The Cardinal’s Snuff-Box by Henry Harland (page 3)

great event, a great step forward, would have definitely taken place. He would have been received at Ventirose as a friend. He would be no longer a mere nodding acquaintance, owing even that meagre relationship to the haphazard of propinquity. The ice-broken, if you will, but still present in abundance–would have been gently thawed away. One era had passed; but then a new era would have begun.

So he turned his back upon Villa F’loriano, and. set off, high-hearted, up the wide lawns, under the bending trees –whither, on four red-marked occasions, he had watched her disappear–towards the castle, which faced him in its vast irregular picturesqueness. There were the oldest portions, grimly mediaeval, a lakeside fortress, with ponderous round towers, meurtrieres, machiolations, its grey stone walls discoloured in fantastic streaks and patches by weather-stains and lichens, or else shaggily overgrown by creepers. Then there were later portions, rectangular, pink-stuccoed, with rusticated work at the corners, and, on the blank spaces between the windows, quaint allegorical frescoes, faded, half washed-out. And then there were entirely modern-looking portions, of gleaming marble, with numberless fanciful carvings, spires, pinnacles, reliefs–wonderfully light, gay, habitable, and (Peter thought) beautiful, in the clear Italian atmosphere, against the blue Italian sky.

“It’s a perfect house for her,” he said. “It suits her–like an appropriate garment; it almost seems to express her.”

And all the while, as he proceeded, her voice kept sounding in his ears; scraps of her conversation, phrases that she had spoken, kept coming back to him.

One end of the long, wide marble terrace had been arranged as a sort of out-of-door living-room. A white awning was stretched overhead; warm-hued rugs were laid on the pavement; there were wicker lounging-chairs, with bright cushions, and a little table, holding books and things.

The Duchessa rose from one of the lounging-chairs, and came forward, smiling, to meet him.

She gave him her hand–for the first time.

It was warm–electrically warm; and it was soft–womanly soft; and it was firm, alive–it spoke of a vitality, a temperament. Peter was sure, besides, that it would be sweet to smell; and he longed to bend over it, and press it with his lips. He might almost have done so, according to Italian etiquette. But, of course, he simply bowed over it, and let it go.

“Mi trova abbandonata,” she said, leading the way back to the terrace-end. There were notes of a peculiar richness in her voice, when she spoke Italian; and she dwelt languorously on the vowels, and rather slurred the consonants, lazily, in the manner Italian women have, whereby they give the quality of velvet to their tongue. She was not an Italian woman; Heaven be praised, she was English: so this was just pure gain to the sum-total of her graces. “My uncle and my niece have gone to the village. But I ‘m expecting them to come home at any moment now–and you’ll not have long, I hope, to wait for your snuff.”

She flashed a whimsical little smile into his eyes. Then she returned to her wicker chair, glancing an invitation at Peter to place himself in the one facing her. She leaned back, resting her head on a pink silk cushion.

Peter, no doubt, sent up a silent prayer that her uncle and her niece might be detained at the village for the rest of the afternoon. By her niece he took her to mean Emilia: he liked her for the kindly euphemism. “What hair she has!” he thought, admiring the loose brown masses, warm upon their background of pink silk.

“Oh, I’m inured to waiting,” he replied, with a retrospective mind for the interminable waits of that interminable day.

The Duchessa had taken a fan from the table, and was playing with it, opening and shutting it slowly, in her lap. Now she caught Peter’s eyes examining it, and she gave it to him. (My own suspicion is that Peter’s eyes had been occupied rather with the hands that held the fan, than with the fan itself–but that’s a detail.)

“I picked it up the other day, in Rome,” she said. “Of course, it’s an imitation of the French fans of the last century, but I thought it pretty.”

It was of white silk, that had been thinly stained a soft yellow, like the yellow of faded yellow rose-leaves. It was painted with innumerable plump little cupids, flying among pale clouds. The sticks were of mother-of=pearl. The end-sticks were elaborately incised, and in the incisions opals were set, big ones and small ones, smouldering with green and scarlet fires.

“Very pretty indeed,” said Peter, “and very curious. It’s like a great butterfly’s wing is n’t it? But are n’t you afraid of opals?”

“Afraid of opals?” she wondered. “Why should one be?”

“Unless your birthday happens to fall in October, they’re reputed to bring bad luck,” he reminded her.

“My birthday happens to fall in June but I ‘ll never believe that such pretty things as opals can bring bad luck,” she laughed, taking the fan, which he returned to her, and stroking one of the bigger opals with her finger tip.

“Have you no superstitions?” he asked.

“I hope not–I don’t think I have,” she answered. “We’re not allowed to have superstitions, you know–nous autres Catholiques.”

“Oh?” he said, with surprise. “No, I did n’t know.”

“Yes, they’re a forbidden luxury. But you–? Are you superstitious? Would you be afraid of opals?”

“I doubt if I should have the courage to wear one. At all events, I don’t regard superstitions in the light of a luxury. I should be glad to be rid of those I have. They’re a horrible inconvenience. But I can’t get it out of my head that the air is filled with a swarm of malignant little devils, who are always watching their chance to do us an ill turn. We don’t in the least know the conditions under which they can bring it off; but it’s legendary that if we wear opals, or sit thirteen at table, or start an enterprise on Friday, or what not, we somehow give them their opportunity. And one naturally wishes to be on the safe side.”

She looked at him with. doubt, considering.

“You don’t seriously believe all that?” she said.

“No, I don’t seriously believe it. But one breathes it in with the air of one’s nursery, and it sticks. I don’t believe it, but I fear it just enough to be made uneasy. The evil eye, for instance. How can one spend any time in Italy, where everybody goes loaded with charms against it, and help having a sort of sneaking half-belief in the evil eye?”

She shook her head, laughing.

“I ‘ve spent a good deal of time in Italy, but I have n’t so much as a sneaking quarter-belief in it.”

“I envy you your strength of mind,” said he. “But surely, though superstition is a luxury forbidden to Catholics, there are plenty of good Catholics who indulge in it, all the same?”

“There are never plenty of good Catholics,” said sire. “You employ a much-abused expression. To profess the Catholic faith, to go to Mass on Sunday and abstain from meat on Friday, that is by no means sufficient to constitute a good Catholic. To be a good Catholic one would have to be a saint, nothing less–and not a mere formal saint, either, but a very real saint, a saint in thought and feeling, as well as in speech and action. Just in so far as one is superstitious, one is a bad Catholic. Oh, if the world were populated by good Catholics, it would be the Millennium come to pass.”

“It would be that, if it were populated by good Christians –wouldn’t it?” asked Peter.

“The terms are interchangeable,” she answered sweetly, with a half-comical look of defiance.

“Mercy!” cried he. “Can’t a Protestant be a good Christian too?”

“Yes,” she said, “because a Protestant can be a Catholic without knowing it.”

“Oh–?” he puzzled, frowning.

“It’s quite simple,” she explained. “You can’t be a Christian unless you’re a Catholic. But if you believe as much of Christian truth as you’ve ever had a fair opportunity of learning, and if you try to live in accordance with Christian morals, you are a Catholic, you’re a member of the Catholic Church, whether you know it or not. You can’t be deprived of your birthright, you see.”

“That seems rather broad,” said Peter; “and one had always heard that Catholicism was nothing if not narrow.”

“How could it be Catholic if it were narrow?” asked she. “However, if a Protestant uses his intelligence, and is logical, he’ll not remain an unconscious Catholic long. If he studies the matter, and is logical, he’ll wish to unite himself to the Church in her visible body. Look at England. See how logic is multiplying converts year by year.”

“But it’s the glory of Englishmen to be illogical,” said Peter, with a laugh. “Our capacity for not following premisses to their logical consequences is the principal source of our national greatness. So the bulk of the English are likely to resist conversion for centuries to come–are they not? And then, nowadays, one is so apt to be an indifferentist in matters of religion–and Catholicism is so exacting. One remains a Protestant from the love of ease.”

“And from the desire, on the part of a good many Englishmen at least, to sail in a boat of their own–not to get mixed up with a lot of foreign publicans and sinners–no?” she suggested.

“Oh, of course, we’re insular and we’re Pharisaical,” admitted Peter.

“And as for one’s indifference,” she smiled, “that is most probably due to one’s youth and inexperience. One can’t come to close quarters with the realities of life–with sorrow, with great joy, with temptation, with sin or with heroic virtue, with death, with the birth of a new soul, with any of the awful, wonderful realities of life–and continue to be an indifferentist in matters of religion, do you think?”

“When one comes to close quarters with the awful, wonderful realities of life, one has religious moments,” he acknowledged. “But they’re generally rather fugitive, are n’t they?”

“One can cultivate them–one can encourage them,” she said. “If you would care to know a good Catholic,” she added, “my niece, my little ward, Emilia is one. She wants to become a Sister of Mercy, to spend her life nursing the poor.”

“Oh? Would n’t that be rather a pity?” Peter said. “She’s so extremely pretty. I don’t know when I have seen prettier brown eyes than hers.”

“Well, in a few years, I expect we shall see those pretty brown eyes looking out from under a sister’s coif. No, I don’t think it will be a pity. Nuns and sisters, I think, are the happiest people in the world–and priests. Have you ever met any one who seemed happier than my uncle, for example?”

“I have certainly never met any one who seemed sweeter, kinder,” Peter confessed. “He has a wonderful old face.”

“He’s a wonderful old man,” said she. “I ‘m going to try to keep him a prisoner here for the rest of the summer–though he will have it that he’s just run down for a week. He works a great deal too hard when he’s in Rome. He’s the only Cardinal I’ve ever heard of, who takes practical charge of his titular church. But here in the country he’s out-of-doors all the blessed day, hand in hand with Emilia. He’s as young as she is, I believe. They play together like children–and make–me feel as staid and solemn and grown-up as one of Mr. Kenneth Grahame’s Olympians.”

Peter laughed. Then, in the moment of silence that followed, he happened to let his eyes stray up the valley.

“Hello!” he suddenly exclaimed. “Someone has been painting our mountain green.”

The Duchessa turned, to look; and she too uttered an exclamation.

By some accident of reflection or refraction, the snows of Monte Sfiorito had become bright green, as if the light that fell on them had passed through emeralds. They both paused, to gaze and marvel for a little. Indeed, the prospect was a pleasing one, as well as a surprising–the sunny lawns, the high trees, the blue lake, and then that bright green mountain.

“I have never known anything like those snow-peaks for sailing under false colours,” Peter said. “I have seen them every colour of the calendar, except their native white.”

“You must n’t blame the poor things,” pleaded the Duchessa. “They can’t help it. It’s all along o’ the distance and the atmosphere and the sun.”

She closed her fan, with which she had been more or less idly playing throughout their dialogue, and replaced it on the table. Among the books there–French books, for the most part, in yellow paper–Peter saw, with something of a flutter (he could never see it without something of a flutter), the grey-and-gold binding of “A Man of Words.”

The Duchessa caught his glance.

“Yes,” she said; “your friend’s novel. I told you I had been re-reading it.”

“Yes,” said he.

“And–do you know–I ‘m inclined to agree with your own enthusiastic estimate of it?” she went on. “I think it’s extremely–but extremely–clever; and more–very charming, very beautiful. The fatal gift of beauty!”

And her smile reminded him that the application of the tag was his own.

“Yes,” said he.

“Its beauty, though,” she reflected, “is n’t exactly of the obvious sort–is it? It does n’t jump at you, for instance. It is rather in the texture of the work, than on the surface. One has to look, to see it.”

“One always has to look, to see beauty that is worth seeing,” he safely generalised. But then–he had put his foot in the stirrup–his hobby bolted with him. “It takes two to make a beautiful object. The eye of the beholder is every bit as indispensable as the hand of the artist. The artist does his work–the beholder must do his. They are collaborators. Each must be the other’s equal; and they must also be like each other–with the likeness of opposites, of complements. Art, in short, is entirely a matter of reciprocity. The kind of beauty that jumps at you is the kind you end by getting heartily tired of–is the skin-deep kind; and therefore it is n’t really beauty at all–it is only an approximation to beauty–it may be only a simulacrum of it.”

Her eyes were smiling, her face was glowing, softly, with interest, with friendliness and perhaps with the least suspicion of something else–perhaps with the faintest glimmer of suppressed amusement; but interest was easily predominant.

“Yes,” she assented . . . . But then she pursued her own train of ideas. “And–with you–I particularly like the woman –Pauline. I can’t tell you how much I like her. I–it sounds extravagant, but it’s true–I can think of no other woman in the whole of fiction whom I like so well–who makes so curiously personal an appeal to me. Her wit–her waywardness –her tenderness–her generosity–everything. How did your friend come by his conception of her? She’s as real to me as any woman I have ever known she’s more real to me than most of the women I know–she’s absolutely real, she lives, she breathes. Yet I have never known a woman resembling her. Life would be a merrier business if one did know women resembling her. She seems to me all that a woman ought ideally to be. Does your friend know women like that–the lucky man? Or is Pauline, for all her convincingness, a pure creature of imagination?”

“Ah,” said Peter, laughing, “you touch the secret springs of my friend’s inspiration. That is a story in itself. Felix Wildmay is a perfectly commonplace Englishman. How could a woman like Pauline be the creature of his imagination? No–she was a ‘thing seen.’ God made her. Wildmay was a mere copyist. He drew her, tant bien que mal, from the life from a woman who’s actually alive on this dull globe to-day. But that’s the story.”

The Duchessa’s eyes were intent.

“The story-? Tell me the story,” she pronounced in a breath, with imperious eagerness.

And her eyes waited, intently.

“Oh,” said Peter, “it’s one of those stories that can scarcely be told. There’s hardly any thing to take hold of. It’s without incident, without progression–it’s all subjective –it’s a drama in states of mind. Pauline was a ‘thing seen,’ indeed; but she wasn’t a thing known: she was a thing divined. Wildmay never knew her–never even knew who she was–never knew her name–never even knew her nationality, though, as the book shows, he guessed her to be an Englishwoman, married to a Frenchman. He simply saw her, from a distance, half-a-dozen times perhaps. He saw her in Paris, once or twice, at the theatre, at the opera; and then later again, once or twice, in London; and then, once more, in Paris, in the Bois. That was all, but that was enough. Her appearance–her face, her eyes, her smile, her way of carrying herself, her way of carrying her head, her gestures, her movements, her way of dressing–he never so much as heard her voice–her mere appearance made an impression on him such as all the rest of womankind had totally failed to make. She was exceedingly lovely, of course, exceedingly distinguished, noble-looking; but she was infinitely more. Her face her whole person–had an expression! A spirit burned in her–a prismatic, aromatic fire. Other women seemed dust, seemed dead, beside her. She was a garden, inexhaustible, of promises, of suggestions. Wit, capriciousness, generosity, emotion–you have said it–they were all there. Race was there, nerve. Sex was there–all the mystery, magic, all the essential, elemental principles of the Feminine, were there: she was a woman. A wonderful, strenuous soul was there: Wildmay saw it, felt it. He did n’t know her –he had no hope of ever knowing her–but he knew her better than he knew any one else in the world. She became the absorbing subject of his thoughts, the heroine of his dreams. She became, in fact, the supreme influence of his life.”

The Duchessa’s eyes had not lost their intentness, while he was speaking. Now that he had finished, she looked down at her hands, folded in her lap, and mused for a moment in silence. At last she looked up again.

“It’s as strange as anything I have ever heard,” she said, “it’s furiously strange–and romantic–and interesting. But –but–” She frowned a little, hesitating between a choice of questions.

“Oh, it’s a story all compact of ‘buts,'” Peter threw out laughing.

She let the remark pass her–she had settled upon her question.

“But how could he endure such a situation?” she asked. “How could he sit still under it? Did n’t he try in any way–did n’t he make any effort at all–to–to find her out–to discover who she was–to get introduced to her? I should think he could never have rested–I should think he would have moved heaven and earth.”

“What could he do? Tell me a single thing he could have done,” said Peter. “Society has made no provision for a case like his. It ‘s absurd–but there it is. You see a woman somewhere; you long to make her acquaintance; and there’s no natural bar to your doing so–you ‘re a presentable man she’s what they call a lady–you’re both, more or less, of the same monde. Yet there ‘s positively no way known by which you can contrive it–unless chance, mere fortuitous chance, just happens to drop a common acquaintance between you, at the right time and place. Chance, in Wildmay’s case, happened to drop all the common acquaintances they may possibly have had at a deplorable distance. He was alone on each of the occasions when he saw her. There was no one he could ask to introduce him; there was no one he could apply to for information concerning her. He could n’t very well follow her carriage through the streets–dog her to her lair, like a detective. Well–what then?”

The Duchessa was playing with her fan again.

“No,” she agreed; “I suppose it was hopeless. But it seems rather hard on the poor man–rather baffling and tantalising.”

“The poor man thought it so, to be sure,” said Peter; “he fretted and fumed a good deal, and kicked against the pricks. Here, there, now, anon, he would enjoy his brief little vision of her–then she would vanish into the deep inane. So, in the end–he had to take it out in something–he took it out in writing a book about her. He propped up a mental portrait of her on his desk before him, and translated it into the character of Pauline. In that way he was able to spend long delightful hours alone with her every day, in a kind of metaphysical intimacy. He had never heard her voice–but now he heard it as often as Pauline opened her lips. He owned her –he possessed her–she lived under his roof–she was always waiting for him in his study. She is real to you? She was inexpressibly, miraculously real to him. He saw her, knew her, felt her, realised her, in every detail of her mind, her soul, her person–down to the very intonations of her speech–down to the veins in her hands, the rings on her fingers–down to her very furs and laces, the frou-frou of her skirts, the scent upon her pocket-handkerchief. He had numbered the hairs of her head, almost.”

Again the Duchessa mused for a while in silence, opening and shutting her fan, and gazing into its opals.

“I am thinking of it from the woman’s point of view,” she said, by and by. “To have played such a part in a man’s life–and never to have dreamed it! Never even, very likely, to have dreamed that such a man existed–for it’s entirely possible she didn’t notice him, on those occasions when he saw her. And to have been the subject of such a novel–and never to have dreamed that, either! To have read the novel perhaps–without dreaming for an instant that there was any sort of connection between Pauline and herself! Or else–what would almost be stranger still–not to have read the novel, not to have heard of it! To have inspired such a book, such a beautiful book –yet to remain in sheer unconscious ignorance that there was such a book! Oh, I think it is even more extraordinary from the woman’s point of view than from the man’s. There is something almost terrifying about it. To have had such an influence on the destiny of someone you’ve never heard of! There’s a kind of intangible sense of a responsibility.”

“There is also, perhaps,” laughed Peter, “a kind of intangible sense of a liberty taken. I’m bound to say I think Wildmay was decidedly at his ease. To appropriate in that cool fashion the personality of a total stranger! But artists are the most unprincipled folk unhung. Ils prennent leur bien la, ou ils le trouvent.”

“Oh, no,” said the Duchessa, “I think she was fair game. One can carry delicacy too far. He was entitled to the benefits of his discovery–for, after all, it was a discovery, was n’t it? You have said yourself how indispensable the eye of the beholder is–‘the seeing eye.’ I think, indeed, the whole affair speaks extremely well for Mr. Wildmay. It is not every man who would be capable of so purely intellectual a passion. I suppose one must call his feeling for her a passion? It indicates a distinction in his nature. He can hardly be a mere materialist. But–but I think it’s heart-rending that he never met her.”

“Oh, but that’s the continuation of the story,” said Peter. “He did meet her in the end, you know.”

“He did meet her!” cried the Duchessa, starting up, with a sudden access of interest, whilst her eyes lightened. “He did meet her? Oh, you must tell me about that.”

And just at this crisis the Cardinal and Emilia appeared, climbing the terrace steps.

“Bother!” exclaimed the Duchessa, under her breath. Then, to Peter, “It will have to be for another time–unless I die of the suspense.”

After the necessary greetings were transacted, another elderly priest joined the company; a tall, burly, rather florid man, mentioned, when Peter was introduced to him, as Monsignor Langshawe. “This really is her chaplain,” Peter concluded. Then a servant brought tea.

“Ah, Diamond, Diamond, you little know what mischief you might have wrought,” he admonished himself, as he walked home through the level sunshine. “In another instant, if we’d not been interrupted, you would have let the cat out of the bag. The premature escape of the cat from the bag would spoil everything.”

And he hugged himself, as one snatched from peril, in a qualm of retroactive terror. At the same time he was filled with a kind of exultancy. All that he had hoped had come to pass, and more, vastly more. Not only had he been received as a friend at Ventirose, but he had been encouraged to tell her a part at least of the story by which her life and his were so curiously connected; and he had been snatched from the peril of telling her too much. The day was not yet when he could safely say, “Mutato nomine. . . . .” Would the day ever be? But, meanwhile, just to have told her the first ten lines of that story, he could not help feeling, somehow advanced matters tremendously, somehow put a new face on matters.

“The hour for which the ages sighed may not be so far away as you think,” he said to Marietta. “The curtain has risen upon Act Three. I fancy I can perceive faint glimmerings of the beginning of the end.”

XIX

All that evening, something which he had not been conscious of noticing especially when it was present to him–certainly he had paid no conscious attention to its details–kept recurring and recurring to Peter’s memory: the appearance of the prettily-arranged terrace-end at Ventirose: the white awning, with the blue sky at its edges, the sunny park beyond; the warm-hued carpets on the marble pavement; the wicker chairs, with their bright cushions; the table, with its books and bibelots–the yellow French books, a tortoise-shell paperknife, a silver paperweight, a crystal smelling-bottle, a bowlful of drooping poppies; and the marble balustrade, with its delicate tracery of leaves and tendrils, where the jessamine twined round its pillars.

This kept recurring, recurring, vividly, a picture that he could see without closing his eyes, a picture with a very decided sentiment. Like the gay and gleaming many-pinnacled facade of her house, it seemed appropriate to her; it seemed in its fashion to express her. Nay, it seemed to do more. It was a corner of her every-day environment; these things were the companions, the witnesses, of moments of her life, phases of herself, which were hidden from Peter; they were the companions and witnesses of her solitude, her privacy; they were her confidants, in a way. They seemed not merely to express her, therefore, but to be continually on the point–I had almost said of betraying her. At all events, if he could only understand their silent language, they would prove rich in precious revelations. So he welcomed their recurrences, dwelt upon them, pondered them, and got a deep if somewhat inarticulate pleasure from them.

On Thursday, as he approached the castle, the last fires of sunset were burning in the sky behind it–the long irregular mass of buildings stood out in varying shades of blue, against varying, dying shades of red: the grey stone, dark, velvety indigo; the pink stucco, pink still, but with a transparent blue penumbra over it; the white marble, palely, scintillantly amethystine. And if he was interested in her environment, now he could study it to his heart’s content: the wide marble staircase, up which he was shown, with its crimson carpet, and the big mellow painting, that looked as if it might be a Titian, at the top; the great saloon, in which he was received, with its polished mosaic floor, its frescoed ceiling, its white-and-gold panelling, its hangings and upholsteries of yellow brocade, its satinwood chairs and tables, its bronzes, porcelains, embroideries, its screens and mirrors; the long dining-hall, with its high pointed windows, its slender marble columns supporting a vaulted roof, its twinkling candles in chandeliers and sconces of cloudy Venetian glass, its brilliant table, its flowers and their colours and their scents.

He could study her environment to his heart’s content, indeed –or to his heart’s despair. For all this had rather the effect of chilling, of depressing him. It was very splendid; it was very luxurious and cheerful; it was appropriate and personal to her, if you like; no doubt, in its fashion, in its measure, it, too, expressed her. But, at that rate, it expressed her in an aspect which Peter had instinctively made it his habit to forget, which he by no means found it inspiriting to remember. It expressed, it emphasised, her wealth, her rank; it emphasised the distance, in a worldly sense, between her and himself, the conventional barriers.

And she . . .

She was very lovely, she was entirely cordial, friendly, she was all that she had ever been–and yet–and yet–Well, somehow, she seemed indefinably different. Somehow, again, the distance, the barriers, were emphasised. She was very lovely, she was entirely cordial, friendly, she was all that she had ever been; but, somehow, to-night, she seemed very much the great lady, very much the duchess . . . .

“My dear man,” he said to himself, “you were mad to dream for a single instant that there was the remotest possibility of anything ever happening.”

The only other guests, besides the Cardinal and Monsignor Langshawe, were an old Frenchwoman, with beautiful white hair, from one of the neighbouring villas, Madame de Lafere, and a young, pretty, witty, and voluble Irishwoman, Mrs. O’Donovan Florence, from an hotel at Spiaggia. In deference, perhaps, to the cloth of the two ecclesiastics, none of the women were in full evening-dress, and there was no arm-taking when they went in to dinner. The dinner itself was of a simplicity which Peter thought admirable, and which, of course, he attributed to his Duchessa’s own good taste. He was not yet familiar enough with the Black aristocracy of Italy, to be aware that in the matter of food and drink simplicity is as much the criterion of good form amongst them, as lavish complexity is the criterion of good form amongst the English-imitating Whites.

The conversation, I believe, took its direction chiefly from the initiative of Mrs. O’Donovan Florence. With great sprightliness and humour, and with an astonishing light-hearted courage, she rallied the Cardinal upon the neglect in which her native island was allowed to languish by the powers at Rome. “The most Catholic country in three hemispheres, to be sure,” she said; “every inch of its soil soaked with the blood of martyrs. Yet you’ve not added an Irish saint to the Calendar for I see you’re blushing to think how many ages; and you’ve taken sides with the heretic Saxon against us in our struggle for Home Rule–which I blame you for, though, being a landowner and a bit of an absentee, I ‘m a traitorous Unionist myself.”

The Cardinal laughingly retorted that the Irish were far too fine, too imaginative and poetical a race, to be bothered with material questions of government and administration. They should leave such cares to the stolid, practical English, and devote the leisure they would thus obtain to the further exercise and development of what someone had called “the starfire of the Celtic nature.” Ireland should look upon England as her working-housekeeper. And as for the addition of Irish saints to the Calendar, the stumbling-block was their excessive number. “‘T is an embarrassment of riches. If we were once to begin, we could never leave off till we had canonised nine-tenths of the dead population.”

Monsignor Langshawe, at this (making jest the cue for earnest), spoke up for Scotland, and deplored the delay in the beatification of Blessed Mary. “The official beatification,” he discriminated, “for she was beatified in the heart of every true Catholic Scot on the day when Bloody Elizabeth murdered her.”

And Madame de Lafere put in a plea for Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette. and the little Dauphin.

“Blessed Mary–Bloody Elizabeth,” laughed the Duchessa, in an aside to Peter; “here is language to use in the presence of a Protestant Englishman.”

“Oh, I’m accustomed to ‘Bloody Elizabeth,'” said he. “Was n’t it a word of Cardinal Newman’s?”

“Yes, I think so,” said she. “And since every one is naming his candidate; for the Calendar, you have named mine. I think there never was a saintlier saint than Cardinal Newman.”

“What is your Eminence’s attitude towards the question of mixed marriages?” Mrs. O’Donovan Florence asked.

Peter pricked up his ears.

“It is not the question of actuality in Italy that it is in England,” his Eminence replied; “but in the abstract, and other things equal, my attitude would of course be one of disapproval.”

“And yet surely,” contended she, “if a pious Catholic girl marries a Protestant man, she has a hundred chances of converting him?”

“I don’t know,” said the Cardinal. “Would n’t it be safer to let the conversion precede the marriage? Afterwards, I ‘m afraid, he would have a hundred chances of inducing her to apostatise, or, at least, of rendering her lukewarm.”

“Not if she had a spark of the true zeal,” said Mrs. O’Donovan Florence. “Any wife can make her husband’s life a burden to him, if she will conscientiously lay herself out to do so. The man would be glad to submit, for the sake of peace in his household. I often sigh for the good old days of the Inquisition; but it’s still possible, in the blessed seclusion of the family circle, to apply the rack and the thumbscrew in a modified form. I know a dozen fine young Protestant men in London whom I’m labouring to convert, and I feel I ‘m defeated only by the circumstance that I’m not in a position to lead them to the altar in the full meaning of the expression.”

“A dozen?” the Cardinal laughed. “Aren’t you complicating the question of mixed marriages with that of plural marriage?”

“‘T was merely a little Hibernicism, for which I beg your Eminence’s indulgence,” laughed she. “But what puts the most spokes in a proselytiser’s wheel is the Faith itself. If we only deserved the reputation for sharp practice and double dealing which the Protestants have foisted upon us, it would be roses, roses, all the way. Why are we forbidden to let the end justify the means? And where are those accommodements avec le ciel of which we’ve heard? We’re not even permitted a few poor accommodements avec le monde.”

“Look at my uncle’s face,” whispered the Duchessa to Peter. The Cardinal’s fine old face was all alight with amusement. “In his fondness for taking things by their humorous end, he has met an affinity.”

“It will be a grand day for the Church and the nations, when we have an Irish Pope,” Mrs. O’Donovan Florence continued. “A good, stalwart, militant Irishman is what’s needed to set everything right. With a sweet Irish tongue, he’d win home the wandering sheep; and with a strong Irish arm, he’d drive the wolves from the fold. It’s he that would soon sweep the Italians out of Rome.”

“The Italians will soon be swept out of Rome by the natural current of events,” said the Cardinal. “But an Irish bishop of my acquaintance insists that we have already had many Irish Popes, without knowing it. Of all the greatest Popes he cries, ‘Surely, they must have had Irish blood.’ He’s perfectly convinced that Pius the Ninth was Irish. His very name, his family-name, Ferretti, was merely the Irish name, Farrity, Italianised, the good bishop says. No one but an Irishman, he insists, could have been so witty.”

Mrs. O’Donovan Florence looked intensely thoughtful for a moment . . . . Then, “I ‘m trying to think of the original Irish form of Udeschini,” she declared.

At which there was a general laugh.

“When you say ‘soon,’ Eminence, do you mean that we may hope to see the Italians driven from Rome in our time?” enquired Madame de Lafere.

“They are on the verge of bankruptcy–for their sins,” the Cardinal answered. “When the crash comes–and it can’t fail to come before many years–there will necessarily be a readjustment. I do not believe that the conscience of Christendom will again allow Peter to be deprived of his inheritance.”

“God hasten the good day,” said Monsignor Langshawe.

“If I can live to see Rome restored to the Pope, I shall die content, even though I cannot live to see France restored to the King,” said the old Frenchwoman.

“And I–even though I cannot live to see Britain restored to the Faith,” said the Monsignore.

The Duchessa smiled at Peter.

“What a hotbed of Ultramontanes and reactionaries you have fallen into,” she murmured.

“It is exhilarating,” said he, “to meet people who have convictions.”

“Even when you regard their convictions as erroneous?” she asked.

“Yes, even then,” he answered. “But I’m not sure I regard as erroneous the convictions I have heard expressed to-night.”

“Oh–?” she wondered. “Would you like to see Rome restored to the Pope?”

“Yes,” said he, “decidedly–for aesthetic reasons, if for no others.”

“I suppose there are aesthetic reasons,” she assented. “But we, of course, think there are conclusive reasons in mere justice.”

“I don’t doubt there are conclusive reasons in mere justice, too,” said he.

After dinner, at the Cardinal’s invitation, the Duchessa went to the piano, and played Bach and Scarlatti. Her face, in the soft candlelight, as she discoursed that “luminous, lucid” music, Peter thought . . . But what do lovers always think of their ladies’ faces, when they look up from their pianos, in soft candlelight?

Mrs. O’Donovan Florence, taking her departure, said to the Cardinal, “I owe your Eminence the two proudest days of my life. The first was when I read in the paper that you had received the hat, and I was able to boast to all my acquaintances that I had been in the convent with your niece by marriage. And the second is now, when I can boast forevermore hereafter that I’ve enjoyed the honour of making my courtesy to you.”

“So,” said Peter, as he walked home through the dew and the starlight of the park, amid the phantom perfumes of the night, “so the Cardinal does n’t approve of mixed marriages and, of course, his niece does n’t, either. But what can it matter to me? For alas and alas–as he truly said–it’s hardly a question of actuality.”

And he lit a cigarette.

XX

“So he did meet her, after all?” the Duchessa said.

“Yes, he met her in the end,” Peter answered.

They were seated under the gay white awning, against the bright perspective of lawn, lake, and mountains, on the terrace at Ventirose, where Peter was paying his dinner-call. The August day was hot and still and beautiful–a day made of gold and velvet and sweet odours. The Duchessa lay back languidly, among the crisp silk cushions, in her low, lounging chair; and Peter, as he looked at her, told himself that he must be cautious, cautious.

“Yes, he met her in the end,” he said.

“Well–? And then–?” she questioned, with a show of eagerness, smiling into his eyes. “What happened? Did she come up to his expectations? Or was she just the usual disappointment? I have been pining–oh, but pining–to hear the continuation of the story.”

She smiled into his eyes, and his heart fluttered. “I must be cautious,” he told himself. “In more ways than one, this is a crucial moment.” At the same time, as a very part of his caution, he must appear entirely nonchalant and candid.

“Oh, no–tutt’ altro,” he said, with an assumption of nonchalant airiness and candid promptness. “She ‘better bettered’ his expectations–she surpassed his fondest. She was a thousand times more delightful than he had dreamed–though, as you know, he had dreamed a good deal. Pauline de Fleuvieres turned out to be the feeblest, faintest echo of her.”

The Duchessa meditated for an instant.

“It seems impossible. It’s one of those situations in which a disenchantment seems the foregone conclusion,” she said, at last.

“It seems so, indeed,” assented Peter; “but disenchantment, there was none. She was all that he had imagined, and infinitely more. She was the substance–he had imagined the shadow. He had divined her, as it were, from a single angle, and there were many angles. Pauline was the pale reflection of one side of her–a pencil-sketch in profile.”

The Duchessa shook her head, marvelling, and smiled again.

“You pile wonder upon wonder,” she said. “That the reality should excel the poet’s ideal! That the cloud-capped towers which looked splendid from afar, with all the glamour of distance, should prove to be more splendid still, on close inspection! It’s dead against the accepted theory of things. And that any woman should be nicer than that adorable Pauline! You tax belief. But I want to know what happened. Had she read his book?”

“Nothing happened,” said Peter. “I warned you that it was a drama without action. A good deal happened, no doubt, in Wildmay’s secret soul. But externally, nothing. They simply chatted together–exchanged the time o’ day–like any pair of acquaintances. No, I don’t think she had read his book. She did read it afterwards, though.”

“And liked it?”

“Yes–she said she liked it.”

“Well–? But then-?” the Duchessa pressed him, insistently. “When she discovered the part she had had in its composition–? Was n’t she overwhelmed? Wasn’t she immensely interested –surprised–moved?”

She leaned forward a little. Her eyes were shining. Her lips were slightly parted, so that between their warm rosiness Peter could see the exquisite white line of her teeth. His heart fluttered again. “I must be cautious, cautious,” he remembered, and made a strenuous “act of will” to steady himself.

“Oh, she never discovered that,” he said.

“What!” exclaimed the Duchessa. Her face fell. Her eyes darkened–with dismay, with incomprehension. “Do you–you don’t–mean to say that he didn’t tell her?” There was reluctance to believe, there was a conditional implication of deep reproach, in her voice.

Peter had to repeat his act of will.

“How could he tell her?” he asked.

She frowned at him, with reproach that was explicit now, and a kind of pained astonishment.

“How could he help telling her?” she cried. “But–but it was the one great fact between them. But it was a fact that intimately concerned her–it was a fact of her own destiny. But it was her right to be told. Do you seriously mean that he did n’t tell her? But why did n’t he? What could have possessed him?”

There was something like a tremor in her voice. “I must appear entirely nonchalant and candid,” Peter remembered.

“I fancy he was possessed, in some measure, by a sense of the liberty he had taken by a sense of what one might, perhaps, venture to qualify as his ‘cheek.’ For, if it was n’t already a liberty to embody his notion of her in a novel–in a published book, for daws to peck at–it would have become a liberty the moment he informed her that he had done so. That would have had the effect of making her a kind of involuntary particeps criminis.”

“Oh, the foolish man!” sighed the Duchessa, with a rueful shake of the head. “His foolish British self-consciousness! His British inability to put himself in another person’s place, to see things from another’s point of view! Could n’t he see, from her point of view, from any point of view but his own, that it was her right to be told? That the matter affected her in one way, as much as it affected him in another? That since she had influenced–since she had contributed to–his life and his art as she had, it was her right to know it? Couldn’t he see that his ‘cheek,’ his real ‘cheek,’ began when he withheld from her that great strange chapter of her own history? Oh, he ought to have told her, he ought to have told her.”

She sank back in her chair, giving her head another rueful shake, and gazed ruefully away, over the sunny landscape, through the mellow atmosphere, into the golden-hazy distance.

Peter looked at her–and then, quickly, for caution’s sake, looked elsewhere.

“But there were other things to be taken into account,” he said.

The Duchessa raised her eyes. “What other things?” they gravely questioned.

“Would n’t his telling her have been equivalent to a declaration of love?” questioned he, looking at the signet-ring on the little finger of his left hand.

“A declaration of love?” She considered for a moment. “Yes, I suppose in a way it would,” she acknowledged. “But even so?” she asked, after another moment of consideration. “Why should he not have made her a declaration of love? He was in love with her, wasn’t he?”

The point of frank interrogation in her eyes showed clearly, showed cruelly, how detached, how impersonal, her interest was.

“Frantically,” said Peter. For caution’s sake, he kept HIS eyes on the golden-hazy peaks of Monte Sfionto. “He had been in love with her, in a fashion, of course, from the beginning. But after he met her, he fell in love with her anew. His mind, his imagination, had been in love with its conception of her. But now he, the man, loved her, the woman herself, frantically, with just a downright common human love. There were circumstances, however, which made it impossible for him to tell her so.”

“What circumstances?” There was the same frank look of interrogation. “Do you mean that she was married?”

“No, not that. By the mercy of heaven,” he pronounced, with energy, “she was a widow.”

The Duchessa broke into an amused laugh.

“Permit me to admire your piety,” she said.

And Peter, as his somewhat outrageous ejaculation came back to him, laughed vaguely too.

“But then–?” she went on. “What else? By the mercy of heaven, she was a widow. What other circumstance could have tied his tongue?”

“Oh,” he answered, a trifle uneasily, “a multitude of circumstances. Pretty nearly every conventional barrier the world has invented, existed between him and her. She was a frightful swell, for one thing.”

“A frightful swell–?” The Duchessa raised her eyebrows.

“Yes,” said Peter, “at a vertiginous height above him–horribly ‘aloft and lone’ in the social hierarchy.” He tried to smile.

“What could that matter?” the Duchessa objected simply. “Mr. Wildmay is a gentleman.”

“How do you know he is?” Peter asked, thinking to create a diversion,

“Of course, he is. He must be. No one but a gentleman could have had such an experience, could have written such a book. And besides, he’s a friend of yours. Of course he’s a gentleman,” returned the adroit Duchessa.

“But there are degrees of gentleness, I believe,” said Peter. “She was at the topmost top. He–well, at all events, he knew his place. He had too much humour, too just a sense of proportion, to contemplate offering her his hand.”

“A gentleman can offer his hand to any woman–under royalty,” said the Duchessa.

“He can, to be sure–and he can also see it declined with thanks,” Peter answered. “But it wasn’t merely her rank. She was horribly rich, besides. And then–and then–! There were ten thousand other impediments. But the chief of them all, I daresay, was Wildmay’s fear lest an avowal of his attachment should lead to his exile from her presence–and he naturally did not wish to be exiled.”

“Faint heart!” the Duchessa said. “He ought to have told her. The case was peculiar, was unique. Ordinary rules could n’t apply to it. And how could he be sure, after all, that she would n’t have despised the conventional barriers, as you call them? Every man gets the wife he deserves–and certainly he had gone a long way towards deserving her. She could n’t have felt quite indifferent to him–if he had told her; quite indifferent to the man who had drawn that magnificent Pauline from his vision of her. No woman could be entirely proof against a compliment like that. And I insist that it was her right to know. He should simply have told her the story of his book and of her part in it. She would have inferred the rest. He needn’t have mentioned love–the word.”

“Well,” said Peter, “it is not always too late to mend. He may tell her some fine day yet.”

And in his soul two voices were contending.

“Tell her–tell her–tell her! Tell her now, at once, and abide your chances,” urged one. “No–no–no–do nothing of the kind,” protested the second. “She is arguing the point for its abstract interest. She is a hundred miles from dreaming that you are the man–hundreds of miles from dreaming that she is the woman. If she had the least suspicion of that, she would sing a song as different as may be. Caution, caution.”

He looked at her–warm and fragrant and radiant, in her soft, white gown, in her low lounging-chair, so near, so near to him –he looked at her glowing eyes, her red lips, her rich brown hair, at the white-and-rose of her skin, at the delicate blue veins in her forehead, at her fine white hands, clasped loosely together in her lap, at the flowing lines of her figure, with its supple grace and strength; and behind her, surrounding her, accessory to her, he was conscious of the golden August world, in the golden August weather–of the green park, and the pure sunshine, and the sweet, still air, of the blue lake, and the blue sky, and the mountains with their dark-blue shadows, of the long marble terrace, and the gleaming marble facade of the house, and the marble balustrade, with the jessamine twining round its columns. The picture was very beautiful–but something was wanting to perfect its beauty; and the name of the something that was wanting sang itself in poignant iteration to the beating of his pulses. And he longed and longed to tell her; and he dared not; and he hesitated . . . .

And while he was hesitating, the pounding of hoofs and the grinding of carriage-wheels on gravel reached his ears–and so the situation was saved, or the opportunity lost, as you choose to think it. For next minute a servant appeared on the terrace, and announced Mrs. O’Donovan Florence.

And shortly after that lady’s arrival, Peter took his leave.

XXI

Well, Trixie, and is one to congratulate you?” asked Mrs. O’Donovan Florence.

“Congratulate me–? On what?” asked Beatrice.

“On what, indeed!” cried the vivacious Irishwoman. “Don’t try to pull the wool over the eyes of an old campaigner like me.”

Beatrice looked blank.

“I can’t in the least think what you mean,” she said.

“Get along with you,” cried Mrs. O’Donovan Florence; and she brandished her sunshade threateningly. “On your engagement to Mr.–what’s this his name is?–to be sure.”

She glanced indicatively down the lawn, in the direction of Peter’s retreating tweeds.

Beatrice had looked blank. But now she looked–first, perhaps, for a tiny fraction of a second, startled–then gently, compassionately ironical.

“My poor Kate! Are you out of your senses?” she enquired, in accents of concern, nodding her head, with a feint of pensive pity.

“Not I,” returned Mrs. O’Donovan Florence, cheerfully confident. “But I ‘m thinking I could lay my finger on a long-limbed young Englishman less than a mile from here, who very nearly is. Hasn’t he asked you yet?”

“Es-to bete?” Beatrice murmured, pitifully nodding again.

“Ah, well, if he has n’t, it’s merely a question of time when he will,” said Mrs. O’Donovan Florence. “You’ve only to notice the famished gaze with which he devours you, to see his condition. But don’t try to hoodwink me. Don’t pretend that this is news to you.”

“News!” scoffed Beatrice. “It’s news and nonsense–the product of your irrepressible imagination. Mr. What’s-this-his-name-is, as you call him, and I are the barest acquaintances. He’s our temporary neighbour–the tenant for the season of Villa Floriano–the house you can catch a glimpse of, below there, through the trees, on the other side of the river.”

“Is he, now, really? And that’s very interesting too. But I wasn’t denying it.” Mrs. O’Donovan Florence smiled, with derisive sweetness. “The fact of his being the tenant of the house I can catch a glimpse of, through the trees, on the other side of the river, though a valuable acquisition to my stores of knowledge, does n’t explain away his famished glance unless, indeed, he’s behind with the rent: but even then, it’s not famished he’d look, but merely anxious and persuasive. I’m a landlord myself. No, Trixie, dear, you’ve made roast meat of the poor fellow’s heart, as the poetical Persians express it; and if he has n’t told you so yet with his tongue, he tells the whole world so with his eyes as often as he allows them to rest on their loadstone, your face. You can see the sparks and the smoke escaping from them, as though they were chimneys. If you’ve not observed that for yourself, it can only be that excessive modesty has rendered you blind. The man is head over ears in love with you. Nonsense or bonsense, that is the sober truth.”

Beatrice laughed.

“I ‘m sorry to destroy a romance, Kate,” she said; “but alas for the pretty one you ‘ve woven, I happen to know that, so far from being in love with me, Mr. Marchdale is quite desperately in love with another woman. He was talking to me about her the moment before you arrived.”

“Was he, indeed?–and you the barest acquaintances!” quizzed Mrs. O’Donovan Florence, pulling a face. “Well, well,” she went on thoughtfully, “if he’s in love with another woman, that settles my last remaining doubt. It can only be that the other woman’s yourself.”

Beatrice shook her head, and laughed again.

“Is that what they call an Irishism?” she asked, with polite curiosity.

“And an Irishism is a very good thing, too–when employed with intention,” retorted her friend. “Did he just chance, now, in a casual way, to mention the other woman’s name, I wonder?”

“Oh, you perverse and stiff-necked generation!” Beatrice laughed. “What can his mentioning or not mentioning her name signify? For since he’s in love with her, it’s hardly likely that he’s in love with you or me at the same time, is it?”

“That’s as may be. But I’ll wager I could make a shrewd guess at her name myself. And what else did he tell you about her? He’s told me nothing; but I’ll warrant I could paint her portrait. She’s a fine figure of a young Englishwoman, brown-haired, grey-eyed, and she stands about five-feet-eight in her shoes. There’s an expression of great malice and humour in her physiognomy, and a kind of devil-may-care haughtiness in the poise of her head. She’s a bit of a grande dame, into the bargain–something like an Anglo-Italian duchess, for example; she’s monstrously rich; and she adds, you’ll be surprised to learn, to her other fascinations that of being a widow. Faith, the men are so fond of widows, it’s a marvel to me that we’re ever married at all until we reach that condition;–and there, if you like, is another Irishism for you. But what’s this? Methinks a rosy blush mantles my lady’s brow. Have I touched the heel of Achilles? She IS a widow? He TOLD you she was a widow? . . . But–bless us and save us!–what’s come to you now? You’re as white as a sheet. What is it?”

“Good heavens!” gasped Beatrice. She lay back in her chair, and stared with horrified eyes into space. “Good–good heavens!”

Mrs. O’ Donovan Florence leaned forward and took her hand.

“What is it, my dear? What’s come to you?” she asked, in alarm.

Beatrice gave a kind of groan.

“It’s absurd–it’s impossible,” she said; “and yet, if by any ridiculous chance you should be right, it’s too horribly horrible.” She repeated her groan. “If by any ridiculous chance you are right, the man will think that I have been leading him on!”

“LEADING HIM ON!” Mrs. O’Donovan Florence suppressed a shriek of ecstatic mirth. “There’s no question about my being right,” she averred soberly. “He wears his heart behind his eyeglass; and whoso runs may read it.”

“Well, then–” began Beatrice, with an air of desperation . . . “But no,” she broke off. “YOU CAN’T be right. It’s impossible, impossible. Wait. I’ll tell you the whole story. You shall see for yourself.”

“Go on,” said Mrs. O’Donovan Florence, assuming an attitude of devout attention, which she retained while Beatrice (not without certain starts and hesitations) recounted the fond tale of Peter’s novel, and of the woman who had suggested the character of Pauline.

“But OF COURSE!” cried the Irishwoman, when the tale was finished; and this time her shriek of mirth, of glee, was not suppressed. “Of course–you miracle of unsuspecting innocence! The man would never have breathed a whisper of the affair to any soul alive, save to his heroine herself–let alone to you, if you and she were not the same. Couple that with the eyes he makes at you, and you’ve got assurance twice assured. You ought to have guessed it from the first syllable he uttered. And when he went on about her exalted station and her fabulous wealth! Oh, my ingenue! Oh, my guileless lambkin! And you Trixie Belfont! Where’s your famous wit? Where are your famous intuitions?”

“BUT DON’T YOU SEE,” wailed Beatrice, “don’t you see the utterly odious position this leaves me in? I’ve been urging him with all my might to tell her! I said . . . oh, the things I said!” She shuddered visibly. “I said that differences of rank and fortune could n’t matter.” She gave a melancholy laugh. “I said that very likely she’d accept him. I said she couldn’t help being . . . Oh, my dear, my dear! He’ll think–of course, he can’t help thinking–that I was encouraging him–that I was coming halfway to meet him.”

“Hush, hush! It’s not so bad as that,” said Mrs. O’Donovan Florence, soothingly. “For surely, as I understand it, the man doesn’t dream that you knew it was about himself he was speaking. He always talked of the book as by a friend of his; and you never let him suspect that you had pierced his subterfuge.”

Beatrice frowned for an instant, putting this consideration in its place, in her troubled mind. Then suddenly a light of intense, of immense relief broke in her face.

“Thank goodness!” she sighed. “I had forgotten. No, he does n’t dream that. But oh, the fright I had!”

“He’ll tell you, all the same,” said Mrs. O’Donovan Florence.

“No, he’ll never tell me now. I am forewarned, forearmed. I ‘ll give him no chance,” Beatrice answered.

“Yes; and what’s more, you’ll marry him,” said her friend.

“Kate! Don’t descend to imbecilities,” cried Beatrice.

“You’ll marry him,” reiterated Mrs. O’Donovan Florence, calmly. “You’ll end by marrying him–if you’re human; and I’ve seldom known a human being who was more so. It’s not in flesh and blood to remain unmoved by a tribute such as that man has paid you. The first thing you’ll do will be to re-read the novel. Otherwise, I’d request the loan of it myself, for I ‘m naturally curious to compare the wrought ring with the virgin gold–but I know it’s the wrought ring the virgin gold will itself be wanting, directly it’s alone. And then the poison will work. And you’ll end by marrying him.”

“In the first place,” replied Beatrice, firmly, “I shall never marry any one. That is absolutely certain. In the next place, I shall not re-read the novel; and to prove that I shan’t, I shall insist on your taking it with you when you leave to-day. And finally, I’m nowhere near convinced that you’re right about my being . . . well, you might as well say the raw material, the rough ore, as the virgin gold. It’s only a bare possibility. But even the possibility had not occurred to me before. Now that it has, I shall be on my guard. I shall know how to prevent any possible developments.”

“In the first place,” said Mrs. O’Donovan Florence, with equal firmness, “wild horses couldn’t induce me to take the novel. Wait till you’re alone. A hundred questions about it will come flocking to your mind; you’d be miserable if you had n’t it to refer to. In the next place, the poison will work and work. Say what you will, it’s flattery that wins us. In the third place, he’ll tell you. Finally, you’ll make a good Catholic of him, and marry him. It’s absurd, it’s iniquitous, anyhow, for a young and beautiful woman like you to remain a widow. And your future husband is a man of talent and distinction, and he’s not bad-looking, either. Will you stick to your title, now, I wonder? Or will you step down, and be plain Mrs. Marchdale? No–the Honourable Mrs.–excuse me–‘Mr. and the Honourable Mrs. Marchdale.’ I see you in the ‘Morning Post’ already. And will you
continue to live in Italy? Or will you come back to England?”

“Oh, my good Kate, my sweet Kate, my incorrigible Kate, what an extravagantly silly Kate you can be when the mood takes you,” Beatrice laughed.

“Kate me as many Kates as you like, the man is really not bad-looking. He has a nice lithe springy figure, and a clean complexion, and an open brow. And if there’s a suggestion of superciliousness in the tilt of his nose, of scepticism in the twirl of his moustaches, and of obstinacy in the squareness of his chin–ma foi, you must take the bitter with the sweet. Besides, he has decent hair, and plenty of it–he’ll not go bald. And he dresses well, and wears his clothes with an air. In short, you’ll make a very handsome couple. Anyhow, when your family are gathered round the evening lamp to-night, I ‘ll stake my fortune on it, but I can foretell the name of the book they’ll find Trixie Belfont reading,” laughed Mrs. O’Donovan Florence.

For a few minutes, after her friend had left her, Beatrice sat still, her head resting on her hand, and gazed with fixed eyes at Monte Sfiorito. Then she rose, and walked briskly backwards and forwards, for a while, up and down the terrace. Presently she came to a standstill, and leaning on the balustrade, while one of her feet kept lightly tapping the pavement, looked off again towards the mountain.

The prospect was well worth her attention, with its blue and green and gold, its wood and water, its misty-blushing snows, its spaciousness and its atmosphere. In the sky a million fluffy little cloudlets floated like a flock of fantastic birds, with mother-of-pearl tinted plumage. The shadows were lengthening now. The sunshine glanced from the smooth surface of the lake as from burnished metal, and falling on the coloured sails of the fishing-boats, made them gleam like sails of crimson silk. But I wonder how much of this Beatrice really saw.

She plucked an oleander from one of the tall marble urns set along the balustrade, and pressed the pink blossom against her face, and, closing her eyes, breathed in its perfume; then, absent-minded, she let it drop, over the terrace, upon the path below.

“It’s impossible,” she said suddenly, aloud. At last she went into the house, and up to her rose-and-white retiring-room. There she took a book from the table, and sank into a deep easy-chair, and began to turn the pages.

But when, by and by, approaching footsteps became audible in the stone-floored corridor without, Beatrice hastily shut the book, thrust it back upon the table, and caught up another so that Emilia Manfredi, entering, found her reading Monsieur Anatole France’s “Etui de nacre.”

“Emilia,” she said, “I wish you would translate the I Jongleur de Notre Dame’ into Italian.”

XXII

Peter, we may suppose, returned to Villa Floriano that afternoon in a state of some excitement.

“He ought to have told her–“

“It was her right to be told–“

“What could her rank matter–“

“A gentleman can offer his hand to any woman–“

“She would have despised the conventional barriers–“

“No woman could be proof against such a compliment–“

The case was peculiar–ordinary rules could not apply to it–“

“Every man gets the wife he deserves–and he had certainly gone a long way towards deserving her–“

“He should simply have told her the story of his book and of her part in it–he need n’t have mentioned love–she would have understood–“

The Duchessa’s voice, clear and cool and crisp-cut, sounded perpetually in his ears; the words she had spoken, the arguments she had urged, repeated and repeated themselves, danced round and round, in his memory.

“Ought I to have told her–then and there? Shall I go to her and tell her to-morrow?”

He tried to think; but he could not think. His faculties were in a whirl–he could by no means command them. He could only wait, inert, while the dance went on. It was an extremely riotous dance. The Duchessa’s conversation was reproduced without sequence, without coherence–scattered fragments of it were flashed before him fitfully, in swift disorder. If he would attempt to seize upon one of those fragments, to detain and fix it, for consideration–a speech of hers, a look, an inflection–then the whole experience suddenly lost its outlines, his recollection of it became a jumble, and he was left, as it were, intellectually gasping.

He walked about his garden, he went into the house, he came out, he walked about again. he went in and dressed for dinner, he
sat on his rustic bench, he smoked cigarette after cigarette.

“Ought I to have told her? Ought I to tell her to-morrow?”

At moments there would come a lull in the turmoil, an interval of quiet, of apparent clearness; and the answer would seem perfectly plain.

“Of course, you ought to tell her. Tell her–and all will be well. She has put herself in the supposititious woman’s place, and she says, ‘He ought to tell her.’ She says it earnestly, vehemently. That means that if she were the woman, she would wish to be told. She will despise the conventional barriers –she will be touched, she will be moved. ‘No woman could be proof against such a compliment.’ Go to her to-morrow, and tell her–and all will be well.”

At these moments he would look up towards the castle, and picture the morrow’s consummation; and his heart would have a convulsion. Imagination flew on the wings of his desire. She stood before him in all her sumptuous womanhood, tender and strong and glowing. As he spoke, her eyes lightened, her eyes burned, the blood came and went in her cheeks; her lips parted. Then she whispered something; and his heart leapt terribly; and he called her name–“Beatrice! Beatrice!” Her name expressed the inexpressible–the adoring passion, the wild hunger and wild triumph of his soul. But now she was moving towards him –she was holding out her hands. He caught her in his arms–he held her yielding body in his arms. And his heart leapt terribly, terribly. And he wondered how he could endure, how he could live through, the hateful hours that must elapse before tomorrow would be to-day.

But “hearts, after leaps, ache.” Presently the whirl would begin again; and then, by and by, in another lull, a contrary answer would seem equally plain.

“Tell her, indeed? My dear man, are you mad? She would simply be amazed, struck dumb, by your presumption. I can see from here her incredulity–I can see the scorn with which she would wither you. It has never dimly occurred to her as conceivable that you would venture to be in love with her, that you would dare to lift your eyes to her–you who are nothing, to her who is all. Yes–nothing, nobody. In her view, you are just a harmless nobody, whose society she tolerates for kindness’ sake–and faute de mieux. It is precisely because she deems you a nobody–because she is profoundly conscious of the gulf that separates you from her–that she can condescend to be amiably familiar. If you were of a rank even remotely approximating to her own, she would be a thousand times more circumspect. Remember–she does not dream that you are Felix Wildmay. He is a mere name to her; and his story is an amusing little romance, perfectly external to herself, which she discusses with entirely impersonal interest. Tell her by all means, if you like Say, ‘I am Wildmay–you are Pauline.’ And see how amazed she will be, and how incensed, and how indignant.”

Then he would look up at the castle stonily, in a mood of desperate renunciation, and vaguely meditate packing his belongings, and going home to England.

At other moments a third answer would seem the plain one: something between these extremes of optimism and pessimism, a compromise, it not a reconciliation.

“Come! Let us be calm, let us be judicial. The consequences of our actions, here below, if hardly ever so good as we could hope, are hardly ever so bad as we might fear. Let us regard this matter in the light of that guiding principle. True, she does n’t dream that you are Wildmay. True, if you were abruptly to say to her, ‘I am Wildmay–you are the woman,’ she would be astonished–even, if you will, at first, more or less taken aback, disconcerted. But indignant? Why? What is this gulf that separates you from her? What are these conventional barriers of which you make so much? She is a duchess, she is the daughter of a lord, and she is rich. Well, all that is to be regretted. But you are neither a plebeian nor a pauper yourself. You are a man of good birth, you are a man of some parts, and you have a decent income. It amounts to this–she is a great lady, you are a small gentleman. In ordinary circumstances, to be sure, so small a gentleman could not ask so great a lady to become his wife. But here the circumstances are not ordinary. Destiny has meddled in the business. Small gentleman though you are, an unusual and subtle relation-ship has been established between you and your great lady. She herself says, ‘Ordinary rules cannot apply–he ought to tell her.’ Very good: tell her. She will be astonished, but she will see that there is no occasion for resentment. And though the odds are, of course, a hundred to one that she will not accept you, still she must treat you as an honourable suitor. And whether she accepts you or rejects you, it is better to tell her and to have it over, than to go on forever dangling this way, like the poor cat in the adage. Tell her–put your fate to the touch–hope nothing, fear nothing–and bow to the event.”

But even this temperate answer provoked its counter-answer.

“The odds are a hundred to one, a thousand to one, that she will not accept you. And if you tell her, and she does not accept you, she will not allow you to see her any more, you will be exiled from her presence. And I thought, you did not wish to be exiled from her presence, You would stake, then, this great privilege, the privilege of seeing her, of knowing her, upon a. chance that has a thousand to one against it. You make light of the conventional barriers–but the principal barrier of them all, you are forgetting. She is a Roman Catholic, and a devout one. Marry a Protestant? She would as soon think of marrying a Paynim Turk.”

In the end, no doubt, a kind of exhaustion followed upon his excitement. Questions and answers suspended themselves; and he could only look up towards Ventirose, and dumbly wish that he was there. The distance was so trifling–in five minutes he could traverse it–the law seemed absurd and arbitrary, which condemned him to sit apart, free only to look and wish.

It was in this condition of mind that Marietta found him, when she came to announce dinner.

Peter gave himself a shake. The sight of the brown old woman, with her homely, friendly face, brought him back to small things, to actual things; and that, if it was n’t a comfort, was, at any rate, a relief.

“Dinner?” he questioned. “Do peris at the gates of Eden DINE?”

“The soup is on the table,” said Marietta.

He rose, casting a last glance towards the castle.

Towers and battlements . . .
Bosomed high in tufted trees, Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The cynosure of neighbouring eyes.”

He repeated the lines in an undertone, and went in to dinner. And then the restorative spirit of nonsense descended upon him.

“Marietta,” he asked, “what is your attitude towards the question of mixed marriages?”

Marietta wrinkled her brow.

“Mixed marriages? What is that, Signorino?”

“Marriages between Catholics and Protestants,” he explained.

“Protestants?” Her brow was still a network. “What things are they?”

“They are things–or perhaps it would be less invidious to say people–who are not Catholics–who repudiate Catholicism as a deadly and soul-destroying error.”

“Jews?” asked Marietta.

“No–not exactly. They are generally classified as Christians. But they protest, you know. Protesto, protestare, verb, active, first conjugation. ‘Mi pare che la donna protesta troppo,’ as the poet sings. They’re Christians, but they protest against the Pope and the Pretender.”

“The Signorino means Freemasons,” said Marietta.

“No, he does n’t,” said Peter. “He means Protestants.”

“But pardon, Signorino,” she insisted; “if they are not Catholics, they must be Freemasons or Jews. They cannot be Christians. Christian–Catholic: it is the same. All Christians are Catholics.”

“Tu quoque!” he cried. “You regard the terms as interchangeable? I ‘ve heard the identical sentiment similarly enunciated by another. Do I look like a Freemason?”

She bent her sharp old eyes upon him studiously for a moment. Then she shook her head.

“No,” she answered slowly. “I do not think that the Signorino looks like a Freemason.”

“A Jew, then?”

“Mache! A Jew? The Signorino!” She shrugged derision.

“And yet I’m what they call a Protestant,” he said.

“No,” said she.

“Yes,” said he. “I refer you to my sponsors in baptism. A regular, true blue moderate High Churchman and Tory, British and Protestant to the backbone, with ‘Frustrate their Popish tricks’ writ large all over me. You have never by any chance married a Protestant yourself?” he asked.

“No, Signorino. I have never married any one. But it was not for the lack of occasions. Twenty, thirty young men courted me when I was a girl. But–mica!–I would not look at them. When men are young they are too unsteady for husbands; when they are old they have the rheumatism.”

Admirably philosophised,” he approved. But it sometimes happens that men are neither young nor old. There are men of thirty-five–I have even heard that there are men of forty. What of them?”

“There is a proverb, Signorino, which says, Sposi di quarant’ anni son mai sempre tiranni,” she informed him.

“For the matter of that,” he retorted, “there is a proverb which says, Love laughs at locksmiths.”

“Non capisco,” said Marietta.

“That’s merely because it’s English,” said he. “You’d understand fast enough if I should put it in Italian. But I only quoted it to show the futility of proverbs. Laugh at locksmiths, indeed! Why, it can’t even laugh at such an insignificant detail as a Papist’s prejudices. But I wish I were a duke and a millionaire. Do you know any one who could create me a duke and endow me with a million?”

“No, Signorino,” she answered, shaking her head.

“Fragrant Cytherea, foam-born Venus, deathless Aphrodite, cannot, goddess though she is,” he complained. “The fact is, I ‘m feeling rather undone. I think I will ask you to bring me a bottle of Asti-spumante–some of the dry kind, with the white seal. I ‘ll try to pretend that it’s champagne. To tell or not to tell–that is the question.

‘A face to lose youth for, to occupy age With the dream of, meet death with–

And yet, if you can believe me, the man who penned those lines had never seen her. He penned another line equally pat to the situation, though he had never seen me, either

‘Is there no method to tell her in Spanish?”

But you can’t imagine how I detest that vulgar use of ‘pen’ for ‘write’–as if literature were a kind of pig. However, it’s perhaps no worse than the use of Asti for champagne. One should n’t be too fastidious. I must really try to think of some method of telling her in Spanish.”

Marietta went to fetch the Asti.

XXIII

When Peter rose next morning, he pulled a grimace at the departed night.

“You are a detected cheat,” he cried, “an unmasked impostor. You live upon your reputation as a counsellor–’tis the only reason why we bear with you. La nuit porte conseil! Yet what counsel have you brought to me?–and I at the pass where my need is uttermost. Shall I go to her this afternoon, and unburden my soul–or shall I not? You have left me where you found me–in the same fine, free, and liberal state of vacillation. Discredited oracle!”

He was standing before his dressing-table, brushing his hair. The image in the glass frowned back at him. Then something struck him.

“At all events, we’ll go this morning to Spiaggia, and have our hair cut,” he resolved.

So he walked to the village, and caught the ten o’clock omnibus for Spiaggia. And after he had had his hair cut, he went to the Hotel de Russie, and lunched in the garden. And after luncheon, of course, he entered the grounds of the Casino, and strolled backwards and forwards, one of a merry procession, on the terrace by the lakeside. The gay toilets of the women, their bright-coloured hats and sunshades, made the terrace look like a great bank of monstrous moving flowers. The band played brisk accompaniments to the steady babble of voices, Italian, English, German. The pure air was shot with alien scents–the women’s perfumery, the men’s cigarette-smoke. The marvellous blue waters crisped in the breeze, and sparkled in the sun; and the smooth snows of Monte Sfiorito loomed so near, one felt one could almost put out one’s stick and scratch one’s name upon them . . . . And here, as luck would have it, Peter came face to face with Mrs. O’Donovan Florence.

“How do you do?” said she, offering her hand.

“How do you do?” said he.

“It’s a fine day,” said she.

“Very,” said he.

“Shall I make you a confidence?” she asked.

“Do,” he answered.

“Are you sure I can trust you?” She scanned his face dubiously.

“Try it and see,” he urged.

“Well, then, if you must know, I was thirsting to take a table and call for coffee; but having no man at hand to chaperon me, I dared not.”

“Je vous en prie” cried Peter, with a gesture of gallantry; and he led her to one of the round marble tables. “Due caffe,” he said to the brilliant creature (chains, buckles, ear-rings, of silver filigree, and head-dress and apron of flame-red silk) who came to learn their pleasure.

“Softly, softly,” put in Mrs. O’Donovan Florence. “Not a drop of coffee for me. An orange-sherbet, if you please. Coffee was a figure of speech–a generic term for light refreshments.”

Peter laughed, and amended his order.

“Do you see those three innocent darlings playing together, under the eye of their governess, by the Wellingtonia yonder?” enquired the lady.

“The little girl in white and the two boys?” asked Peter.

“Precisely,” said she. “Such as they are, they’re me own.”

“Really?” he responded, in the tone of profound and sympathetic interest we are apt to affect when parents begin about their children.

“I give you my word for it,” she assured him. “But I mention the fact, not in a spirit of boastfulness, but merely to show you that I ‘m not entirely alone and unprotected. There’s an American at our hotel, by the bye, who goes up and down telling every one who’ll listen that it ought to be Washingtonia, and declaiming with tears in his eyes against the arrogance of the English in changing Washington to Wellington. As he’s a respectable-looking man with grown-up daughters, I should think very likely he’s right.”

“Very likely,” said Peter. “It’s an American tree, is n’t it?”

“Whether it is n’t or whether it is,” said she, “one thing is undeniable: you English are the coldest-blooded animals south of the Arctic Circle.”

“Oh–? Are we?” he doubted.

“You are that,” she affirmed, with sorrowing emphasis.

“Ah, well,” he reflected, “the temperature of our blood does n’t matter. We’re, at any rate, notoriously warm-hearted.”

“Are you indeed?” she exclaimed. “If you are, it’s a mighty quiet kind of notoriety, let me tell you, and a mighty cold kind of warmth.”

Peter laughed.

“You’re all for prudence and expediency. You’re the slaves of your reason. You’re dominated by the head, not by the heart. You’re little better than calculating-machines. Are you ever known, now, for instance, to risk earth and heaven, and all things between them, on a sudden unthinking impulse?”

“Not often, I daresay,” he admitted.

“And you sit there as serene as a brazen statue, and own it without a quaver,” she reproached him.

“Surely,” he urged, “in my character of Englishman, it behooves me to appear smug and self-satisfied?”

“You’re right,” she agreed. “I wonder,” she continued, after a moment’s pause, during which her eyes looked thoughtful, “I wonder whether you would fall upon and annihilate a person who should venture to offer you a word of well-meant advice.”

“I should sit as serene as a brazen statue, and receive it without a quaver,” he promised.

“Well, then,” said she, leaning forward a little, and dropping her voice, “why don’t you take your courage in both hands, and ask her?”

Peter stared.

“Be guided by me–and do it,” she said.

“Do what?” he puzzled.

“Ask her to marry you, of course,” she returned amiably. Then, without allowing him time to shape an answer, “Touche!” she cried, in triumph. “I ‘ve brought the tell-tale colour to your cheek. And you a brazen statue! ‘They do not love who do not show their love.’ But, in faith, you show yours to any one who’ll be at pains to watch you. Your eyes betray you as often as ever you look at her. I had n’t observed you for two minutes by the clock, when I knew your secret as well as if you ‘d chosen me for your confessor. But what’s holding you back? You can’t expect her to do the proposing. Now curse me for a meddlesome Irishwoman, if you will–but why don’t you throw yourself at her feet, and ask her, like a man?”

“How can I?” said Peter, abandoning any desire he may have felt to beat about the bush. Nay, indeed, it is very possible he welcomed, rather than resented, the Irishwoman’s meddling.

“What’s to prevent you?” said she.

“Everything,” said he.

“Everything is nothing. That?”

“Dear lady! She is hideously rich, for one thing.”

“Getaway with you!” was the dear lady’s warm expostulation. “What has money to do with the question, if a man’s in love? But that’s the English of it–there you are with your cold-blooded calculation. You chain up your natural impulses as if they were dangerous beasts. Her money never saved you from succumbing to her enchantments. Why should it bar you from declaring your passion.”

“There’s a sort of tendency in society,” said Peter, “to look upon the poor man who seeks the hand of a rich woman as a fortunehunter.”

“A fig for the opinion of society,” she cried. “The only opinion you should consider is the opinion of the woman you adore. I was an heiress myself; and when Teddy O’Donovan proposed to me, upon my conscience I believe the sole piece of property he possessed in the world was a corkscrew. So much for her ducats!”

Peter laughed.

“Men, after coffee, are frequently in the habit of smoking,” said she. “You have my sanction for a cigarette. It will keep you in countenance.”

“Thank you,” said Peter, and lit his cigarette.

“And surely, it’s a countenance you’ll need, to be going on like that about her money. However–if you can find a ray of comfort in the information–small good will her future husband get of it, even if he is a fortunehunter: for she gives the bulk of it away in charity, and I ‘m doubtful if she keeps two thousand a year for her own spending.”

“Really?” said Peter; and for a breathing-space it seemed to him that there was a ray of comfort in the information.

“Yes, you may rate her at two thousand a year,” said Mrs. O’Donovan Florence. “I suppose you can match that yourself. So the disparity disappears.”

The ray of comfort had flickered for a second, and gone out.

“There are unfortunately other disparities,” he remarked gloomily.

“Put a name on them,” said she.

“There’s her rank.”

His impetuous adviser flung up a hand of scorn.

“Her rank, do you say?” she cried. “To the mischief with her rank. What’s rank to love? A woman is only a woman, whether she calls herself a duchess or a dairy-maid. A woman with any spirit would marry a bank manager, if she loved him. A man’s a man. You should n’t care that for her rank.”

“That” was a snap of Mrs. O’ Donovan Florence’s fingers.

“I suppose you know,” said Peter, “that I am a Protestant.”

“Are you–you poor benighted creature? Well, that’s easily remedied. Go and get yourself baptised directly.”

She waved her hand towards the town, as if to recommend his immediate procedure in quest of a baptistery.

Peter laughed again.

“I ‘m afraid that’s more easily said than done.”

“Easy!” she exclaimed. “Why, you’ve only to stand still and let yourself be sprinkled. It’s the priest who does the work. Don’t tell me,” she added, with persuasive inconsequence, “that you’ll allow a little thing like being in love with a woman to keep you back from professing the true faith.”

“Ah, if I were convinced that it is true,” he sighed, still laughing.

“What call have you to doubt it? And anyhow, what does it matter whether you ‘re convinced or not? I remember, when I was a school-girl, I never was myself convinced of the theorems of Euclid; but I professed them gladly, for the sake of the marks they brought; and the eternal verities of mathematics remained unshaken by my scepticism.”

“Your reasoning is subtle,” laughed Peter. “But the worst of it is, if I were ten times a Catholic, she wouldn’t have me. So what’s the use?”

“You never can tell whether a woman will have you or not, until you offer yourself. And even if she refuses you, is that a ground for despair? My own husband asked me three times, and three times I said no. And then he took to writing verses–and I saw there was but one way to stop him. So we were married. Ask her; ask her again–and again. You can always resort in the end to versification. And now,” the lady concluded, rising, “I have spoken, and I leave you to your fate. I’m obliged to return to the hotel, to hold a bed of justice. It appears that my innocent darlings, beyond there, innocent as they look, have managed among them to break the electric light in my sitting-room. They’re to be arraigned before me at three for an instruction criminelle. Put what I ‘ve said in your pipe, and smoke it–’tis a mother’s last request. If I ‘ve not succeeded in determining you, don’t pretend, at least, that I haven’t encouraged you a bit. Put what I ‘ve said in your pipe, and see whether, by vigorous drawing, you can’t fan the smouldering fires of encouragement into a small blaze of determination.”

Peter resumed his stroll backwards and forwards by the lakeside. Encouragement was all very well; but . . . “Shall I –shall I not? Shall I–shall I not? Shall I–shall I not?” The eternal question went tick-tack, tick-tack, to the rhythm of his march. He glared at vacancy, and tried hard to make up his mind.