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.