Beatrice walking with a priest—ay, I am not sure it would n't be more accurate to say conspiring with a priest: but you shall judge.
They were in a room of the Palazzo Udeschini, at Rome—a reception room, on the piano nobile. Therefore you see it: for are not all reception-rooms in Roman palaces alike?
Vast, lofty, sombre; the walls hung with dark-green tapestry—a pattern of vertical stripes, dark green and darker green; here and there a great dark painting, a Crucifixion, a Holy Family, in a massive dim-gold frame; dark-hued rugs on the tiled floor; dark pieces of furniture, tables, cabinets, dark and heavy; and tall windows, bare of curtains at this season, opening upon a court—a wide stone-eaved court, planted with fantastic-leaved eucalyptus-trees, in the midst of which a brown old fountain, indefatigable, played its sibilant monotone.
In the streets there were the smells, the noises, the heat, the glare of August of August in Rome, “the most Roman of the months,” they say; certainly the hottest, noisiest, noisomest, and most glaring. But here all was shadow, coolness, stillness, fragrance-the fragrance of the clean air coming in from among the eucalyptus-trees.
Beatrice, critical-eyed, stood before a pier-glass, between two of the tall windows, turning her head from side to side, craning her neck a little—examining (if I must confess it) the effect of a new hat. It was a very stunning hat—if a man's opinion hath any pertinence; it was beyond doubt very complicated. There was an upward-springing black brim; there was a downward-sweeping black feather; there was a defiant white aigrette not unlike the Shah of Persia's; there were glints of red.
The priest sat in an arm-chair—one of those stiff, upright Roman arm-chairs, which no one would ever dream of calling easy-chairs, high-backed, covered with hard leather, studded with steel nails—and watched her, smiling amusement, indulgence.
He was an oldish priest—sixty, sixty-five. He was small, lightly built, lean-faced, with delicate-strong features: a prominent, delicate nose; a well-marked, delicate jaw-bone, ending in a prominent, delicate chin; a large, humorous mouth, the full lips delicately chiselled; a high, delicate, perhaps rather narrow brow, rising above humorous grey eyes, rather deep-set. Then he had silky-soft smooth white hair, and, topping the occiput, a tonsure that might have passed for a natural bald spot.
He was decidedly clever-looking; he was aristocratic-looking, distinguished-looking; but he was, above all, pleasant-looking, kindly-looking, sweet-looking.
He wore a plain black cassock, by no means in its first youth—brown along the seams, and, at the salient angles, at the shoulders, at the elbows, shining with the lustre of hard service. Even without his cassock, I imagine, you would have divined him for a clergyman—he bore the clerical impress, that odd indefinable air of clericism which everyone recognises, though it might not be altogether easy to tell just where or from what it takes its origin. In the garb of an Anglican—there being nothing, at first blush, necessarily Italian, necessarily un-English, in his face—he would have struck you, I think, as a pleasant, shrewd old parson of the scholarly—earnest type, mildly donnish, with a fondness for gentle mirth. What, however, you would scarcely have divined—unless you had chanced to notice, inconspicuous in this sober light, the red sash round his waist, or the amethyst on the third finger of his right hand—was his rank in the Roman hierarchy. I have the honour of presenting his Eminence Egidio Maria Cardinal Udeschini, formerly Bishop of Cittareggio, Prefect of the Congregation of Archives and Inscriptions.
That was his title ecclesiastical. He had two other titles. He was a Prince of the Udeschini by accident of birth. But his third title was perhaps his most curious. It had been conferred upon him informally by the populace of the Roman slum in which his titular church, St. Mary of the Lilies, was situated: the little Uncle of the Poor.
As Italians measure wealth, Cardinal Udeschini was a wealthy man. What with his private fortune and official stipends, he commanded an income of something like a hundred thousand lire. He allowed himself five thousand lire a year for food, clothing, and general expenses. Lodging and service he had for nothing in the palace of his family. The remaining ninety-odd thousand lire of his budget... Well, we all know that titles can be purchased in Italy; and that was no doubt the price he paid for the title I have mentioned.
However, it was not in money only that Cardinal Udeschim paid. He paid also in labour. I have said that his titular church was in a slum. Rome surely contained no slum more fetid, none more perilous—a region of cut-throat alleys, south of the Ghetto, along the Tiber bank. Night after night, accompanied by his stout young vicar, Don Giorgio Appolloni, the Cardinal worked there as hard as any hard-working curate: visiting the sick, comforting the afflicted, admonishing the knavish, persuading the drunken from their taverns, making peace between the combative. Not infrequently, when he came home, he would add a pair of stilettos to his already large collection of such relics. And his homecomings were apt to be late—oftener than not, after midnight; and sometimes, indeed, in the vague twilight of morning, at the hour when, as he once expressed it to Don Giorgio, “the tired burglar is just lying down to rest.” And every Saturday evening the Cardinal Prefect of Archives and Inscriptions sat for three hours boxed up in his confessional, like any parish priest—in his confessional at St. Mary of the Lilies, where the penitents who breathed their secrets into his ears, and received his fatherly counsels... I beg your pardon. One must not, of course, remember his rags or his sores, when Lazarus approaches that tribunal.
But I don't pretend that the Cardinal was a saint; I am sure he was not a prig. For all his works of supererogation, his life was a life of pomp and luxury, compared to the proper saint's life. He wore no hair shirt; I doubt if he knew the taste of the Discipline. He had his weaknesses, his foibles—even, if you will, his vices. I have intimated that he was fond of a jest. “The Sacred College,” I heard him remark one day, “has fifty centres of gravity. I sometimes fear that I am its centre of levity.” He was also fond of music. He was also fond of snuff:
“'T is an abominable habit,” he admitted. “I can't tolerate it at all—in others. When I was Bishop of Cittareggio, I discountenanced it utterly among my clergy. But for myself—I need not say there are special circumstances. Oddly enough, by the bye, at Cittareggio each separate member of my clergy was able to plead special circumstances for himself I have tried to give it up, and the effort has spoiled my temper—turned me into a perfect old shrew. For my friends' sake, therefore, I appease myself with an occasional pinch. You see, tobacco is antiseptic. It's an excellent preservative of the milk of human kindness.”
The friends in question kept him supplied with sound rappee. Jests and music he was abundantly competent to supply himself. He played the piano and the organ, and he sang—in a clear, sweet, slightly faded tenor. Of secular composers his favourites were “the lucid Scarlatti, the luminous Bach.” But the music that roused him to enthusiasm was Gregorian. He would have none other at St. Mary of the Lilies. He had trained his priests and his people there to sing it admirably—you should have heard them sing Vespers; and he sang it admirably himself—you should have heard him sing a Mass—you should have heard that sweet old tenor voice of his in the Preface and the Pater Noster.
So, then, Beatrice stood before a pier-glass, and studied her new hat; whilst the Cardinal, amused, indulgent, sat in his high-backed armchair, and watched her.
“Well—? What do you think?” she asked, turning towards him.
“You appeal to me as an expert?” he questioned.
His speaking-voice, as well as his singing-voice, was sweet, but with a kind of trenchant edge upon it, a genial asperity, that gave it character, tang.
“As one who should certainly be able to advise,” said she.
“Well, then—” said he. He took his chin into his hand, as if it were a beard, and looked up at her, considering; and the lines of amusement—the “parentheses”—deepened at either side of his mouth. “Well, then, I think if the feather were to be lifted a little higher in front, and brought down a little lower behind—”
“Good gracious, I don't mean my hat,” cried Beatrice. “What in the world can an old dear like you know about hats?”
There was a further deepening of the parentheses.
“Surely,” he contended, “a cardinal should know much. Is it not 'the badge of all our tribe,' as your poet Byron says?”
Beatrice laughed. Then, “Byron—?” she doubted, with a look.
The Cardinal waved his hand—a gesture of amiable concession.
“Oh, if you prefer, Shakespeare. Everything in English is one or the other. We will not fall out, like the Morellists, over an attribution. The point is that I should be a good judge of hats.”
He took snuff.
“It's a shame you haven't a decent snuff-box,” Beatrice observed, with an eye on the enamelled wooden one, cheap and shabby, from which he helped himself.
“The box is but the guinea-stamp; the snuff's the thing.—Was it Shakespeare or Byron who said that?” enquired the Cardinal.
Beatrice laughed again.
“I think it must have been Pulcinella. I'll give you a lovely silver one, if you'll accept it.”
“Will you? Really?” asked the Cardinal, alert.
“Of course I will. It's a shame you haven't one already.”
“What would a lovely silver one cost?” he asked.
“I don't know. It does n't matter,” answered she.
“But approximately? More or less?” he pursued.
“Oh, a couple of hundred lire, more or less, I daresay.”
“A couple of hundred lire?” He glanced up, alerter. “Do you happen to have that amount of money on your person?”
Beatrice (the unwary woman) hunted for her pocket—took out her purse—computed its contents.
“Yes,” she innocently answered.
The Cardinal chuckled—the satisfied chuckle of one whose unsuspected tactics have succeeded.
“Then give me the couple of hundred lire.”
He put forth his hand.
But Beatrice held back.
“What for?” she asked, suspicion waking.
“Oh, I shall have uses for it.”
His outstretched hand—a slim old tapering, bony hand, in colour like dusky ivory—closed peremptorily, in a dumb-show of receiving; and now, by the bye, you could not have failed to notice the big lucent amethyst, in its setting of elaborately-wrought pale gold, on the third finger.
“Come! Give!” he insisted, imperative.
Rueful but resigned, Beatrice shook her head.
“You have caught me finely,” she sighed, and gave.
“You should n't have jingled your purse—you should n't have flaunted your wealth in my face,” laughed the Cardinal, putting away the notes. He took snuff again. “I think I honestly earned that pinch,” he murmured.
“At any rate,” said Beatrice, laying what unction she could to her soul, “I am acquainted with a dignitary of the Church, who has lost a handsome silver snuffbox—beautiful repousse work, with his arms engraved on the lid.”
“And I,” retaliated he, “I am acquainted with a broken-down old doctor and his wife, in Trastevere, who shall have meat and wine at dinner for the next two months—at the expense of a niece of mine. 'I am so glad,' as Alice of Wonderland says, 'that you married into our family.'”
“Alice of Wonderland—?” doubted Beatrice.
The Cardinal waved his hand.
“Oh, if you prefer, Punch. Everything in English is one or the other.”
Beatrice laughed. “It was the I of which especially surprised my English ear,” she explained.
“I am your debtor for two hundred lire. I cannot quarrel with you over a particle,” said he.
“But why,” asked she, “why did you give yourself such superfluous pains? Why couldn't you ask me for the money point-blank? Why lure it from me, by trick and device?”
The Cardinal chuckled.
“Ah, one must keep one's hand in. And one must not look like a Jesuit for nothing.”
“Do you look like a Jesuit?”
“I have been told so.”
“By whom—for mercy's sake?”
“By a gentleman I had the pleasure of meeting not long ago in the train—a very gorgeous gentleman, with gold chains and diamonds flashing from every corner of his person, and a splendid waxed moustache, and a bald head which, I think, was made of polished pink coral. He turned to me in the most affable manner, and said, 'I see, Reverend Sir, that you are a Jesuit. There should be a fellow-feeling between you and me. I am a Jew. Jews and Jesuits have an almost equally bad name!'”
The Cardinal's humorous grey eyes swam in a glow of delighted merriment.
“I could have hugged him for his 'almost.' I have been wondering ever since whether in his mind it was the Jews or the Jesuits who benefited by that reservation. I have been wondering also what I ought to have replied.”
“What did you reply?” asked Beatrice, curious.
“No, no,” said the Cardinal. “With sentiments of the highest consideration, I must respectfully decline to tell you. It was too flat. I am humiliated whenever I recall it.”
“You might have replied that the Jews, at least, have the advantage of meriting their bad name,” she suggested.
“Oh, my dear child!” objected he. “My reply was flat—you would have had it sharp. I should have hurt the poor well-meaning man's feelings, and perhaps have burdened my own soul with a falsehood, into the bargain. Who are we, to judge whether people merit their bad name or not? No, no. The humiliating circumstance is, that if I had possessed the substance as well as the show, if I had really been a son of St. Ignatius, I should have found a retort that would have effected the Jew's conversion.”
“And apropos of conversions,” said Beatrice, “see how far we have strayed from our muttons.”
“Our muttons—?” The Cardinal looked up, enquiring.
“I want to know what you think—not of my hat—but of my man.”
“Oh—ah, yes; your Englishman, your tenant.” The Cardinal nodded.
“My Englishman—my tenant—my heretic,” said she.
“Well,” said he, pondering, while the parentheses became marked again,—“I should think, from what you tell me, that you would find him a useful neighbour. Let me see... You got fifty lire out of him, for a word; and the children went off, blessing you as their benefactress. I should think that you would find him a valuable neighbour—and that he, on his side, might find you an expensive one.”
Beatrice, with a gesture, implored him to be serious.
“Ah, please don't tease about this,” she said. “I want to know what you think of his conversion?”
“The conversion of a heretic is always 'a consummation devoutly to be desired,' as well, you may settle it between Shakespeare and Byron, to suit yourself. And there are none so devoutly desirous of such consummations as you Catholics of England—especially you women. It is said that a Catholic Englishwoman once tried to convert the Pope.”
“Well, there have been popes whom it would n't have hurt,” commented Beatrice. “And as for Mr. Marchdale,” she continued, “he has shown 'dispositions.' He admitted that he could see no reason why it should not have been Our Blessed Lady who sent us to the children's aid. Surely, from a Protestant, that is an extraordinary admission?”
“Yes,” said the Cardinal. “And if he meant it, one may conclude that he has a philosophic mind.”
“If he meant it?” Beatrice cried. “Why should he not have meant it? Why should he have said it if he did not mean it?”
“Oh, don't ask me,” protested the Cardinal. “There is a thing the French call politesse. I can conceive a young man professing to agree with a lady for the sake of what the French might call her beaux yeux.”
“I give you my word,” said Beatrice, “that my beaux yeux had nothing to do with the case. He said it in the most absolute good faith. He said he believed that in a universe like ours nothing was impossible—that there were more things in heaven and earth than people generally dreamed of—that he could see no reason why the Blessed Virgin should not have sent us across the children's path. Oh, he meant it. I am perfectly sure he meant it.”
The Cardinal smiled—at her eagerness, perhaps.
“Well, then,” he repeated, “we must conclude that he has a philosophic mind.”
“But what is one to do?” asked she. “Surely one ought to do something? One ought to follow such an admission up? When a man is so far on the way to the light, it is surely one's duty to lead him farther?”
“Without doubt,” said the Cardinal.
“Well—? What can one do?”
The Cardinal looked grave.
“One can pray,” he said.
“Emilia and I pray for his conversion night and morning.”
“That is good,” he approved.
“But that is surely not enough?”
“One can have Masses said.”
“Monsignor Langshawe, at the castle, says a Mass for him twice a week.”
“That is good,” approved the Cardinal.
“But is that enough?”
“Why doesn't Monsignor Langshawe call upon him—cultivate his acquaintance—talk with him—set him thinking?” the Cardinal enquired.
“Oh, Monsignor Langshawe!” Beatrice sighed, with a gesture. “He is interested in nothing but geology—he would talk to him of nothing but moraines—he would set him thinking of nothing but the march of glaciers.”
“Hum,” said the Cardinal.
“Well, then—?” questioned Beatrice.
“Well, then, Carissima, why do you not take the affair in hand yourself?”
“But that is just the difficulty. What can I what can a mere woman—do in such a case?”
The Cardinal looked into his amethyst, as a crystal-gazer into his crystal; and the lines about his humorous old mouth deepened and quivered.
“I will lend you the works of Bellarmine in I forget how many volumes. You can prime yourself with them, and then invite your heretic to a course of instructions.”
“Oh, I wish you would n't turn it to a joke,” said Beatrice.
“Bellarmine—a joke!” exclaimed the Cardinal. “It is the first time I have ever heard him called so. However, I will not press the suggestion.”
“But then—? Oh, please advise me seriously. What can I do? What can a mere unlearned woman do?”
The Cardinal took snuff. He gazed into his amethyst again, beaming at it, as if he could descry something deliciously comical in its depths. He gave a soft little laugh. At last he looked up.
“Well,” he responded slowly, “in an extremity, I should think that a mere unlearned woman might, if she made an effort, ask the heretic to dinner. I 'll come down and stay with you for a day or two, and you can ask him to dinner.”
“You're a perfect old darling,” cried Beatrice, with rapture. “He'll never be able to resist you.”'
“Oh, I 'm not undertaking to discuss theology with him,” said the Cardinal. “But one must do something in exchange for a couple of hundred lire—so I'll come and give you my moral support.”
“You shall have your lovely silver snuffbox, all the same,” said she.
Mark the predestination!
“CASTEL VENTIROSE,“August 21 st.
“DEAR Mr. Marchdale: It will give me great pleasure if you can dine with us on Thursday evening next, at eight o'clock, to meet my uncle, Cardinal Udeschini, who is staying here for a few days.
“I have been re-reading 'A Man of Words.' I want you to tell me a great deal more about your friend, the author.
Yours sincerely,BEATRICE DI SANTANGIOLO.”
It is astonishing, what men will prize, what men will treasure. Peter Marchdale, for example, prizes, treasures, (and imagines that he will always prize and treasure), the perfectly conventional, the perfectly commonplace little document, of which the foregoing is a copy.
The original is written in rather a small, concentrated hand, not overwhelmingly legible perhaps, but, as we say, “full of character,” on paper lightly blueish, in the prescribed corner of which a tiny ducal coronet is embossed, above the initials “B. S.” curiously interlaced in a cypher.
When Peter received it, and (need I mention?) approached it to his face, he fancied he could detect just a trace, just the faintest reminder, of a perfume—something like an afterthought of orris. It was by no means anodyne. It was a breath, a whisper, vague, elusive, hinting of things exquisite, intimate of things intimately feminine, exquisitely personal. I don't know how many times he repeated that manoeuvre of conveying the letter to his face; but I do know that when I was privileged to inspect it, a few months later, the only perfume it retained was an unmistakable perfume of tobacco.
I don't know, either, how many times he read it, searched it, as if secrets might lie perdu between the lines, as if his gaze could warm into evidence some sympathetic ink, or compel a cryptic sub-intention from the text itself.
Well, to be sure, the text had cryptic subintentions; but these were as far as may be from any that Peter was in a position to conjecture. How could he guess, for instance, that the letter was an instrument, and he the victim, of a Popish machination? How could he guess that its writer knew as well as he did who was the author of “A Man of Words”?
And then, all at once, a shade of trouble of quite another nature fell upon his mind. He frowned for a while in silent perplexity. At last he addressed himself to Marietta.
“Have you ever dined with a cardinal?” he asked.
“No, Signorino,” that patient sufferer replied.
“Well, I'm in the very dickens of a quandary—son' proprio nel dickens d'un imbarazzo.” he informed her.
“Dickens—?” she repeated.
“Si—Dickens, Carlo, celebre autore inglese. Why not?” he asked.
Marietta gazed with long-suffering eyes at the horizon.
“Or, to put it differently,” Peter resumed, “I've come all the way from London with nothing better than a dinner jacket in my kit.”
“Dina giacca? Cosa e?” questioned Marietta.
“No matter what it is—the important thing is what it is n't. It is n't a dress-coat.”
“Non e un abito nero,” said Marietta, seeing that he expected her to say something.
“Well—? You perceive my difficulty. Do you think you could make me one?” said Peter.
“Make the Signorino a dress-coat? I? Oh, no, Signorino.” Marietta shook her head.
“I feared as much,” he acknowledged. “Is there a decent tailor in the village?”
“No, Signorino.”
“Nor in the whole length and breadth of this peninsula, if you come to that. Well, what am I to do? How am I to dine with a cardinal? Do you think a cardinal would have a fit if a man were to dine with him in a dina giacca?”
“Have a fit? Why should he have a fit, Signorino?” Marietta blinked.
“Would he do anything to the man? Would he launch the awful curses of the Church at him, for instance?”
“Mache, Signorino!” She struck an attitude that put to scorn his apprehensions.
“I see,” said Peter. “You think there is no danger? You advise me to brazen the dina giacca out, to swagger it off?”
“I don't understand, Signorino,” said Marietta.
“To understand is to forgive,” said he; “and yet you can't trifle with English servants like this, though they ought to understand, ought n't they? In any case, I 'll be guided by your judgment. I'll wear my dina giacca, but I'll wear it with an air! I 'll confer upon it the dignity of a court-suit. Is that a gardener—that person working over there?”
Marietta looked in the quarter indicated by Peter's nod.
“Yes, Signorino; ha is the same gardener who works here three days every week,” she answered.
“Is he, really? He looks like a pirate,” Peter murmured.
“Like a pirate? Luigi?” she exclaimed.
“Yes,” affirmed her master. “He wears green corduroy trousers, and a red belt, and a blue shirt. That is the pirate uniform. He has a swarthy skin, and a piercing eye, and hair as black as the Jolly Roger. Those are the marks by which you recognise a pirate, even when in mufti. I believe you said his name is Luigi?”
“Yes, Signorino—Luigi Maroni. We call him Gigi.”
“Is Gigi versatile?” asked Peter.
“Versatile—?” puzzled Marietta. But then, risking her own interpretation of the recondite word, “Oh, no, Signorino. He is of the country.”
“Ah, he's of the country, is he? So much the better. Then he will know the way to Castel Ventirose?”
“But naturally, Signorino.” Marietta nodded.
“And do you think, for once in a way, though not versatile, he could be prevailed upon to divert his faculties from the work of a gardener to that of a messenger?”
“A messenger, Signorino?” Marietta wrinkled up her brow.
“Ang—an unofficial postman. Do you think he could be induced to carry a letter for me to the castle?”
“But certainly, Signorino. He is here to obey the Signorino's orders.” Marietta shrugged her shoulders, and waved her hands.
“Then tell him, please, to go and put the necessary touches to his toilet,” said Peter. “Meanwhile I'll indite the letter.”
When his letter was indited, he found the piratical-looking Gigi in attendance, and he gave it to him, with instructions.
Thereupon Gigi (with a smile of sympathetic intelligence, inimitably Italian) put the letter in his hat, put his hat upon his head, and started briskly off—but not in the proper direction: not in the direction of the road, which led to the village, and across the bridge, and then round upon itself to the gates of the park. He started briskly off towards Peter's own toolhouse, a low red-tiled pavilion, opposite the door of Marietta's kitchen.
Peter was on the point of calling to him, of remonstrating. Then he thought better of it. He would wait a bit, and watch.
He waited and watched; and this was what he saw.
Gigi entered the tool-house, and presently brought out a ladder, which he carried down to the riverside, and left there. Then he returned to the tool-house, and came back bearing an armful of planks, each perhaps a foot wide by five or six feet long. Now he raised his ladder to the perpendicular, and let it descend before him, so that, one extremity resting upon the nearer bank, one attained the further, and it spanned the flood. Finally he laid a plank lengthwise upon the hithermost rungs, and advanced to the end of it; then another plank; then a third: and he stood in the grounds of Ventirose.
He had improvised a bridge—a bridge that swayed upwards and downwards more or less dizzily about the middle, if you will—but an entirely practicable bridge, for all that. And he had saved himself at least a good three miles, to the castle and back, by the road.
Peter watched, and admired.
“And I asked whether he was versatile!” he muttered. “Trust an Italian for economising labour. It looks like unwarrantable invasion of friendly territory—but it's a dodge worth remembering, all the same.”
He drew the Duchessa's letter from his pocket, and read it again, and again approached it to his face, communing with that ghost of a perfume.
“Heavens! how it makes one think of chiffons,” he exclaimed. “Thursday—Thursday—help me to live till Thursday!”
But he had n't to live till Thursday—he was destined to see her not later than the next afternoon.
You know with what abruptness, with how brief a warning, storms will spring from the blue, in that land of lakes and mountains.
It was three o'clock or thereabouts; and Peter was reading in his garden; and the whole world lay basking in unmitigated sunshine.
Then, all at once, somehow, you felt a change in things: the sunshine seemed less brilliant, the shadows less solid, less sharply outlined. Oh, it was very slight, very uncertain; you had to look twice to assure yourself that it was n't a mere fancy. It seemed as if never so thin a gauze had been drawn over the face of the sun, just faintly bedimming, without obscuring it. You could have ransacked the sky in vain to discover the smallest shred of cloud.
At the same time, the air, which had been hot all day—hot, but buoyant, but stimulant, but quick with oxygen—seemed to become thick, sluggish, suffocating, seemed to yield up its vital principle, and to fall a dead weight upon the earth. And this effect was accompanied by a sudden silence—the usual busy out-of-door country noises were suddenly suspended: the locusts stopped their singing; not a bird twittered; not a leaf rustled: the world held its breath. And if the river went on babbling, babbling, that was a very part of the silence—accented, underscored it.
Yet still you could not discern a rack of cloud anywhere in the sky—still, for a minute or two.... Then, before you knew how it had happened, the snow-summits of Monte Sfiorito were completely lapped in cloud.
And now the cloud spread with astonishing rapidity—spread and sank, cancelling the sun, shrouding the Gnisi to its waist, curling in smoky wreaths among the battlements of the Cornobastone, turning the lake from sapphire to sombre steel, filling the entire valley with a strange mixture of darkness and an uncanny pallid light. Overhead it hung like a vast canopy of leaden-hued cotton-wool; at the west it had a fringe of fiery crimson, beyond which a strip of clear sky on the horizon diffused a dull metallic yellow, like tarnished brass.
Presently, in the distance, there was a low growl of thunder; in a minute, a louder, angrier growl—as if the first were a menace which had not been heeded. Then there was a violent gush of wind—cold; smelling of the forests from which it came; scattering everything before it, dust, dead leaves, the fallen petals of flowers; making the trees writhe and labour, like giants wrestling with invisible giants; making the short grass shudder; corrugating the steel surface of the lake. Then two or three big raindrops fell—and then, the deluge.
Peter climbed up to his observatory—a square four-windowed turret, at the top of the house—thence to watch the storm and exult in it. Really it was splendid—to see, to hear; its immense wild force, its immense reckless fury. Rain had never rained so hard, he thought. Already, the lake, the mountain slopes, the villas and vineyards westward, were totally blotted out, hidden behind walls and walls of water; and even the neighbouring lawns of Ventirose, the confines of his own garden, were barely distinguishable, blurred as by a fog. The big drops pelted the river like bullets, sending up splashes bigger than themselves. And the tiled roof just above his head resounded with a continual loud crepitation, as if a multitude of iron-shod elves were dancing on it. The thunder crashed, roared, reverberated, like the toppling of great edifices. The lightning tore through the black cloud-canopy in long blinding zig-zags. The wind moaned, howled, hooted—and the square chamber where Peter stood shook and rattled under its buffetings, and was full of the chill and the smell of it. Really the whole thing was splendid.
His garden-paths ran with muddy brooklets; the high-road beyond his hedge was transformed to a shallow torrent.... And, just at that moment, looking off along the highroad, he saw something that brought his heart into his throat.
Three figures were hurrying down it, half-drowned in the rain—the Duchessa di Santangiolo, Emilia Manfredi, and a priest.
In a twinkling, Peter, bareheaded, was at his gate.
“Come in—come in,” he called.
“We are simply drenched—we shall inundate your house,” the Duchessa said, as he showed them into his sitting-room.
They were indeed dripping with water, soiled to their knees with mud.
“Good heavens!” gasped Peter, stupid. “How were you ever out in such a downpour?”
She smiled, rather forlornly.
“No one told us that it was going to rain, and we were off for a good long walk—for pleasure.”
“You must be wet to the bone—you must be perishing with cold,” he cried, looking from one to another.
“Yes, I daresay we are perishing with cold,” she admitted.
“And I have no means of offering you a fire—there are no fireplaces,” he groaned, with a gesture round the bleak Italian room, to certify their absence.
“Is n't there a kitchen?” asked the Duchessa, a faint spark of raillery kindling amid the forlornness of her smile.
Peter threw up his hands.
“I had lost my head. The kitchen, of course. I 'll tell Marietta to light a fire.”
He excused himself, and sought out Marietta. He found her in her housekeeper's room, on her knees, saying her rosary, in obvious terror. I 'm afraid he interrupted her orisons somewhat brusquely.
“Will you be so good as to start a rousing fire in the kitchen—as quickly as ever it can be done?”
And he rejoined his guests.
“If you will come this way—” he said.
Marietta had a fire of logs and pine-cones blazing in no time. She courtesied low to the Duchessa, lower still to the priest—in fact, Peter was n't sure that she did n't genuflect before him, while he made a rapid movement with his hand over her head: the Sign of the Cross, perhaps.
He was a little, unassuming-looking, white haired priest, with a remarkably clever, humorous, kindly face; and he wore a remarkably shabby cassock. The Duchessa's chaplain, Peter supposed. How should it occur to him that this was Cardinal Udeschini? Do Cardinals (in one's antecedent notion of them) wear shabby cassocks, and look humorous and unassuming? Do they go tramping about the country in the rain, attended by no retinue save a woman and a fourteen-year-old girl? And are they little men—in one's antecedent notion? True, his shabby cassock had red buttons, and there was a red sash round his waist, and a big amethyst glittered in a setting of pale gold on his annular finger. But Peter was not sufficiently versed in fashions canonical, to recognise the meaning of these insignia.
How, on the other hand, should it occur to the Duchessa that Peter needed enlightenment? At all events, she said to him, “Let me introduce you;” and then, to the priest, “Let me present Mr. Marchdale—of whom you have heard before now.”
The white-haired old man smiled sweetly into Peter's eyes, and gave him a slender, sensitive old hand.
“E cattivo vento che non e buono per qualcuno—debbo a questa burrasca la pregustazione d' un piacere,” he said, with a mingling of ceremonious politeness and sunny geniality that was of his age and race.
Peter—instinctively—he could not have told why—put a good deal more deference into his bow, than men of his age and race commonly put into their bows, and murmured something about “grand' onore.”
Marietta placed a row of chairs before the raised stone hearth, and afterwards, at her master's request, busied herself preparing tea.
“But I think you would all be wise to take a little brandy first,” Peter suggested. “It is my despair that I am not able to provide you with a change of raiment. Brandy will be the best substitute, perhaps.”
The old priest laughed, and put his hand upon the shoulder of Emilia.
“You have spared this young lady an embarrassing avowal. Brandy is exactly what she was screwing her courage to the point of asking for.”
“Oh, no!” protested Emilia, in a deep Italian voice, with passionate seriousness.
But Peter fetched a decanter, and poured brandy for everyone.
“I drink to your health—c'est bien le cas de le dire. I hope you will not have caught your deaths of cold,” he said.
“Oh, we are quite warm now,” said the Duchessa. “We are snug in an ingle on Mount Ararat.”
“Our wetting will have done us good—it will make us grow. You and I will never regret that, will we, Emilietta?” said the priest.
A lively colour had come into the Duchessa's cheeks; her eyes seemed unusually bright. Her hair was in some disorder, drooping at the sides, and blown over her brow in fine free wavelets. It was dark in the kitchen, save for the firelight, which danced fantastically on the walls and ceiling, and struck a ruddy glow from Marietta's copper pots and pans. The rain pattered lustily without; the wind wailed in the chimney; the lightning flashed, the thunder volleyed. And Peter looked at the Duchessa—and blessed the elements. To see her seated there, in her wet gown, seated familiarly, at her ease, before his fire, in his kitchen, with that colour in her cheeks, that brightness in her eyes, and her hair in that disarray—it was unspeakable; his heart closed in a kind of delicious spasm. And the fragrance, subtle, secret, evasive, that hovered in the air near her, did not diminish his emotion.
“I wonder,” she asked, with a comical little glance upwards at him, “whether you would resent it very much if I should take off my hat—because it's a perfect reservoir, and the water will keep trickling down my neck.”
His joy needed but this culmination that she should take off her hat!
“Oh, I beg of you—” he returned fervently.
“You had better take yours off too, Emilia,” said the Duchessa.
“Admire masculine foresight,” said the priest. “I took mine off when I came in.”
“Let me hang them up,” said Peter.
It was wonderful to hold her hat in his hand—it was like holding a part of herself. He brushed it surreptitiously against his face, as he hung it up. Its fragrance—which met him like an answering caress, almost—did not lessen his emotion.
Then Marietta brought the tea, with bread-and-butter, and toast, and cakes, and pretty blue china cups and saucers, and silver that glittered in the firelight.
“Will you do me the honour of pouring the tea?” Peter asked the Duchessa.
So she poured the tea, and Peter passed it. As he stood close to her, to take it—oh, but his heart beat, believe me! And once, when she was giving him a cup, the warm tips of her fingers lightly touched his hand. Believe me, the touch had its effect. And always there was that heady fragrance in the air, like a mysterious little voice, singing secrets.
“I wonder,” the old priest said, “why tea is not more generally drunk by us Italians. I never taste it without resolving to acquire the habit. I remember, when I was a child, our mothers used to keep it as a medicine; and you could only buy it at the chemists' shops.”
“It's coming in, you know, at Rome—among the Whites,” said the Duchessa.
“Among the Whites!” cried he, with a jocular simulation of disquiet. “You should not have told me that, till I had finished my cup. Now I shall feel that I am sharing a dissipation with our spoliators.”
“That should give an edge to its aroma,” laughed she. “And besides, the Whites aren't all responsible for our spoliation—some of them are not so white as your fancy paints them. They'd be very decent people, for the most part—if they were n't so vulgar.”
“If you stick up for the Whites like that when I am Pope, I shall excommunicate you,” the priest threatened. “Meanwhile, what have you to say against the Blacks?”
“The Blacks, with few exceptions, are even blacker than they're painted; but they too would be fairly decent people in their way—if they were n't so respectable. That is what makes Rome impossible as a residence for any one who cares for human society. White society is so vulgar—Black society is so deadly dull.”
“It is rather curious,” said the priest, “that the chief of each party should wear the colour of his adversary. Our chief dresses in white, and their chief can be seen any day driving about the streets in black.”
And Peter, during this interchange of small-talk, was at liberty to feast his eyes upon her.
“Perhaps you have not yet reached the time of life where men begin to find a virtue in snuff?” the priest said, producing a smart silver snuff box, tapping the lid, and proffering it to Peter.
“On the contrary—thank you,” Peter answered, and absorbed his pinch like an adept.
“How on earth have you learned to take it without a paroxysm?” cried the surprised Duchessa.
“Oh, a thousand years ago I was in the Diplomatic Service,” he explained. “It is one of the requirements.”
Emilia Manfredi lifted her big brown eyes, filled with girlish wonder, to his face, and exclaimed, “How extraordinary!”
“It is n't half so extraordinary as it would be if it were true, my dear,” said the Duchessa.
“Oh? Non e poi vero?” murmured Emilia, and her eyes darkened with disappointment.
Peter meanwhile was looking at the snuffbox, which the priest still held in his hand, and admiring its brave repousse work of leaves and flowers, and the escutcheon engraved on the lid. But what if he could have guessed the part he had passively played in obtaining it for its possessor—or the part that it was still to play in his own epopee? Mark again the predestination!
“The storm is passing,” said the priest.
“Worse luck!” thought Peter.
For indeed the rain and the wind were moderating, the thunder had rolled farther away, the sky was becoming lighter.
“But there's a mighty problem before us still,” said the Duchessa. “How are we to get to Ventirose? The roads will, be ankle-deep with mud.”
“If you wish to do me a very great kindness—” Peter began.
“Yes—?” she encouraged him.
“You will allow me to go before you, and tell them to come for you with a carriage.”
“I shall certainly allow you to do nothing of the sort,” she replied severely. “I suppose there is no one whom you could send?”
“I should hardly like to send Marietta. I 'm afraid there is no one else. But upon my word, I should enjoy going myself.”
She shook her head, smiling at him with mock compassion.
“Would you? Poor man, poor man! That is an enjoyment which you will have to renounce. One must n't expect too much in this sad life.”
“Well, then,” said Peter, “I have an expedient. If you can walk a somewhat narrow plank—?”
“Yes—?” questioned she.
“I think I can improvise a bridge across the river.”
“I believe the rain has stopped,” said the priest, looking towards the window.
Peter, manning his soul for the inevitable, got up, went to the door, opened it, stuck out his head.
“Yes,” he acknowledged, while his heart sank within him, “the rain has stopped.”
And now the storm departed almost as rapidly as it had arrived. In the north the sky was already clear, blue and hard-looking—a wall of lapis-lazuli. The dark cloud-canopy was drifting to the south. Suddenly the sun came out, flashing first from the snows of Monte Sfiorito, then, in an instant, flooding the entire prospect with a marvellous yellow light, ethereal amber; whilst long streamers of tinted vapour—columns of pearl-dust, one might have fancied—rose to meet it; and all wet surfaces, leaves, lawns, tree-trunks, housetops, the bare crags of the Gnisi, gleamed in a wash of gold.
Puffs of fresh air blew into the kitchen, filling it with the keen sweet odour of wet earth. The priest and the Duchessa and Emilia joined Peter at the open door.
“Oh, your poor, poor garden!” the Duchessa cried.
His garden had suffered a good deal, to be sure. The flowers lay supine, their faces beaten into the mud; the greensward was littered with fallen leaves and twigs—and even in one or two places whole branches had been broken from the trees; on the ground about each rose-bush a snow of pink rose-petals lay scattered; in the paths there were hundreds of little pools, shining in the sun like pools of fire.
“There's nothing a gardener can't set right,” said Peter, feeling no doubt that here was a trifling tax upon the delights the storm had procured him.
“And oh, our poor, poor hats!” said the Duchessa, eyeing ruefully those damaged pieces of finery. “I fear no gardener can ever set them right.”
“It sounds inhospitable,” said Peter, “but I suppose I had better go and build your bridge.”
So he threw a ladder athwart the river, and laid the planks in place, as he had seen Gigi do the day before.
“How ingenious—and, like all great things, how simple,” laughed the Duchessa.
Peter waved his hand, as who should modestly deprecate applause. But, I 'm ashamed to own, he didn't disclaim the credit of the invention.
“It will require some nerve,” she reflected, looking at the narrow planks, the foaming green water. “However—”
And gathering in her skirts, she set bravely forward, and made the transit without mishap. The priest and Emilia, gathering in their skirts, made it after her.
She paused on the other side, and looked back, smiling.
“Since you have discovered so efficacious a means of cutting short the distance between our places of abode,” she said, “I hope you will not fail to profit by it whenever you may have occasion—on Thursday, for example.”
“Thank you very much,” said Peter.
“Of course,” she went on, “we may all die of our wetting yet. It would perhaps show a neighbourly interest if you were to come up to-morrow, and take our news. Come at four o'clock; and if we're alive... you shall have another pinch of snuff,” she promised, laughing.
“I adore you,” said Peter, under his breath. “I'll come with great pleasure,” he said aloud.
“Marietta,” he observed, that evening, as he dined, “I would have you to know that the Aco is bridged. Hence, there is one symbol the fewer in Lombardy. But why does—you mustn't mind the Ollendorfian form of my enquiry—why does the chaplain of the Duchessa wear red stockings?”
“The chaplain of the Duchessa—?” repeated Marietta, wrinkling up her brow.
“Ang—of the Duchessa di Santangiolo. He wore red stockings, and shoes with silver buckles. Do you think that's precisely decorous—don't you think it 's the least bit light-minded—in an ecclesiastic?”
“He—? Who—?” questioned Marietta.
“But the chaplain of the Duchessa—when he was here this afternoon.”
“The chaplain of the Duchessa!” exclaimed Marietta. “Here this afternoon? The chaplain of the Duchessa was not here this afternoon. His Eminence the Lord Prince Cardinal Udeschini was here this afternoon.”
“What!” gasped Peter.
“Ang,” said Marietta.
“That was Cardinal Udeschini—that little harmless-looking, sweet-faced old man!” Peter wondered.
“Sicuro—the uncle of the Duca,” said she.
“Good heavens!” sighed he. “And I allowed myself to hobnob with him like a boon-companion.”
“Gia,” said she.
“You need n't rub it in,” said he. “For the matter of that, you yourself entertained him in your kitchen.”
“Scusi?” said she.
“Ah, well—it was probably for the best,” he concluded. “I daresay I should n't have behaved much better if I had known.”
“It was his coming which saved this house from being struck by lightning,” announced Marietta.
“Oh—? Was it?” exclaimed Peter.
“Yes, Signorino. The lightning would never strike a house that the Lord Prince Cardinal was in.”
“I see—it would n't venture—it would n't presume. Did—did it strike all the houses that the Lord Prince Cardinal was n't in?”
“I do not think so, Signorino. Ma non fa niente. It was a terrible storm—terrible, terrible. The lightning was going to strike this house, when the Lord Prince Cardinal arrived.”
“Hum,” said Peter. “Then you, as well as I, have reason for regarding his arrival as providential.”