My Friend Prospero

I

I would rather not dwell upon the details of Annunziata's illness. By the mercy of Providence, she got well in the end; but in the mean time those details were sufficiently painful. John, for example, found it more than painful to hear her cry out piteously, as she often would in her delirium, that she did not wish to be turned into a monkey; he hung his head and groaned, and cursed the malinspired moment which had given that chimæra birth. However, he had his compensations. Maria Dolores, whom he had thought never to see again, he saw every day. "Let us hope that you and she may never meet again." In his despairing heart the words became a refrain. But an hour later the news of trouble at the presbytery had travelled to the pavilion, and she flew straight to Annunziata's bedside. Ever since, (postponing those threatened nuptials at Mischenau), she had shared with John, and the parroco, and Marcella the cook, the labours of nurse. And though it was arranged that the men, turn and turn about, should watch by night, and the women by day, John, by coming early and leaving late, contrived to make a good part of his vigil and of hers coincident. And the strange result is that now, looking backwards upon that period of pain and dread, when from minute to minute no one knew what awful change the next minute might bring,—looking backwards, and seeing again the small bare room, cell-like, with its whitewashed walls, its iron cot, its Crucifix, its narrow window (through which wide miles of valley shone), and then the little white face and the brown curls tossing on the pillow, and the woman of his love sitting near to him, in the intimacy of a common care and common duties,—the strange result is that John feels a glow in his heart, as at the memory of a period of joy.

"Oh, do not let them turn me into a monkey. Oh, Holy Mother, I am so afraid. Oh, do not let them!" Annunziata cried, shuddering, and shrinking deeper into bed, towards the wall.

John hung his head and wrung his hands. "My God, my God!" he groaned.

"You should not blame yourself," Maria Dolores said in a low voice, while she bathed the child's forehead, and fanned her face. "Your intention was good, you could not foresee what has happened, and it may be for the best, after all,—it may strengthen her 'will to live,' which is the great thing, the doctor says."

She had spoken English, but Annunziata's next outcry was like a response.

"Oh, to live, to live—I want to live, to live Oh, let me live!"

But at other times her wandering thoughts took quite a different turn.

Gazing solemnly up into Maria Dolores' face, she said, "He does not even know her name, though he fears it may be Smitti. I thought it was Maria Dolores, but he fears it may be Smitti."

John looked out of the window, pretending not to hear, and praying, I expect, that Maria Dolores' eyes might be blinded and her counsel darkened. At the same time, (Heaven having sent me a laughing hero), I won't vouch that his shoulders didn't shake a little.

II

Apropos of their ignorance of each other's patronymics. ... One afternoon Maria Dolores was taking the air at the open door of the presbytery, when, to a mighty clattering of horses' hoofs, a big high-swung barouche came sweeping into the court-yard, described a bold half-circle, and abruptly drew up before her. In the barouche sat a big old lady, a big soft, humorous-eyed old lady, in cool crêpe-de-chine, cream-coloured, with beautiful white hair, a very gay light straw bonnet, and a much befurbelowed lavender-hued sunshade. Coachman and footman, bolt upright, stared straight before them, as rigid as if their liveries were of papier-maché. The horses, with a full sense of what they owed to appearances, fierily champed their bits, tossed their manes, and pawed the paving-stones. The old lady smiled upon Maria Dolores with a look of great friendliness and interest, softly bowed, and wished her, in a fine, warm, old high-bred voice, "Good afternoon."

Maria Dolores (feeling an instant liking, as well as curiosity and admiration) smiled in her turn, and responded, "Good afternoon."

"You enjoy a fine view from here," the old lady remarked, ducking her sunshade in the direction of the valley.

"A beautiful view," agreed Maria Dolores, following the sunshade with her eyes.

Those of the stranger had a gleam. "But don't you think, if the unvarnished truth may be whispered, that it's becoming the merest trifle too hot?" she suggested.

Maria Dolores lightly laughed. "I think it is decidedly too hot," she said.

"I'm glad to find we're of the same opinion," declared the old lady, fanning herself. "You can positively see the heat vibrating there in the distance. We children of the North should fly such weather. For my part, I'm off to-morrow for England, where I can shiver through the summer comfortably in my chimney-corner."

Maria Dolores laughed out again.

"So I've driven over from Roccadoro," the newcomer continued, "to have a farewell look at a young man of my acquaintance who's staying here. I dare say you may know him. He has blue eyes and a red beard, a flattering manner and a pretty wit, and his name is Blanchemain."

"Oh?" said Maria Dolores, her eyebrows going up. "Is that his name? You mean the young Englishman who lives with the parroco?"

The old lady's eyebrows, which were thick and dark, went up too.

"Is it possible you didn't know his name?" was her surprised ejaculation. Then she said, "I wonder whether he is anywhere about?"

"I fancy he's asleep," said Maria Dolores.

"Asleep? At this hour?" The dark eyebrows frowned their protest. "That sounds like a sad slugabed."

Maria Dolores looked serious. "He was up all night. We have a child ill here, and he was up all night, watching."

The stranger's grey eyes filled with concern and sympathy. "I hope, I'm sure, it's not that pretty little girl, the niece of the parroco?" she said.

"Unhappily, it is," said Maria Dolores. "She has been very ill indeed."

"I am extremely sorry to hear it, extremely sorry," the old lady declared, with feeling. "If I can be of any sort of use—if I can send anything—or in any way help—" Her eyes completed the offer.

"Oh, thank you, thank you," replied Maria Dolores. "You are most kind, but I don't think there is anything any one can do. Besides, she is on the mend now, we hope. The doctor says the worst is probably over."

"Well, thank God for that," exclaimed the visitor, with a will. She considered for a moment, and then reverted to the previous question. "So you did not know that my vivid young friend's name was Blanchemain?"

"No," said Maria Dolores.

"It is a good name—there's none better in England," averred the old lady, with a nod of emphasis that set the wheat-ears in her bonnet quivering.

"Oh—?" said Maria Dolores, looking politely interested.

"He's the nephew and heir of Lord Blanchemain of Ventmere," her instructress went on. "That is one of our most ancient peerages."

"Really?" said Maria Dolores. (What else did she say in her heart? Where now was her cobbler's son?)

"And I'm glad to be able to add that I'm his sort of connection—I'm the widow of the late Lord Blanchemain." The lady paused; then, with that smile of hers which we know, that smile which went as an advance-guard to disarm resentment, "People of my age are allowed to be inquisitive," she premised. "I have introduced myself to you—won't you introduce yourself to me?"

"My name is Maria Dolores of Zelt-Neuminster," answered the person questioned, also smiling.

The widow of the late Lord Blanchemain inwardly gasped, but she was quick to suppress all outward symptoms of that circumstance. The daughter of Eve in her gasped, but the practised old Englishwoman of the world affably and imperturbably pronounced, with a gracious movement of the head, "Ah, indeed? You are then, of course, a relation of the Prince?"

"I am the Prince's sister," said Maria Dolores. And, as if an explanation of her presence was in order, she added, "I am here visiting my old nurse and governess, to whom my brother has given a pavilion of the Castle for her home."

Lady Blanchemain fanned herself. "A miller's daughter!" she thought, with a silent laugh at John's expense and her own. "I am very glad to have made your acquaintance," she said, "and I hope this may not be our last meeting. I'm afraid I ought now to be hastening back to Roccadoro. I wonder whether you will have the kindness, when you see him, to convey my parting benediction to Mr. Blanchemain. Oh, no, I would not let him be wakened, not for worlds. Thank you. Good-bye."

And with a great effect of majesty and importance, like a conscious thing, her carriage rolled away.

III

"My romance is over, my April dream is ended," said the Princess, with an air, perhaps a feint, of listless melancholy, to Frau Brandt.

"What mean you?" asked Frau Brandt, unmoved.

"My cobbler's son has disappeared—has vanished in a blaze of glory," her Serene Highness explained, and laughed.

"I don't understand," said Frau Brandt. "He has not left Sant' Alessina?"

"No, but he isn't a cobbler's son at all—he's merely been masquerading as one—his name is not Brown, Jones, or Robinson—his name is the high-sounding name of Blanchemain, and he's heir to an English peerage."

"Ah, so? He is then noble?" Frau Brandt inferred, raising her eyes, with satisfaction.

"As noble as need be. An English peer is marriageable. So here's adieu to my cottage in the air."

"Here's good riddance to it," said Frau Brandt.

That evening, at the hour of sunset, Maria Dolores met John in the garden.

"You had a visitor this afternoon," she announced. "A most inspiritingly young old lady, as soft and white as a powder-puff, in a carriage that was like a coach-and-four. Lady Blanchemain. She is leaving to-morrow for England. She desired me to give you her farewell blessing."

"It will be doubly precious to me by reason of the medium through which it comes," said John, with his courtliest obeisance.

There was a little pause, during which she looked at the western sky. But presently, "Why did you tell me you had an uncle who was a farmer?" she asked, beginning slowly to pace down the pathway.

"Did I tell you that? I suppose I had a boastful fit upon me," John replied.

"But it very much misled me," said Maria Dolores.

"Oh, it's perfectly true," said John.

"You are the heir to a peerage," said Maria Dolores.

John had a gesture.

"There you are," he said; "and my uncle, the peer, spends much of his time and most of his money breeding sheep and growing turnips. If that isn't a farmer, I should like to know what is."

"I hope you displayed less reticence regarding your station in the world to that woman you were in love with," said she.

"That woman I was in love with?" John caught her up. "That woman I am in love with, please."

"Oh? Are you still in love with her?" Maria Dolores wondered. "It is so long since you have spoken of her, I thought your heart was healed."

"If I have not spoken of her, it has been because I was under the impression that you had tacitly forbidden me to do so," John informed her.

"So I had," she admitted. "But I find that there is such a thing—as being too well obeyed."

She brought out her last words, after the briefest possible suspension, hurriedly, in a voice that quailed a little, as if in terror of its own audacity. John, with tingling pulses, turned upon her. But she, according to her habit at such times, refused him her eyes. He could see, though, that her eyelashes trembled.

"Oh," he cried, "I love her so much, I need her so, I suppose I shall end by doing the dishonourable thing."

"Did you ever tell her that you were Lord Blanchemain's heir?" she asked.

"I never thought of it. Why should I?" said John.

"When you were bemoaning your poverty, as an obstacle to marriage, you might have remembered that your birth counted for something. With us Austrians, for example, birth counts for almost everything,—for infinitely more than money."

"I think," said John, as one impersonally generalizing, "that a fortune-hunter with a tuft is the least admirable variety of that animal. I wish you could see what beautiful little rose-white ears she has, and the lovely way in which her dark hair droops about them."

"How long ago was it," mused she, "that love first made people fancy they saw beauties which had no real existence?"

"Oh, the moment you see a thing, it acquires real existence," John returned. "The act of seeing is an act of creation. The thing you see has real existence on your retina and in your mind, if nowhere else, and that is the realest sort of real existence."

"Then she must thank you as the creator of her 'rose-white' ears," laughed Maria Dolores. "I wonder whether that sunset has any real existence, and whether it is really as splendid as it seems."

The west had become a vast sea of gold, a pure and placid sea of many-tinted gold, bounded and intersected and broken into innumerable wide bays and narrow inlets by great cloud-promontories, purple and rose and umber. Directly opposite, just above the crest-line of the hills, hung the nearly full moon, pale as a mere phantom of itself. And from somewhere in the boscage at the garden's end came a lool-lool-lool-lioo-liô, deep and long-drawn, liquid and complaining, which one knew to be the preliminary piping-up of Philomel.

"If some things," said John, "derive their beauty from the eye of the beholder, the beauty of other things is determined by the presence or absence of the person you long to share all beautiful visions with. The sky, the clouds, the whole air and earth, this evening, seem to me beauty in its ultimate perfection."

Maria Dolores softly laughed, softly, softly. And for a long time, by the marble balustrade that guarded this particular terrace of the garden, they stood in silence. The western gold burned to red, and more sombre red; the cloud-promontories gloomed purpler; the pale moon kindled, and shone like ice afire, with its intense cold brilliancy; the olive woods against the sky lay black; a score of nightingales, near and far, were calling and sobbing and exulting; and two human spirits yearned with the mystery of love.

"My income," said John, all at once, brusquely coming to earth, "is exactly six hundred pounds a year. I suppose two people could live on that, though I'm dashed if I see how. Of course we couldn't live in England, where that infernal future peerage would put us under a thousand obligations; but I dare say we might find a garret here in Italy. The question is, would she be willing, or have I any right to ask her, to marry me, on the condition of leaving her own money untouched, and living with me on mine?

"Apropos of future peerages and things," said Maria Dolores, "do you happen to know whether she has any rank of her own to keep up?"

"I don't care twopence about her rank," said John.

"Do you happen to know her name?" she asked.

"I know what I wish her name was," John promptly answered. "I wish to Heaven it was Blanchemain."

Maria Dolores gazed, pensive, at the moon. "He does not even know her name," she remarked, on a key of meditation, "though he fears," she sadly shook her head, "he fears it may be Smitti."

"Oh, I say!" cried John, wincing, with a kind of sorry giggle; and I don't know whether he looked or felt the more sheepish. His face showed every signal of humiliation, he tugged nervously at his beard, but his eyes, in spite of him, his very blue blue eyes were full of vexed amusement.

The bell in the clock-tower struck eight.

"There—it is your hour for going to Annunziata," said Maria Dolores.

"You have not answered my question?" said John.

"I will think about it," said she.

IV

Annunziata's delirium had passed, but in spite of all their efforts to persuade her not to talk, talk she would.

"This is the month of May, isn't it?" she asked, next morning.

"Yes, dear one," said Maria Dolores, whose watch it was.

"And that is the month of Mary. San Luca ought to hurry up and make me well, so that I can keep flowers on the Lady Altar."

"Then if you wish to get well quickly," said Maria Dolores, "you must try not to talk,—nor even to think, if you can help it. You know the doctor does not want you to talk."

"All right. I won't talk. A going clock may be always wrong, but a stopped clock is right twice a day. So stop your tongue, and avoid folly. My uncle told me that. He never talks."

"And now shall you and I imitate his example?" proposed Maria Dolores. Her lips, compressed, were plainly the gaolers of a laugh.

"Yes," said Annunziata. "But I can't help thinking of those poor flowers. All May flowers are born to be put on the Lady Altar. Those poor flowers are missing what they were born for. They must be very sad."

"This afternoon, every afternoon," Maria Dolores promised, "I will put flowers on the Lady Altar. Now see if you can't shut your eyes, and rest for a little while."

"I once found a toad on the Lady Altar. What do you think he was there for?" asked Annunziata.

"I can't think, I'm sure," said Maria Dolores.

"Well, when I first saw him I was angry, and I was going to get a broom and sweep him away. But then I thought it must be very hard to be a toad, and that you can't help being a toad if you are born one, and I thought that perhaps that toad was there praying that he might be changed from a toad to something else. So I didn't sweep him away. Have you ever heard of the little Mass of Corruption that lay in a garden?"

"No," said Maria Dolores.

"Well," said Annunziata, "once upon a time a little Mass of Corruption lay in a garden. But it did not know it was a Mass of Corruption, and it did not wish to be a Mass of Corruption, and it never did any harm or wished any harm to any one, but just lay there all day long, and thought how beautiful the sky was, and how good and warm the sun, and how sweet the flowers were and the bird-songs, and thanked God with all its heart for having given it such a lovely place to lie in. Yet all the while, you know, it couldn't help being what it was, a little Mass of Corruption. And at the close of the day some people who were walking in the garden saw it, and cried out, 'Oh, what a horrible little Mass of Corruption!' and they called the gardener, and had it buried in the earth. But the little Mass of Corruption, when it heard that it was a little Mass of Corruption, felt very, very sad, and it made a supplication to Our Lady. 'I do not wish to be a Mass of Corruption,' it said. 'Queen of Heaven, pray for me, that I may be purified, and made clean, and not be a Mass of Corruption any longer, and that I may then go back to the garden, out of this dark earth.' So Our Lady prayed for it, and it was cleansed with water and purified, and—what do you think the Little Mass of Corruption became? It became a rose—a red rose in that very garden, just where they had buried it. From which we see—But I don't quite remember what we see from it," she broke off the pain of baffled effort on her brow. "My uncle could tell you that."

Afterwards, for a few minutes, she was silent, lying quite still, with her eyes on the ceiling.

"Why do sunny lands produce dark people, and dark lands light people?" she asked all at once.

"Ah, don't begin to talk again, dear," Maria Dolores pleaded. "The doctor will he coming soon now, and he will be angry if he finds that I have let you talk."

"Oh, I will tell him that it isn't your fault," said Annunziata. "I will tell him that you didn't let me, but that I talked because it is so hard to lie here and think, think, think, and not be allowed to say what you are thinking. Prospero asked me that question about sunny lands a long time ago. I've been thinking and thinking, but I can't think it out. Have you a great deal of money? Are you very rich?"

"Darling, won't you please not talk any more?" Maria Dolores implored her.

"I'll stop pretty soon," said Annunziata. "I think you are very rich. I think, in spite of his saying her name is not Maria Dolores, that you are the dark woman whom Prospero is to marry. He is to marry a dark woman who will be very rich. But then he will also he very rich himself. Is Austria a sunny land? England must be a dark land, for Prospero is light. Let me see your left hand, please, and I will tell you whether you are to marry a light man.

"Hush!" said Maria Dolores, trying not to laugh. "That shall be some other time."

"Wouldn't you like to marry Prospero? I would," said Annunziata.

"I think I hear the wheels of the doctor's gig," said Maria Dolores. "Now we shall both be scolded."

"But of course, if you do marry him, I can't," Annunziata pursued, undaunted by this menace. "A man isn't allowed to have two wives,—unless he is a king. He may have two sisters or two daughters, but not two wives or two mothers. There was once a king named Salomone who had a thousand wives, but even he had only one mother, I think. I hope you will live at Sant' Alessina after your marriage. Will you?"

Maria Dolores bit her lip and vouchsafed no answer; and again for a minute or two Annunziata lay silent. But presently, "Have you ever waked up in the middle of the night, and felt terribly frightened?" she asked.

"Yes, dear, sometimes. I suppose every one has," said Maria Dolores.

"Well, do you know why people feel so frightened when they wake like that?" pursued the child.

"No," said Maria Dolores.

"I do," said Annunziata. "The middle of the night is the Devil's Noon. Nobody is awake in the middle of the night except wicked people, like thieves or roysterers, or people who are suffering. All people who are good, and who are well and happy, are sound asleep. So it is the time the Devil likes best, and he and all his evil spirits come to the earth to enjoy the great pleasure of seeing people wicked or suffering. And that is why we feel so frightened when we wake. The air all round us is full of evil spirits, though we can't see them, and they are watching us, to run and tell the Devil if we do anything wicked or suffer any pain. But it is foolish of us to feel frightened, because our Guardian Angels are always there too, and they are a hundred times stronger than the evil spirits. Angels, you know, are very big, very much bigger than men. Some of them are as tall as mountains, but even the quite small ones are as tall as trees."

"This time I really do hear wheels," said Maria Dolores, with an accent of thanksgiving.

And she rose to meet the doctor.

V

John sat in his room, absorbed in contemplation of a tiny lace-edged pocket-handkerchief. He spread it out upon his knee, and laughed. He crumpled it up in his palm, and pressed it to his face, and drank deep of its faint perfume,—faint, but powerfully provocative of visions and emotions. He had found it during the night on the floor of the sick-room, and had captured and borne it away like a treasure. He spread it out on his knee again, and was again about to laugh at its small size and gauzy texture, when his eye was caught by something in its corner. He held it nearer to the window. The thing that had caught his eye was a cypher surmounted by a crown, embroidered so minutely as almost to call for a magnifying glass. But without a glass he could see that the cypher was composed of the initials M and D, and that the crown was not a coronet, but a closed crown, of the pattern worn by mediatised princes.

"What on earth can be the meaning of this?" he wondered, frowning, and breathing quick.

But he was stopped from further speculation for the moment by a knock at the door. The postman entered with two letters, for one of which, as it was registered, John had to sign. When he had tipped the postman and was alone again, he put his registered letter on the dressing-table (with a view to disciplining curiosity and exercising patience, possibly) and turned his attention to the other. In a handsome, high old hand, that somehow reminded him of the writer's voice, it ran as follows:—

And his registered letter, when at last he opened it, ran thus:—

And then there came another tap at the door, and it was the postman who had returned, with a third letter which, like the true Italian postman that he was, he had forgotten,—and I fancy, if it hadn't been for that tip still warm in his pocket, the easy-going fellow would have allowed it to stand over till to-morrow. He made, at any rate, a great virtue of having discovered it and of having retraced his steps.

The letter was written in black, angular, uncompromising characters, that looked rather like sabre-thrusts and bayonets. It read:—

And the enclosure:—

So! Here sat a young man with plenty to think about; a young man, whose income, yesterday a bare six hundred, had sprung up over night to something near six thousand. Six thousand a year isn't opulence, if you like, but a young man possessing it can hardly look upon himself as quite empty-handed, either. This young man, however, had other things as well to think of. What of that embroidered handkerchief? What of those shrewd suspicions of Lady Blanchemain's? What of his miller's daughter?

And there was another thing still. What of his proud old honest Spartan of an unimaginative uncle? He thought of him, and "Oh, the poor old boy," he cried. "Not for ten times the money would I have had the dear old woman write to him like that. How hard it must have hit him!"

"M, D, and a princely crown," he reflected. "I wish I had an Almanach de Gotha."

VI

"Who was it said of some one that he dearly loved a lord?" Maria Dolores, her chin in the air, asked of Frau Brandt.

"I do not know," Frau Brandt replied, knitting.

"Well, at least, you know whether it would be possible for a man and wife to live luxuriously on sixpence a week. Would it?" pursued her tease.

"You are well aware that it would not," said Frau Brandt.

"How about six hundred pounds a year?"

"Six hundred pounds—?" Frau Brandt computed. "That would be six thousand florins, no? It would depend upon their station in the world."

"Well, suppose their station were about my station—and my lord's?"

"You," said Frau Brandt, with a chuckle of contentment, swaying her white-bonneted head. "You would need twice that for your dress alone."

"One could dress more simply," said Maria Dolores.

"No," said Frau Brandt, her good eyes beaming, "you must always dress in the very finest that can be had."

"But then," Maria Dolores asked with wistfulness, "what am I to do? For six hundred pounds is the total of his income."

"You have, unless I am mistaken, an income of your own," Frau Brandt remarked.

"Yes—but he won't let me use it," said Maria Dolores.

"He? Who?" demanded Frau Brandt, bridling. "Who is there that dares to say let or not let to you?

"My future husband," said Maria Dolores. "He has peculiar ideas of honour. He does not like the notion of marrying a woman who is richer than himself. So he will marry me only on the condition that I send my own fortune to be dropped in the middle of the sea."

"What nonsense is this?" said Frau Brandt, composed.

"No, it is the truth," said Maria Dolores, "the true truth. He is too proud to live in luxury at his wife's expense."

"I like a man making conditions, when it is a question of marrying you," said Frau Brandt, with scorn.

"So do I," said Maria Dolores, with heartiness.

"Well, at any rate, I am glad to see that he is not after you for your money," Frau Brandt reflected.

"I suppose we shall have to dress in sackcloth and dine on lentils," said Maria Dolores.

"Of course you will tell him to take his conditions to the Old One," said Frau Brandt. "It is out of the question for you to change the manner of your life."

"I feel indeed as if it were," admitted Maria Dolores. "But if he insists?"

"Then tell him to go to the Old One himself," was Frau Brandt's blunt advice.

Maria Dolores laughed. "It seems like an impasse," she said. "Who is to break the news to my brother?"

"We will wait until there is some news to break," the old woman amiably grumbled.

Again at the sunset hour Maria Dolores met him in the garden. He was seated on one of their marble benches, amongst marble columns, (rose-tinted by the western light, and casting long purple shadows), in a vine-embowered pergola. He was leaning forward, legs crossed, brow wrinkled, as one deep in thought. But of course at the sound of her footstep he jumped up.

"What mighty problem were you revolving?" she asked. "You looked like Rembrandt's philosophe en méditation."

"I was revolving the problem of human love," he answered. "I was mutilating Browning.