a part of that great scheme of miracles by +which God's world goes on, Nature, which nobody can really understand in +the very least. All that the chaps called scientists can really do is to +observe and more or less give names to the miracles. They can't explain +'em." + +"It is great pleasure to watch such things," said Annunziata. "It is a +great blessing to be allowed to see a miracle performed with your own +eyes." + +"So it is," agreed John. "And if you keep your eyes well open, there's +not a minute of the livelong day when you mayn't see one." + +"It is very strange," said Annunziata, "but when the sun shines, then I +love the sunny weather, and am glad that it does not rain. Yet when it +does rain, then I find that I love the rain too, that I love it just as +much as the sun,--it is so fresh, it smells so good, the raindrops are +so pretty, and they make such a pretty sound where they fall, and the +grey light is so pleasant." + +"Our loves," said John, "are always very strange. Love is the rummest +miracle of them all. It is even more difficult to account for than the +formation of clouds on the hillside." + +"We love the things that give us pleasure," said Annunziata. + +"And the people, sometimes, who give us pain," said John. + +"We love the people, first of all, who are related to us," said +Annunziata, "and then the people we see a great deal of--just as I love, +first of all, my uncle, and then you and Marcella the cook." + +"Who brings in the inevitable veal," said John. "Thank you, Honeymouth." +He bowed and laughed, while Annunziata's grave eyes wondered what he was +laughing at. "But it isn't every one," he pointed out, "who has your +solid and well-balanced little head-piece. It isn't every one who keeps +his love so neatly docketed, or so sanely submitted to the sway of +reason. Some of us love first of all people who aren't related to us in +the remotest degree, and people we've seen hardly anything of and know +next to nothing about." + +Annunziata deprecatingly shook her head. + +"It is foolish to love people we know nothing about," she declared, in +her deep voice, and looked a very sage delivering judgment. + +"True enough," said John. "But what would you have? Some of us are born +to folly, as the sparks fly upward. You see, there's a mighty difference +between love and love. There's the love which is affection, there's the +love which is cupboard-love, and there's the love which is just simply +love-love and nothing else. The first, as you have truly observed, has +its roots in consanguinity or association, the second in a lively hope +of future comfits, and either is sufficiently explicable. But the third +has its roots apparently in mere haphazard and causelessness, and isn't +explicable by any means whatsoever, and yet is far and away the +violentest of the three. It falls as the lightning from the clouds, and +strikes whom it will. Though I mix my metaphors fearlessly, like a man, +I trust, with your feminine intuition, you follow me?" + +"No," said Annunziata, without compunction, her eyes on the distance. "I +don't know what you mean." + +"Thank Heaven you don't, pray Heaven you never may," said her +inconsequential friend. "For love-love is a plague. You meet a person, +for example, in a garden. You know nothing whatever about her, not even +her name, though you fear it may be Schmidt. You meet her not more than +half a dozen times all told. And suddenly one morning you wake up to +discover that she has become to you the person of first importance in +the world. She is practically a total stranger to you, she's of a +different nationality, a different rank, yet she's infinitely the most +precious and important person in the world. When you're absent from her +you can do nothing but think of her, gloating with throes of aromatic +pain over the memory of your last meeting with her, longing with +soul-hunger for your next. The merest flutter of her gown, modulation of +her voice, glance of her eye, will throw your heart into a palpitation. +You look in the direction of the house that she inhabits, and you feel +the emotions of a Peri looking at the gate of Eden. And it gives you the +strangest sort of strange joy to talk about her, though of course you +take pains to talk about her in veiled terms, obliquely, so that your +listener shan't guess _whom_ you are talking about. In short, she is the +be-all and the end-all of your existence,--and you don't even know her +name, though you fear it may be Schmidt." + +He lolled back at ease on the marble bench, and twirled his yellow-red +moustaches, fancy free. + +"But you do know her name," said Annunziata, simply, in her deepest +voice, holding him with a gaze, lucent and serious, that seemed almost +reproachful. "Her name is Maria Dolores." + +The thing was tolerably unexpected. What wonder if it put my hero out of +countenance? His attitude grew rigid, his pink skin three shades pinker; +his blue eyes stared at her, startled. So for a second; then he relaxed, +and laughed, laughed long and heartily, perhaps a little despitefully +too, at his own expense. ... But he must try, if he might, to repair the +mischief. + +"My poor child," he said, resting his hand on her curls, and gently +smoothing them. "You are what the French call an _enfant terrible_. You +are what the English call a deuced sharp little pickle. And I must try, +if I can, without actually lying, to persuade you that you are utterly +mistaken, utterly and absolutely mistaken,"--he raised his voice, for +greater convincingness,--"and that her name is nothing distantly +resembling the name that you have spoken, and that in fact her name is +Mrs. Harris, and that in fine there is no such person, and that I was +merely talking hypothetically, in abstractions; I must draw a herring +across the trail, I must raise a dust, and throw a lot of it into your +amazingly clear-sighted little eyes. Now, is it definitely impressed +upon you that her name is _not_--the thrice-adorable name you +mentioned?" + +"I thought it was," answered Annunziata. "I am sorry it is not." And +then she dismissed the subject. "See, it is raining harder. See how the +rain comes down in long strings of beads,--see how it is like a network +of long strings of glass beads falling through the air. When the rain +comes down like that, it means that after the rain stops it will be very +hot. To-morrow it will be very hot." + +The bell in the clock-tower tolled out seven solemn strokes; then the +lighter-toned and nimbler-tongued bell of the church began to ring. + +"Come," peremptorily said Annunziata, jumping up. "Mass." + +She held out her hand, took John's, and, like a mother, led the meek and +unquestioning young man to his duties. + + + + +II + + +Of course there are no such heretical inventions as pews in the parish +church of Sant' Alessina. You sit upon orthodox rush-bottomed chairs, +you kneel upon orthodox bare stones. But at the Epistle side of the +altar, at an elevation of perhaps a yard from the pavement, there is a +recess in the wall, enclosed by a marble balustrade, and hung with faded +red curtains, which looks, I'm afraid, a good deal like a private box at +a theatre, and is in fact the tribune reserved for the masters of the +Castle. (In former days those masters were the Sforzas. So, from this +tribune, the members of that race of iron and blood, of fierceness and +of guile, have assisted at the mystical sacrifice of the Lamb of God!) +Heretofore, during John's residence at the presbytery, the tribune had +stood vacant. To-day it was occupied by Maria Dolores and Frau Brandt. +Maria Dolores, instead of wearing a hat, had adopted the ancient and +beautiful use of draping a long veil of black lace over her dark hair. + +John knelt in the middle of the church, in the thick of the ragged, +dirty, unsavoury villagers. When Mass was over, he returned to the +cloisters, and there, face to face, he met the lady of his dreams. + +She graciously inclined her head. + +"Good morning," she said, smiling, in a voice that seemed to him full of +morning freshness. + +"Good morning," he responded, wondering whether she could hear the +tremor of his heart. "Though, in honest truth, it's rather a bad +morning, isn't it?" he submitted, posing his head at an angle, dubious +and reflective, that seemed to raise the question to a level of +philosophic import. + +"Oh, with these cloisters, one shouldn't complain," said she, glancing +indicatively round. "One can still be out of doors, and yet not get the +wetting one deserves. And the view is so fine, and these faded old +frescoes are so droll." + +"Yes," said he, his wits, for the instant, in a state of suspended +animation. "The view is fine, the frescoes are droll." + +She looked as if she were thinking about something. + +"Don't you find it," she asked, after a moment, with the slightest +bepuzzled drawing together of her eyebrows, "a trifle unpleasant, +hearing Mass from where you do?" + +John looked blank. + +"Unpleasant? No. Why?" he asked. + +"I should think it might be disagreeable to be hemmed in and elbowed by +those extraordinarily ragged and dirty people," she explained. "It's a +pity they shouldn't clean themselves up a little before coming to +church." + +"Ah, yes," he assented, "a little cleaning up wouldn't hurt them; that's +very certain. But," he set forth, in extenuation, "it's not the custom +of the country, and the fact that it isn't has its good significance, as +well as its bad. It's one of the many signs of how genuinely democratic +and popular the Church is in Italy,--as it ought to be everywhere. It is +here essentially the Church of the people, the Church of the poor. It is +the one place where the poorest man, in all his rags, and with the soil +of his work upon him, feels perfectly at ease, perfectly at home, +perfectly equal to the richest. It is the one place where a reeking +market-woman, with her basket on her arm, will feel at liberty to take +her place beside the great lady, in her furs and velvets, and even to +ask her, with a nudge, to move up and make room. That is as it should +be, isn't it?" + +"No doubt, no doubt," agreed Maria Dolores, beginning to pace backwards +and forwards over the lichen-stained marble pavement, (stained as by the +hand of an artist, in wavy veins of yellow or pale-green, with here and +there little rosettes of scarlet), while John kept beside her. "All the +same, I should not like to kneel quite in the very heart of the crowd, +as you do." + +"You are a delicate and sensitive woman," he reminded her. "I am a man, +and a moderately tough one. However, I must admit that until rather +recently I had exactly your feeling. But I got a lesson." He broke off +and gave a vague little laugh, vaguely rueful, as at a not altogether +pleasant reminiscence. + +"What was the lesson?" she asked. + +"Well," said he, "if you care to know, it was this. The first time that +I attended Mass here, desiring to avoid the people, I sought out a far +corner of the church, behind a pillar, where there was no one. But as +soon as I had got myself well established there, up hobbled a deformed +and lame old man, and plumped himself down beside me, so close that our +coat-sleeves touched. I think he was the most repulsive-looking old man +I have ever seen; he was certainly the dirtiest, the grimiest, and his +rags were extravagantly foul. I will spare you a more circumstantial +portrait. And all through Mass I was sick with disgust and sore with +resentment. Why should he come and rub his coat-sleeve against mine, +when there was room in plenty for him elsewhere? The next time I went to +church, I chose a different corner, as remote as might be from my former +one; but again, no sooner was I well installed, than, lo and behold, the +same unspeakable old man limped up and knelt with me, cheek by jowl. And +so, if you can believe it, the next time, and so the next. It didn't +matter where I placed myself, there he was sure to place himself too. +You will suppose that, apart from my annoyance, I was vastly perplexed. +Why should he pursue me so? Who was he? What was he after? And for +enlightenment I addressed myself to Annunziata. 'Who is the hideous old +man who always kneels beside me?' I asked her. She had not noticed any +one kneeling beside me, she said; she had noticed, on the contrary, that +I always knelt alone, at a distance. 'Well,' said I, 'keep your eyes +open to-day, and you will see the man I mean.' So we went to Mass, and +sure enough, no sooner had I found a secluded place, than my old friend +appeared and joined me, dirtier and more hideous and if possible more +deformed than ever. + +"Yes?" said Maria Dolores, with interest, as he paused. + +"When we came out of church, I asked Annunziata who he was," continued +John. "And she said that though she had kept her eyes open, according to +my injunction, she had failed to see any one kneeling beside me--that, +on the contrary, she had seen me," he concluded, with an insouciance +that was plainly assumed for its dramatic value, "kneeling alone, at a +distance from every one." + +Maria Dolores' face was white. She frowned her mystification. + +"What!" she exclaimed, in a half-frightened voice. + +"That is precisely the ejaculation that fell from my own lips at the +time," said John. "Then I gave her a minute description of the old man, +in all his ugliness. And then she administered my lesson to me." + +"Yes? What was it?" questioned Maria Dolores, her interest acute. + +"Speaking in that oracular vein of hers, her eyes very big, her face +very grave, she assured me that my horrible old man had no objective +existence. She informed me cheerfully and calmly that he was an image of +my own soul, as it appeared, corrupted and aged and deformed by the sins +of a lifetime, to God and to the Saints. And she added that he was sent +to punish me for my pride in thinking myself different to the common +people, and in seeking to hold myself aloof. Since then," John brought +his anecdote to a term, "I have always knelt in the body of the church, +and I have never again seen my Doppelgaenger." + +Maria Dolores was silent for a little. They had come to the southern end +of the cloisters, where the buttresses of the Castle walls, all +shaggy-mantled in a green overgrowth of creepers, fall precipitously +away, down the steep face of a natural cliff. They stopped here, and +stood looking off. The rain had held up, though the valley was still +misty with its vapours. Whiffs of velvety air, warm and sweet, blew in +their faces, lightly stirred the dark hair about her brow, and, catching +the flowery edge of her black lace mantilla, set it fluttering. + +"That is a very good story," she said, by-and-by, with a sober glance, +behind which there was the glint of laughter. "In view of it, however, I +suppose there will be no use in my delivering a message I am charged +with for you from my friend Frau Brandt." + +"Oh?" questioned John. "What message?" + +"Frau Brandt has received from the owner of the Castle the privilege of +hearing Mass from the tribune; and she wished me to invite you in her +name hereafter to hear Mass from there with us. But I suppose, in view +of your 'lesson,' that is an invitation which you will decline?" The +glint of laughter shone brighter in her eyes, and her mouth had a tiny +pucker, amiably derisive. + +John looked at her, his blue eyes bold. + +"That is an invitation which I am terribly tempted to accept," he said, +in a voice of unconcealed emotion, of patent meaning; and beneath his +bold gaze, her dark eyes dropped, while I think a blush faintly swept +her cheeks. "And first of all," he added, "pray express to Frau Brandt +my grateful thanks for it--and let me thank you also for your kindness +in conveying it. If, in spite of my temptation, I _don't_ accept it, +that will be for a very special reason, and one quite unconnected with +my 'lesson.'" + +Maria Dolores probably knew her danger. She turned, and began to walk +backwards, towards the point where you can pass from the cloisters, +through the great porte-cochere, into the garden, and so on to the +pavilion beyond the clock. She probably knew her danger; but she was +human, but she was a woman. Besides, she had reached the porte-cochere, +and thus commanded a clear means of escape. So, coming to a standstill +here, "What is the very special reason?" she asked, in a low voice, +keeping her eyes from his. + +His were bolder than ever. Infinite admiration of her burned in them, +infinite delight in her, desire for her; at the same time a kind of +angry hopelessness darkened them, and a kind of bitter amusement, as of +one amused at his own sad plight. + +"I wish I were rich," he exclaimed, irritably, between his teeth. + +"Oh? Is _that_ the very special reason?" asked she, with two notes of +laughter. + +"No," said he, "but it has a connection with it. You see, I'm in love." + +"Yes," said she. "I remember your telling me so." + +"Well, I wish I were rich," said he. "Then I might pluck up courage to +ask the woman I love to be my wife." + +"Money isn't everything here below," said she. "I have your own word for +that." + +"What else counts," said he, "when you wish to ask a woman to marry +you?" + +"Oh, many things," said she. "Difference of rank, for example." + +"That wouldn't count with me," said the democratic fellow, handsomely. +"I shouldn't give two thoughts to differences of rank." + +Maria Dolores smiled--at her secret reflections, I suppose. + +"But poverty puts it out of all question," John moodily went on. "I +couldn't ask a woman to come and share with me an income of sixpence a +week. Especially as I have grounds for believing that she's in rather +affluent circumstances herself. Oh, I wish I were rich!" He repeated +this aspiration in a groan. + +"Poor, poor young man!" she commiserated him, while her eyes, which she +held perseveringly averted, were soft with sympathy and gay with mirth. +"When do you begin your gardening?" + +"Oh, don't mock me!" he cried, with an imploring gesture. "You know, +joking apart, that it's child's play for a man of my age, with no +profession and no special talent, to fancy he can turn to and earn +money. I might, if I made supernatural exertions, and if Fortune went +out of her way to favour me, add a maximum of another sixpence to my +weekly budget. No, there's never a hope for me on sea or land. I must +e'en bear it, though I cannot grin withal." + +"Ah, well," said Maria Dolores, to comfort him, "these attacks, I have +read, are often as short as they are sharp. Let us trust you'll soon +rally from this one. How long have they generally lasted in the past?" + +John's face grew dark with upbraiding; the sea-blue of his eyes, the +gold of his hair and beard, the pink of his complexion visibly grew +dark. + +"You are so needlessly unkind," he said, "that you don't deserve to hear +the true answer to your question." + +She studied the half-obliterated fresco on the wall beside her. + +"All the same," said he, "you _shall_ hear it. If falling in love were +my habit, no doubt I shouldn't take it so hard. But the simple truth, +though I am thirty years old, is that I have never before felt so much +as a heart-flutter for any woman. And, since you cite your reading, _I_ +have read that a fire which may merely singe the surface of green wood, +will entirely consume the dry." + +She continued to study the ancient painting. Her fingers were playing +with the ends of her lace veil. + +"Besides," he went on, "if I had been in love a dozen times, it wouldn't +signify. For I should have been in love with ordinary usual human +women. They're the only sort I ever met--till I met her. She's of a +totally different order--as distinct from them as ... What shall +I say? Oh, as unlike them as starfire is unlike dull clay. +Starfire--starfire--the wonderful, high, white-burning starfire of her +spirit, that's the thing that strikes you most in her. It shines through +her. It shines in her eyes, it shines in her hair, her adorable, soft, +dark, warm and fragrant hair; it shines in her very voice; it shines in +every word she utters, even in the unkindest." + +"Dear me! what an alarmingly refulgent person you depict!" laughed Maria +Dolores, her eyes still on the wall. + +"I have no gift for word-painting," said John; "though I doubt if the +words are yet invented that could fitly paint my lady. She grows in +beauty day by day. It's a literal fact--every fresh time I see her, she +is perceptibly more lovely than the last, more love-compelling in her +loveliness. But 'tis a thing unpaintable, indescribable, as +indescribable as the perfume of a rose. Oh, why haven't I five thousand +a year?" + +"You harp so persistently upon your desire for money," suggested Maria +Dolores, "one might infer she was a commodity, to be bought and sold. +You begin at the wrong end. What good would five or fifty thousand a +year do you, if you had not begun by winning her love? + +"No, I begin at the proper end, worse luck," John answered, glooming. +"For, without a decent income, I have no right even to try to win her +love. + +"And that being so," questioned Maria Dolores, "I hope you +conscientiously avoid her society, or, when you meet, make yourself +consistently disagreeable to her? + +"There's no need for such precautions," John replied. "There's no fear +for her. She regards me as a casual and passing acquaintance. So I make +myself no more disagreeable than I am by nature. And if I avoided her +society, (which I am far from doing), it would be not for her sake, but +for my own. For, though her society is to me a kind of anticipation of +the joys of Heaven, yet when I leave it and find myself alone, the +reaction is dreary in the superlative degree; and the fear, which +perpetually haunts me (for I know nothing of her plans), lest I shall +never see her again, is agonizing as a foretaste of--Heaven's antipode. +Oh, I love her!" + +He took, involuntarily I dare say, a step in her direction. She +retreated under the vaulting of the _porte-cochere_. + +"You seem," she commented, "to be getting a good deal of emotional +experience,--which doubtless some day you will find of value. Why not, +instead of gardener, embark as novelist or poet? Here is material you +could then turn to account." + +"Ah, there you are," he complained, piteously, "mocking me again. Ah, +well, if you must have your laugh, have it, and welcome. A man can learn +to take the bitter with the sweet." + +"To spare you that discomfort," said she, moving deeper into the +archway, while John's face fell, "I will bid you good-bye. I am to +report, then, that you decline my friend's invitation with thanks?" + +"With my most grateful thanks," he was able intensively to rejoin, in +spite of his dismay at the imminence of her departure. + +"And for a very special reason?" she harked back, now, suddenly, for +the first time since they had touched thin ice, giving him a glance. + +It was the fleetingest of fleeting glances, it was merry and ironic, but +there was something in it which brought a flame to his blue eyes. + +"For the very special reason," he answered, with vehemence, "that I fear +the presence near me of--" He held his breath for a second, the flame in +his eyes enveloping her; then, with an abrupt change of tone and mien, +he ended, "--of Frau Brandt might distract my attention from the +sermon." + +She laughed, and said, "Good-bye." + +"Good-bye," said John. And when she was halfway through the tunnel-like +passage, "I suppose you know you are leaving me to a day as barren as +the Desert of Sahara?" he called after her. + +"Oh, who can tell what a day may bring forth?" called she, but without +looking back. + +For a long while John's faculties were kept busy, trying to determine +whether that was a promise, a menace, or a mere word in the air. + + + + +III + + +"Rain before seven, clear before eleven," is as true, or as untrue, in +Lombardy as it is in other parts of the world. The rain had held up, and +now, in that spirited phrase of Corvo's, "here came my lord the Sun," +splendidly putting the clouds to flight, or chaining them, transfigured, +to his chariot-wheels; clothing the high snow-peaks in a roseate glory, +(that seemed somehow, I don't know why, to accent their solitude and +their remoteness); flooding the valley with ethereal amber; turning the +swollen Rampio to a river of fire while the nearer hillsides, the olive +woods, the trees in the Castle garden, glistened with a million million +crystals, and the petals of the flowers were crystal-tipped; while the +breath of the earth rose in long streamers of luminous incense, and the +sky gleamed with every tender, every brilliant, tint of blue, from the +blue of pale forgetmenots to the blue of larkspur. + +John, contemplating this spectacle, (and thinking of Maria Dolores? +revolving still her cryptic valediction?), all at once, as his eye +rested on the shimmer at the valley's end which he knew to be the lake, +lifted up his hand and clapped his brow. "By Jove," he muttered, "if I +wasn't within an ace of clean forgetting!" The sight of the lake had +fortunately put him in mind that he was engaged to-day to lunch with +Lady Blanchemain at Roccadoro. + +He found her ladyship, in a frock all concentric whirls of crisp white +ruffles, vigorously wielding a fan, and complaining of the heat. +(Indeed, as Annunziata had predicted, it had grown markedly warmer.) "I +shall fly away, if this continues; I shall fly straight to town, and set +my house in order for the season. When do _you_ come?" she asked, +smiling on him from her benign old eyes. + +"I don't come," answered John. "I rather like town in autumn and winter, +when it's too dark to see its ugliness, but save me from it in the clear +light of summer." + +"Fudge," said Lady Blanchemain. "London's the most beautiful capital in +Europe--it's grandiose. And it's the only place where there are any +people. + +"Yes," said John, "but, as at Nice and Homburg, too many of them are +English. And there's a liberal scattering, I've heard, of Jews?" + +"Oh, Jews are all right--when they aren't Jewy," said Lady Blanchemain, +with magnanimity. "I know some very nice ones. I was rather hoping you +would be a feature of my Sunday afternoons." + +"I'm not a society man," said John. "I've no aptitude myself for +patronizing or toadying, and I don't particularly enjoy being patronized +or toadied to." + +"Is that the beginning and end of social life in England?" Lady +Blanchemain inquired, delicately sarcastic. + +"As I have seen it, yes," asseverated John. "The beginning, end, and +middle of social life in England, as in Crim-Tartary, is worship of the +longest pigtail,--a fetichism sometimes grosser, sometimes subtler, +sometimes deliberate, often unconscious and instinctive. Every one you +meet is aware that his pigtail is either longer or shorter than yours, +and accordingly, more or less subtly, grossly, unconsciously or +deliberately, swaggers or bends the knee. It's a state of things I've +tried in vain to find diverting." + +"It's a state of things you'll find prevailing pretty well in all places +where the human species breeds," said Lady Blanchemain. "The only +difference will be a question of what constitutes the pigtail. And are +you, then, remaining at Sant' Alessina?" + +"For the present," answered John. + +"Until--?" she questioned. + +"Oh, well, until she sends me away, or leaves herself," said he, "and so +my fool's paradise achieves its inevitable end." + +Lady Blanchemain laughed--a long, quiet laugh of amused contentment. + +"Come in to luncheon," she said, putting her soft white hand upon his +arm, "and tell me all about it." And when they were established at her +table, a round table, gay with flowers, in a window at the far end of +the cool, terazza-paved, stucco-columned dining-room of the Hotel +Victoria, "Why do you call it a fool's paradise?" she asked. + +"Well, you see, I'm in love," said he. + +"You really are?" she doubted, with sprightliness, looking gleeful. + +"All too really," he assured her, in a sinking voice. + +"What an old witch I was!" mused she, with satisfaction. "Accept my +heart-felt felicitations." She beamed upon him. + +"I should prefer your condolences," said he, in a voice from the depths. + +"_Allons donc!_ Cheer up," laughed she, dallying with her bliss. "Men +have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for love." + +"I wonder," said John. "That is a statement, it seems to me, which would +be the better for some proving." + +"At all events," said she, "you, for one, are not dead yet." + +"No," admitted he; "though I could almost wish I was." + +"Do you mean to say she has definitely rejected you?" she demanded, +alarmed. + +"Fortune has spared her that necessity," said John. "I haven't asked +her, and I never shall. I haven't any money." + +"Pooh! Is that all?" scoffed her ladyship, relieved. "You have +prospects." + +"Remote ones--the remoter the better. I won't count on dead men's +shoes," said John. + +"What is it your little fortune-teller at the Castle calls you?" asked +Lady Blanchemain, shrewdly, her dark old eyebrows up. + +"She calls me _lucus a non lucendo_," was John's quick riposte; and the +lady laughed. + +But in a moment she pulled a straight face. "I seriously counsel you to +have more faith," she said. "Go home and ask her to marry you; and if +she accepts,--you'll see. Money will come. Besides, your rank and your +prospective rank are assets which you err in not adding to the balance. +Go home, and propose to her." + +"'Twould do no good," said John, dejectedly. "She regards me with +imperturbable indifference. I've made the fieriest avowals to her, and +she's never turned a hair." + +Lady Blanchemain looked bewildered. "You've made avowals--?" she +falteringly echoed. + +"I should rather think so," John affirmed. "Indirect ones, of course, +and I hope inoffensive, but fiery as live coals. In the third person, +you know. I've given her two and two; she has, you may be sure, enough +skill in mathematics to put 'em together." + +"And she never turned a hair?" the lady marvelled. + +"She jeered at me, she mocked me, she laughed and rode away," said he. + +"She's probably in love with you," said Lady Blanchemain. "If a woman +will listen, if a woman will laugh! If you don't propose to her now, +having ensnared her young affections, you'll be something worse than the +wicked nobleman of song and story." + +"Oh, well," John responded, conciliatory, "I dare say some of these days +a proposal will slip out when I least intend it. So I shall have done +the honourable thing--and I'm sure I can trust her to play fair and say +me nay." + +Lady Blanchemain slowly shook her head. "I'm glad you're not _my_ +lover," she devoutly murmured, plying her fan. + +"Oh, but I am," cried John, with a bow, and an admiring flash of the +eyes. + +Her soft old face lighted up; then it took on an expression of +resolution, and she set her strong old jaws. + +"In that case," she remarked, "you will have the less reluctance in +granting a favour I'm about to ask you." + +"What's the favour?" said John, in a tone of readiness. + +"I want you to buy a pig in a poke," said she. + +"Oh?" questioned he. + +"Yes," said she. "I want you to make me a promise blindfold. I want you +to promise in the dark that you will do something. What it is that +you're to do you're not to know till the time comes. Will you promise?" + +"Dearest lady," said the trustful young man, "I'm perfectly confident +that you would never ask me to do anything that I couldn't do with +profit to myself. Buy a pig in a poke? From you, without a moment's +hesitation. Of course I promise." + +"Bravo, bravo," applauded Lady Blanchemain, glowing at her easy triumph. +"In a few days you'll receive a letter. That will tell you what it is +you're pledged to. And now, to reward you, come with me to my +sitting-room, and I will make you a little present." + +When they had reached her sitting-room (dim and cool, with its +half-drawn blinds and the straw-coloured linen covers of its furniture), +she put into his hands a small case of shagreen, small and hard, and at +the edges white with age. + +"Go to the window and see what's in it," she said. + +And obeying, "By Jove, what a stunner!" he exclaimed. The case contained +a ring, a light circle of gold, set with a ruby, surrounded by a row of +diamonds,--for my part, I think the most beautiful ruby I have ever +seen. It was as big as a hazel-nut, or almost; it was cut, with +innumerable facets, in the shape of a heart; and it quivered and burned, +and flowed and rippled, liquidly, with the purest, limpidest red fire. + +"'Tis the spirit of a rose, distilled and crystallized," said Lady +Blanchemain. + +"'Tis a drop of liquid light," said John. "But why do you give it to me? +I can't wear it. I don't think I ought to accept it." + +"Nobody asks you to wear it," said Lady Blanchemain. "It's a woman's +ring, of course. But as for accepting it, you need have no scruples. +It's an old Blanchemain gem, that was in the family a hundred years +before I came into it. It's properly an heirloom, and you're the heir. +I give it to you for a purpose. Should you ever become engaged, I desire +you to placcit upon the finger of the adventurous woman." + + + + +IV + + +Under a gnarled old olive, by the river's brim, Annunziata sat on the +turf, head bowed, so that her curls fell in a tangle all about her +cheeks, and gazed fixedly into the green waters, the laughing, dancing, +purling waters, green, and, where the sun reached them, shot with seams +and cleavages of light, like fluorspar. In the sun-flecked, +shadow-dappled grass near by, violets tried to hide themselves, but were +betrayed by their truant sweetness. The waters purled, a light breeze +rustled the olive-leaves, and birds were singing loud and wild, as birds +will after rain. + +Maria Dolores, coming down the path that followed the river's windings, +stood for a minute, and watched her small friend without speaking. But +at last she called out, "_Ciao_, Annunziata. Are you dreaming dreams and +seeing visions?" + +Annunziata started and looked up. "Sh-h!" she whispered, with an +admonitory gesture. She stole a wary glance roundabout, and then spoke +as one fearful of being overheard. "I was listening to the music of +Divopan," she said. + +Maria Dolores, who had come closer, appeared at a loss. "The music +of--what?" she questioned. + +"Sh-h!" whispered Annunziata. "I would not dare to say it aloud. The +music of Divopan." + +"Divopan?" Maria Dolores puzzled, compliantly guarding her tone. "What +is that?" + +"Divo--Pan," said Annunziata, dividing the word in two, and always with +an air of excessive caution. + +But Maria Dolores helplessly shook her head. "I'm afraid I don't +understand. What is Divo--Pan?" + +"Don't you know what a _divo_ is?" asked Annunziata, her clear grey eyes +surprised. + +"Oh, a _divo?_" said Maria Dolores, getting a glimmer of light. "Ah, +yes, a divo is a saint, I think? + +"Not exactly," Annunziata discriminated, "but something like one. The +saints, you see, are always very good, and _divi_ are sometimes bad. +But they are powerful, like saints. They can do anything they wish. Divo +Pan is the divo who makes all the music that you hear out of doors,--the +music of the wind and the water and the bird-songs. But you must be +careful never to praise his music aloud, lest Divo Apollone should hear +you. He is the divo that makes all the music you hear on instruments--on +harps and violins and pianos. He is very jealous of Divo Pan, and if he +hears you praising him, will do something to you. You know what he did +to King Mida, don't you?" + +"What did he do?" asked Maria Dolores. + +Annunziata stole another wary glance about. + +"Once upon a time," she recounted, always in her lowest voice, "many +years ago, hundreds of years ago, the King of this country was named +Mida. And he loved very much the music of Divo Pan. He loved to sit by +the river here, and to listen to the music of the water, and of the +leaves, and of the birds. I love to do it too, and I think he was quite +right. But one day, in his house, there came a musician with a harp, and +began to play to him. And the King listened for a while, and then he +told the musician to stop. 'Your music is very good,' he said, 'but now +I am going into the fields and by the river, where I can hear a music I +like better.' But the musician with the harp was really Divo Apollone +himself; disguised. And this made him very angry and jealous. And to +punish King Mida he changed his ears to long hairy ears, like an ass's. +So, if you love the music of Divo Pan, you must be very careful not to +let Divo Apollone hear you praise it, or he will do something to you." + +And to drive home this application of her theme, she held up a warning +finger. + +Maria Dolores had listened, smiling. Now she gave a gay little laugh, +and then for a moment mused. "That is a very curious bit of history," +she said, in the end. "How ever did it come to your knowledge?" + +Annunziata shrugged. "Oh," she answered, "everybody knows that. I have +known it for years. My grandmother who lived in Milan told it to me. +Doesn't the water look cool and pleasant?" was her abrupt digression, as +she returned her gaze to the Rampio. "When it is hot like this, I +should like to lie down in the water, and go to sleep. Wouldn't you?" + +"I'm not so sure," said Maria Dolores. "I should rather fear I might be +drowned." + +"Oh, but that wouldn't hurt," said Annunziata, with security. "To be +drowned in such beautiful green water, among all those beams of light, +would be nice." + +"Perhaps you are not aware," said Maria Dolores, "that when people are +drowned they die?" + +"Oh, yes, I know that," said Annunziata. "But"--she raised calm pellucid +eyes--"wouldn't you like to die?" + +"Certainly not," said Maria Dolores, a shadow on her face. + +"I would," said Annunziata, stoutly. "It must be lovely to die." + +"Hush," Maria Dolores rebuked her, frowning. "You must not say such +things." + +"Why not say them, if you think them?" asked Annunziata. + +"You mustn't think them either," said Maria Dolores. + +"Oh, I can't help thinking them," said Annunziata, with a movement. "It +surely must be lovely to die and go to Heaven. If I were perfectly sure +I should go to Heaven, I would shut my eyes and die now. But I should +probably have to wait some time in Purgatory. And, of course, I might go +to Hell." + +Maria Dolores' face was full of trouble. "You must not talk like that," +she said. "You must not. It is wicked of you." + +"Then, if I am wicked, I _should_ go to Hell?" inquired Annunziata, +looking alertly up. + +Maria Dolores looked about her, looked across the river, down the +valley, as one in distress scanning the prospect for aid. "Of course you +would not," she said. "My dear child, can't we find something else to +talk of?" + +"Do you think I shall have a very long and hard Purgatory?" asked +Annunziata. + +Maria Dolores threw a despairing glance at the horizon. + +"No, no, dear," she answered uneasily. "You will have a very short and +gentle one. Anyhow, you'll not have to consider that for years to come. +Now shall we change the subject?" + +"Well," said Annunziata, with an air of deliberation, "if you are +perfectly sure I shall not go to Hell, and that my Purgatory will not +be long and hard, I think I will do what I said. I will lie down in the +water and go to sleep, and the water will drown me, and I shall die." + +Maria Dolores' face was terrified. "Annunziata!" she cried. "You don't +know what you are saying. You are cruel. You won't do anything of the +sort. You must give me your solemn word of honour that you won't do +anything of the sort. It would be a most dreadful sin. Come. Come with +me now, away from here, away from the sight of the river. You must never +come here alone again. Give me your hand, and come away." + +Annunziata got up, gave her hand, and moved off at Maria Dolores' side, +towards the Castle. "Of course," she said, "if I want to die, I don't +need to lie down in the water. I can die at any moment I wish, by just +shutting my eyes, and holding my breath, and telling my heart seven +times to stop beating. Heart, stop beating; heart, stop beating;--that +way, seven times." + +"For the love of Mercy," wailed poor Maria Dolores, almost writhing in +her misery.... Then, suddenly, she breathed a deep sigh of relief, and +fervently exclaimed, "Thank God." John was advancing towards them, down +the rugged pathway. + +"Do please come and help me with this perverse and maddening child," she +called to him, in English. "She's frightening me half out of my wits by +threatening to die. She even threatened to drown herself in the Rampio." + +"Children of her complexion can't die," said John, in Italian, (and +Annunziata pricked up her ears). "They can only turn into monkeys, and +then they have to live in the forests of Africa, where it is always +dark, and all the men and women are negro savages, and all the other +animals (except the mosquitos and the snakes) are lions and tigers. +Besides, if Annunziata were to turn into a monkey, she couldn't have the +sugared chestnuts that somebody or other has brought her from Roccadoro. +On the chest of drawers in my room there has mysteriously appeared a box +of sugared chestnuts. I thought they were for her, but they're not, +unless she will promise never to turn into a monkey." + +Annunziata's eyes had clouded. + +"Of course I won't turn into a monkey," she said, in accents at once of +disillusion and disdain. "I did not know there was any such danger. I +should hate to be a monkey." Then her eyes brightened again. "May I go +and get them now?" she asked, wistful and impatient. + +"Yes," said John; "be off with you." And she went running lightly up the +hill. + +He turned to Maria Dolores. Her face (clear-cut, with its dark hair, +against the red background of her sunshade) was white and drawn with +pain. But she smiled, rather wanly, as her gaze met his, and said, in a +weak voice, "Oh, I am so glad you came. I can't tell you how she was +frightening me." And all at once her eyes filled with tears. + +I needn't say whether John was moved, whether it was his impulse to take +her in his arms and dry her tears with kisses. He did actually, on that +impulse, give a perceptible start towards her, but then he restrained +himself. "The child ought to be whipped," he broke out angrily. "You +must not take her prattle so seriously." + +"But _she_ was so serious," said Maria Dolores. "Oh, when she +threatened to lie down in the river, and let herself be drowned--!" Her +voice failed her, as at the inexpressible. + +"No fear of that," said John. "The first touch of the cold water (and +icy-cold it is, a glacier-stream, you know) would bring her to her +senses. But come! You must not think of it any more. You have had a bad +shock, but no bones are broken, and now you must try to banish it all +from your mind." + +"What an unaccountable child she is!" said Maria Dolores. "Surely it is +unnatural and alarming for a child to have her head so teeming with +strange freaks and fancies. Oh, I pray God to grant that nothing may +happen to her." + +"The most serious evil that's likely to happen to her for the present," +said John, "will be an indigestion of marrons glaces." + +Maria Dolores' tears had gone now. She smiled. But afterwards she looked +grave again. "Oh, I wish I could get the dread of something happening to +her out of my heart. I wish she wasn't so pale and fragile-looking," she +said. Then there came a gleam in her eyes. "But you were going for a +walk, and I am detaining you." + +"The object of my walk has been accomplished," said John. + +"Oh?" questioned she. + +"I was walking in the hope, on the chance, that I might meet you," he +hardily explained. "It's such an age since I've seen you. Are you making +for the garden? I pray you to be kind, and let me go with you. I've been +an exile and a wanderer--I've been to Roccadoro." + +She had rebegun her ascension of the hill. The path was steep, as well +as rugged. Sometimes John had to help her over a hard bit. The touch of +her hand, soft and warm, and firm too, in his; the sense of her +closeness; the faint fragrance of her garments, of her hair,--these +things, you may be sure, went to his head, went to his heart. The garden +lay in a white blaze of sunshine, that seemed almost material, like an +incandescent fluid; but the entrance to the avenue was dark and +inviting. "Let us," he proposed, "go and sit on a marble bench under the +glossy leaves of the ilexes, in the deep, cool shade; and let's play +that it's a thousand years ago, and that you're a Queen (white Queen +Blanche, like a queen of lilies), and that I'm your minstrel-man." + +"What song will you sing me?" asked she gaily, as they took their places +on the marble bench. It was semicircular, with a high carved back, +(carved with the armorials of the Sforzas), and of course it was +lichen-stained, grey and blue and green, yellow and scarlet. + + "_White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies, + Fairer and dearer than dearest and fairest, + To hear me sing, if it her sweet will is,-- + Sing, minstrel-man, of thy love, an thou darest_," + +trolled John, in his light barytone, to a tune, I imagine, improvised +for the occasion. "But if it's a thousand years ago," he laughed, "that +song smacks too much perhaps of actuality, and I had best choose +another." + +Maria Dolores joined in his laugh. "I did not know you sang," she said. +"Let me hear the other." + +"A song," reflected he, "that I could sing with a good deal of feeling +and conviction, would be 'Give her but the least excuse to love me.'" + +Maria Dolores all at once looked sober. + +"Oughtn't you to be careful," she said, "to give her no excuse at all to +love you, if you are really resolved never to ask her to be your wife?" + +"That is exactly what I have given her," answered John, "no excuse at +all. I should sing in a spirit purely academic,--my song would be the +utterance of a pious but hopeless longing, of the moth's desire for the +star." + +"But she, I suppose, isn't a star," objected Maria Dolores. "She's +probably just a weak human woman. You may have given her excuses without +meaning to." There was the slightest quaver in her voice. + +John caught his breath; he turned upon her almost violently. But she was +facing away from him, down the avenue, so that he could not get her +eyes. + +"In that case," she said, "wouldn't you owe her something?" + +"I should owe myself a lifetime's penance with the discipline," John on +a solemn tone replied, hungrily looking at her cheek, at the little +tendrils of dark hair about her brow. "God knows what I should owe to +her." + +"You would owe it to her," said Maria Dolores, always facing away, "to +tell her your love straightforwardly, and to ask her to marry you." + +John thrilled, John ached. His blue eyes burned upon her. "What else do +you think I dream of, night and day? But how could I, with honour? You +know my poverty," he groaned. + +"But if she has enough, more than enough, for two?" softly urged Maria +Dolores. + +"Ah, that's the worst of it," cried he. "If we were equals in penury, if +she had nothing, then I might honourably ask her, and we could live on +herbs together in a garret, and I could keep her respect and my own. Oh, +garret-paradise! But to marry a woman who is rich, to live in luxury +with her, and to try to look unconscious while she pays the bills,--she +would despise me, I should abhor myself." + +"Why should she despise you?" asked Maria Dolores. "The possession of +wealth is a mere accident. If people are married and love each other, I +can't see that it matters an atom whether their money belonged in the +first place to the man or to the woman,--it would belong henceforward to +them both equally." + +"That is a very generous way of looking at it, but it is a woman's way. +No decent man could accept it," said John. + +"Up to a certain point," said Maria Dolores, slowly, "I understand your +scruples. I understand that a poor man might feel that he would not like +to make the advances, if the woman he loved was rich. But suppose the +woman loved him, and knew that he loved her, and knew that it was only +his poverty which held him back, then _she_ might make the advances. She +might put aside her pride, and go halfway to meet him, and to remove his +difficulties and embarrassments. If, after that, he still did not ask +her, I think his scruples would have become mere vanity,--I think it +would show that he cared more for his mere vanity than for her +happiness." + +Her voice died out. John could see that her lip quivered a little. His +throat was dry. The pulses were pounding in his temples. His brain was +all a confusion. He hardly knew what had befallen him, he hardly knew +what she had said. He only knew that there was a great ball of fire in +his breast, and that the pain of it was half an immeasurable joy. + +"God forgive me," the absurd and exaggerated stickler for the dignity of +his sex wildly cried. "God knows how I love her, how I care for her +happiness. But to go to her empty-handed,--but to put myself in the +position of being kept by a woman,--God knows how impossible it is." + +Maria Dolores stood up, still looking away from him. + +"Well, let us hope," she said, changing her tone to one of unconcerned +detachment, "that we have been discussing baseless suppositions. Let us +hope that her heart is quite untouched. And for both your sakes," she +concluded, her head in the air, "let us hope that you and she will never +meet again. Good-bye." + +She gave him a curt little nod, and walked lightly, rapidly up the +avenue. + +John's brain was all a confusion. He looked after her helplessly. He +only knew that there was a great ball of fire in his breast, and that +the pain of it was now unmixed. + + + + +V + + +Maria Dolores tripped into Frau Brandt's sitting-room, merrily singing a +snatch of song. + + "_Gardez vous d'etre severe + Quand on vous park d'amour_," + +she carolled. Then she stopped singing, and blithely laughed. + +Frau Brandt raised her good brown face from her knitting, and her good +brown eyes looked anxiously upwards, slantwise over her +tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles. + +"What is the matter now?" she asked. "What has happened to vex you now?" + +"To vex me!" cried Maria Dolores, in apparent astonishment. "Wasn't I +singing aloud from sheer exuberance of high spirits?" + +"No," said Frau Brandt, with a very positive shake of her white-capped +head. "You were singing to conceal your low spirits. What has +happened?" + +"Ah, well, then, if you know so much and must know all," said Maria +Dolores, "I've just proposed to the man I'm in love with, and been sent +about my business." + +"What do you mean?" asked Frau Brandt, phlegmatic. "What nonsense is +this?" + +"I mean my cobbler's son," Maria Dolores answered. "I, a Princess of the +Empire, humbly offered him, a cobbler's son, my hand, heart, and +fortune,--and the graceless man rejected them with scorn." + +"That is a likely story," said Frau Brandt, wagging her chin. Her blunt +brown fingers returned to their occupation. "I see your Serene Highness +offering her hand." + +"At all events, will you kindly tell Josephine to pack our boxes. +To-morrow we'll be flitting," her Serene Highness in a casual way +announced. + +"What say you?" cried Frau Brandt, dropping her knitting into her lap. + +"Yes--to Mischenau, to my brother," the Princess pursued. "Of course +you'll have to come with us, poor dear. You can't let me travel alone +with Josephine." + +"No," said Frau Brandt. "I will go with you." + +"And you can remain for my wedding," Maria Dolores added. "I am going +home to meet my brother's wishes, and to marry my second cousin, the +high and mighty Maximilian, Prince of Zelt-Zelt." + +"Herr Gott!" said Frau Brandt, glancing with devotion at the ceiling. + + + + +VI + + +John, wild-eyed, was still where she had left him, in the avenue, +savouring and resavouring his woe. "If only," he brooded, "she were of +one's own rank in the world, then her wealth might perhaps not be such +an absolutely hopeless impediment as it is. But to marry, as they say, +beneath one, and to marry money into the bargain,--that would be a +little too much like the fortune-hunter of tradition." He still sat +where she had left him, on the marble bench, disconsolate, when the +parroco approached hurriedly, from the direction of the house. + +"Signore," the parroco began, out of breath, "I offer a thousand excuses +for venturing to disturb you, but my niece has suddenly fallen ill. I am +going to the village to telephone for a doctor. My cook is away, for her +Sunday afternoon. Might I pray you to have the extreme kindness to stay +with the child till I return? I don't know what is the matter, but she +fainted, and now is delirious, and, I'm afraid, very ill indeed." + +"Good Heavens!" gasped John, forgetting everything else. "Of course, of +course." + +And he set off hotfoot for the presbytery. + + + + +PART SIXTH + + + + +I + + +I would rather not dwell upon the details of Annunziata's illness. By +the mercy of Providence, she got well in the end; but in the mean time +those details were sufficiently painful. John, for example, found it +more than painful to hear her cry out piteously, as she often would in +her delirium, that she did not wish to be turned into a monkey; he hung +his head and groaned, and cursed the malinspired moment which had given +that chimaera birth. However, he had his compensations. Maria Dolores, +whom he had thought never to see again, he saw every day. "Let us hope +that you and she may never meet again." In his despairing heart the +words became a refrain. But an hour later the news of trouble at the +presbytery had travelled to the pavilion, and she flew straight to +Annunziata's bedside. Ever since, (postponing those threatened nuptials +at Mischenau), she had shared with John, and the parroco, and Marcella +the cook, the labours of nurse. And though it was arranged that the men, +turn and turn about, should watch by night, and the women by day, John, +by coming early and leaving late, contrived to make a good part of his +vigil and of hers coincident. And the strange result is that now, +looking backwards upon that period of pain and dread, when from minute +to minute no one knew what awful change the next minute might +bring,--looking backwards, and seeing again the small bare room, +cell-like, with its whitewashed walls, its iron cot, its Crucifix, its +narrow window (through which wide miles of valley shone), and then the +little white face and the brown curls tossing on the pillow, and the +woman of his love sitting near to him, in the intimacy of a common care +and common duties,--the strange result is that John feels a glow in his +heart, as at the memory of a period of joy. + +"Oh, do not let them turn me into a monkey. Oh, Holy Mother, I am so +afraid. Oh, do not let them!" Annunziata cried, shuddering, and +shrinking deeper into bed, towards the wall. + +John hung his head and wrung his hands. "My God, my God!" he groaned. + +"You should not blame yourself," Maria Dolores said in a low voice, +while she bathed the child's forehead, and fanned her face. "Your +intention was good, you could not foresee what has happened, and it may +be for the best, after all,--it may strengthen her 'will to live,' which +is the great thing, the doctor says." + +She had spoken English, but Annunziata's next outcry was like a +response. + +"Oh, to live, to live--I want to live, to live Oh, let me live!" + +But at other times her wandering thoughts took quite a different turn. + +Gazing solemnly up into Maria Dolores' face, she said, "He does not even +know her name, though he fears it may be Smitti. I thought it was Maria +Dolores, but he fears it may be Smitti." + +John looked out of the window, pretending not to hear, and praying, I +expect, that Maria Dolores' eyes might be blinded and her counsel +darkened. At the same time, (Heaven having sent me a laughing hero), I +won't vouch that his shoulders didn't shake a little. + + + + +II + + +Apropos of their ignorance of each other's patronymics. ... One +afternoon Maria Dolores was taking the air at the open door of the +presbytery, when, to a mighty clattering of horses' hoofs, a big +high-swung barouche came sweeping into the court-yard, described a bold +half-circle, and abruptly drew up before her. In the barouche sat a big +old lady, a big soft, humorous-eyed old lady, in cool crepe-de-chine, +cream-coloured, with beautiful white hair, a very gay light straw +bonnet, and a much befurbelowed lavender-hued sunshade. Coachman and +footman, bolt upright, stared straight before them, as rigid as if their +liveries were of papier-mache. The horses, with a full sense of what +they owed to appearances, fierily champed their bits, tossed their +manes, and pawed the paving-stones. The old lady smiled upon Maria +Dolores with a look of great friendliness and interest, softly bowed, +and wished her, in a fine, warm, old high-bred voice, "Good afternoon." + +Maria Dolores (feeling an instant liking, as well as curiosity and +admiration) smiled in her turn, and responded, "Good afternoon." + +"You enjoy a fine view from here," the old lady remarked, ducking her +sunshade in the direction of the valley. + +"A beautiful view," agreed Maria Dolores, following the sunshade with +her eyes. + +Those of the stranger had a gleam. "But don't you think, if the +unvarnished truth may be whispered, that it's becoming the merest trifle +too hot?" she suggested. + +Maria Dolores lightly laughed. "I think it is decidedly too hot," she +said. + +"I'm glad to find we're of the same opinion," declared the old lady, +fanning herself. "You can positively _see_ the heat vibrating there in +the distance. We children of the North should fly such weather. For my +part, I'm off to-morrow for England, where I can shiver through the +summer comfortably in my chimney-corner." + +Maria Dolores laughed out again. + +"So I've driven over from Roccadoro," the newcomer continued, "to have a +farewell look at a young man of my acquaintance who's staying here. I +dare say you may know him. He has blue eyes and a red beard, a +flattering manner and a pretty wit, and his name is Blanchemain." + +"Oh?" said Maria Dolores, her eyebrows going up. "Is that his name? You +mean the young Englishman who lives with the parroco?" + +The old lady's eyebrows, which were thick and dark, went up too. + +"Is it possible you didn't know his name?" was her surprised +ejaculation. Then she said, "I wonder whether he is anywhere about?" + +"I fancy he's asleep," said Maria Dolores. + +"Asleep? At this hour?" The dark eyebrows frowned their protest. "That +sounds like a sad slugabed." + +Maria Dolores looked serious. "He was up all night. We have a child ill +here, and he was up all night, watching." + +The stranger's grey eyes filled with concern and sympathy. "I hope, I'm +sure, it's not that pretty little girl, the niece of the parroco?" she +said. + +"Unhappily, it is," said Maria Dolores. "She has been very ill indeed." + +"I am extremely sorry to hear it, extremely sorry," the old lady +declared, with feeling. "If I can be of any sort of use--if I can send +anything--or in any way help--" Her eyes completed the offer. + +"Oh, thank you, thank you," replied Maria Dolores. "You are most kind, +but I don't think there is anything any one can do. Besides, she is on +the mend now, we hope. The doctor says the worst is probably over." + +"Well, thank God for that," exclaimed the visitor, with a will. She +considered for a moment, and then reverted to the previous question. "So +you did not know that my vivid young friend's name was Blanchemain?" + +"No," said Maria Dolores. + +"It is a good name--there's none better in England," averred the old +lady, with a nod of emphasis that set the wheat-ears in her bonnet +quivering. + +"Oh--?" said Maria Dolores, looking politely interested. + +"He's the nephew and heir of Lord Blanchemain of Ventmere," her +instructress went on. "That is one of our most ancient peerages." + +"Really?" said Maria Dolores. (What else did she say in her heart? Where +now was her cobbler's son?) + +"And I'm glad to be able to add that I'm his sort of connection--I'm the +widow of the late Lord Blanchemain." The lady paused; then, with that +smile of hers which we know, that smile which went as an advance-guard +to disarm resentment, "People of my age are allowed to be inquisitive," +she premised. "I have introduced myself to you--won't you introduce +yourself to me?" + +"My name is Maria Dolores of Zelt-Neuminster," answered the person +questioned, also smiling. + +The widow of the late Lord Blanchemain inwardly gasped, but she was +quick to suppress all outward symptoms of that circumstance. The +daughter of Eve in her gasped, but the practised old Englishwoman of the +world affably and imperturbably pronounced, with a gracious movement of +the head, "Ah, indeed? You are then, of course, a relation of the +Prince?" + +"I am the Prince's sister," said Maria Dolores. And, as if an +explanation of her presence was in order, she added, "I am here visiting +my old nurse and governess, to whom my brother has given a pavilion of +the Castle for her home." + +Lady Blanchemain fanned herself. "A miller's daughter!" she thought, +with a silent laugh at John's expense and her own. "I am very glad to +have made your acquaintance," she said, "and I hope this may not be our +last meeting. I'm afraid I ought now to be hastening back to Roccadoro. +I wonder whether you will have the kindness, when you see him, to convey +my parting benediction to Mr. Blanchemain. Oh, no, I would not let him +be wakened, not for worlds. Thank you. Good-bye." + +And with a great effect of majesty and importance, like a conscious +thing, her carriage rolled away. + + + + +III + + +"My romance is over, my April dream is ended," said the Princess, with +an air, perhaps a feint, of listless melancholy, to Frau Brandt. + +"What mean you?" asked Frau Brandt, unmoved. + +"My cobbler's son has disappeared--has vanished in a blaze of glory," +her Serene Highness explained, and laughed. + +"I don't understand," said Frau Brandt. "He has not left Sant' +Alessina?" + +"No, but he isn't a cobbler's son at all--he's merely been masquerading +as one--his name is not Brown, Jones, or Robinson--his name is the +high-sounding name of Blanchemain, and he's heir to an English peerage." + +"Ah, so? He is then noble?" Frau Brandt inferred, raising her eyes, with +satisfaction. + +"As noble as need be. An English peer is marriageable. So here's adieu +to my cottage in the air." + +"Here's good riddance to it," said Frau Brandt. + +That evening, at the hour of sunset, Maria Dolores met John in the +garden. + +"You had a visitor this afternoon," she announced. "A most inspiritingly +young old lady, as soft and white as a powder-puff, in a carriage that +was like a coach-and-four. Lady Blanchemain. She is leaving to-morrow +for England. She desired me to give you her farewell blessing." + +"It will be doubly precious to me by reason of the medium through which +it comes," said John, with his courtliest obeisance. + +There was a little pause, during which she looked at the western sky. +But presently, "Why did you tell me you had an uncle who was a farmer?" +she asked, beginning slowly to pace down the pathway. + +"Did I tell you that? I suppose I had a boastful fit upon me," John +replied. + +"But it very much misled me," said Maria Dolores. + +"Oh, it's perfectly true," said John. + +"You are the heir to a peerage," said Maria Dolores. + +John had a gesture. + +"There you are," he said; "and my uncle, the peer, spends much of his +time and most of his money breeding sheep and growing turnips. If that +isn't a farmer, I should like to know what is." + +"I hope you displayed less reticence regarding your station in the world +to that woman you were in love with," said she. + +"That woman I _was_ in love with?" John caught her up. "That woman I +_am_ in love with, please." + +"Oh? Are you still in love with her?" Maria Dolores wondered. "It is so +long since you have spoken of her, I thought your heart was healed." + +"If I have not spoken of her, it has been because I was under the +impression that you had tacitly forbidden me to do so," John informed +her. + +"So I had," she admitted. "But I find that there is such a thing--as +being too well obeyed." + +She brought out her last words, after the briefest possible suspension, +hurriedly, in a voice that quailed a little, as if in terror of its own +audacity. John, with tingling pulses, turned upon her. But she, +according to her habit at such times, refused him her eyes. He could +see, though, that her eyelashes trembled. + +"Oh," he cried, "I love her so much, I need her so, I suppose I shall +end by doing the dishonourable thing." + +"Did you ever tell her that you were Lord Blanchemain's heir?" she +asked. + +"I never thought of it. Why should I?" said John. + +"When you were bemoaning your poverty, as an obstacle to marriage, you +might have remembered that your birth counted for something. With us +Austrians, for example, birth counts for almost everything,--for +infinitely more than money." + +"I think," said John, as one impersonally generalizing, "that a +fortune-hunter with a tuft is the least admirable variety of that +animal. I wish you could see what beautiful little rose-white ears she +has, and the lovely way in which her dark hair droops about them." + +"How long ago was it," mused she, "that love first made people fancy +they saw beauties which had no real existence?" + +"Oh, the moment you see a thing, it acquires real existence," John +returned. "The act of seeing is an act of creation. The thing you see +has real existence on your retina and in your mind, if nowhere else, and +that is the realest sort of real existence." + +"Then she must thank you as the creator of her 'rose-white' ears," +laughed Maria Dolores. "I wonder whether that sunset has any real +existence, and whether it is really as splendid as it seems." + +The west had become a vast sea of gold, a pure and placid sea of +many-tinted gold, bounded and intersected and broken into innumerable +wide bays and narrow inlets by great cloud-promontories, purple and rose +and umber. Directly opposite, just above the crest-line of the hills, +hung the nearly full moon, pale as a mere phantom of itself. +And from somewhere in the boscage at the garden's end came a +lool-lool-lool-lioo-lio, deep and long-drawn, liquid and complaining, +which one knew to be the preliminary piping-up of Philomel. + +"If some things," said John, "derive their beauty from the eye of the +beholder, the beauty of other things is determined by the presence or +absence of the person you long to share all beautiful visions with. The +sky, the clouds, the whole air and earth, this evening, seem to me +beauty in its ultimate perfection." + +Maria Dolores softly laughed, softly, softly. And for a long time, by +the marble balustrade that guarded this particular terrace of the +garden, they stood in silence. The western gold burned to red, and more +sombre red; the cloud-promontories gloomed purpler; the pale moon +kindled, and shone like ice afire, with its intense cold brilliancy; the +olive woods against the sky lay black; a score of nightingales, near and +far, were calling and sobbing and exulting; and two human spirits +yearned with the mystery of love. + +"My income," said John, all at once, brusquely coming to earth, "is +exactly six hundred pounds a year. I suppose two people _could_ live on +that, though I'm dashed if I see how. Of course we couldn't live in +England, where that infernal future peerage would put us under a +thousand obligations; but I dare say we might find a garret here in +Italy. The question is, would she be willing, or have I any right to +ask her, to marry me, on the condition of leaving her own money +untouched, and living with me on mine? + +"Apropos of future peerages and things," said Maria Dolores, "do you +happen to know whether she has any rank of her own to keep up?" + +"I don't care twopence about her rank," said John. + +"Do you happen to know her name?" she asked. + +"I know what I wish her name was," John promptly answered. "I wish to +Heaven it was Blanchemain." + +Maria Dolores gazed, pensive, at the moon. "He does not even know her +name," she remarked, on a key of meditation, "though he fears," she +sadly shook her head, "he fears it may be Smitti." + +"Oh, I say!" cried John, wincing, with a kind of sorry giggle; and I +don't know whether he looked or felt the more sheepish. His face showed +every signal of humiliation, he tugged nervously at his beard, but his +eyes, in spite of him, his very blue blue eyes were full of vexed +amusement. + +The bell in the clock-tower struck eight. + +"There--it is your hour for going to Annunziata," said Maria Dolores. + +"You have not answered my question?" said John. + +"I will think about it," said she. + + + + +IV + + +Annunziata's delirium had passed, but in spite of all their efforts to +persuade her not to talk, talk she would. + +"This is the month of May, isn't it?" she asked, next morning. + +"Yes, dear one," said Maria Dolores, whose watch it was. + +"And that is the month of Mary. San Luca ought to hurry up and make me +well, so that I can keep flowers on the Lady Altar." + +"Then if you wish to get well quickly," said Maria Dolores, "you must +try not to talk,--nor even to think, if you can help it. You know the +doctor does not want you to talk." + +"All right. I won't talk. A going clock may be always wrong, but a +stopped clock is right twice a day. So stop your tongue, and avoid +folly. My uncle told me that. He never talks." + +"And now shall you and I imitate his example?" proposed Maria Dolores. +Her lips, compressed, were plainly the gaolers of a laugh. + +"Yes," said Annunziata. "But I can't help thinking of those poor +flowers. All May flowers are born to be put on the Lady Altar. Those +poor flowers are missing what they were born for. They must be very +sad." + +"This afternoon, every afternoon," Maria Dolores promised, "I will put +flowers on the Lady Altar. Now see if you can't shut your eyes, and rest +for a little while." + +"I once found a toad on the Lady Altar. What do you think he was there +for?" asked Annunziata. + +"I can't think, I'm sure," said Maria Dolores. + +"Well, when I first saw him I was angry, and I was going to get a broom +and sweep him away. But then I thought it must be very hard to be a +toad, and that you can't help being a toad if you are born one, and I +thought that perhaps that toad was there praying that he might be +changed from a toad to something else. So I didn't sweep him away. Have +you ever heard of the little Mass of Corruption that lay in a garden?" + +"No," said Maria Dolores. + +"Well," said Annunziata, "once upon a time a little Mass of Corruption +lay in a garden. But it did not know it was a Mass of Corruption, and it +did not wish to be a Mass of Corruption, and it never did any harm or +wished any harm to any one, but just lay there all day long, and thought +how beautiful the sky was, and how good and warm the sun, and how sweet +the flowers were and the bird-songs, and thanked God with all its heart +for having given it such a lovely place to lie in. Yet all the while, +you know, it couldn't help being what it was, a little Mass of +Corruption. And at the close of the day some people who were walking in +the garden saw it, and cried out, 'Oh, what a horrible little Mass of +Corruption!' and they called the gardener, and had it buried in the +earth. But the little Mass of Corruption, when it heard that it _was_ a +little Mass of Corruption, felt very, very sad, and it made a +supplication to Our Lady. 'I do not wish to be a Mass of Corruption,' it +said. 'Queen of Heaven, pray for me, that I may be purified, and made +clean, and not be a Mass of Corruption any longer, and that I may then +go back to the garden, out of this dark earth.' So Our Lady prayed for +it, and it was cleansed with water and purified, and--what do you think +the Little Mass of Corruption became? It became a rose--a red rose in +that very garden, just where they had buried it. From which we see--But +I don't quite remember what we see from it," she broke off the pain of +baffled effort on her brow. "My uncle could tell you that." + +Afterwards, for a few minutes, she was silent, lying quite still, with +her eyes on the ceiling. + +"Why do sunny lands produce dark people, and dark lands light people?" +she asked all at once. + +"Ah, don't begin to talk again, dear," Maria Dolores pleaded. "The +doctor will he coming soon now, and he will be angry if he finds that I +have let you talk." + +"Oh, I will tell him that it isn't your fault," said Annunziata. "I will +tell him that you didn't let me, but that I talked because it is so hard +to lie here and think, think, think, and not be allowed to say what you +are thinking. Prospero asked me that question about sunny lands a long +time ago. I've been thinking and thinking, but I can't think it out. +Have you a great deal of money? Are you very rich?" + +"Darling, won't you please not talk any more?" Maria Dolores implored +her. + +"I'll stop pretty soon," said Annunziata. "I think you are very rich. I +think, in spite of his saying her name is not Maria Dolores, that you +are the dark woman whom Prospero is to marry. He is to marry a dark +woman who will be very rich. But then he will also he very rich himself. +Is Austria a sunny land? England must be a dark land, for Prospero is +light. Let me see your left hand, please, and I will tell you whether +you are to marry a light man. + +"Hush!" said Maria Dolores, trying not to laugh. "That shall be some +other time." + +"Wouldn't you like to marry Prospero? I would," said Annunziata. + +"I think I hear the wheels of the doctor's gig," said Maria Dolores. +"Now we shall both be scolded." + +"But of course, if you do marry him, I can't," Annunziata pursued, +undaunted by this menace. "A man isn't allowed to have two +wives,--unless he is a king. He may have two sisters or two daughters, +but not two wives or two mothers. There was once a king named Salomone +who had a thousand wives, but even he had only one mother, I think. I +hope you will live at Sant' Alessina after your marriage. Will you?" + +Maria Dolores bit her lip and vouchsafed no answer; and again for a +minute or two Annunziata lay silent. But presently, "Have you ever waked +up in the middle of the night, and felt terribly frightened?" she asked. + +"Yes, dear, sometimes. I suppose every one has," said Maria Dolores. + +"Well, do you know why people feel so frightened when they wake like +that?" pursued the child. + +"No," said Maria Dolores. + +"I do," said Annunziata. "The middle of the night is the Devil's Noon. +Nobody is awake in the middle of the night except wicked people, like +thieves or roysterers, or people who are suffering. All people who are +good, and who are well and happy, are sound asleep. So it is the time +the Devil likes best, and he and all his evil spirits come to the earth +to enjoy the great pleasure of seeing people wicked or suffering. And +that is why we feel so frightened when we wake. The air all round us is +full of evil spirits, though we can't see them, and they are watching +us, to run and tell the Devil if we do anything wicked or suffer any +pain. But it is foolish of us to feel frightened, because our Guardian +Angels are always there too, and they are a hundred times stronger than +the evil spirits. Angels, you know, are very big, very much bigger than +men. Some of them are as tall as mountains, but even the quite small +ones are as tall as trees." + +"This time I really do hear wheels," said Maria Dolores, with an accent +of thanksgiving. + +And she rose to meet the doctor. + + + + +V + + +John sat in his room, absorbed in contemplation of a tiny lace-edged +pocket-handkerchief. He spread it out upon his knee, and laughed. He +crumpled it up in his palm, and pressed it to his face, and drank deep +of its faint perfume,--faint, but powerfully provocative of visions and +emotions. He had found it during the night on the floor of the +sick-room, and had captured and borne it away like a treasure. He spread +it out on his knee again, and was again about to laugh at its small size +and gauzy texture, when his eye was caught by something in its corner. +He held it nearer to the window. The thing that had caught his eye was a +cypher surmounted by a crown, embroidered so minutely as almost to call +for a magnifying glass. But without a glass he could see that the cypher +was composed of the initials M and D, and that the crown was not a +coronet, but a closed crown, of the pattern worn by mediatised princes. + +"What on earth can be the meaning of this?" he wondered, frowning, and +breathing quick. + +But he was stopped from further speculation for the moment by a knock at +the door. The postman entered with two letters, for one of which, as it +was registered, John had to sign. When he had tipped the postman and was +alone again, he put his registered letter on the dressing-table (with a +view to disciplining curiosity and exercising patience, possibly) and +turned his attention to the other. In a handsome, high old hand, that +somehow reminded him of the writer's voice, it ran as follows:-- + + "DEAR JOHN, + + "I was heart-broken not to see you when I drove over to say + good-bye this afternoon, but chance favoured me at least to the + extent of letting me see your miller's daughter, and you may + believe that I was glad of an opportunity to inspect her at close + quarters. My dear boy, she is no more a miller's daughter than you + are. Her beauty--there's _race_ in it. Her manner and carriage, + her voice, accent, her way of dressing, (I'd give a sovereign for + the name of her dressmaker), the fineness of her skin, her hair, + everything--there's race in 'em all, race and consciousness of + race, pride, dignity, distinction. These things don't come to pass + in a generation. I'm surprised at your lack of perspicacity. And + those blue eyes of yours look so sharp, too. But perhaps your wish + was father to your thought. You felt (well, and so to some extent + did I) that it would be more _romantic_. She's probably a very + great swell indeed, and I expect the Frau What's-her-name she's + staying with will turn out to be her old governess or nurse or + something. When those Austrians _can_ show quarterings, (of course + you must bar recent creations--they're generally named Cohen), they + can show them to some effect. They think nothing of thirty-two. All + of which, _au fond_, rather rejoices me, for if she really had been + a miller's daughter, it would have seemed a good deal like throwing + yourself away, and who knows what your rusty, crusty old uncle B. + might have said? I've long had a rod in pickle for _him_, and + t'other day I applied it. _Attendez_. + + "Don't forget the pig you purchased--so gallantly and confidingly. + I would not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments--your + pig will gobble 'em up. You should by this have received a + communication from my solicitors. Remember, you have pledged your + sacred promise. There must be no question of trying to shirk or + burke it. Remember that I am quite outrageously rich. I have no + children of my own, and no very near relatives, (and my distant + ones are intensely disagreeable), and I can't help looking upon the + heir of the Blanchemains as a kind of spiritual son. In your + position there's no such thing as having too much money. Take all + that comes, and never mind the quarter whence. They're Plymouth + Brethren, and send me tracts. + + "Good-bye now till August, if not before. For of course in August + you must come to me at Fring. Will you bring your bride? When and + where the wedding? I suppose they'll want it in Austria. Beware of + long engagements--or of too short ones. The autumn's the time,--the + only pretty ring-time. You see, you'll need some months for the + preparation of your trousseau. I love a man to be smart. Well, + good-bye. I was so sorry about that child's illness, but thankful + to hear she was mending. + + "Yours affectionately, + + "LINDA BLANCHEMAIN." + +And his registered letter, when at last he opened it, ran thus:-- + + "DEAR SIR:--Pursuant to instructions received from our client Lady + Blanchemain, we beg to hand you herewith our cheque for Seven + hundred and fifty pounds (L750 stg.), and to request the favour of + your receipt for the same, together with the address of your + bankers, that we may pay in quarterly a like sum to your account, + it being her ladyship's intention, immediately upon her return to + England, to effect a settlement upon yourself and heirs of L100,000 + funded in Bk. of Eng. stock. + + "We are further to have the pleasure to inform you that by the + terms of a will just prepared by us, and to be executed by Lady + Blanchemain at the earliest possible date, you are constituted her + residuary legatee. + + "With compliments and respectful congratulations, + + "We have the honour, dear Sir, to be, + + "Your obedient servants, + + "FARROW, BERNSCOT, AND TISDALE." + +And then there came another tap at the door, and it was the postman who +had returned, with a third letter which, like the true Italian postman +that he was, he had forgotten,--and I fancy, if it hadn't been for that +tip still warm in his pocket, the easy-going fellow would have allowed +it to stand over till to-morrow. He made, at any rate, a great virtue of +having discovered it and of having retraced his steps. + +The letter was written in black, angular, uncompromising characters, +that looked rather like sabre-thrusts and bayonets. It read:-- + + "DEAR JACK:--I have received the enclosure from Linda Lady + Blanchemain. She is an exceedingly impertinent and meddlesome old + woman. But she is right about the allowance. I don't know why I + never thought of it myself. I don't know why you never suggested + it. I extremely regret it. As next in succession, you are + certainly entitled to an annuity from the estate. I have to-day + remitted L500 to your bankers, and am instructing my agents to pay + in a like amount quarterly. + + "I hope I shall soon be seeing you at Ventmere. We are having a + grand lambing season, but there's a nasty spread of swine-fever, + and the whole country's papered with handbills. I got a goodish bit + of hunting down at Wilsborough during the winter. Now there's + nothing to do but play golf. I never could find any fun in shooting + rooks. + + "Your affectionate uncle, + + "B of V." + +And the enclosure:-- + + "Linda Lady Blanchemain presents her compliments to Lord + Blanchemain of Ventmere, and begs to apprise him that she has + lately had the pleasure of meeting his lordship's nephew John, and + has discovered to her amazement that his lordship makes him no + allowance. This situation, for the heir to the barony of + Blanchemain, is of course absurd, and must, Lady Blanchemain is + sure, be due entirely to an oversight on his lordship's part. She + ventures, therefore, with all respect, to bring it to his notice." + +So! Here sat a young man with plenty to think about; a young man, whose +income, yesterday a bare six hundred, had sprung up over night to +something near six thousand. Six thousand a year isn't opulence, if you +like, but a young man possessing it can hardly look upon himself as +quite empty-handed, either. This young man, however, had other things as +well to think of. What of that embroidered handkerchief? What of those +shrewd suspicions of Lady Blanchemain's? What of his miller's daughter? + +And there was another thing still. What of his proud old honest Spartan +of an unimaginative uncle? He thought of him, and "Oh, the poor old +boy," he cried. "Not for ten times the money would I have had the dear +old woman write to him like that. How hard it must have hit him!" + +"M, D, and a princely crown," he reflected. "I wish I had an Almanach de +Gotha." + + + + +VI + + +"Who was it said of some one that he dearly loved a lord?" Maria +Dolores, her chin in the air, asked of Frau Brandt. + +"I do not know," Frau Brandt replied, knitting. + +"Well, at least, you know whether it would be possible for a man and +wife to live luxuriously on sixpence a week. Would it?" pursued her +tease. + +"You are well aware that it would not," said Frau Brandt. + +"How about six hundred pounds a year?" + +"Six hundred pounds--?" Frau Brandt computed. "That would be six +thousand florins, no? It would depend upon their station in the world." + +"Well, suppose their station were about my station--and my lord's?" + +"You," said Frau Brandt, with a chuckle of contentment, swaying her +white-bonneted head. "You would need twice that for your dress alone." + +"One could dress more simply," said Maria Dolores. + +"No," said Frau Brandt, her good eyes beaming, "you must always dress in +the very finest that can be had." + +"But then," Maria Dolores asked with wistfulness, "what am I to do? For +six hundred pounds is the total of his income." + +"You have, unless I am mistaken, an income of your own," Frau Brandt +remarked. + +"Yes--but he won't let me use it," said Maria Dolores. + +"He? Who?" demanded Frau Brandt, bridling. "Who is there that dares to +say let or not let to you? + +"My future husband," said Maria Dolores. "He has peculiar ideas of +honour. He does not like the notion of marrying a woman who is richer +than himself. So he will marry me only on the condition that I send my +own fortune to be dropped in the middle of the sea." + +"What nonsense is this?" said Frau Brandt, composed. + +"No, it is the truth," said Maria Dolores, "the true truth. He is too +proud to live in luxury at his wife's expense." + +"I like a man making conditions, when it is a question of marrying you," +said Frau Brandt, with scorn. + +"So do I," said Maria Dolores, with heartiness. + +"Well, at any rate, I am glad to see that he is not after you for your +money," Frau Brandt reflected. + +"I suppose we shall have to dress in sackcloth and dine on lentils," +said Maria Dolores. + +"Of course you will tell him to take his conditions to the Old One," +said Frau Brandt. "It is out of the question for you to change the +manner of your life." + +"I feel indeed as if it were," admitted Maria Dolores. "But if he +insists?" + +"Then tell him to go to the Old One himself," was Frau Brandt's blunt +advice. + +Maria Dolores laughed. "It seems like an _impasse_," she said. "Who is +to break the news to my brother?" + +"We will wait until there is some news to break," the old woman amiably +grumbled. + +Again at the sunset hour Maria Dolores met him in the garden. He was +seated on one of their marble benches, amongst marble columns, +(rose-tinted by the western light, and casting long purple shadows), in +a vine-embowered pergola. He was leaning forward, legs crossed, brow +wrinkled, as one deep in thought. But of course at the sound of her +footstep he jumped up. + +"What mighty problem were you revolving?" she asked. "You looked like +Rembrandt's _philosophe en meditation_." + +"I was revolving the problem of human love," he answered. "I was +mutilating Browning. + + '_Was it something said, + Something done, + Was it touch of hand, + Turn of head?_' + +I was also thinking about you. I was wondering whether it would be my +cruel destiny not to see you this evening, and thinking of the first +time I ever saw you." + +"Oh," said she, lightly, "that morning among the olives,--when you +gathered the windflowers for me?" + +"No," said he. "That was the second time." + +"Indeed?" said she, surprised. She sat down on the marble bench. John +stood before her. + +"Yes," said he. "The first time was the day before. You were crossing +the garden--you were bending over the sun-dial--and I spied upon you +from a window of the _piano nobile_. Lady Blanchemain was there with me, +and she made a prediction." + +"What did she predict?" asked Maria Dolores, unsuspicious. + +"She predicted that I would fall--" But he dropped his sentence in the +middle. "She predicted what has happened." + +"Oh," murmured Maria Dolores, and looked at the horizon. By-and-by, +"That morning among the olives was the first time that I saw you--when +you dashed like a paladin to my assistance. I feel that I have never +sufficiently thanked you." + +"A paladin oddly panoplied," said John. "Tell me honestly, weren't you +in two minds whether or not to reward me with largesse? You had silver +in your hand." + +Maria Dolores laughed. I think she coloured a little. + +"Perhaps I was, for half a second," she confessed. "But your grand +manner soon put me in one mind." + +John also laughed. He took a turn backwards and forwards. "I have waked +in the dead of night, and grown hot and cold to remember the figure of +fun I was." + +"No," said Maria Dolores, to console him. "You weren't a figure of fun. +Your costume had the air of being an impromptu, but," she laughed, "your +native dignity shone through." + +"Thank you," said John, bowing. "The next time I saw you was that same +afternoon. You were with Annunziata in the avenue. I carried my vision +of you, like a melody, all the way to Roccadoro-and all the way home +again." + +"I had just made Annunziata's acquaintance," said Maria Dolores. + +"You had a white sunshade and a lilac frock," said John. "The next time +was that night in the moonlight. You were all in white, with a scarf of +white lace over your hair. You threw me a white rose from your +balcony--and I have carried that rose with me ever since." + +"I threw you a white rose?" doubted Maria Dolores, looking up, at fault. + +"Yes," said John. "Have you forgotten it?" + +"I certainly have," said she, with emphasis. + +"You threw me a smile that was like a white rose," said he. + +She laughed. + +"I think I just distantly acknowledged your bow," she said. + +"Well, some people's distant acknowledgments are like white roses," said +he. "I hope, at least, you remember what a glorious night it was, and +how the nightingales were singing?" + +"Yes," said she. "I remember that." + +"I have a fancy," he declared, "that it will be a more glorious night +still to-night, and that the nightingales will sing better than they +have ever sung before." + +Maria Dolores did not speak. + +"Do you happen," John asked, after a long silence, while they gazed at +the deepening colours in the west, "do you happen to possess such a +thing as a copy of the Almanach de Gotha?" + +"Yes," said she. + +"Really? I wonder whether you will lend it to me?" + +"I am sorry--it is in Vienna." And after an instant's pause, she +ventured, "What, if it isn't indiscreet to inquire, do you wish to look +up?" + +"I wish to look up a lady--a dream lady--a lady who walks in beauty like +the night of cloudless climes--and whose pocket-handkerchiefs are +embroidered with the initials M.D., in a cypher, under a princely +crown." + +"I should think," said Maria Dolores, considering, "that she would +probably be a member of one of the mediatised princely houses. But if +you have nothing more than her initials to go by, you would find it +difficult to trace her in the Almanach de Gotha." + +"No doubt," said John. "But to a man of spirit a difficulty is a +challenge." + +"Do you make a practice," asked she, "of appropriating people's +handkerchiefs?" + +"Certain people's--yes," unblushing, he promptly owned. + +"M.D. under a princely crown, I think you said?" she mused. "It occurs +to me that Maria Dolores of Zelt-Neuminster's pocket-handkerchiefs might +be so embroidered." + +"Ah?" said John. "Zelt-Neuminster? That would be a daughter of the man +who owns this Castle?" + +"No, she is a sister of the man who owns this Castle." + +"I understand," said John. "I wonder that the sister of the man who owns +this Castle never comes here to see how fine it is." + +"She has been here quite recently," said Maria Dolores. "She has been +here visiting her foster-mother, who lives in the pavilion beyond the +clock. She came to make a sort of retreat--to think something over." + +"Yes--?" questioned he. + +"Her brother is very anxious to marry her off. He is anxious that she +should marry her second cousin, the Prince of Zelt-Zelt. She came here +to make up her mind." + +"Has she made it up?" he asked. + +"I am not sure," said she. + +"Yet you seem to be deep in her confidence," said he. + +"Yes--but she is not quite sure herself." + +"Oh--?" said John. + +"She is one of those foolish women who dream of marriage as a high +romance." + +"Wise men," said John, "dream of it as the highest." + +She shook her head. + +"A marriage with her cousin would be an end to all romance for ever. She +was thinking a little while ago, I believe, of marrying a plain +commoner, the nephew of a farmer. That would have been indeed romantic. +Now, I hear, she is considering, a future member of your English House +of Lords." + +"Wouldn't even that be rather romantic--if a step down constitutes +romance?" John suggested. + +"Oh, a British peer is scarcely a step down," she returned. "Besides, +there are people who don't care--what is the expression?--twopence about +rank." + +"When I said that," John explained, "I had no inkling that her rank was +so exalted." + +"Did you think she was the daughter of a cobbler?" Maria Dolores +quickly, with some haughtiness, inquired. + +"I thought she was a daughter of the stars," John answered. + +"And you feared her name was Smitti," she said, haughtiness dissolving +in mirth. "I will never tell you what she feared that yours was." + +"See," said John, "how they are hanging the heavens with banners. It +must be in honour of some great impending event." + +Yesterday the west had been a sea. To-day it was a city, a vast grey and +violet city, with palaces and battlemented towers, and countless airy +spires and pinnacles; and here, there, everywhere, its walls were gay +with gold and crimson, as with drooping banners. + +"'Tis a city _en fete_," said John. "'Tis the city where marriages are +made. They must have one in hand." + +"Hark," said she, putting up a finger. "There are your nightingales +beginning." + +But the raised finger reminded him of something. "Have you a rooted +objection to rings?" he asked. + +"Why?" asked she. + +"I notice that you don't wear any." + +"Oh, sometimes I wear many," she said. "Then one has moods in which one +leaves them off." + +"I have a ring in my pocket which I think belongs to you," said he. + +"Really? I don't know that any of my rings are missing." + +"Here it is," said he. He produced the little old shagreen case he had +received from Lady Blanchemain, opened, and offered it. + +"It is a singularly beautiful ring," said she, her eyes admiring. "But +it doesn't belong to me." + +"I think it does," said he. "May I try it on your finger?" + +She put forth her right hand. + +"No--your left hand, please," he said. He dropped upon one knee before +her, and when the delicate white hand was surrendered, I imagine he made +of getting the ring upon the alliance finger a longer business by a good +deal than was necessary. "There," he said in the end, "you see. It looks +as if it had grown there. Of course it belongs to you." He still held +her hand, warm and firm and velvet-soft. I think in another second he +would have touched it with his lips. But she drew it away. + +She gazed into the depths of the heart-shaped ruby, tremulous with +liquid light, and smiled as at secret thoughts. + +"But I don't see," said John, getting to his feet, "how any man can ask +a Princess of the House of Zelt to marry him and live on six hundred +pounds a year." + +"She would have to modify her habits a good deal, that is very certain," +said Maria Dolores. + +"She would have to modify them utterly," said John. "Six hundred a year +is poverty even for a single man. For a married couple it would be +beggary. She would have to live like the wife of a petty employe. She +would have to travel second class and stay at fourth-rate hotels. She +would have to turn her old dresses and trim her own bonnets. She would +have to do without a maid. And all this means that she would have +virtually to renounce her caste, to give up the society of her equals, +who demand a certain scale of appearances, and to live among pariahs or +to live in isolation. Don't you think a man would be a monster of +selfishness to exact such sacrifices?" + +"Oh, some men have excessively far-fetched and morbid notions of +honour," said she. + +"Do you think the Princess, with all this brought to her attention, +would ever dream of consenting?" + +"Women in love are weak--they will consent to almost anything," said +she, her dark eyes smiling for an instant into his. + +Why didn't he take her in his arms? Hope deferred maketh the heart sick, +but to defer the consummation of a joy assured (observes the Persian +poet) giveth the heart a peculiar sweet excitement. + +"Well," said John. "I'm glad to think she is weak; but I'll never ask my +wife to consent to anything so unpleasant. A Princess and a future +peeress, living on six hundred pounds a year! It's unheard of." + +She looked at him, puzzled, incredulous. + +"Oh--? Can you possibly mean--that you will--take back your condition?" + +"Yes," said he, humbly. "Who am I to make conditions?" + +"You will let her spend as much of her own money as she likes?" she +wondered, wide-eyed. + +"As a lover of thrift, I shall deprecate extravagance," said John. "But +as a submissive husband, I shall let her do in all things as her fancy +dictates." + +"Well," marvelled she, "here is a surprise--here is a volte-face +indeed." + +And she looked at the city in the sky, and appeared to turn things over. + +John was mysteriously chuckling. + +"Haven't you your opinion," he asked, "of men who eat their words and +put their scruples in their pockets?" + +"I don't understand," said she, looking wild. "There is, of course, some +joke." + +"There is a joke, indeed," said he; "the joke is that I'm ten times +richer than I told you I was." + +She started back, and fixed him with a glance. + +"Then all that about your being poor was only humbug?" There was +reproach in her voice, I'm not sure there wasn't disappointment. + +"No," said he, "it was the exact and literal truth. But I have come into +a modest competency over-night." + +"I don't understand," said she. + +"My own part in the story is a sufficiently inglorious one," said he. +"I'm the benefactee. Lady Blanchemain and my uncle have put their heads +together, and endowed me. I feel rather small at letting them, but it +enables me to look my affianced boldly in the money-eye." + +"Oh? You are affianced? Already?" she asked gaily. + +"No--not unless you are," gaily answered John. + +She looked down at her ring. + + + + +VII + + +The quiet-coloured end of evening smiled fainter, fainter. The aerial +city, its cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces, had crumbled into +ruins, and stars twinkled among their shattered and darkened walls. The +moon burned icily above the eastern hills. The nightingales (or John was +no true prophet) sang better than they had ever sung before, while bats, +hither, thither, flew in startling zig-zags, as if waltzing to the +music. And all the air was sweet with the breath of dew-wet roses. + +The clock struck eight. + +"There--you must go," said Maria Dolores. + +"Go? Where to?" asked John, feigning vagueness. + +"This is no subject for jest," said she, feigning severity. + +"I can't go yet--I can't leave you yet," said he. "Besides, it is an +education in aesthetics to watch the moonlight on these marble columns, +and the pale shadows of the vine-leaves." + +"Well, then," said she, "stay you here and pursue your education. I will +go in your place. For Marcella Cuciniera must be relieved." She rose, +and moved towards the darkling front of the Castle. + +"Hang education! I'll go with you," said John, following. + +"I shall only stop a moment, to see how she is," said Maria Dolores. +"Then I must hurry home, to get my packing begun." + +"Your packing?" faltered John. + +"To-morrow morning Frau Brandt and I are leaving for Austria--for +Schloss Mischenau, where my brother lives." + +"Good Lord!" said John. "Ah, well, I suppose it is what they would call +the proper course," he admitted with gloomy resignation. "But think how +dreadfully you'll be missed--by Annunziata." + +"Annunziata is so much better, I can easily be spared," said Maria +Dolores; "and anyhow--'tis needs must. I think you will probably soon +receive a letter from my brother, asking you to visit him. Mischenau is +a place worth seeing, in its northern style. And, in his northern style, +my brother is a man worth meeting. I counsel you to go." + +"I shall certainly go," said John. "I shall linger here at Sant' +Alessina like a soul in durance, counting the hours till my release. I +shall be particularly glad to meet your brother, as I have matters of +importance to arrange with him." + +"Until then," said she, smiling, "I think we must do with those--matters +of importance"--her voice quavered on the word--"what is it that the +Pope sometimes does with Cardinals?" + +"Yes," moodily consented John, "I suppose we must. But oh me, what a +dreary, blank, stale, and unprofitable desolation this garden will +become,--and at every turn the ghost of some past joy!" + +Annunziata looked up with eyes that seemed omniscient. + +"I was thinking about you," she greeted them. + +"About which of us?" asked John. + +"About both of you. I always now, since a long while, think of you both +together. I think Maria Dolores is the dark woman whom Prospero is to +marry." + +John laughed. Maria Dolores looked out of the window. + +"And I was thinking," Annunziata went on, "how strange it was that if +you hadn't both at the same time just happened to come to Sant' +Alessina, you might have lived and died and never have known each +other." + +"Perish that thought," laughed John. "But I have sometimes thought it +myself." + +"And then," Annunziata rounded out her tale, "I thought that perhaps you +had not just happened--that probably you had been led." + +"That is a thing I haven't a doubt of," John with energy affirmed. + +"You look as if you were very glad about something--both of you," said +Annunziata, those omniscient eyes of hers studying their faces. "What is +it that you are both so glad of?" + +"We are so glad to find you feeling so well," answered Maria Dolores. + +But Annunziata shook her head, as one who knew better. "No--that is not +the only thing. You are glad of something else besides." + +"There's no taking you in," said John. "But we are under bonds to treat +that Something Else as the Pope sometimes treats Princes of the Church." + +"He gives them red hats," said Annunziata. + +"I shall give this thing a crown of myrtle," said John. + +"You sometimes say things that sound as if they hadn't any sense," +Annunziata informed him, with patient indulgence, nodding at the +ceiling. + +Maria Dolores leaned over the bed, and kissed Annunziata's brow. "Good +night, carina," she murmured. + +Annunziata put up her little white arms, and encircled Maria Dolores' +neck. Then she kissed her four times--on the brow, on the chin, on the +left cheek, on the right. "That is a cross of kisses," she explained. +"It is the way my mother used to kiss me. It means may the four Angels +of Peace, Grace, Holiness, and Wisdom watch over your sleep." + +But early next morning, John being still on duty, Maria Dolores came +back,--booted and spurred for her journey, in tailor-made tweeds, with a +little felt toque and a veil: a costume of which Annunziata's eyes were +quick to catch the suggestion. + +"Why are you dressed like that?" she asked, uneasily. "I never saw you +dressed like that before. You look as if you were going away somewhere." + +"I have got to go away--I have got to go to my home, in Austria. I have +come to bid you good-bye," Maria Dolores answered. + +Annunziata's eyes were dark with pain. "Oh," she said, in a voice of +deep dismay. + +"We shan't be separated long, though," Maria Dolores promised. "I have +asked your uncle to lend you to me. As soon as you are strong enough to +travel, you are coming to Austria to pay me a long visit. Then I will +come back with you to Sant' Alessina. And then--well, wherever I go you +will always go with me. For of course I can never live happily again +without you." + +"One moment, please," put in John. "Here is a small difficulty. I can +never live happily without her, either. I also have asked her uncle to +lend her to me. And wherever _I_ go, she is always to go with me. How +are we to adjust our rival claims?" + +Annunziata's eyes lighted up. + +"Oh, that will be easy enough," she pointed out. "You will have to go +everywhere together." + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of My Friend Prospero, by Henry Harland + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY FRIEND PROSPERO *** + +***** This file should be named 14682.txt or 14682.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/6/8/14682/ + +Produced by Rick Niles, Charlie Kirschner and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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