Chapter 10

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

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

But even this temperate answer provoked its counter-answer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

He rose, casting a last glance towards the castle.

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

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

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

Marietta wrinkled her brow.

“Mixed marriages? What is that, Signorino?”

“Marriages between Catholics and Protestants,” he explained.

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

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

“Jews?” asked Marietta.

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

“The Signorino means Freemasons,” said Marietta.

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

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

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

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

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

“A Jew, then?”

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

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

“No,” said she.

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

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

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

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

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

“Non capisco,” said Marietta.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marietta went to fetch the Asti.

XXIII

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How do you do?” said he.

“It's a fine day,” said she.

“Very,” said he.

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

“Do,” he answered.

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

“Try it and see,” he urged.

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

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

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

Peter laughed, and amended his order.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh--? Are we?” he doubted.

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

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

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

Peter laughed.

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

“Not often, I daresay,” he admitted.

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

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

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

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

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

Peter stared.

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

“Do what?” he puzzled.

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

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

“What's to prevent you?” said she.

“Everything,” said he.

“Everything is nothing. That?”

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

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

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

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

Peter laughed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Put a name on them,” said she.

“There's her rank.”

His impetuous adviser flung up a hand of scorn.

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

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

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

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

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

Peter laughed again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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.

XXIV

And, like the lady in the ballad, sure enough, she greeted his arrival with a glance of cold surprise.

At all events, eyebrows raised, face unsmiling, it was a glance that clearly supplemented her spoken “How do you do?” by a tacit (perhaps self-addressed?) “What can bring him here?”

You or I, indeed, or Mrs. O'Donovan Florence, in the fulness of our knowledge, might very likely have interpreted it rather as a glance of nervous apprehension. Anyhow, it was a glance that perfectly checked the impetus of his intent. Something snapped and gave way within him; and he needed no further signal that the occasion for passionate avowals was not the present.

And thereupon befell a scene that was really quite too absurd, that was really childish, a scene over the memory of which, I must believe, they themselves have sometimes laughed together; though, at the moment, its absurdity held, for him at least, elements of the tragic.

He met her in the broad gravelled carriage-sweep, before the great hall-door. She had on her hat and gloves, as if she were just going out. It seemed to him that she was a little pale; her eyes seemed darker than usual, and graver. Certainly--cold surprise, or nervous apprehension, as you will--her attitude was by no means cordial. It was not oncoming. It showed none of her accustomed easy, half-humorous, wholly good-humoured friendliness. It was decidedly the attitude of a person standing off, shut in, withheld.

“I have never seen her in the least like this before,” he thought, as he looked at her pale face, her dark, grave eyes; “I have never seen her more beautiful. And there is not one single atom of hope for me.”

“How do you do?” she said, unsmiling and waited, as who should invite him to state his errand. She did not offer him her hand but, for that matter, (she might have pleaded), she could not, very well: for one of her hands held her sunshade, and the other held an embroidered silk bag, woman's makeshift for a pocket.

And then, capping the first pang of his disappointment, a kind of anger seized him. After all, what right had she to receive him in this fashion?--as if he were an intrusive stranger. In common civility, in common justice, she owed it to him to suppose that he would not be there without abundant reason.

And now, with Peter angry, the absurd little scene began.

Assuming an attitude designed to be, in its own way, as reticent as hers, “I was passing your gate,” he explained, “when I happened to find this, lying by the roadside. I took the liberty of bringing it to you.”