Chapter 3

“But that, Magnificence,” Marietta went on, warming to her theme, “that is only one of his simplicities. He asks me, 'Who puts the whitewash on Monte Sfiorito? 'And when I tell him that it is not whitewash, but snow, he says, 'How do you know?' But everyone knows that it is snow. Whitewash!”

The sprightly old woman gave her whole body a shake, for the better exposition of her state of mind. And thereupon, from the interior of her basket, issued a plaintive little squeal.

“What have you in your basket?” Beatrice asked.

“A little piglet, Nobility--un piccolo porcellino,” said Marietta.

And lifting the cover an inch or two, she displayed the anxious face of a poor little sucking pig.

“E carino?” she demanded, whilst her eyes beamed with a pride that almost seemed maternal.

“What on earth are you going to do with him?” Beatrice gasped.

The light of pride gave place to a light of resolution, in Marietta's eyes.

“Kill him, Mightiness,” was her grim response; “stuff him with almonds, raisins, rosemary, and onions; cook him sweet and sour; and serve him, garnished with rosettes of beet-root, for my Signorino's Sunday dinner.”

“Oh-h-h!” shuddered Beatrice and Emilia, in a breath; and they resumed their walk.

XII

Francois was dining--with an appearance of great fervour.

Peter sat on his rustic bench, by the riverside, and watched him, smoking a cigarette the while.

The Duchessa di Santangiolo stood screened by a tree in the park of Ventirose, and watched them both.

Francois wore a wide blue ribbon round his pink and chubby neck; and his dinner consisted of a big bowlful of bread and milk.

Presently the Duchessa stepped forth from her ambush, into the sun, and laughed.

“What a sweetly pretty scene,” she said. “Pastoral--idyllic--it reminds one of Theocritus--it reminds one of Watteau.”

Peter threw his cigarette into the river, and made an obeisance.

“I am very glad you feel the charm of it,” he responded. “May I be permitted to present Master Francois Vllon?”

“We have met before,” said the Duchessa, graciously smiling upon Francois, and inclining her head.

“Oh, I did n't know,” said Peter, apologetic.

“Yes,” said the Duchessa, “and in rather tragical circumstances. But at that time he was anonymous. Why--if you won't think my curiosity impertinent--why Francois Villon?”

“Why not?” said Peter. “He made such a tremendous outcry when he was condemned to death, for one thing. You should have heard him. He has a voice! Then, for another, he takes such a passionate interest in his meat and drink. And then, if you come to that, I really had n't the heart to call him Pauvre Lelian.”

The Duchessa raised amused eyebrows.

“You felt that Pauvre Lelian was the only alternative?”

“I had in mind a remark of Pauvre Lilian's friend and confrere, the cryptic Stephane,” Peter answered. “You will remember it. 'L'ame d'un poete dans le corps d'un--' I--I forget the last word,” he faltered.

“Shall we say 'little pig'?” suggested the Duchessa.

“Oh, please don't,” cried Peter, hastily, with a gesture of supplication. “Don't say 'pig' in his presence. You'll wound his feelings.”

The Duchessa laughed.

“I knew he was condemned to death,” she owned. “Indeed, it was in his condemned cell that I made his acquaintance. Your Marietta Cignolesi introduced us. Her air was so inexorable, I 'm a good deal surprised to see him alive to-day. There was some question of a stuffing of rosemary and onions.”

“Ah, I see,” said Peter, “I see that you're familiar with the whole disgraceful story. Yes, Marietta, the unspeakable old Tartar, was all for stuffing him with rosemary and onions. But he could not bring himself to share her point of view. He screamed his protest, like a man, in twenty different octaves. You really should have heard him. His voice is of a compass, of a timbre, of an expressiveness! Passive endurance, I fear, is not his forte. For the sake of peace and silence, I intervened, interceded. She had her knife at his very throat. I was not an instant too soon. So, of course, I 've had to adopt him.”

“Of course, poor man,” sympathised the Duchessa. “It's a recognised principle that if you save a fellow's life, you 're bound to him for the rest of yours. But--but won't you find him rather a burdensome responsibility when he's grownup?” she reflected.

“--Que voulez-vous?” reflected Peter. “Burdensome responsibilities are the appointed accompaniments of man's pilgrimage. Why not Francois Villon, as well as another? And besides, as the world is at present organised, a member of the class vulgarly styled 'the rich' can generally manage to shift his responsibilities, when they become too irksome, upon the backs of the poor. For example--Marietta! Marietta!” he called, raising his voice a little, and clapping his hands.

Marietta came. When she had made her courtesy to the Duchessa, and a polite enquiry as to her Excellency's health, Peter said, with an indicative nod of the head, “Will you be so good as to remove my responsibility?”

“Il porcellino?” questioned Marietta.

“Ang,” said he.

And when Marietta had borne Francois, struggling and squealing in her arms, from the foreground--

“There--you see how it is done,” he remarked.

The Duchessa laughed.

“An object-lesson,” she agreed. “An object-lesson in--might n't one call it the science of Applied Cynicism?”

“Science!” Peter plaintively repudiated the word. “No, no. I was rather flattering myself it was an art.”

“Apropos of art--” said the Duchessa.

She came down two or three steps nearer to the brink of the river. She produced from behind her back a hand that she had kept there, and held up for Peter's inspection a grey-and-gold bound book.

“Apropos of art, I've been reading a novel. Do you know it?”

Peter glanced at the grey-and-gold binding--and dissembled the emotion that suddenly swelled big in his heart.

He screwed his eyeglass into his eye, and gave an intent look.

“I can't make out the title,” he temporised, shaking his head, and letting his eyeglass drop.

On the whole, it was very well acted; and I hope the occult little smile that played about the Duchessa's lips was a smile of appreciation.

“It has a highly appropriate title,” she said. “It is called 'A Man of Words,' by an author I've never happened to hear of before, named Felix Wildmay.”

“Oh, yes. How very odd,” said Peter. “By a curious chance, I know it very well. But I 'm surprised to discover that you do. How on earth did it fall into your hands?”

“Why on earth shouldn't it?” wondered she. “Novels are intended to fall into people's hands, are they not?”

“I believe so,” he assented. “But intentions, in this vale of tears, are not always realised, are they? Anyhow, 'A Man of Words' is not like other novels. It's peculiar.”

“Peculiar--?” she repeated.

“Of a peculiar, of an unparalleled obscurity,” he explained. “There has been no failure approaching it since What's-his-name invented printing. I hadn't supposed that seven copies of it were in circulation.”

“Really?” said the Duchessa. “A correspondent of mine in London recommended it. But--in view of its unparalleled obscurity is n't it almost equally a matter for surprise that you should know it?”

“It would be, sure enough,” consented Peter, “if it weren't that I just happen also to know the author.”

“Oh--? You know the author?” cried the Duchessa, with animation.

“Comme ma poche,” said Peter. “We were boys together.”

“Really?” said she. “What a coincidence.”

“Yes,” said he.

“And--and his book?” Her eyebrows went up, interrogative. “I expect, as you know the man, you think rather poorly of it?”

“On the contrary, in the teeth of verisimilitude, I think extremely well of it,” he answered firmly. “I admire it immensely. I think it's an altogether ripping little book. I think it's one of the nicest little books I've read for ages.

“How funny,” said she.

“Why funny?” asked he.

“It's so unlikely that one should seem a genius to one's old familiar friends.”

“Did I say he seemed a genius to me? I misled you. He does n't. In fact, he very frequently seems--but, for Charity's sake, I 'd best forbear to tell. However, I admire his book. And--to be entirely frank--it's a constant source of astonishment to me that he should ever have been able to do anything one-tenth so good.”

The Duchessa smiled pensively.

“Ah, well,” she mused, “we must assume that he has happy moments--or, perhaps, two soul-sides, one to face the world with, one to show his manuscripts when he's writing. You hint a fault, and hesitate dislike. That, indeed, is only natural, on the part of an old friend. But you pique my interest. What is the trouble with him? Is--is he conceited, for example?”

“The trouble with him?” Peter pondered. “Oh, it would be too long and too sad a story. Should I anatomise him to you as he is, I must blush and weep, and you must look pale and wonder. He has pretty nearly every weakness, not to mention vices, that flesh is heir to. But as for conceit... let me see. He concurs in my own high opinion of his work, I believe; but I don't know whether, as literary men go, it would be fair to call him conceited. He belongs, at any rate, to the comparatively modest minority who do not secretly fancy that Shakespeare has come back to life.”

“That Shakespeare has come back to life!” marvelled the Duchessa. “Do you mean to say that most literary men fancy that?”

“I think perhaps I am acquainted with three who don't,” Peter replied; “but one of them merely wears his rue with a difference. He fancies that it's Goethe.”

“How extravagantly--how exquisitely droll!” she laughed.

“I confess, it struck me so, until I got accustomed to it,” said he, “until I learned that it was one of the commonplaces, one of the normal attributes of the literary temperament. It's as much to be taken for granted, when you meet an author, as the tail is to be taken for granted, when you meet a cat.”

“I'm vastly your debtor for the information--it will stand me in stead with the next author who comes my way. But, in that case, your friend Mr. Felix Wildmay will be, as it were, a sort of Manx cat?” was her smiling deduction.

“Yes, if you like, in that particular, a sort of Manx cat,” acquiesced Peter, with a laugh.

The Duchessa laughed too; and then there was a little pause.

Overhead, never so light a breeze lisped never so faintly in the tree-tops; here and there bird-notes fell, liquid, desultory, like drops of rain after a shower; and constantly one heard the cool music of the river. The sun, filtering through worlds and worlds of leaves, shed upon everything a green-gold penumbra. The air, warm and still, was sweet with garden-scents. The lake, according to its habit at this hour of the afternoon, had drawn a grey veil over its face, a thin grey veil, through which its sapphire-blue shone furtively. Far away, in the summer haze, Monte Sfiorito seemed a mere dim spectre of itself--a stranger might easily have mistaken it for a vague mass of cloud floating above the horizon.

“Are you aware that it 's a singularly lovely afternoon?” the Duchessa asked, by and by.

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

In the Duchessa's face, perhaps, there flickered, for half-a-second, the least perceptible light, as of a comprehending and unresentful smile. But she went on, with fine aloofness.

“I rather envy you your river, you know. We are too far from it at the castle. Is n't the sound, the murmur, of it delicious? And its colour--how does it come by such a subtle colour? Is it green? Is it blue? And the diamonds on its surface--see how they glitter. You know, of course,” she questioned, “who the owner is of those unequalled gems?”

“Surely,” Peter answered, “the lady paramount of this demesne?”

“No, no.” She shook her head, smiling. “Undine. They are Undine's--her necklaces and tiaras. No mortal woman's jewel-case contains anything half so brilliant. But look at them--look at the long chains of them--how they float for a minute--and are then drawn down. They are Undine's--Undine and her companions are sporting with them just below the surface. A moment ago I caught a glimpse of a white arm.”

“Ah,” said Peter, nodding thoughtfully, “that's what it is to have 'the seeing eye.' But I'm grieved to hear of Undine in such a wanton mood. I had hoped she would still be weeping her unhappy love-affair.”

“What! with that horrid, stolid German--Hildebrandt, was his name?” cried the Duchessa. “Not she! Long ago, I'm glad to say, she learned to laugh at that, as a mere caprice of her immaturity. However, this is a digression. I want to return to our 'Man of Words.' Tell me--what is the quality you especially like in it?”

“I like its every quality,” Peter affirmed, unblushing. “Its style, its finish, its concentration; its wit, humour, sentiment; its texture, tone, atmosphere; its scenes, its subject; the paper it's printed on, the type, the binding. But above all, I like its heroine. I think Pauline de Fleuvieres the pearl of human women--the cleverest, the loveliest, the most desirable, the most exasperating. And also the most feminine. I can't think of her at all as a mere fiction, a mere shadow on paper. I think of her as a living, breathing, flesh-and-blood woman, whom I have actually known. I can see her before me now--I can see her eyes, full of mystery and mischief--I can see her exquisite little teeth, as she smiles--I can see her hair, her hands--I can almost catch the perfume of her garments. I 'm utterly infatuated with her--I could commit a hundred follies for her.”

“Mercy!” exclaimed the Duchessa. “You are enthusiastic.”

“The book's admirers are so few, they must endeavour to make up in enthusiasm what they lack in numbers,” he submitted.

“But--at that rate--why are they so few?” she puzzled. “If the book is all you think it, how do you account for its unpopularity?”

“It could never conceivably be anything but unpopular,” said he. “It has the fatal gift of beauty.”

The Duchessa laughed surprise.

“Is beauty a fatal gift--in works of art?”

“Yes--in England,” he declared.

“In England? Why especially in England?”

“In English-speaking--in Anglo-Saxon lands, if you prefer. The Anglo-Saxon public is beauty-blind. They have fifty religions--only one sauce--and no sense of beauty whatsoever. They can see the nose on one's face--the mote in their neighbour's eye; they can see when a bargain is good, when a war will be expedient. But the one thing they can never see is beauty. And when, by some rare chance, you catch them in the act of admiring a beautiful object, it will never be for its beauty--it will be in spite of its beauty for some other, some extra-aesthetic interest it possesses--some topical or historical interest. Beauty is necessarily detached from all that is topical or historical, or documentary or actual. It is also necessarily an effect of fine shades, delicate values, vanishing distinctions, of evasiveness, inconsequence, suggestion. It is also absolute, unrelated--it is positive or negative or superlative--it is never comparative. Well, the Anglo-Saxon public is totally insensible to such things. They can no more feel them, than a blind worm can feel the colours of the rainbow.”

She laughed again, and regarded him with an air of humorous meditation.

“And that accounts for the unsuccess of 'A Man of Words'?”

“You might as well offer Francois Villon a banquet of Orient pearls.”

“You are bitterly hard on the Anglo-Saxon public.”

“Oh, no,” he disclaimed, “not hard--but just. I wish them all sorts of prosperity, with a little more taste.”

“Oh, but surely,” she caught him up, “if their taste were greater, their prosperity would be less?”

“I don't know,” said he. “The Greeks were fairly prosperous, were n't they? And the Venetians? And the French are not yet quite bankrupt.”

Still again she laughed--always with that little air of humorous meditation.

“You--you don't exactly overwhelm one with compliments,” she observed.

He looked alarm, anxiety.

“Don't I? What have I neglected?” he cried.

“You 've never once evinced the slightest curiosity to learn what I think of the book in question.”

“Oh, I'm sure you like it,” he rejoined hardily. “You have 'the seeing eye.'”

“And yet I'm just a humble member of the Anglo-Saxon public.”

“No--you're a distinguished member of the Anglo-Saxon 'remnant.' Thank heaven, there's a remnant, a little scattered remnant. I'm perfectly sure you like 'A Man of Words.'”

“'Like it' is a proposition so general. Perhaps I am burning to tell someone what I think of it in detail.”

She smiled into his eyes, a trifle oddly.

“If you are, then I know someone who is burning to hear you,” he avowed.

“Well, then, I think--I think...” she began, on a note of deliberation. “But I 'm afraid, just now, it would take too long to formulate my thought. Perhaps I'll try another day.”

She gave him a derisory little nod--and in a minute was well up the lawn, towards the castle.

Peter glared after her, his fists clenched, teeth set.

“You fiend!” he muttered. Then, turning savagely upon himself, “You duffer!”

Nevertheless, that evening, he said to Marietta, “The plot thickens. We've advanced a step. We've reached what the vulgar call a psychological moment. She's seen my Portrait of a Lady. But as yet, if you can believe me, she doesn't dream who painted it; and she has n't recognised the subject. As if one were to face one's image in the glass, and take it for another's! 3--I 'll--I 'll double your wages--if you will induce events to hurry up.”

However, as he spoke English, Marietta was in no position to profit by his offer.

XIII

Peter was walking in the high-road, on the other side of the river--the great high-road that leads from Bergamo to Milan.

It was late in the afternoon, and already, in the west, the sky was beginning to put on some of its sunset splendours. In the east, framed to Peter's vision by parallel lines of poplars, it hung like a curtain of dark-blue velvet.

Peter sat on the grass, by the roadside, in the shadow of a hedge--a rose-bush hedge, of course--and lighted a cigarette.

Far down the long white road, against the blue velvet sky, between the poplars, two little spots of black, two small human figures, were moving towards him.

Half absently, he let his eyes accompany them.

As they came nearer, they defined themselves as a boy and a girl. Nearer still, he saw that they were ragged and dusty and barefoot.

The boy had three or four gaudy-hued wicker baskets slung over his shoulder.

Vaguely, tacitly, Peter supposed that they would be the children of some of the peasants of the countryside, on their way home from the village.

As they arrived abreast of him, they paid him the usual peasants' salute. The boy lifted a tattered felt hat from his head, the girl bobbed a courtesy, and “Buona sera, Eccellenza,” they said in concert, without, however, pausing in their march.

Peter put his hand in his pocket.

“Here, little girl,” he called.

The little girl glanced at him, doubting.

“Come here,” he said.

Her face a question, she came up to him; and he gave her a few coppers.

“To buy sweetmeats,” he said.

“A thousand thanks; Excellency,” said she, bobbing another courtesy.

“A thousand thanks, Excellency,” said the boy, from his distance, again lifting his rag of a hat.

And they trudged on.

But Peter looked after them--and his heart smote him. They were clearly of the poorest of the poor. He thought of Hansel and Gretel. Why had he given them so little? He called to them to stop.

The little girl came running back.

Peter rose to meet her.

“You may as well buy some ribbons too,” he said, and gave her a couple of lire.

She looked at the money with surprise--even with an appearance of hesitation. Plainly, it was a sum, in her eyes.

“It's all right. Now run along,” said Peter.

“A thousand thanks, Excellency,” said she, with a third courtesy, and rejoined her brother....

“Where are they going?” asked a voice.

Peter faced about.

There stood the Duchessa, in a bicycling costume, her bicycle beside her. Her bicycling costume was of blue serge, and she wore a jaunty sailor-hat with a blue ribbon. Peter (in spite of the commotion in his breast) was able to remember that this was the first time he had seen her in anything but white.

Her attention was all upon the children, whom he, perhaps, had more or less banished to Cracklimbo.

“Where are they going?” she repeated, trouble in her voice and in her eyes.

Peter collected himself.

“The children? I don't know--I didn't ask. Home, aren't they?”

“Home? Oh, no. They don't live hereabouts,” she said. “I know all the poor of this neighbourhood.--Ohe there! Children! Children!” she cried.

But they were quite a hundred yards away, and did not hear.

“Do you wish them to come back?” asked Peter.

“Yes--of course,” she answered, with a shade of impatience.

He put his fingers to his lips (you know the schoolboy accomplishment), and gave a long whistle.

That the children did hear.

They halted, and turned round, looking, enquiring.

“Come back--come back!” called the Duchessa, raising her hand, and beckoning.

They came back.

“The pathetic little imps,” she murmured while they were on the way.

The boy was a sturdy, square-built fellow, of twelve, thirteen, with a shock of brown hair, brown cheeks, and sunny brown eyes; with a precocious air of doggedness, of responsibility. He wore an old tail-coat, the tail-coat of a man, ragged, discoloured, falling to his ankles.

The girl was ten or eleven, pale, pinched; hungry, weary, and sorry looking. Her hair too had been brown, upon a time; but now it was faded to something near the tint of ashes, and had almost the effect of being grey. Her pale little forehead was crossed by thin wrinkles, lines of pain, of worry, like an old woman's.

The Duchessa, pushing her bicycle, and followed by Peter, moved down the road, to meet them. Peter had never been so near to her before--at moments her arm all but brushed his sleeve. I think he blessed the children.

“Where are you going?” the Duchessa asked, softly, smiling into the girl's sad little face.

The girl had shown no fear of Peter; but apparently she was somewhat frightened by this grand lady. The toes of her bare feet worked nervously in the dust. She hung her head shyly, and eyed her brother.

But the brother, removing his hat, with the bow of an Italian peasant--and that is to say, the bow of a courtier--spoke up bravely.

“To Turin, Nobility.”

He said it in a perfectly matter-of-fact way, quite as he might have said, “To the next farm-house.”

The Duchessa, however, had not bargained for an answer of this measure. Startled, doubting her ears perhaps, “To--Turin--!” she exclaimed.

“Yes, Excellency,” said the boy.

“But--but Turin--Turin is hundreds of kilometres from here,” she said, in a kind of gasp.

“Yes, Excellency,” said the boy.

“You are going to Turin--you two children--walking--like that!” she persisted.

“Yes, Excellency.”

“But--but it will take you a month.”

“Pardon, noble lady,” said the boy. “With your Excellency's permission, we were told it should take fifteen days.”

“Where do you come from?” she asked.

“From Bergamo, Excellency.”

“When did you leave Bergamo?”

“Yesterday morning, Excellency.”

“The little girl is your sister?”

“Yes, Excellency.”

“Have you a mother and father?”

“A father, Excellency. The mother is dead.” Each of the children made the Sign of the Cross; and Peter was somewhat surprised, no doubt, to see the Duchessa do likewise. He had yet to learn the beautiful custom of that pious Lombard land, whereby, when the Dead are mentioned, you make the Sign of the Cross, and, pausing reverently for a moment, say in silence the traditional prayer of the Church:

“May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the Mercy of God, rest in peace.”