“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.
“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.”
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 ageWith 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.
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.
“I'm afraid I must be somewhat lacking in decision of character,” he said, with pathetic wonder.
Then suddenly he stamped his foot.
“Come! An end to this tergiversation. Do it. Do it,” cried his manlier soul.
“I will,” he resolved all at once, drawing a deep breath, and clenching his fists.
He left the Casino, and set forth to walk to Ventirose. He could not wait for the omnibus, which would not leave till four. He must strike while his will was hot.
He walked rapidly; in less than an hour he had reached the tall gilded grille of the park. He stopped for an instant, and looked up the straight avenue of chestnuts, to the western front of the castle, softly alight in the afternoon sun. He put his hand upon the pendent bell-pull of twisted iron, to summon the porter. In another second he would have rung, he would have been admitted.... And just then one of the little demons that inhabit the circumambient air, called his attention to an aspect of the situation which he had not thought of.
“Wait a bit,” it whispered in his ear. “You were there only yesterday. It can't fail, therefore, to seem extraordinary, your calling again to-day. You must be prepared with an excuse, an explanation. But suppose, when you arrive, suppose that (like the lady in the ballad) she greets you with 'a glance of cold surprise'—what then, my dear? Why, then, it's obvious, you can't allege the true explanation—can you? If she greets you with a glance of cold, surprise, you 'll have your answer, as it were, before the fact you 'll know that there's no manner of hope for you; and the time for passionate avowals will automatically defer itself. But then—? How will you justify your visit? What face can you put on?”
“H'm,” assented Peter, “there's something in that.”
“There's a great deal in that,” said the demon. “You must have an excuse up your sleeve, a pretext. A true excuse is a fine thing in its way; but when you come to a serious emergency, an alternative false excuse is indispensable.”
“H'm,” said Peter.
However, if there are demons in the atmosphere, there are gods in the machine—(“Paraschkine even goes so far as to maintain that there are more gods in the machine than have ever been taken from it.”) While Peter stood still, pondering the demon's really rather cogent intervention, his eye was caught by something that glittered in the grass at the roadside.
“The Cardinal's snuff-box,” he exclaimed, picking it up.
The Cardinal had dropped his snuff-box. Here was an excuse, and to spare. Peter rang the bell.