Chapter 4

“And where is your father?” the Duchessa asked.

“In Turin, Excellency,” answered the boy. “He is a glass-blower. After the strike at Bergamo, he went to Turin to seek work. Now he has found it. So he has sent for us to come to him.”

“And you two children--alone--are going to walk all the way to Turin!” She could not get over the pitiful wonder of it.

“Yes, Excellency.”

“The heart-rending little waifs,” she said, in English, with something like a sob. Then, in Italian, “But--but how do you live by the way?”

The boy touched his shoulder-load of baskets.

“We sell these, Excellency.”

“What is their price?” she asked.

“Thirty soldi, Excellency.”

“Have you sold many since you started?”

The boy looked away; and now it was his turn to hang his head, and to let his toes work nervously in the dust.

“Haven't you sold any?” she exclaimed, drawing her conclusions.

“No, Excellency. The people would not buy,” he owned, in a dull voice, keeping his eyes down.

“Poverino,” she murmured. “Where are you going to sleep to-night?”

“In a house, Excellency,” said he.

But that seemed to strike the Duchessa as somewhat vague.

“In what house?” she asked.

“I do not know, Excellency,” he confessed. “We will find a house.”

“Would you like to come back with me, and sleep at my house?”

The boy and girl looked at each other, taking mute counsel.

Then, “Pardon, noble lady--with your Excellency's permission, is it far?” the boy questioned.

“I am afraid it is not very near--three or four kilometres.”

Again the children looked at each other, conferring. Afterwards, the boy shook his head.

“A thousand thanks, Excellency. With your permission, we must not turn back. We must walk on till later. At night we will find a house.”

“They are too proud to own that their house will be a hedge,” she said to Peter, again in English. “Aren't you hungry?” she asked the children.

“No, Excellency. We had bread in the village, below there,” answered the boy.

“You will not come home with me, and have a good dinner, and a good night's sleep?”

“Pardon, Excellency. With your favour, the father would not wish us to turn back.”

The Duchessa looked at the little girl.

The little girl wore a medal of the Immaculate Conception on a ribbon round her neck--a forlorn blue ribbon, soiled and frayed.

“Oh, you have a holy medal,” said the Duchessa.

“Yes, noble lady,” said the girl, dropping a courtesy, and lifting up her sad little weazened face.

“She has been saying her prayers all along the road,” the boy volunteered.

“That is right,” approved the Duchessa. “You have not made your First Communion yet, have you?”

“No, Excellency,” said the girl. “I shall make it next year.”

“And you?” the Duchessa asked the boy.

“I made mine at Corpus Christi,” said the boy, with a touch of pride.

The Duchessa turned to Peter.

“Do you know, I haven't a penny in my pocket. I have come out without my purse.”

“How much ought one to give them?” Peter asked.

“Of course, there is the fear that they might be robbed,” she reflected. “If one should give them a note of any value, they would have to change it; and they would probably be robbed. What to do?”

“I will speak to the boy,” said Peter. “Would you like to go to Turin by train?” he asked.

The boy and girl looked at each other. “Yes, Excellency,” said the boy.

“But if I give you money for your fare, will you know how to take care of it--how to prevent people from robbing you?”

“Oh, yes, Excellency.”

“You could take the train this evening, at Venzona, about two kilometres from here, in the direction you are walking. In an hour or two you would arrive at Milan; there you would change into the train for Turin. You would be at Turin to-morrow morning.”

“Yes, Excellency.”

“But if I give you money, you will not let people rob you? If I give you a hundred lire?”

The boy drew back, stared, as if frightened.

“A hundred lire--?” he said.

“Yes,” said Peter.

The boy looked at his sister.

“Pardon, Nobility,” he said. “With your condescension, does it cost a hundred lire to go to Turin by train?”

“Oh, no. I think it costs eight or ten.”

Again the boy looked at his sister.

“Pardon, Nobility. With your Excellency's permission, we should not desire a hundred lire then,” he said.

Peter and the Duchessa were not altogether to be blamed, I hope, if they exchanged the merest hint of a smile.

“Well, if I should give you fifty?” Peter asked.

“Fifty lire, Excellency?”

Peter nodded.

Still again the boy sought counsel of his sister, with his eyes.

“Yes, Excellency,” he said.

“You are sure you will be able to take care of it--you will not let people rob you,” the Duchessa put in, anxious. “They will wish to rob you. If you go to sleep in the train, they will try to pick your pocket.”

“I will hide it, noble lady. No one shall rob me. If I go to sleep in the train, I will sit on it, and my sister will watch. If she goes to sleep, I will watch,” the boy promised confidently.

“You must give it to him in the smallest change you can possibly scrape together,” she advised Peter.

And with one-lira, two-lira, ten-lira notes, and with a little silver and copper, he made up the amount.

“A thousand thanks, Excellency,” said the boy, with a bow that was magnificent; and he proceeded to distribute the money between various obscure pockets.

“A thousand thanks, Excellency,” said the girl, with a courtesy.

“Addio, a buon' viaggio,” said Peter.

“Addio, Eccellenze,” said the boy.

“Addio, Eccellenze,” said the girl.

But the Duchessa impulsively stooped down, and kissed the girl on her poor little wrinkled brow. And when she stood up, Peter saw that her eyes were wet.

The children moved off. They moved off, whispering together, and gesticulating, after the manner of their race: discussing something. Presently they stopped; and the boy came running back, while his sister waited.

He doffed his hat, and said, “A thousand pardons, Excellency-”

“Yes? What is it?” Peter asked.

“With your Excellency's favour--is it obligatory that we should take the train?”

“Obligatory?” puzzled Peter. “How do you mean?”

“If it is not obligatory, we would prefer, with the permission of your Excellency, to save the money.”

“But--but then you will have to walk!” cried Peter.

“But if it is not obligatory to take the train, we would pray your Excellency's permission to save the money. We should like to save the money, to give it to the father. The father is very poor. Fifty lire is so much.”

This time it was Peter who looked for counsel to the Duchessa.

Her eyes, still bright with tears, responded, “Let them do as they will.”

“No, it is not obligatory--it is only recommended,” he said to the boy, with a smile that he could n't help. “Do as you will. But if I were you, I should spare my poor little feet.”

“Mille grazie, Eccellenze,” the boy said, with a final sweep of his tattered hat. He ran back to his sister; and next moment they were walking resolutely on, westward, “into the great red light.”

The Duchessa and Peter were silent for a while, looking after them.

They dwindled to dots in the distance, and then, where the road turned, disappeared.

At last the Duchessa spoke--but almost as if speaking to herself.

“There, Felix Wildmay, you writer of tales, is a subject made to your hand,” she said.

We may guess whether Peter was startled. Was it possible that she had found him out? A sound, confused, embarrassed, something composite, between an oh and ayes, seemed to expire in his throat.

But the Duchessa did n't appear to heed it.

“Don't you think it would be a touching episode for your friend to write a story round?” she asked.

We may guess whether he was relieved.

“Oh--oh, yes,” he agreed, with the precipitancy of a man who, in his relief, would agree to anything.

“Have you ever seen such courage?” she went on. “The wonderful babies! Fancy fifteen days, fifteen days and nights, alone, unprotected, on the highway, those poor little atoms! Down in their hearts they are really filled with terror. Who would n't be, with such a journey before him? But how finely they concealed it, mastered it! Oh, I hope they won't be robbed. God help them--God help them!”

“God help them, indeed,” said Peter.

“And the little girl, with her medal of the Immaculate Conception. The father, after all, can hardly be the brute one might suspect, since he has given them a religious education. Oh, I am sure, I am sure, it was the Blessed Virgin herself who sent us across their path, in answer to that poor little creature's prayers.”

“Yes,” said Peter, ambiguously perhaps. But he liked the way in which she united him to herself in the pronoun.

“Which, of course,” she added, smiling gravely into his eyes, “seems the height of absurdity to you?”

“Why should it seem the height of absurdity to me?” he asked.

“You are a Protestant, I suppose?”

“I suppose so. But what of that? At all events, I believe there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in the usual philosophies. And I see no reason why it should not have been the Blessed Virgin who sent us across their path.”

“What would your Protestant pastors and masters do, if they heard you? Isn't that what they call Popish superstition?”

“I daresay. But I'm not sure that there's any such thing as superstition. Superstition, in its essence, is merely a recognition of the truth that in a universe of mysteries and contradictions, like ours, nothing conceivable or inconceivable is impossible.”

“Oh, no, no,” she objected. “Superstition is the belief in something that is ugly and bad and unmeaning. That is the difference between superstition and religion. Religion is the belief in something that is beautiful and good and significant--something that throws light into the dark places of life--that helps us to see and to live.”

“Yes,” said Peter, “I admit the distinction.” After a little suspension, “I thought,” he questioned, “that all Catholics were required to go to Mass on Sunday?”

“Of course--so they are,” said she.

“But--but you--” he began.

“I hear Mass not on Sunday only--I hear it every morning of my life.”

“Oh? Indeed? I beg your pardon,” he stumbled. “I--one--one never sees you at the village church.”

“No. We have a chapel and a chaplain at the castle.”

She mounted her bicycle.

“Good-bye,” she said, and lightly rode away.

“So-ho! Her bigotry is not such a negligible quantity, after all,” Peter concluded.

“But what,” he demanded of Marietta, as she ministered to his wants at dinner, “what does one barrier more or less matter, when people are already divided by a gulf that never can be traversed? You see that river?” He pointed through his open window to the Aco. “It is a symbol. She stands on one side of it, I stand on the other, and we exchange little jokes. But the river is always there, flowing between us, separating us. She is the daughter of a lord, and the widow of a duke, and the fairest of her sex, and a millionaire, and a Roman Catholic. What am I? Oh, I don't deny I 'm clever. But for the rest? ... My dear Marietta, I am simply, in one word, the victim of a misplaced attachment.”

“Non capisco Francese,” said Marietta.

XIV

And after that, for I forget how many days, Peter and the Duchessa did not meet; and so he sank low and lower in his mind.

Nothing that can befall us, optimists aver, is without its value; and this, I have heard, is especially true if we happen to be literary men. All is grist that comes to a writer's mill.

By his present experience, accordingly, Peter learned--and in the regretful prose of some future masterpiece will perhaps be enabled to remember--how exceeding great is the impatience of the lovesick, with what febrile vehemence the smitten heart can burn, and to what improbable lengths hours and minutes can on occasions stretch themselves.

He tried many methods of distraction.

There was always the panorama of his valley--the dark-blue lake, pale Monte Sfiorito, the frowning Gnisi, the smiling uplands westward. There were always the sky, the clouds, the clear sunshine, the crisp-etched shadows; and in the afternoon there was always the wondrous opalescent haze of August, filling every distance. There was always his garden--there were the great trees, with the light sifting through high spaces of feathery green; there were the flowers, the birds, the bees, the butterflies, with their colour, and their fragrance, and their music; there was his tinkling fountain, in its nimbus of prismatic spray; there was the swift, symbolic Aco. And then, at a half-hour's walk, there was the pretty pink-stuccoed village, with its hill-top church, its odd little shrines, its grim-grotesque ossuary, its faded frescoed house-fronts, its busy, vociferous, out-of-door Italian life:--the cobbler tapping in his stall; women gossiping at their toilets; children sprawling in the dirt, chasing each other, shouting; men drinking, playing mora, quarrelling, laughing, singing, twanging mandolines, at the tables under the withered bush of the wine-shop; and two or three more pensive citizens swinging their legs from the parapet of the bridge, and angling for fish that never bit, in the impetuous stream below.

Peter looked at these things; and, it is to be presumed, he saw them. But, for all the joy they gave him, he, this cultivator of the sense of beauty, might have been the basest unit of his own purblind Anglo-Saxon public. They were the background for an absent figure. They were the stage-accessories of a drama whose action was arrested. They were an empty theatre.

He tried to read. He had brought a trunkful of books to Villa Floriano; but that book had been left behind which could fix his interest now.

He tried to write--and wondered, in a kind of daze, that any man should ever have felt the faintest ambition to do a thing so thankless and so futile.

“I shall never write again. Writing,” he generalised, and possibly not without some reason, “when it is n't the sordidest of trades, is a mere fatuous assertion of one's egotism. Breaking stones in the street were a nobler occupation; weaving ropes of sand were better sport. The only things that are worth writing are inexpressible, and can't be written. The only things that can be written are obvious and worthless--the very crackling of thorns under a pot. Oh, why does n't she turn up?”

And the worst of it was that at any moment, for aught he knew, she might turn up. That was the worst of it, and the best. It kept hope alive, only to torture hope. It encouraged him to wait, to watch, to expect; to linger in his garden, gazing hungry-eyed up the lawns of Ventirose, striving to pierce the foliage that embowered the castle; to wander the country round-about, scanning every vista, scrutinising every shape and shadow, a tweed-clad Gastibelza. At any moment, indeed, she might turn up; but the days passed--the hypocritic days--and she did not turn up.

Marietta, the kind soul, noticing his despondency, sought in divers artless ways to cheer him.

One evening she burst into his sitting-room with the effect of a small explosion, excitement in every line of her brown old face and wiry little figure.

“The fireflies! The fireflies, Signorino!” she cried, with strenuous gestures.

“What fireflies?” asked he, with phlegm.

“It is the feast of St. Dominic. The fireflies have arrived. They arrive every year on the feast of St. Dominic. They are the beads of his rosary. They are St. Dominic's Aves. There are thousands of them. Come, Signorino, Come and see.”

Her black eyes snapped. She waved her hands urgently towards the window.

Peter languidly got up, languidly crossed the room, looked out.

There were, in truth, thousands of them, thousands and thousands of tiny primrose flames, circling, fluttering, rising, sinking, in the purple blackness of the night, like snowflakes in a wind, palpitating like hearts of living gold--Jove descending upon Danae invisible.

“Son carin', eh?” cried eager Marietta.

“Hum--yes--pretty enough,” he grudgingly acknowledged. “But even so?” the ingrate added, as he turned away, and let himself drop back into his lounging-chair. “My dear good woman, no amount of prettiness can disguise the fundamental banality of things. Your fireflies--St. Dominic's beads, if you like--and, apropos of that, do you know what they call them in America?--they call them lightning-bugs, if you can believe me--remark the difference between southern euphuism and western bluntness--your fireflies are pretty enough, I grant. But they are tinsel pasted on the Desert of Sahara. They are condiments added to a dinner of dust and ashes. Life, trick it out as you will, is just an incubus--is just the Old Man of the Sea. Language fails me to convey to you any notion how heavily he sits on my poor shoulders. I thought I had suffered from ennui in my youth. But the malady merely plays with the green fruit; it reserves its serious ravages for the ripe. I can promise you 't is not a laughing matter. Have you ever had a fixed idea? Have you ever spent days and nights racking your brain, importuning the unanswering Powers, to learn whether there was--well, whether there was Another Man, for instance? Oh, bring me drink. Bring me Seltzer water and Vermouth. I will seek nepenthe at the bottom of the wine-cup.”

Was there another man? Why should there not be? And yet was there? In her continued absence, the question came back persistently, and scarcely contributed to his peace of mind.

A few days later, nothing discouraged, “Would you like to have a good laugh, Signorino?” Marietta enquired.

“Yes,” he answered, apathetic.

“Then do me the favour to come,” she said.

She led him out of his garden, to the gate of a neighbouring meadow. A beautiful black-horned white cow stood there, her head over the bars, looking up and down the road, and now and then uttering a low distressful “moo.”

“See her,” said Marietta.

“I see her. Well--?” said Peter.

“This morning they took her calf from her--to wean it,” said Marietta.

“Did they, the cruel things? Well--?” said he.

“And ever since, she has stood there by the gate, looking down the road, waiting, calling.”

“The poor dear. Well--?” said he.

“But do you not see, Signorino? Look at her eyes. She is weeping--weeping like a Christian.”

Peter looked-and, sure enough, from the poor cow's eyes tears were falling, steadily, rapidly: big limpid tears that trickled down her cheek, her great homely hairy cheek, and dropped on the grass: tears of helpless pain, uncomprehending endurance. “Why have they done this thing to me?” they seemed dumbly to cry.

“Have you ever seen a cow weep before? Is it comical, at least?” demanded Marietta, exultant.

“Comical--?” Peter gasped. “Comical--!” he groaned....

But then he spoke to the cow.

“Poor dear--poor dear,” he repeated. He patted her soft warm neck, and scratched her between the horns and along the dewlap.

“Poor dear--poor dear.”

The cow lifted up her head, and rested her great chin on Peter's shoulder, breathing upon his face.

“Yes, you know that we are companions in misery, don't you?” he said. “They have taken my calf from me too--though my calf, indeed, was only a calf in an extremely metaphorical sense--and it never was exactly mine, anyhow--I daresay it's belonged from the beginning to another man. You, at least, have n't that gall and wormwood added to your cup. And now you must really try to pull yourself together. It's no good crying. And besides, there are more calves in the sea than have ever been taken from it. You'll have a much handsomer and fatter one next time. And besides, you must remember that your loss subserves someone else's gain--the farmer would never have done it if it hadn't been to his advantage. If you 're an altruist, that should comfort you. And you must n't mind Marietta,--you must n't mind her laughter. Marietta is a Latin. The Latin conception of what is laughable differs by the whole span of heaven from the Teuton. You and I are Teutons.”

“Teutons--?” questioned Marietta wrinkling her brow.

“Yes--Germanic,” said he.

“But I thought the Signorino was English?”

“So he is.”

“But the cow is not Germanic. White, with black horns, that is the purest Roman breed, Signorino.”

“Fa niente,” he instructed her. “Cows and Englishmen, and all such sentimental cattle, including Germans, are Germanic. Italians are Latin--with a touch of the Goth and Vandal. Lions and tigers growl and fight because they're Mohammedans. Dogs still bear without abuse the grand old name of Sycophant. Cats are of the princely line of Persia, and worship fire, fish, and flattery--as you may have noticed. Geese belong indifferently to any race you like--they are cosmopolitans; and I've known here and there a person who, without distinction of nationality, was a duck. In fact, you're rather by way of being a duck yourself: And now,” he perorated, “never deny again that I can talk nonsense with an aching heart.”

“All the same,” insisted Marietta, “it is very comical to see a cow weep.”

“At any rate,” retorted Peter, “it is not in the least comical to hear a hyaena laugh.”

“I have never heard one,” said she.

“Pray that you never may. The sound would make an old woman of you. It's quite blood-curdling.”

“Davvero?” said Marietta.

“Davvero,” he assured her.

And meanwhile the cow stood there, with her head on his shoulder, silently weeping, weeping.

He gave her a farewell rub along the nose.

“Good-bye,” he said. “Your breath is like meadowsweet. So dry your tears, and set your hopes upon the future. I 'll come and see you again to-morrow, and I 'll bring you some nice coarse salt. Good-bye.”

But when he went to see her on the morrow, she was grazing peacefully; and she ate the salt he brought her with heart-whole bovine relish--putting out her soft white pad of a tongue, licking it deliberately from his hand, savouring it tranquilly, and crunching the bigger grains with ruminative enjoyment between her teeth. So soon consoled! They were companions in misery no longer. “I 'm afraid you are a Latin, after all,” he said, and left her with a sense of disappointment.

That afternoon Marietta asked, “Would you care to visit the castle, Signorino?”

He was seated under his willow-tree, by the river, smoking cigarettes--burning superfluous time.

Marietta pointed towards Ventirose.

“Why?” said he.

“The family are away. In the absence of the family, the public are admitted, upon presentation of their cards.”

“Oho!” he cried. “So the family are away, are they?”

“Yes, Signorino.”

“Aha!” cried he. “The family are away. That explains everything. Have--have they been gone long?”

“Since a week, ten days, Signorino.”

“A week! Ten days!” He started up, indignant. “You secretive wretch! Why have you never breathed a word of this to me?”

Marietta looked rather frightened.

“I did not know it myself, Signorino,” was her meek apology. “I heard it in the village this morning, when the Signorino sent me to buy coarse salt.”

“Oh, I see.” He sank back upon his rustic bench. “You are forgiven.” He extended his hand in sign of absolution. “Are they ever coming back?”

“Naturally, Signorino.”

“What makes you think so?”

“But they will naturally come back.”

“I felicitate you upon your simple faith. When?”

“Oh, fra poco. They have gone to Rome.”

“To Rome? You're trifling with me. People do not go to Rome in August.”

“Pardon, Signorino. People go to Rome for the feast of the Assumption. That is the 15th. Afterwards they come back,” said Marietta, firmly.

“I withdraw my protest,” said Peter. “They have gone to Rome for the feast of the Assumption. Afterwards they will come back.”

“Precisely, Signorino. But you have now the right to visit the castle, upon presentation of your card. You address yourself to the porter at the lodge. The castle is grand, magnificent. The Court of Honour alone is thirty metres long.”

Marietta stretched her hands to right and left as far as they would go.