Chapter 6

"Oh? The Servites--the Mantellate? I am glad of that," exclaimed Maria Dolores. "It is a most beautiful order. They have an especial devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows."

"Yes," said John, and remembered it was for Our Lady of Sorrows that she who spoke was named.

Slow though their march had been, by this time they had come to the end of the avenue, and were in the wide circular sweep before the castle. They stopped here, and stood looking off over the garden, with its sombre cypresses and bright beds of geranium, down upon the valley, dim and luminous in a mist of gold. Great, heavy, fantastic-shaped clouds, pearl-white with pearl-grey shadows, piled themselves up against the scintillant dark blue of the sky. In and out among the rose-trees near at hand, where the sun was hottest, heavily flew, with a loud bourdonnement, the cockchafers promised by Annunziata,--big, blundering, clumsy, the scorn of their light-winged and business-like competitors, the bees. Lizards lay immobile as lizards cast in bronze, only their little glittering, watchful pin-heads of eyes giving sign of life. And of course the blackcaps never for a moment left off singing.

They stood side by side, within a yard of each other, in silent contemplation of these things, during I don't know how many long and, for John, delicious seconds. Yes, he owned it to himself; it was delicious to feel her standing there beside him, in silent communion with him, contemplating the same things, enjoying the same pleasantnesses. Companionship--companionship: it was what he had been unconsciously needing all along! ... At last she turned, and, withdrawing her eyes lingeringly from the landscape, looked into his, with a smile. She did not speak, but her smile said, just as explicitly as her lips could have done, "What a scene of beauty!"

And John responded aloud, with fervour, "Indeed, indeed it is."

"And so romantic," she added. "It is like a scene out of some old high musical romance."

"The most romantic scene I know," said he. "All my life I have thought so."

"Oh?" said she, looking surprise. "Have you known it all your life?"

"Well,--very nearly," said he, with half a laugh. "I saw it first when I was ten. Then for long years I lost it,--and only recovered it, by accident, a month ago."

Her face showed her interest. "Oh? How was that? How did it happen?"

"When I was ten," John recounted, half laughing again, "I was travelling with my father, and, among the many places we visited, one seemed to me a very vision of romance made real. A vast and stately castle, in a garden, in a valley, with splendid halls and chambers, and countless beautiful pictures of women. All my life I remembered it, dreamed of it, longed to see it again. But I hadn't a notion where it was, save vaguely that it was somewhere in Italy; and, my poor father being dead, there was no one I could ask. Then, wandering in these parts a month ago, I stumbled upon it, and recognized it. Though shrunken a good deal in size, to be sure, it was still recognizable, and as romantic as ever."

Maria Dolores listened pensively. When he had reached his period, her eyes lighted up. "What a charming adventure!" she said. "And so, for you, besides its general romance, the place has a personal one, all your own. I, too, have known it for long years, but only from photographs. I suppose I should never have seen the real thing, except for a friend of mine coming to live here."

"I wonder," said John, "that the people who own it never live here."

"The Prince of Zelt-Neuminster?" said she. "No,--he doesn't like the Italian Government. Since Lombardy passed from Austria to Italy, the family have entirely given up staying at Sant' Alessina."

"In those circumstances," said John, "practical-minded people, I should think, would get rid of the place."

"Oh," said she, laughing, "the Prince, in some ways, is practical-minded enough. He has this great collection of Italian paintings, which, by Italian law, he mayn't remove from Italian soil; and if he were to get rid of Sant' Alessina, where could he house them? In other ways, though, he is perhaps not so practical. He is one of those Utopians who believe that the present Kingdom of Italy must perforce before long make shipwreck; and I think he holds on to Sant' Alessina in the dream of coming here in triumph, and grandly celebrating that event."

"I see," said John, nodding. "That is a beautiful ideal."

"Good-bye," said she, flashing a last quick smile into his eyes; and she moved away, down a garden path, towards the pavilion beyond the clock.

III

And now, I should have imagined, for a single session, (and that an initial one), he had had enough. I should have expected him to spend the remainder of his day, a full man, in thankful tranquillity, in agreeable retrospective rumination. But no. Indulgence, it soon appeared, had but whetted his appetite. After a quarter-hour of walking about the garden, during which his jumble of sensations and impressions,--her soft-glowing eyes, her soft-drooping hair, under her wine-red hat; her slender figure, in its fluttering summery muslin, and the faint, faint perfume (like a far-away memory of rose-leaves) that hovered near her; her smile, and the curves, when she smiled, of her rose-red lips, and the gleam of her snow-white teeth; her laugh, her voice, her ivory voice; her pretty crisp-cut English; her appreciation of Annunziata, her disquieting presentiments concerning her; and his deep satisfaction in her propinquity, her "companionship;" and the long shaded fragrant avenue, and the bird-songs, and the gentle weather,--after a quarter-hour of anything but thankful tranquillity, a quarter-hour of unaccountable excitement and exaltation, during which his jumble of impressions and sensations settled themselves, from ebullition, into some sort of quiescence, he began to grow restlessly aware that, so far from having had enough, he had had just a sufficient taste to make him hunger keenly for more and more. It was ridiculous, but he couldn't help it. And as there seemed no manner of likelihood that his hunger would soon be fed, it was trying. At the best, he could not reasonably hope to see her again before to-morrow; and even then--? What ghost of a reason had he to hope that even then he could renew their conversation? He had owed that to-day to the bare hazard of their ways lying together. To-morrow, very likely, at the best, he might get a bow and a smile. Very likely it might be days before he should again have anything approaching a real talk with her. And what--a new consideration, that struck a sudden terror to his soul--what if her visit to Frau Brandt was to be a short one? What if to-morrow even, she were to depart? "Her very ease in talking with me, a stranger, may quite well have been due to the fact that she knew she would never see me again," he argued. ... So he was working himself into a fine state of despondency, and the world was rapidly being resolved into dust and ashes, when Heaven sent him a diversion. Nay, indeed, Heaven sent him two diversions.

IV

There was a sound of wheels on gravel, of horses' hoofs on stone, and Lady Blanchemain's great high-swung barouche, rolling superbly forth from the avenue, drew up before the Castle, Lady Blanchemain herself, big and soft and sumptuous in silks and laces, under a much-befurbelowed, much-befringed, lavender-hued silk sunshade, occupying the seat of honour. John hastened across the garden, hat in hand, to welcome her.

"Jump in," she commanded, with a smile, and an imperious sweep of the arm. "I have come to take you for a drive."

The footman (proud man) held open the door, and John jumped in. But just as the footman (with an air) had closed the door behind him, and before the coachman had touched up his horses, there came a rhythm of running footsteps, and the voice of Annunziata called, insistently, "Prospero! Prospero!" Then, all out of breath, her pale cheeks pink, her curls in disarray, Annunziata arrived beside the carriage, and, no wise abashed by that magnificent equipage, nor by the magnificent old lady throning in it, (no wise abashed, but, from the roundness of her eyes, a good deal surprised and vastly curious), she explained, gasping, "A telegram," and held up to John a straw-coloured envelope.

"Thank you," said he, taking it, and waving a friendly hand. "But you should not run so fast," he admonished her, with concern.

Whereupon the carriage drove off, Annunziata standing and watching, always round-eyed, till it was out of sight.

"What an interesting-looking child!" said Lady Blanchemain.

"Yes," said John. "I should have liked to introduce her to you."

"Who is she?" asked the lady.

"She's the private detective I told you of. She's my affinity. She's the young limb o' mischief for whom I ravaged your stores of marchpane. She's the niece of the parroco."

"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain. "Why does she call you--what was it?--Prospero?"

"She's an optimist. She's a bird of good omen," answered John. "She's satisfied herself, by consulting an oracle, that Fortune has favours up her sleeve for me. She encouragingly anticipates them by calling me Prospero before the fact."

Lady Blanchemain softly laughed. "That's very nice of her, and very wise. Aren't you going to read your telegram?"

"I didn't know whether you'd permit," said John.

"Oh pray," said she, with a gesture.

The carriage by this time had left the garden, and the coachman had turned his horses' heads northwards, away from the lake, towards the Alps, where their snowy summits, attenuated by the sun and the distance and the blue air, looked like vapours rising into the sky.

John tore open his envelope, read, frowned, and uttered a half-stifled ejaculation,--something that sounded rather like "I say!" and vaguely like "By Jove!"

"No bad news, I hope?" inquired the lady, sympathetic, and trying to speak as if she didn't know what curiosity meant.

"Excellent news, on the contrary," said John, "but a bolt from the blue." And he offered her the paper.

"Am on my way to Rome," she read aloud. "Could I come to you for a day? Winthorpe, Hotel Cavour, Milan."--"Winthorpe?" She pursed her lips, as one tasting something. "I don't know the name. Who is he? What's his County?" she demanded,--she, who carried the County Families in her head.

John chuckled. "He hasn't got a County--he's only an American," he said, pronouncing that genial British formula with intention.

"Oh," sighed Lady Blanchemain, her expectations dashed; and drawing in her skirts, she sank a little deeper into her corner.

"He hasn't got a County," repeated John. "But he's far and away the greatest swell I know."

"A swell? An American?" Lady Blanchemain pressed down her lips, and gave a movement to her shoulders.

"An aristocrat, a patrician," said John.

"Fudge!" said Lady Blanchemain. "Americans and Australians--they're anything you like, but they're never that."

John laughed. "I adore," he said, "our light and airy British way of tarring Americans and Australians with the same brush,--the descendants of transported convicts and the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers!"

"Is your Winthorpe man a descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers?" asked Lady Blanchemain, dryly.

"Indeed he is," said John. "He's descended from ten separate individuals who made the first voyage in the _Mayflower_. And he holds, by-the-by, intact, the lands that were ceded to his family by the Indians the year after. That ought to recommend him to your Ladyship,--an unbroken tenure of nearly three hundred years."

"Old acres," her ladyship admitted, cautiously, "always make for respectability."

"Besides," John carelessly threw out, "he's a baronet."

Lady Blanchemain sat up. "A baronet?" she said. "An American?"

"Alas, yes," said John, "a mere American. And one of the earliest creations,--by James the First, no less. His patent dates from 1612. But he doesn't use the title. He regards it, he pretends, as merged in a higher dignity."

"What higher dignity?" asked the lady, frowning.

"That of an American citizen, he says," chuckled John.

"Brrr!" she breathed, impatient.

"And moreover," John gaily continued, "besides being descended from the Pilgrim Fathers, he's descended in other lines from half the peerage of Seventeenth Century England. And to top up with, if you please, he's descended from Alfred the Great. He's only an American, but he can show a clear descent bang down from Alfred the Great! I think the most exquisite, the most subtle and delicate pleasure I have ever experienced has been to see English people, people of yesterday, cheerfully patronizing him."

"You've enlarged my sphere of knowledge," said Lady Blanchemain, grimly. "I had never known that there was blood in America. Does this prodigious personage talk through his nose?"

"Worse luck, no," said John. "I wish he did--a little--just enough to smack of his soil, to possess local colour. No, he talks for all the world like you or me,--which exposes him to compliments in England. 'An American? Really?' our tactful people cry, when he avows his nationality 'Upon my word, I should never have suspected it.'"

"I suppose, with all the rest, he's rich?" asked Lady Blanchemain.

"Immensely," assented John. "Speaking of Fortune and her favours, she's withheld none from him."

"Then he's good-looking, too?"

"He looks like a Man," said John.

"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain, moving. "If _I_ had received a wire from a creature of such proportions, I've a feeling I'd answer it."

"I've a very similar feeling myself," laughed John. "When we turn back, if you think your coachman can be persuaded to stop at the telegraph office in the village, I'll give my feeling effect."

"I think we might turn back now," said Lady Blanchemain. "It's getting rather gloomy here." She looked round, with a little shudder, and then gave the necessary order. The valley had narrowed to what was scarcely more than a defile between two dark and rugged hillsides, --pine-covered hillsides that shut out the sun, smiting the air with chill and shadow, and turning the Rampio, whose brawl seemed somehow to increase the chill, turning the sparkling, sportive Rampio to the colour of slate. "It puts one in mind of brigands," she said, with another little shudder. But though the air was chilly, it was wonderfully, keenly fragrant with the incense of the pines.

"Well," she asked, when they were facing homewards, "and your woman? What of her?"

"Nothing," said John. "Or, anyhow, very little." (It would be extremely pleasant, he felt suddenly, to talk of her; but at the same time he felt an extreme reluctance to let his pleasure be seen.)

"But your private detective?" said Lady Blanchemain. "Weren't her investigations fruitful?"

"Not very," said he. "She learnt little beyond her name and age."

"And what _is_ her name?" asked the lady.

"Her name is Maria Dolores," answered John, (and he experienced a secret joy, strange to him, in pronouncing it).

"Maria Dolores?" said Lady Blanchemain, (and he experienced a secret joy in hearing it). "Maria Dolores--what?"

"My detective didn't discover her Pagan name," said John.

"So that you are still in doubt whether she's the daughter of a miller?" Lady Blanchemain raised her eyebrows.

"Oh, no: I think she's a miller's daughter safely enough," said he. "But she's an elaborately chiselled and highly polished one. Her voice is like ivory and white velvet; and to hear her speak English is a revelation of the hidden beauties of that language."

"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain, eyeing him. "So you've advanced to the point of talking with her?"

"Well," answered John, weighing his words, "I don't know whether I can quite say that. But accident threw us together for a minute or two this afternoon, and we could scarcely do less, in civility, than exchange the time of day."

"And are you in love with her?" asked Lady Blanchemain.

"I wonder," said he. "What do _you_ think? Is it possible for a man to be in love with a woman he's seen only half a dozen times all told, and spoken with never longer than a minute or two at a stretch?"

"_Was_ it only a minute or two--_really_?" asked Lady Blanchemain, wooing his confidence with a glance.

"No," said John. "It was probably ten minutes, possibly fifteen. But they passed so quickly, it's really nearer the truth to describe them as one or two."

Lady Blanchemain shifted her sunshade, and screwed herself half round, so as to face him, her soft old eyes full of smiling scrutiny and suspicion.

"I never can tell whether or not you're serious," she complained. "If you _are_ serious,--well, _à quand le mariage_?"

"The marriage?" cried John. "How could I marry her? Such a thing's out of all question.

"Why?" asked she.

"A miller's daughter!" said John. "Would you have me marry the daughter of a miller?"

"You said yourself yesterday--" the lady reminded him.

"Ah, yes," said he. "But night brings counsel."

"If she's well educated," said Lady Blanchemain, "if she's well-bred, what does it matter about her father? Though a nobody in Austria, where nothing counts but quarterings, he's probably what we'd call a gentleman in England. Suppose he's a barrister? Or the editor of a newspaper? Or--"

She paused, thoughtful-eyed, to think of respectable professions. At last she gave up the effort.

"Well, anything decent," she concluded, "so long as he had plenty of money."

"Ah," said John, sadly, and with perhaps mock humility. "If he had plenty of money, he'd never consent to his daughter marrying a son of poverty like me."

"Pooh! For a title?" cried Lady Blanchemain. "Besides, you have prospects. Isn't your name Prospero?"

"I have precious little faith in oracles," said John.

"I advise you to have more," said Lady Blanchemain, with a smile that seemed occult.

And now her carriage entered the village, and she put him down at the telegraph office.

"Don't wait," said John. "The walk from here to the Castle is nothing, and it would take you out of your way."

"Well, good-bye, then," said she. "And cultivate more faith in oracles--when they're auspicious."

Alone, she drew from some recondite fold of her many draperies a letter, an unsealed letter, which she opened, spread out, and proceeded to read. It was a long letter in her ladyship's own handsome, high-bred, old-fashioned handwriting; and it was addressed to Messrs. Farrow, Bernscot, and Tisdale, Solicitors, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London. She read it twice through, and at last (with a smile that seemed occult) restored it to its envelope. "Stop at the Post Office," she said to her coachman, as they entered Roccadoro; and to her footman, giving him the letter, "Have that registered, please."

Annunziata lay in wait for John in the garden. She ran up, and seized him by the arm. Then, skipping beside him, as he walked on, "Who was she? Where did she come from? Where did she take you? Whom was the telegram from?" she demanded in a breath, nestling her curls against his coat-sleeve.

"_Piano, piano_," remonstrated John. "One question at a time. Now, begin again."

"Whom was the telegram from?" she obeyed, beginning at the end.

"Ah," said he, "the telegram was from _my_ friend Prospero. He's coming here to-morrow. We must ask your uncle whether he can give him a bed."

"And the old lady?" pursued Annunziata. "Who was she?"

"The old lady was my fairy godmother," said John, building better than he knew.

PART FOURTH

I

Pacing together backwards and forwards, as they talked, John and his friend Winthorpe presented a striking and perhaps interesting contrast. John was tall, but Winthorpe seemed a good deal taller--though, (trifles in these matters looming so large), had actual measurements been taken, I dare say half an inch would have covered the difference. John was lean and sinewy, but rounded off at the joints, and of a pliant carriage, so that it never occurred to you to think of him as _thin_. Winthorpe's spare figure, spare and angular, with its greater height, held unswervingly to the plane of the perpendicular, appeared absolutely to be constructed of nothing but bone and tendon. John's head, with its yellow hair, its curly beard verging towards red, its pink skin, and blue eyes full of laughter, might have served a painter as a model for the head of Mirth. Winthorpe's,--with brown hair cropped close, and showing the white of the scalp; clean-shaven, but of a steely tint where the razor had passed; with a marked jaw-bone and a salient square chin; with a high-bridged determined nose, and a white forehead rising vertical over thick black eyebrows, and rather deep-set grey eyes,--well, clap a steeple-crowned hat upon it, and you could have posed him for one of his own Puritan ancestors. The very clothes of the men carried on their unlikeness,--John's loose blue flannels and red sailor's knot, careless-seeming, but smart in their effect, and showing him careful in a fashion of his own; Winthorpe's black tie and dark tweeds, as correct as Savile Row could turn them out, yet somehow, by the way he wore them, proclaiming him immediately a man who never gave two thoughts to his dress. If, however, Winthorpe's face was the face of a Puritan, it was the face of a Puritan with a sense of humour--the lines about the mouth were clearly the footprints of smiles. It seemed the face of a sensitive Puritan, as well, and (maugre that high-bridged nose) of a gentle--the light in his clear grey eyes was a kindly and gentle light. After all, Governor Bradford, as his writings show,--though he tried hard, perhaps, not to let them show it--was a Puritan with a sense of humour; John Alden and Priscilla were surely sensitive and gentle: and Winthorpe was descended from Governor Bradford, and from John Alden and Priscilla. The two friends walked backwards and forwards in the great open space before the Castle, and talked. They had not met for nearly two years, and had plenty to talk about.

II

Seated at one of the open windows of the pavilion beyond the clock, Maria Dolores (in a pale green confection of I know not what airy, filmy tissue) looked down, and somewhat vaguely watched them,--herself concealed by the netted curtain, which, according to Italian usage, was hung across the casement, to mitigate the heat and shut out insects. She watched them at first vaguely, and only from time to time, for the rest going on with some needlework she had in her lap. But by-and-by she dropped her needlework altogether, and her watching became continuous and absorbed.

"What a singular-looking man!" she thought, studying Winthorpe. "What an ascetic-looking man! He looks like an early Christian martyr. He looks like a priest. I believe he _is_ a priest. English priests," she remembered, "when they travel, often dress as laymen. Yes, he is a priest, and a terribly austere one--I shouldn't like to go to him for confession. But in spite of his austerity, he seems to be extraordinarily happy about something just at present. That light in his eyes,--it is almost a light of ecstasy. It is a light I have never seen in any eyes, save those of priests and nuns."

Winthorpe, while that "almost ecstatic" light shone in his eyes, had been speaking.

Now, as he paused, John, with a glance of gay astonishment, halted, and turned so as to face him. John's lips moved, and it was perfectly plain that he was exclaiming, delightedly, "Really? _Really_?"

Winthorpe joyously nodded: whereupon John held out both hands, got hold of his friend's, and, his pink face jubilant, shook them with tremendous heartiness.

"The priest has received advancement--he is probably to be made a bishop," inferred Maria Dolores; "and Signor Prospero is congratulating him."