'She is the darling of my heartAnd she lives in our valley,'”
he carolled softly.
“E del mio cuore la carina,E dimor' nella nostra vallettina,”
he obligingly translated. “But for all the good I get of her, she might as well live on the top of the Cornobastone,” he added dismally. “Yes, now you may bring me my coffee—only, let it be tea. When your coffee is coffee it keeps me awake at night.”
Marietta trudged back to her kitchen, nodding at the sky.
The next afternoon, however, the Duchessa di Santangiolo appeared on the opposite bank of the tumultuous Aco.
Peter happened to be engaged in the amiable pastime of tossing bread-crumbs to his goldfinches.
But a score or so of sparrows, vulture-like, lurked under cover of the neighbouring foliage, to dash in viciously, at the critical moment, and snatch the food from the finches' very mouths.
The Duchessa watched this little drama for a minute, smiling, in silent meditation: while Peter—who, for a wonder, had his back turned to the park of Ventirose, and, for a greater wonder still perhaps, felt no pricking in his thumbs—remained unconscious of her presence.
At last, sorrowfully, (but there was always a smile at the back of her eyes), she shook her head.
“Oh, the pirates, the daredevils,” she sighed.
Peter started; faced about; saluted.
“The brigands,” said she, with a glance towards the sparrows' outposts.
“Yes, poor things,” said he.
“Poor things?” cried she, indignant. “The unprincipled little monsters!”
“They can't help it,” he pleaded for them. “'It is their nature to.' They were born so. They had no choice.”
“You actually defend them!” she marvelled, rebukefully.
“Oh, dear, no,” he disclaimed. “I don't defend them. I defend nothing. I merely recognise and accept. Sparrows—finches. It's the way of the world—the established division of the world.”
She frowned incomprehension.
“The established division of the world—?”
“Exactly,” said he. “Sparrows—finches the snatchers and the snatched-from. Everything that breathes is either a sparrow or a finch. 'T is the universal war—the struggle for existence—the survival of the most unscrupulous. 'T is a miniature presentment of what's going on everywhere in earth and sky.”
She shook her head again.
“YOU see the earth and sky through black spectacles, I 'm afraid,” she remarked, with a long face. But there was still an underglow of amusement in her eyes.
“No,” he answered, “because there's a compensation. As you rise in the scale of moral development, it is true, you pass from the category of the snatchers to the category of the snatched-from, and your ultimate extinction is assured. But, on the other hand, you gain talents and sensibilities. You do not live by bread alone. These goldfinches, for a case in point, can sing—and they have your sympathy. The sparrows can only make a horrid noise—and you contemn them. That is the compensation. The snatchers can never know the joy of singing—or of being pitied by ladies.”
“N... o, perhaps not,” she consented doubtfully. The underglow of amusement in her eyes shone nearer to the surface. “But—but they can never know, either, the despair of the singer when his songs won't come.”
“Or when the ladies are pitiless. That is true,” consented Peter.
“And meanwhile they get the bread, crumbs,” she said.
“They certainly get the bread-crumbs,” he admitted.
“I 'm afraid “—she smiled, as one who has conducted a syllogism safely to its conclusion—“I 'm afraid I do not think your compensation compensates.”
“To be quite honest, I daresay it does n't,” he confessed.
“And anyhow”—she followed her victory up—“I should not wish my garden to represent the universal war. I should not wish my garden to be a battle-field. I should wish it to be a retreat from the battle—an abode of peace—a happy valley—a sanctuary for the snatched-from.”
“But why distress one's soul with wishes that are vain?” asked he. “What could one do?”
“One could keep a dragon,” she answered promptly. “If I were you, I should keep a sparrow-devouring, finch-respecting dragon.”
“It would do no good,” said he. “You'd get rid of one species of snatcher, but some other species of snatcher would instantly pop UP.”
She gazed at him with those amused eyes of hers, and still again, slowly, sorrowfully, shook her head.
“Oh, your spectacles are black—black,” she murmured.
“I hope not,” said he; “but such as they are, they show me the inevitable conditions of our planet. The snatcher, here below, is ubiquitous and eternal—as ubiquitous, as eternal, as the force of gravitation. He is likewise protean. Banish him—he takes half a minute to change his visible form, and returns au galop. Sometimes he's an ugly little cacophonous brown sparrow; sometimes he's a splendid florid money-lender, or an aproned and obsequious greengrocer, or a trusted friend, hearty and familiar. But he 's always there; and he's always—if you don't mind the vernacular—'on the snatch.'”
The Duchessa arched her eyebrows.
“If things are really at such a sorry pass,” she said, “I will commend my former proposal to you with increased confidence. You should keep a dragon. After all, you only wish to protect your garden; and that”—she embraced it with her glance—“is not so very big. You could teach your dragon, if you procured one of an intelligent breed, to devour greengrocers, trusted friends, and even moneylenders too (tough though no doubt they are), as well as sparrows.”
“Your proposal is a surrender to my contention,” said Peter. “You would set a snatcher to catch the snatchers. Other heights in other lives, perhaps. But in the dark backward and abysm of space to which our lives are confined, the snatcher is indigenous and inexpugnable.”
The Duchessa looked at the sunny landscape, the bright lawns, the high bending trees, with the light caught in the network of their million leaves; she looked at the laughing white villas westward, the pale-green vineyards, the yellow cornfields; she looked at the rushing river, with the diamonds sparkling on its surface, at the far-away gleaming snows of Monte Sfiorito, at the scintillant blue shy overhead.
Then she looked at Peter, a fine admixture of mirth with something like gravity in her smile.
“The dark backward and abysm of space?” she repeated. “And you do not wear black spectacles? Then it must be that your eyes themselves are just a pair of black-seeing pessimists.”
“On the contrary,” triumphed Peter, “it is because they are optimists, that they suspect there must be forwarder and more luminous regions than the Solar System.”
The Duchessa laughed.
“I think you have the prettiest mouth, and the most exquisite little teeth, and the eyes richest in promise, and the sweetest laughter, of any woman out of Paradise,” said Peter, in the silence of his soul.
“It is clear I shall never be your match in debate,” said she.
Peter made a gesture of deprecating modesty.
“But I wonder,” she went on, “whether you would put me down as 'another species of snatcher,' if I should ask you to spare me just the merest end of a crust of bread?” And she lifted those eyes rich in promise appealingly to his.
“Oh, I beg of you—take all I have,” he responded, with effusion. “But—but how—?”
“Toss,” she commanded tersely.
So he tossed what was left of his bread into the air, above the river; and the Duchessa, easily, deftly, threw up a hand, and caught it on the wing.
“Thank you very much,” she laughed, with a little bow.
Then she crumbled the bread, and began to sprinkle the ground with it; and in an instant she was the centre of a cloud of birds. Peter was at liberty to watch her, to admire the swift grace of her motions, their suggestion of delicate strength, of joy in things physical, and the lithe elasticity of her figure, against the background of satiny lawn, and the further vistas of lofty sunlit trees. She was dressed in white, as always—a frock of I know not what supple fabric, that looked as if you might have passed it through your ring, and fell in multitudes of small soft creases. Two big red roses drooped from her bodice. She wore a garden-hat, of white straw, with a big daring rose-red bow, under which the dense meshes of her hair, warmly dark, dimly bright, shimmered in a blur of brownish gold.
“What vigour, what verve, what health,” thought Peter, watching her, “what—lean, fresh, fragrant health!” And he had, no doubt, his emotions.
She bestowed her bread crumbs on the birds; but she was able, somehow, to discriminate mightily in favour of the goldfinches. She would make a diversion, the semblance of a fling, with her empty right hand; and the too-greedy sparrows would dart off, avid, on that false lead. Whereupon, quickly, stealthily, she would rain a little shower of crumbs, from her left hand, on the grass beside her, to a confiding group of finches assembled there. And if ever a sparrow ventured to intrude his ruffianly black beak into this sacred quarter, she would manage, with a kind of restrained ferocity, to “shoo” him away, without thereby frightening the finches.
And all the while her eyes laughed; and there was colour in her cheeks; and there was the forceful, graceful action of her body.
When the bread was finished, she clapped her hands together gently, to dust the last mites from them, and looked over at Peter, and smiled significantly.
“Yes,” he acknowledged, “you outwitted them very skilfully. You, at any rate, have no need of a dragon.”
“Oh, in default of a dragon, one can do dragon's work oneself,” she answered lightly. “Or, rather, one can make oneself an instrument of justice.”
“All the same, I should call it uncommonly hard luck to be born a sparrow—within your jurisdiction,” he said.
“It is not an affair of luck,” said she. “One is born a sparrow—within my jurisdiction—for one's sins in a former state.—No, you little dovelings”—she turned to a pair of finches on the greensward near her, who were lingering, and gazing up into her face with hungry, expectant eyes—“I have no more. I have given you my all.” And she stretched out her open hands, palms downwards, to convince them.
“The sparrows got nothing; and the goldfinches, who got 'your all,' grumble because you gave so little,” said Peter, sadly. “That is what comes of interfering with the laws of Nature.” And then, as the two birds flew away, “See the dark, doubtful, reproachful glances with which they cover you.”
“You think they are ungrateful?” she said. “No—listen.”
She held up a finger.
For, at that moment, on the branch of an acacia, just over her head, a goldfinch began to sing—his thin, sweet, crystalline trill of song.
“Do you call that grumbling?” she asked.
“It implies a grumble,” said Peter, “like the 'thank you' of a servant dissatisfied with his tip. It's the very least he can do. It's perfunctory—I 'm not sure it is n't even ironical.”
“Perfunctory! Ironical!” cried the Duchessa. “Look at him! He's warbling his delicious little soul out.”
They both paused to look and listen.
The bird's gold-red bosom palpitated. He marked his modulations by sudden emphatic movements of the head. His eyes were fixed intently before him, as if he could actually see and follow the shining thread of his song, as it wound away through the air. His performance had all the effect of a spontaneous rhapsody. When it was terminated, he looked down at his auditors, eager, inquisitive, as who should say, “I hope you liked it?”—and then, with a nod clearly meant as a farewell, flew out of sight.
The Duchessa smiled again at Peter, with intention.
“You must really try to take a cheerier view of things,” she said.
And next instant she too was off, walking slowly, lightly, up the green lawns, between the trees, towards the castle, her gown fluttering in the breeze, now dazzling white as she came into the sun, now pearly grey as she passed into the shade.
“What a woman it is,” said Peter to himself, looking after her. “What vigour, what verve, what sex! What a woman!”
And, indeed, there was nothing of the too-prevalent epicene in the Duchessa's aspect; she was very certainly a woman. “Heavens, how she walks!” he cried in a deep whisper.
But then a sudden wave of dejection swept over him. At first he could not account for it. By and by, however, a malicious little voice began to repeat and repeat within him, “Oh, the futile impression you must have made upon her! Oh, the ineptitudes you uttered! Oh, the precious opportunity you have misemployed!”
“You are a witch,” he said to Marietta. “You've proved it to the hilt. I 've seen the person, and the object is more desperately lost than ever.”
That evening, among the letters Peter received from England, there was one from his friend Mrs. Winchfield, which contained certain statistics.
“Your Duchessa di Santangiolo 'was' indeed, as your funny old servant told you, English: the only child and heiress of the last Lord Belfont. The Belfonts of Lancashire (now, save for your Duchessa, extinct) were the most bigoted sort of Roman Catholics, and always educated their daughters in foreign convents, and as often as not married them to foreigners. The Belfont men, besides, were ever and anon marrying foreign wives; so there will be a goodish deal of un-English blood in your Duchessa's own ci-devant English veins.
“She was born, as I learn from an indiscretion of my Peerage, in 1870, and is, therefore, as near to thirty (the dangerous age!) as to the six-and-twenty your droll old Marietta gives her. Her Christian names are Beatrice Antonia Teresa Mary—faites en votre choix. She was married at nineteen to Baldassarre Agosto, Principe Udeschini, Duca di Santangiolo, Marchese di Castellofranco, Count of the Holy Roman Empire, Knight of the Holy Ghost and of St. Gregory, (does it take your breath away?), who, according to Frontin, died in '93; and as there were no children, his brother Felipe Lorenzo succeeded to the titles. A younger brother still is Bishop of Sardagna. Cardinal Udeschini is the uncle.
“That, dear child, empties my sack of information. But perhaps I have a bigger sack, full of good advice, which I have not yet opened. And perhaps, on the whole, I will not open it at all. Only, remember that in yonder sentimental Italian lake country, in this summer weather, a solitary young man's fancy might be much inclined to turn to thoughts of—folly; and keep an eye on my friend Peter Marchdale.”
Our solitary young man brooded over Mrs. Winchfield's letter for a long while.
“The daughter of a lord, and the widow of a duke, and the niece-in-law of a cardinal,” he said. “And, as if that were not enough, a bigoted Roman Catholic into the bargain.... And yet—and yet,” he went on, taking heart a little, “as for her bigotry, to judge by her assiduity in attending the village church, that factor, at least, thank goodness, would appear to be static, rather than dynamic.”
After another longish interval of brooding, he sauntered down to the riverside, through his fragrant garden, fragrant and fresh with the cool odours of the night, and peered into the darkness, towards Castel Ventirose. Here and there he could discern a gleam of yellow, where some lighted window was not entirely hidden by the trees. Thousands and thousands of insects were threading the silence with their shrill insistent voices. The repeated wail, harsh, prolonged, eerie, of some strange wild creature, bird or beast, came down from the forest of the Gnisi. At his feet, on the troubled surface of the Aco, the stars, reflected and distorted, shone like broken spearheads.
He lighted a cigarette, and stood there till he had consumed it.
“Heigh-ho!” he sighed at last, and turned back towards the villa. And “Yes,” he concluded, “I must certainly keep an eye on our friend Peter Marchdale.”
“But I 'm doubting it's a bit too late—troppo tardo,” he said to Marietta, whom he found bringing hot water to his dressing-room.
“It is not very late,” said Marietta. “Only half-past ten.”
“She is a woman—therefore to be loved; she is a duchess—therefore to be lost,” he explained, in his native tongue.
“Cosa.” questioned Marietta, in hers.
Beatrice and Emilia, strolling together in one of the flowery lanes up the hillside, between ranks of the omnipresent poplar, and rose-bush hedges, or crumbling pink-stuccoed walls that dripped with cyclamen and snapdragon, met old Marietta descending, with a basket on her arm.
Marietta courtesied to the ground.
“How do you do, Marietta?” Beatrice asked.
“I can't complain, thank your Grandeur. I have the lumbago on and off pretty constantly, and last week I broke a tooth. But I can't complain. And your Highness?”
Marietta returned, with brisk aplomb.
Beatrice smiled. “Bene, grazie. Your new master—that young Englishman,” she continued, “I hope you find him kind, and easy to do for?”
“Kind—yes, Excellency. Also easy to do for. But—!” Marietta shrugged her shoulders, and gave her head two meaning oscillations.
“Oh—?” wondered Beatrice, knitting puzzled brows.
“Very amiable, your Greatness; but simple, simple,” Marietta explained, and tapped her brown old forehead with a brown forefinger.
“Really—?” wondered Beatrice.
“Yes, Nobility,” said Marietta. “Gentle as a canarybird, but innocent, innocent.”
“You astonish me,” Beatrice avowed. “How does he show it?”
“The questions he asks, Most Illustrious, the things he says.”
“For example—?” pursued Beatrice.
“For example, your Serenity—” Marietta paused, to search her memory.— “Well, for one example, he calls roast veal a fowl. I give him roast veal for his luncheon, and he says to me, 'Marietta, this fowl has no wings.' But everyone knows, your Mercy, that veal is not a fowl. How should veal have wings?”
“How indeed?” assented Beatrice, on a note of commiseration. And if the corners of her mouth betrayed a tendency to curve upwards, she immediately compelled them down. “But perhaps he does not speak Italian very well?” she suggested.
“Mache, Potenza! Everyone speaks Italian,” cried Marietta.
“Indeed?” said Beatrice.
“Naturally, your Grace—all Christians,” Marietta declared.
“Oh, I did n't know,” said Beatrice, meekly. “Well,” she acknowledged, “since he speaks Italian, it is certainly unreasonable of him to call veal a fowl.”
“But that, Magnificence,” Marietta went on, warming to her theme, “that is only one of his simplicities. He asks me, 'Who puts the whitewash on Monte Sfiorito? 'And when I tell him that it is not whitewash, but snow, he says, 'How do you know?' But everyone knows that it is snow. Whitewash!”
The sprightly old woman gave her whole body a shake, for the better exposition of her state of mind. And thereupon, from the interior of her basket, issued a plaintive little squeal.
“What have you in your basket?” Beatrice asked.
“A little piglet, Nobility—un piccolo porcellino,” said Marietta.
And lifting the cover an inch or two, she displayed the anxious face of a poor little sucking pig.
“E carino?” she demanded, whilst her eyes beamed with a pride that almost seemed maternal.
“What on earth are you going to do with him?” Beatrice gasped.
The light of pride gave place to a light of resolution, in Marietta's eyes.
“Kill him, Mightiness,” was her grim response; “stuff him with almonds, raisins, rosemary, and onions; cook him sweet and sour; and serve him, garnished with rosettes of beet-root, for my Signorino's Sunday dinner.”
“Oh-h-h!” shuddered Beatrice and Emilia, in a breath; and they resumed their walk.
Francois was dining—with an appearance of great fervour.
Peter sat on his rustic bench, by the riverside, and watched him, smoking a cigarette the while.
The Duchessa di Santangiolo stood screened by a tree in the park of Ventirose, and watched them both.
Francois wore a wide blue ribbon round his pink and chubby neck; and his dinner consisted of a big bowlful of bread and milk.
Presently the Duchessa stepped forth from her ambush, into the sun, and laughed.
“What a sweetly pretty scene,” she said. “Pastoral—idyllic—it reminds one of Theocritus—it reminds one of Watteau.”
Peter threw his cigarette into the river, and made an obeisance.
“I am very glad you feel the charm of it,” he responded. “May I be permitted to present Master Francois Vllon?”
“We have met before,” said the Duchessa, graciously smiling upon Francois, and inclining her head.
“Oh, I did n't know,” said Peter, apologetic.
“Yes,” said the Duchessa, “and in rather tragical circumstances. But at that time he was anonymous. Why—if you won't think my curiosity impertinent—why Francois Villon?”
“Why not?” said Peter. “He made such a tremendous outcry when he was condemned to death, for one thing. You should have heard him. He has a voice! Then, for another, he takes such a passionate interest in his meat and drink. And then, if you come to that, I really had n't the heart to call him Pauvre Lelian.”
The Duchessa raised amused eyebrows.
“You felt that Pauvre Lelian was the only alternative?”
“I had in mind a remark of Pauvre Lilian's friend and confrere, the cryptic Stephane,” Peter answered. “You will remember it. 'L'ame d'un poete dans le corps d'un—' I—I forget the last word,” he faltered.
“Shall we say 'little pig'?” suggested the Duchessa.
“Oh, please don't,” cried Peter, hastily, with a gesture of supplication. “Don't say 'pig' in his presence. You'll wound his feelings.”
The Duchessa laughed.
“I knew he was condemned to death,” she owned. “Indeed, it was in his condemned cell that I made his acquaintance. Your Marietta Cignolesi introduced us. Her air was so inexorable, I 'm a good deal surprised to see him alive to-day. There was some question of a stuffing of rosemary and onions.”
“Ah, I see,” said Peter, “I see that you're familiar with the whole disgraceful story. Yes, Marietta, the unspeakable old Tartar, was all for stuffing him with rosemary and onions. But he could not bring himself to share her point of view. He screamed his protest, like a man, in twenty different octaves. You really should have heard him. His voice is of a compass, of a timbre, of an expressiveness! Passive endurance, I fear, is not his forte. For the sake of peace and silence, I intervened, interceded. She had her knife at his very throat. I was not an instant too soon. So, of course, I 've had to adopt him.”
“Of course, poor man,” sympathised the Duchessa. “It's a recognised principle that if you save a fellow's life, you 're bound to him for the rest of yours. But—but won't you find him rather a burdensome responsibility when he's grownup?” she reflected.
“—Que voulez-vous?” reflected Peter. “Burdensome responsibilities are the appointed accompaniments of man's pilgrimage. Why not Francois Villon, as well as another? And besides, as the world is at present organised, a member of the class vulgarly styled 'the rich' can generally manage to shift his responsibilities, when they become too irksome, upon the backs of the poor. For example—Marietta! Marietta!” he called, raising his voice a little, and clapping his hands.
Marietta came. When she had made her courtesy to the Duchessa, and a polite enquiry as to her Excellency's health, Peter said, with an indicative nod of the head, “Will you be so good as to remove my responsibility?”
“Il porcellino?” questioned Marietta.
“Ang,” said he.
And when Marietta had borne Francois, struggling and squealing in her arms, from the foreground—
“There—you see how it is done,” he remarked.
The Duchessa laughed.
“An object-lesson,” she agreed. “An object-lesson in—might n't one call it the science of Applied Cynicism?”
“Science!” Peter plaintively repudiated the word. “No, no. I was rather flattering myself it was an art.”
“Apropos of art—” said the Duchessa.
She came down two or three steps nearer to the brink of the river. She produced from behind her back a hand that she had kept there, and held up for Peter's inspection a grey-and-gold bound book.
“Apropos of art, I've been reading a novel. Do you know it?”
Peter glanced at the grey-and-gold binding—and dissembled the emotion that suddenly swelled big in his heart.
He screwed his eyeglass into his eye, and gave an intent look.
“I can't make out the title,” he temporised, shaking his head, and letting his eyeglass drop.
On the whole, it was very well acted; and I hope the occult little smile that played about the Duchessa's lips was a smile of appreciation.
“It has a highly appropriate title,” she said. “It is called 'A Man of Words,' by an author I've never happened to hear of before, named Felix Wildmay.”
“Oh, yes. How very odd,” said Peter. “By a curious chance, I know it very well. But I 'm surprised to discover that you do. How on earth did it fall into your hands?”
“Why on earth shouldn't it?” wondered she. “Novels are intended to fall into people's hands, are they not?”
“I believe so,” he assented. “But intentions, in this vale of tears, are not always realised, are they? Anyhow, 'A Man of Words' is not like other novels. It's peculiar.”
“Peculiar—?” she repeated.
“Of a peculiar, of an unparalleled obscurity,” he explained. “There has been no failure approaching it since What's-his-name invented printing. I hadn't supposed that seven copies of it were in circulation.”
“Really?” said the Duchessa. “A correspondent of mine in London recommended it. But—in view of its unparalleled obscurity is n't it almost equally a matter for surprise that you should know it?”
“It would be, sure enough,” consented Peter, “if it weren't that I just happen also to know the author.”
“Oh—? You know the author?” cried the Duchessa, with animation.
“Comme ma poche,” said Peter. “We were boys together.”
“Really?” said she. “What a coincidence.”
“Yes,” said he.
“And—and his book?” Her eyebrows went up, interrogative. “I expect, as you know the man, you think rather poorly of it?”
“On the contrary, in the teeth of verisimilitude, I think extremely well of it,” he answered firmly. “I admire it immensely. I think it's an altogether ripping little book. I think it's one of the nicest little books I've read for ages.
“How funny,” said she.
“Why funny?” asked he.
“It's so unlikely that one should seem a genius to one's old familiar friends.”
“Did I say he seemed a genius to me? I misled you. He does n't. In fact, he very frequently seems—but, for Charity's sake, I 'd best forbear to tell. However, I admire his book. And—to be entirely frank—it's a constant source of astonishment to me that he should ever have been able to do anything one-tenth so good.”
The Duchessa smiled pensively.
“Ah, well,” she mused, “we must assume that he has happy moments—or, perhaps, two soul-sides, one to face the world with, one to show his manuscripts when he's writing. You hint a fault, and hesitate dislike. That, indeed, is only natural, on the part of an old friend. But you pique my interest. What is the trouble with him? Is—is he conceited, for example?”
“The trouble with him?” Peter pondered. “Oh, it would be too long and too sad a story. Should I anatomise him to you as he is, I must blush and weep, and you must look pale and wonder. He has pretty nearly every weakness, not to mention vices, that flesh is heir to. But as for conceit... let me see. He concurs in my own high opinion of his work, I believe; but I don't know whether, as literary men go, it would be fair to call him conceited. He belongs, at any rate, to the comparatively modest minority who do not secretly fancy that Shakespeare has come back to life.”
“That Shakespeare has come back to life!” marvelled the Duchessa. “Do you mean to say that most literary men fancy that?”
“I think perhaps I am acquainted with three who don't,” Peter replied; “but one of them merely wears his rue with a difference. He fancies that it's Goethe.”
“How extravagantly—how exquisitely droll!” she laughed.
“I confess, it struck me so, until I got accustomed to it,” said he, “until I learned that it was one of the commonplaces, one of the normal attributes of the literary temperament. It's as much to be taken for granted, when you meet an author, as the tail is to be taken for granted, when you meet a cat.”
“I'm vastly your debtor for the information—it will stand me in stead with the next author who comes my way. But, in that case, your friend Mr. Felix Wildmay will be, as it were, a sort of Manx cat?” was her smiling deduction.
“Yes, if you like, in that particular, a sort of Manx cat,” acquiesced Peter, with a laugh.
The Duchessa laughed too; and then there was a little pause.
Overhead, never so light a breeze lisped never so faintly in the tree-tops; here and there bird-notes fell, liquid, desultory, like drops of rain after a shower; and constantly one heard the cool music of the river. The sun, filtering through worlds and worlds of leaves, shed upon everything a green-gold penumbra. The air, warm and still, was sweet with garden-scents. The lake, according to its habit at this hour of the afternoon, had drawn a grey veil over its face, a thin grey veil, through which its sapphire-blue shone furtively. Far away, in the summer haze, Monte Sfiorito seemed a mere dim spectre of itself—a stranger might easily have mistaken it for a vague mass of cloud floating above the horizon.
“Are you aware that it 's a singularly lovely afternoon?” the Duchessa asked, by and by.
“I have a hundred reasons for thinking it so,” Peter hazarded, with the least perceptible approach to a meaning bow.
In the Duchessa's face, perhaps, there flickered, for half-a-second, the least perceptible light, as of a comprehending and unresentful smile. But she went on, with fine aloofness.
“I rather envy you your river, you know. We are too far from it at the castle. Is n't the sound, the murmur, of it delicious? And its colour—how does it come by such a subtle colour? Is it green? Is it blue? And the diamonds on its surface—see how they glitter. You know, of course,” she questioned, “who the owner is of those unequalled gems?”
“Surely,” Peter answered, “the lady paramount of this demesne?”
“No, no.” She shook her head, smiling. “Undine. They are Undine's—her necklaces and tiaras. No mortal woman's jewel-case contains anything half so brilliant. But look at them—look at the long chains of them—how they float for a minute—and are then drawn down. They are Undine's—Undine and her companions are sporting with them just below the surface. A moment ago I caught a glimpse of a white arm.”
“Ah,” said Peter, nodding thoughtfully, “that's what it is to have 'the seeing eye.' But I'm grieved to hear of Undine in such a wanton mood. I had hoped she would still be weeping her unhappy love-affair.”
“What! with that horrid, stolid German—Hildebrandt, was his name?” cried the Duchessa. “Not she! Long ago, I'm glad to say, she learned to laugh at that, as a mere caprice of her immaturity. However, this is a digression. I want to return to our 'Man of Words.' Tell me—what is the quality you especially like in it?”
“I like its every quality,” Peter affirmed, unblushing. “Its style, its finish, its concentration; its wit, humour, sentiment; its texture, tone, atmosphere; its scenes, its subject; the paper it's printed on, the type, the binding. But above all, I like its heroine. I think Pauline de Fleuvieres the pearl of human women—the cleverest, the loveliest, the most desirable, the most exasperating. And also the most feminine. I can't think of her at all as a mere fiction, a mere shadow on paper. I think of her as a living, breathing, flesh-and-blood woman, whom I have actually known. I can see her before me now—I can see her eyes, full of mystery and mischief—I can see her exquisite little teeth, as she smiles—I can see her hair, her hands—I can almost catch the perfume of her garments. I 'm utterly infatuated with her—I could commit a hundred follies for her.”
“Mercy!” exclaimed the Duchessa. “You are enthusiastic.”
“The book's admirers are so few, they must endeavour to make up in enthusiasm what they lack in numbers,” he submitted.
“But—at that rate—why are they so few?” she puzzled. “If the book is all you think it, how do you account for its unpopularity?”
“It could never conceivably be anything but unpopular,” said he. “It has the fatal gift of beauty.”
The Duchessa laughed surprise.
“Is beauty a fatal gift—in works of art?”
“Yes—in England,” he declared.
“In England? Why especially in England?”
“In English-speaking—in Anglo-Saxon lands, if you prefer. The Anglo-Saxon public is beauty-blind. They have fifty religions—only one sauce—and no sense of beauty whatsoever. They can see the nose on one's face—the mote in their neighbour's eye; they can see when a bargain is good, when a war will be expedient. But the one thing they can never see is beauty. And when, by some rare chance, you catch them in the act of admiring a beautiful object, it will never be for its beauty—it will be in spite of its beauty for some other, some extra-aesthetic interest it possesses—some topical or historical interest. Beauty is necessarily detached from all that is topical or historical, or documentary or actual. It is also necessarily an effect of fine shades, delicate values, vanishing distinctions, of evasiveness, inconsequence, suggestion. It is also absolute, unrelated—it is positive or negative or superlative—it is never comparative. Well, the Anglo-Saxon public is totally insensible to such things. They can no more feel them, than a blind worm can feel the colours of the rainbow.”
She laughed again, and regarded him with an air of humorous meditation.
“And that accounts for the unsuccess of 'A Man of Words'?”
“You might as well offer Francois Villon a banquet of Orient pearls.”
“You are bitterly hard on the Anglo-Saxon public.”
“Oh, no,” he disclaimed, “not hard—but just. I wish them all sorts of prosperity, with a little more taste.”
“Oh, but surely,” she caught him up, “if their taste were greater, their prosperity would be less?”
“I don't know,” said he. “The Greeks were fairly prosperous, were n't they? And the Venetians? And the French are not yet quite bankrupt.”
Still again she laughed—always with that little air of humorous meditation.
“You—you don't exactly overwhelm one with compliments,” she observed.
He looked alarm, anxiety.
“Don't I? What have I neglected?” he cried.
“You 've never once evinced the slightest curiosity to learn what I think of the book in question.”
“Oh, I'm sure you like it,” he rejoined hardily. “You have 'the seeing eye.'”
“And yet I'm just a humble member of the Anglo-Saxon public.”
“No—you're a distinguished member of the Anglo-Saxon 'remnant.' Thank heaven, there's a remnant, a little scattered remnant. I'm perfectly sure you like 'A Man of Words.'”
“'Like it' is a proposition so general. Perhaps I am burning to tell someone what I think of it in detail.”
She smiled into his eyes, a trifle oddly.
“If you are, then I know someone who is burning to hear you,” he avowed.
“Well, then, I think—I think...” she began, on a note of deliberation. “But I 'm afraid, just now, it would take too long to formulate my thought. Perhaps I'll try another day.”
She gave him a derisory little nod—and in a minute was well up the lawn, towards the castle.
Peter glared after her, his fists clenched, teeth set.
“You fiend!” he muttered. Then, turning savagely upon himself, “You duffer!”
Nevertheless, that evening, he said to Marietta, “The plot thickens. We've advanced a step. We've reached what the vulgar call a psychological moment. She's seen my Portrait of a Lady. But as yet, if you can believe me, she doesn't dream who painted it; and she has n't recognised the subject. As if one were to face one's image in the glass, and take it for another's! 3—I 'll—I 'll double your wages—if you will induce events to hurry up.”
However, as he spoke English, Marietta was in no position to profit by his offer.