Chapter 12

“Now, dear,” he said, with the gentleness, the tenderness, of one speaking to a beloved child, “here is Mr. Marchdale. Tell him what you have on your mind. He is ready to hear and to forgive you.”

Marietta fixed her eyes anxiously on Peter's face.

“First,” she whispered, “I wish to beg the Signorino to pardon all this trouble I am making for him. I am the Signorino's servant; but instead of serving, I make trouble for him.”

She paused. The Cardinal smiled at Peter.

Peter answered, “Marietta, if you talk like that, you will make the Signorino cry. You are the best servant that ever lived. You are putting me to no trouble at all. You are giving me a chance--which I should be glad of, except that it involves your suffering--to show my affection for you, and my gratitude.”

“There, dear,” said the Cardinal to her, “you see the Signorino makes nothing of that. Now the next thing. Go on.”

“I have to ask the Signorino's forgiveness for my impertinence,” whispered Marietta.

“Impertinence--?” faltered Peter. “You have never been impertinent.”

“Scusi, Signorino,” she went on, in her whisper. “I have sometimes contradicted the Signorino. I contradicted the Signorino when he told me that St. Anthony of Padua was born in Lisbon. It is impertinent of a servant to contradict her master. And now his most high Eminence says the Signorino was right. I beg the Signorino to forgive me.”

Again the Cardinal smiled at Peter.

“You dear old woman,” Peter half laughed, half sobbed, “how can you ask me to forgive a mere difference of opinion? You--you dear old thing.”

The Cardinal smiled, and patted Marietta's hand.

“The Signorino is too good,” Marietta sighed.

“Go on, dear,” said the Cardinal.

“I have been guilty of the deadly sin of evil speaking. I have spoken evil of the Signorino,” she went on. “I said--I said to people--that the Signorino was simple--that he was simple and natural. I thought so then. Now I know it is not so. I know it is only that the Signorino is English.”

Once more the Cardinal smiled at Peter.

Again Peter half laughed, half sobbed.

“Marietta! Of course I am simple and natural. At least, I try to be. Come! Look up. Smile. Promise you will not worry about these things any more.”

She looked up, she smiled faintly.

“The Signorino is too good,” she whispered.

After a little interval of silence, “Now, dear,” said the Cardinal, “the last thing of all.”

Marietta gave a groan, turning her head from side to side on her pillow.

“You need not be afraid,” said the Cardinal. “Mr. Marchdale will certainly forgive you.”

“Oh-h-h,” groaned Marietta. She stared at the ceiling for an instant.

The Cardinal patted her hand. “Courage, courage,” he said.

“Oh--Signorino mio,” she groaned again, “this you never can forgive me. It is about the little pig, the porcellino. The Signorino remembers the little pig, which he called Francesco?”

“Yes,” answered Peter.

“The Signorino told me to take the little pig away, to find a home for him. And I told the Signorino that I would take him to my nephew, who is a farmer, towards Fogliamo. The Signorino remembers?”

“Yes,” answered Peter. “Yes, you dear old thing. I remember.”

Marietta drew a deep breath, summoned her utmost fortitude.

“Well, I did not take him to my nephew. The--the Signorino ate him.”

Peter could hardly keep from laughing. He could only utter a kind of half-choked “Oh?”

“Yes,” whispered Marietta. “He was bought with the Signorino's money. I did not like to see the Signorino's money wasted. So I deceived the Signorino. You ate him as a chicken-pasty.”

This time Peter did laugh, I am afraid. Even the Cardinal--well, his smile was perilously near a titter. He took a big pinch of snuff.

“I killed Francesco, and I deceived the Signorino. I am very sorry,” Marietta said.

Peter knelt down at her bedside.

“Marietta! Your conscience is too sensitive. As for killing Francesco--we are all mortal, he could not have lived forever. And as for deceiving the Signorino, you did it for his own good. I remember that chicken-pasty. It was the best chicken-pasty I have ever tasted. You must not worry any more about the little pig.”

Marietta turned her face towards him, and smiled.

“The Signorino forgives his servant?” she whispered.

Peter could not help it. He bent forward, and kissed her brown old cheek.

“She will be easier now,” said the Cardinal. “I will stay with her a little longer.”

Peter went out. The scene had been childish--do you say?--ridiculous, almost farcical indeed? And yet, somehow, it seemed to Peter that his heart was full of unshed tears. At the same time, as he thought of the Cardinal, as he saw his face, his smile, as he heard the intonations of his voice, the words he had spoken, as he thought of the way he had held Marietta's hand and patted it--at the same time a kind of strange joy seemed to fill his heart, a strange feeling of exaltation, of enthusiasm.

“What a heavenly old man,” he said.

In the garden Sister Scholastica and Emilia were still walking together.

They halted, when Peter came out; and Emilia said, “With your consent, Signore, Sister Scholastica has accepted me as her lieutenant. I will come every morning, and sit with Marietta during the day. That will relieve the sister, who has to be up with her at night.”

And every morning after that, Emilia came, walking through the park, and crossing the river by the ladder-bridge, which Peter left now permanently in its position. And once or twice a week, in the afternoon, the Cardinal would drive up in the brougham, and, having paid a little visit to Marietta, would drive Emilia home.

In the sick-room Emilia would read to Marietta, or say the rosary for her.

Marietta mended steadily day by day. At the end of a fortnight she was able to leave her bed for an hour or two in the afternoon, and sit in the sun in the garden. Then Sister Scholastica went back to her convent at Venzona. At the end of the third week Marietta could be up all day. But Gigi's stalwart Carolina Maddalena continued to rule as vicereine in the kitchen. And Emilia continued to come every morning.

“Why does the Duchessa never come?” Peter wondered. “It would be decent of her to come and see the poor old woman.”

Whenever he thought of Cardinal Udeschini, the same strange feeling of joy would spring up in his heart, which he had felt when he had left the beautiful old man with Marietta, on the day of his first visit. In the beginning he could only give this feeling a very general and indefinite expression. “He is a man who renews one's faith in things, who renews one's faith in human nature.” But gradually, I suppose, the feeling crystallised; and at last, in due season, it found for itself an expression that was not so indefinite.

It was in the afternoon, and he had just conducted the Cardinal and Emilia to their carriage. He stood at his gate for a minute, and watched the carriage as it rolled away.

“What a heavenly old man, what a heavenly old man,” he thought.

Then, still looking after the carriage, before turning back into his garden, he heard himself repeat, half aloud

“Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbour's creed hath lent.”

The words had come to his lips, and were pronounced, were addressed to his mental image of the Cardinal, without any conscious act of volition on his part. He heard them with a sort of surprise, almost as if some one else had spoken them. He could not in the least remember what poem they were from, he could not even remember what poet they were by. Were they by Emerson? It was years since he had read a line of Emerson's.

All that evening the couplet kept running in his head. And the feeling of joy, of enthusiasm, in his heart, was not so strange now. But I think it was intensified.

The next time the Cardinal arrived at Villa Floriano, and gave Peter his hand, Peter did not merely shake it, English fashion, as he had hitherto done.

The Cardinal looked startled.

Then his eyes searched Peter's face for a second, keenly interrogative. Then they softened; and a wonderful clear light shone in them, a wonderful pure, sweet light.

“Benedicat te Omnipotens Deus, Pater, et Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus,” he said, making the Sign of the Cross.

XXVII

Up at the castle, Cardinal Udeschini was walking backwards and forwards on the terrace, reading his Breviary.

Beatrice was seated under the white awning, at the terrace-end, doing some kind of needlework.

Presently the Cardinal came to a standstill near her, and closed his book, putting his finger in it, to keep the place.

“It will be, of course, a great loss to Casa Udeschini, when you marry,” he remarked.

Beatrice looked up, astonishment on her brow.

“When I marry?” she exclaimed. “Well, if ever there was a thunderbolt from a clear sky!”

And she laughed.

“Yes-when you marry,” the Cardinal repeated, with conviction. “You are a young woman--you are twenty-eight years old. You will, marry. It is only right that you should marry. You have not the vocation for a religious. Therefore you must marry. But it will be a great loss to the house of Udeschini.”

“Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof,” said Beatrice, laughing again. “I haven't the remotest thought of marrying. I shall never marry.”

“Il ne faut jamais dire a la fontaine, je ne boirai pas de ton eau,” his Eminence cautioned her, whilst the lines of humour about his mouth emphasised themselves, and his grey eyes twinkled. “Other things equal, marriage is as much the proper state for the laity, as celibacy is the proper state for the clergy. You will marry. It would be selfish of us to oppose your marrying. You ought to marry. But it will be a great loss to the family--it will be a great personal loss to me. You are as dear to me as any of my blood. I am always forgetting that we are uncle and niece by courtesy only.”

“I shall never marry. But nothing that can happen to me can ever make the faintest difference in my feeling for you. I hope you know how much I love you?” She looked into his eyes, smiling her love. “You are only my uncle by courtesy? But you are more than an uncle--you have been like a father to me, ever since I left my convent.”

The Cardinal returned her smile.

“Carissima,” he murmured. Then, “It will be a matter of the utmost importance to me, however,” he went on, “that, when the time comes, you should marry a good man, a suitable man--a man who will love you, whom you will love--and, if possible, a man who will not altogether separate you from me, who will perhaps love me a little too. It would send me in sorrow to my grave, if you should marry a man who was not worthy of you.”

“I will guard against that danger by not marrying at all,” laughed Beatrice.

“No--you will marry, some day,” said the Cardinal. “And I wish you to remember that I shall not oppose your marrying--provided the man is a good man. Felipe will not like it--Guido will pull a long nose--but I, at least, will take your part, if I can feel that the man is good. Good men are rare, my dear; good husbands are rarer still. I can think, for instance, of no man in our Roman nobility, whom I should be content to see you marry. Therefore I hope you will not marry a Roman. You would be more likely to marry one of your own countrymen. That, of course, would double the loss to us, if it should take you away from Italy. But remember, if he is a man whom I can think worthy of you, you may count upon me as an ally.”

He resumed his walk, reopening his Breviary.

Beatrice resumed her needlework. But she found it difficult to fix her attention on it. Every now and then, she would leave her needle stuck across its seam, let the work drop to her lap, and, with eyes turned vaguely up the valley, fall, apparently, into a muse.

“I wonder why he said all that to me?” was the question that kept posing itself.

By and by the Cardinal closed his Breviary, and put it in his pocket. I suppose he had finished his office for the day. Then he came and sat down in one of the wicker chairs, under the awning. On the table, among the books and things, stood a carafe of water, some tumblers, a silver sugar-bowl, and a crystal dish full of fresh pomegranate seeds. It looked like a dish full of unset rubies. The Cardinal poured some water into a tumbler, added a lump of sugar and a spoonful of pomegranate seeds, stirred the mixture till it became rose-coloured, and drank it off in a series of little sips.

“What is the matter, Beatrice?” he asked, all at once.

Beatrice raised her eyes, perplexed.

“The matter--? Is anything the matter?”

“Yes,” said the Cardinal; “something is the matter. You are depressed, you are nervous, you are not yourself. I have noticed it for many days. Have you something on, your mind?”

“Nothing in the world,” Beatrice answered, with an appearance of great candour. “I had not noticed that I was nervous or depressed.”

“We are entering October,” said the Cardinal. “I must return to Rome. I have been absent too long already. I must return next week. But I should not like to go away with the feeling that you are unhappy.”

“If a thing were needed to make me unhappy, it would be the announcement of your intended departure,” Beatrice said, smiling. “But otherwise, I am no more unhappy than it is natural to be. Life, after all, is n't such a furiously gay business as to keep one perpetually singing and dancing--is it? But I am not especially unhappy.”

“H'm,” said the Cardinal. Then, in a minute, “You will come to Rome in November, I suppose?” he asked.

“Yes--towards the end of November, I think,” said Beatrice.

The Cardinal rose, and began to walk backwards and forwards again.

In a little while the sound of carriage-wheels could be heard, in the sweep, round the corner of the house.

The Cardinal looked at his watch.

“Here is the carriage,” he said. “I must go down and see that poor old woman.... Do you know,” he added, after a moment's hesitation, “I think it would be well if you were to go with me.”

A shadow came into Beatrice's eyes.

“What good would that do?” she asked.

“It would give her pleasure, no doubt. And besides, she is one of your parishioners, as it were. I think you ought to go. You have never been to see her since she fell ill.”

“Oh--well,” said Beatrice.

She was plainly unwilling. But she went to put on her things.

In the carriage, when they had passed the village and crossed the bridge, as they were bowling along the straight white road that led to the villa, “What a long time it is since Mr. Marchdale has been at Ventirose,” remarked the Cardinal.

“Oh--? Is it?” responded Beatrice, with indifference.

“It is more than three weeks, I think--it is nearly a month,” the Cardinal said.

“Oh--?” said she.

“He has had his hands full, of course; he has had little leisure,” the Cardinal pursued. “His devotion to his poor old servant has been quite admirable. But now that she is practically recovered, he will be freer.”

“Yes,” said Beatrice.

“He is a young man whom I like very much,” said the Cardinal. “He is intelligent; he has good manners; and he has a fine sense of the droll. Yes, he has wit--a wit that you seldom find in an Anglo-Saxon, a wit that is almost Latin. But you have lost your interest in him? That is because you despair of his conversion?”

“I confess I am not greatly interested in him,” Beatrice answered. “And I certainly have no hopes of his conversion.”

The Cardinal smiled at his ring. He opened his snuffbox, and inhaled a long deliberate pinch of snuff.

“Ah, well--who can tell?” he said. “But--he will be free now, and it is so long since he has been at the castle--had you not better ask him to luncheon or dinner?”

“Why should I?” answered Beatrice. “If he does not come to Ventirose, it is presumably because he does not care to come. If he does care to come, he needs no invitation. He knows that he is at liberty to call whenever he likes.”

“But it would be civil, it would be neighbourly, to ask him to a meal,” the Cardinal submitted.

“And it would put him in the embarrassing predicament of having either to accept against his will, or to decline and appear ungracious,” submitted Beatrice. “No, it is evident that Ventirose does not amuse him.”

“Bene,” said the Cardinal. “Be it as you wish.”

But when they reached Villa Floriano, Peter was not at home.

“He has gone to Spiaggia for the day,” Emilia informed them.

Beatrice, the Cardinal fancied, looked at once relieved and disappointed.

Marietta was seated in the sun, in a sheltered corner of the garden.

While Beatrice talked with her, the Cardinal walked about.

Now it so happened that on Peter's rustic table a book lay open, face downwards.

The Cardinal saw the book. He halted in his walk, and glanced round the garden, as if to make sure that he was not observed. He tapped his snuff--box, and took a pinch of snuff. Then he appeared to meditate for an instant, the lines about his mouth becoming very marked indeed. At last, swiftly, stealthily, almost with the air of a man committing felony, he slipped his snuff-box under the open book, well under it, so that it was completely covered up.

On the way back to Ventirose, the Cardinal put his hand in his pocket.

“Dear me!” he suddenly exclaimed. “I have lost my snuff box again.” He shook his head, as one who recognises a fatality. “I am always losing it.”

“Are you sure you had it with you?” Beatrice asked.

“Oh, yes, I think I had it with me. I should have missed it before this, if I had left it at home. I must have dropped it in Mr. Marchdale's garden.”

“In that case it will probably be found,” said Beatrice.

Peter had gone to Spiaggia, I imagine, in the hope of meeting Mrs. O'Donovan Florence; but the printed visitors' list there told him that she had left nearly a fortnight since. On his return to the villa, he was greeted by Marietta with the proud tidings that her Excellency the Duchessa di Santangiolo had been to see her.

“Oh--? Really?” he questioned lightly. (His heart, I think, dropped a beat, all the same.)

“Ang,” said Marietta. “She came with the most Eminent Prince Cardinal. They came in the carriage. She stayed half an hour. She was very gracious.”

“Ah?” said Peter. “I am glad to hear it.”

“She was beautifully dressed,” said Marietta.

“Of that I have not the shadow of a doubt,” said he.

“The Signorina Emilia drove away with them,” said she.

“Dear, dear! What a chapter of adventures,” was his comment.

He went to his rustic table, and picked up his book.

“How the deuce did that come there?” he wondered, discovering the snuff box.

It was, in truth, an odd place for it. A cardinal may inadvertently drop his snuff box, to be sure. But if the whole College of Cardinals together had dropped a snuff box, it would hardly have fallen, of its own weight, through the covers of an open book, to the under-side thereof, and have left withal no trace of its passage.

“Solid matter will not pass through solid matter, without fraction--I learned that at school,” said Peter.

The inference would be that someone had purposely put the snuff box there.

But who?

The Cardinal himself? In the name of reason, why?

Emilia? Nonsense.

Marietta? Absurd.

The Du--

A wild surmise darted through Peter's soul. Could it be? Could it conceivably be? Was it possible that--that--was it possible, in fine, that this was a kind of signal, a kind of summons?

Oh, no, no, no. And yet--and yet--

No, certainly not. The idea was preposterous. It deserved, and (I trust) obtained, summary deletion.

“Nevertheless,” said Peter, “it's a long while since I have darkened the doors of Ventirose. And a poor excuse is better than none. And anyhow, the Cardinal will be glad to have his snuff.”

The ladder-bridge was in its place.

He crossed the Aco.

XXVIII

He crossed the Aco, and struck bravely forward, up the smooth lawns, under the bending trees, towards the castle.

The sun was setting. The irregular mass of buildings stood out in varying shades of blue, against varying, dying shades of red.

Half way there, Peter stopped, and looked back.

The level sunshine turned the black forests of the Gnisi to shining forests of bronze, and the foaming cascade that leapt down its side to a cascade of liquid gold. The lake, for the greater part, lay in shadow, violet-grey through a pearl-grey veil of mist; but along the opposite shore it caught the light, and gleamed a crescent of quicksilver, with roseate reflections. The three snow-summits of Monte Sfiorito, at the valley's end, seemed almost insubstantial--floating forms of luminous pink vapour, above the hazy horizon, in a pure sky intensely blue.

A familiar verse came into Peter's mind.

“Really,”' he said to himself, “down to the very 'cataract leaping in glory,' I believe they must have pre-arranged the scene, feature for feature, to illustrate it.” And he began to repeat the vivid, musical lines, under his breath...

But about midway of them he was interrupted.

“It's not altogether a bad sort of view--is it?” a voice asked, behind him.

Peter faced about.

On a marble bench, under a feathery acacia; a few yards away, a lady was seated, looking at him, smiling.

Peter's eyes met hers--and suddenly his heart gave a jump. Then it stood dead still for a second. Then it flew off, racing perilously. Oh, for the best reasons in the world. There was something in her eyes, there was a glow, a softness, that seemed--that seemed... But thereby hangs my tale.

She was dressed in white. She had some big bright-yellow chrysanthemums stuck in her belt. She wore no hat. Her hair, brown and warm in shadow, sparkled, where the sun touched it, transparent and iridescent, like crinkly threads of glass.

“You do not think it altogether bad--I hope?” she questioned, arching her eyebrows slightly, with a droll little assumption of concern.

Peter's heart was racing--but he must answer her.

“I was just wondering,” he answered, with a tolerably successful feint of composure, “whether one might not safely call it altogether good.”

“Oh--?” she exclaimed.

She threw back her head, and examined the prospect critically. Afterwards, she returned her gaze to Peter, with an air of polite readiness to defer to his opinion.

“It is not too sensational? Not too much like a landscape on the stage?”

“We must judge it leniently,” said he; “we must remember that it is only unaided Nature. Besides,” he added, “to be meticulously truthful, there is a spaciousness, there is a vivacity in the light and colour, there is a sense of depth and atmosphere, that we should hardly find in a landscape on the stage.”

“Yes--perhaps there is,” she admitted thoughtfully.

And with that, they looked into each other's eyes, and laughed.

“Are you aware,” the lady asked, after a brief silence, “that it is a singularly lovely evening.”

“I have a hundred reasons for thinking it so,” Peter answered, with the least approach to a meaning bow.

In the lady's face there flickered, perhaps, for half a second, the faintest light, as of a comprehending and unresentful smile. But she went on, with fine detachment