My Friend Prospero

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.