Chapter 11

"It's time to dress," said Anthony. He lighted a cigarette.

Adrian strummed through his phrase again, brows knitted, looking intensely judicial. Then he swung round on his piano-stool.

"Hey? What did you say?" he questioned, his blue eyes vague, his pink face blank.

"I merely asked whether you were n't going for a holiday this summer," Anthony repeated, between two outputs of smoke.

"And you interrupt a heaven-sent musician, when you see the fit's upon him, merely to ask an irrelevant thing like that," Adrian reproved him. "I was holding an assize, a gaol-delivery. That phrase was on trial before me for its life. In art, sir, one should imitate the methods of a hanging judge. Put every separate touch on trial for its life, and deem it guilty till it can prove itself innocent. Yea, even though these same touches be dear to you as her children to a mother. Such is the high austerity of art. I thought you said it was time to dress."

"So it is," said Anthony. "Are n't you going for a holiday this summer?"

Adrian closed his music-book, and got up.

"Of course I am," he answered.

"When?" said Anthony.

"In September, as usual," said Adrian.

"I was wondering," said Anthony, twiddling his cigarette, "whether you would mind taking your holiday a little earlier than usual this year--in August, for instance?"

"Why?" asked Adrian, with caution.

"It would suit me better, I could spare you better," Anthony said.

Adrian eyed him suspiciously.

"In August? We 're in August now, are n't we?"

"I believe so," said Anthony. "Either August or late July. One could find out from the almanac, I suppose. It would suit me very well if you could take your holiday now--at once."

Adrian's suspicion became acute.

"What are you up to? What do you want to get rid of _me_ for?"

Anthony smoked.

"I don't want to get rid of you. On the contrary--I 'll go with you, if you like."

Adrian scrutinized him searchingly, suspicion reinforced by astonishment. All at once his eyes flashed.

"Aha!" he cried. "I see what you 've been at. You 've been trying to philander with the Nobil Donna Susanna Torrebianca--and she 's sent you about your business. Oh, _I 've_ seen how things were going." He winked and nodded.

"Nothing of the sort," said Anthony. "You might tell Wickersmith to pack our things. We 'll take the eight-fifteen up to-morrow morning. That will get us to Victoria in time for the eleven o'clock Continental express."

"Oh? We 're going abroad?" asked Adrian.

"I suppose so. Where else is there to go?" said Anthony.

"I could have told you beforehand," Adrian consoled him, "that you had n't the ghost of a chance with her. You grim, glum, laconic sort of men are n't at all the sort that would appeal to a rich, poetic, southern nature like Madame Torrebianca's. She would be attracted by an exuberant, expansive, warm, sunny sort of man,--a man genial and fruity, like old wine,--sweet and tender and mellow, like ripe peaches. If it were n't that I sternly discountenance the imperilling of business interests by mixing them up with personal sentiment, I should very probably have paid court to her myself. And now I expect you have lost me a tenant. I expect she 'll not care to renew the lease."

"Don't know, I 'm sure," said Anthony. "You might ask her. We 're dining with her to-night. That would make a graceful dinner-table topic."

Adrian's blue eyes grew round.

"We 're dining with her to-night?"

That did n't at all fit his theory of the case.

"At least I am," affirmed Anthony, dropping the end of his cigarette into an ash-tray. "And she said I might bring you, if you 'd promise to be good."

"_The--deuce_!" ejaculated Adrian, in something between a whisper and a whistle. "But--then--why--what--what under the sun are you going abroad for?"

"A mere whim--a sheer piece of perversity--a sleeveless errand," Anthony answered. "So now we might set about sweeping and garnishing ourselves," he suggested, moving towards the door.

Susanna was very beautiful, I think, in a rose-coloured dinner-gown (rose-coloured chiffon, with accessories of drooping old pale-yellowish lace), a spray of scarlet geranium in her hair, pearls round her throat, and, as you could now and then perceive, high-heeled scarlet slippers on her feet.

She was very beautiful, very pleasant and friendly; and if she seemed, perhaps, a thought less merry, a thought more pensive, than her wont--if sometimes, for a second or two, she seemed to lose herself, while her eyes gazed far away, and her lips remained slightly parted--I doubt if Anthony liked her any the less for this.

But what he pined for was a minute alone with her; and that appeared to be by no means forthcoming. After dinner they all went out upon the terrace, where it was lighted by the open French windows of the drawing-room, and reposed in wicker chairs, whilst they sipped their coffee. He looked at her, and his heart grew big--with grief, with resentment, with delight, with despair, with hope. "She cares for me--she has said it, she has shown it. But then why does she send me on this egregious wild-goose chase? She cares for me. But then why does n't she arrange to give me a minute alone with her to-night?"

In the end,--well, was it Adrian, or was it Miss Sandus, whom he had to thank for their minute alone?

"Why does nobody say, 'Dear kind Mr. Willes, do be nice, and sing us something'?" Adrian plaintively inquired.

Anthony grasped the skirts of happy chance.

"Dear kind Mr. Willes, do be nice, and sing us something," he said at once.

"I 'll play your accompaniments," volunteered Miss Sandus.

And she and the songster went into the drawing-room.

"Thank heaven," said Anthony, under his breath, but fervently, gazing hard at Susanna.

She gave a little laugh.

"What are you laughing at?" he asked.

"At your sudden access of piety," said she.

"At any rate," said he, "I owe no thanks to _you_. For all you cared, apparently, we should have spent the whole of this last precious evening surrounded by strangers."

"Mamam, dites-moi ce qu'on sent Quand on aime,"

came the voice of Adrian from within.

"If you talk, we can't hear the music," said Susanna.

"Bother the music," responded Anthony.

"It was you who asked him to sing," she said.

"Bother his singing. This is my last evening with you. Do you think a woman has the right to be as gloriously beautiful as you are to-night? Do you think it's fair to the feelings of a poor wretched man, who adores her, and whom she, in mere wanton wickedness, is sending to the uttermost ends of the earth?"

Susanna had her fan of white feathers in her lap. She caressed it.

"I want to ask you something," said Anthony.

"What is it?" said she.

"A piece of information, to help me on my journey. Will you give it me?"

"If I can, of course," said she, putting her fan on the table.

"You promise?" said he.

"If I have any information that can be of use to you, I 'll give it with pleasure," she agreed.

"Very good. That's a promise," said he. "Now then, for my question. I love you. Do you love me?"

He looked hard at her.

She laughed, in acknowledgment that she had been fairly caught. Then her eyes softened.

"Yes," she said.

But before he could move, she had sprung up, and disappeared through one of the French windows, joining Miss Sandus and Adrian at the piano.

In her flight, however, she forgot her fan. It lay where she had left it on the table.

Anthony picked it up, pressed it to his face. He closed his eyes, and kept it pressed to his face. Its fragrance was more than a mere fragrance--there was something of herself in it, something poignantly, intimately personal.

By and by he put the fan in his pocket, in the inside pocket of his coat--feathers downwards, the better to conceal it. Then he too joined the group at the piano.

XX

In their sitting-room in the Hôtel de Rome, at Vallanza, Anthony and Adrian were waiting for their breakfast. It is evident, therefore, that Susanna's will had prevailed, and a fool's errand was in process of accomplishment. The fool, no doubt, to the last moment, had renewed his protests, his pleadings, his refusals; but, at each fresh outburst, coldly, firmly, the lady had reiterated her ultimatum, "Then all is over between you and me." And in the end, very conscious of his folly, very much incensed by her perversity, disgusted, dejected, and, as his travelling-companion had occasion to observe, in the very devil of a temper, he had left Victoria by the eleven o'clock Continental express. "Never forget," Miss Sandus whispered in his ear, as he paid her his adieux, "never forget that sound old adage--'journeys end in lovers meeting.'" This was oracular, and he had no opportunity to press for an interpretation; but it was clearly intended as of good omen. At the same time, in another part of the room, Susanna was whispering to Adrian. As Adrian never again expressed the slightest curiosity anent the motive of their hegira, I am led to wonder whether Susanna had admitted him to her confidence. She had intimated that she should n't especially mind doing so; and it is certain that he, from that time forth, now and then smiled at the sky with an eye that looked very knowing.

Those who have recently visited Sampaolo will remember the Hôtel de Rome as a small, new, spick-and-span establishment, built at the corner of the Piazza San Guido and the Riva Vittorio Emmanuele, and presenting none of that "local colour in the shape of dirt and discomfort" which we are warned to expect in Italy, if we depart from the track beaten by the tourist. I am told that the modern Italian commercial gentleman (who is often a German, and not infrequently a Jew) has learned some of the tourist's exactions. It is thanks to him, presumably, that even at out-of-the-way Vallanza there exists a decent inn.

Our friends' sitting-room was on the first floor, a corner room, having two sets of windows. One set commanded the Piazza, with its grey old church (the Cathedral of St. Paul and St. Guy), its detached campanile, its big central fountain, and, occupying the entire eastern side, the crumbling frescoed front of the Palazzo Rosso. The other set looked across the Riva, and its double row of palms, out upon the bay, with its anchored ships, its fishing-boats, its encircling olive-covered hills, dotted high and low by villages and villas, and its embosomed Islets, Isola Nobile, Isola Fratello, Isola Sorella, the whole wide prospect glowing in the sun.

The Piazza, which opens to the north, lay in cool blue shadow; and just now a market was in progress there, a jumble-scene of merchandise, animals, and humanity; men, women, and children, dogs and donkeys, goats, calves, pigs, poultry; vegetables and fruit--quartered melons, with green rind, black seeds, and rosy flesh, great golden pumpkins, onions in festoons, figs in pyramids; boots, head-gear, and rough shop-made clothing, for either sex; cheap jewellery also; and every manner of requisite for the household, from pots and pans of wrought copper, brass lamps, iron bedsteads and husk-filled bedding, to portraits in brilliant oleograph of King and Queen and the inevitable Garibaldi. The din was stupendous. Humanity hawked, chaffered, haggled, laughed, vituperated. Donkeys brayed, calves mooed, dogs barked, ducks quacked, pigs squealed. A dentist had set up his chair near the fountain, and was brawling proffers of relief to the tooth-distressed. Sometimes a beglamoured sufferer would allow himself to be taken in hand; and therewith, above the general blare and blur of noise, rose clear and lusty a series of shameless Latin howls. The town-crier, in a cocked hat, wandered hither and thither, like a soul in pain, feebly beating his drum, and droning out a nasal proclamation to which, so far as was apparent, no one listened. The women, for the most part, wore bright-coloured skirts,--striped green and red, or blue and yellow,--and long black veils, covering the head, and falling below the waist; the men, dark jerseys, corduroy trousers, red belts in lieu of braces, and red fishers' caps with tassels that dangled over the ear. Two such men, at this moment, passed up the Piazza arm-in-arm, singing. I don't know what their song was, but they had good voices, and while one of them carried the melody, the other sang a second.

Anthony, morose and listless, Adrian, all agog with excitement, had been looking down upon this spectacle for some minutes in silence. It was their first glimpse of daylit Sampaolo. They had arrived from Venice last night after dark.

But now, as the men passed singing, Adrian was moved to utterance.

"Italia, oh, Italia!" he exclaimed. "I thought I knew my Italy. I thought I had visited my Italy every year or two, for more years than you could shake a stick at. But this is too Italian to be true. This is not Italy--this is Italian opera."

Anthony gloomed.

"It's an infernal bore, whatever it is," he declared.

"Fie, fie," Adrian chid him. "Infernal? That is not at all a nice word. Don't let me hear it a second time. How animated and southern and picturesque that _arracheur-de-dents_ is, is n't he? What distinction he confers upon the scene. Have you no teeth that need attending to? I should love to see you operated on by a practitioner like that, in the fresh air, under the azure canopy of heaven, in the eye of the world, fearless and unashamed. The long, rather rusty building opposite, with the pictures fading from its walls, is none other than the Palazzo Rosso, the cradle of your race. It can be visited between ten and four. I 've had a talk with our landlord's daughter--such a pretty girl. Her name--what do you suppose her name is? Her name is Pia. She has nice hair and eyes, and is a perfect cornucopia of information.--Ah, at last!" he sighed, pressing his hand to his heart, as the door opened, and the waiter appeared, bearing a tray.

Then, as the waiter set out the contents of his tray upon the table, Adrian, bending forward, examined them with the devoutness, with the intentness, of an impassioned connoisseur.

"Grilled ham, gallantine of chicken _aux truffes_, mortadella, an omelette _aux fines herbes_, coffee, hot milk, whipped cream, bread, figs, apricots," he enumerated. "And if it had n't been for my talk with the landlord's daughter, do you know what we should have had? We should have had coffee and bread and _praeterea nihil_. That's what we should have had," he pronounced tragically, shaking his head in retrospective consternation at the thing escaped. "Oh, these starveling Continental breakfasts! But I threw myself upon Pia's clemency. I paid her compliments upon her hair, upon her toilet. I called her Pia mia. I said that if I had only met her earlier in life, I should have been a very different person. I appealed to the _woman_ in her. I explained to her that my hollow-cheeked companion, with the lack-lustre eye, was a star-crossed lover, and must be treated with exceptional tenderness. I said that nothing mitigated the _tormento d'amore_ like beginning the day with a sustaining meal. I said you were a man of an unbounded stomach. I said you were subject to paroxysms of the most violent rage, and if you did n't get the proper variety and quantity of food, you 'd smash the furniture. I smiled upon her with my bonniest, blithest eyne. I ogled her. I chucked her under the chin. I did nothing of the sort. I was extremely dignified. But I told her of a dream I had last night--oh, such a lovely dream--and she was melted. What do you suppose I dreamed of? I dreamed of plump, juicy English sausages."

His face grew wistful, his voice sank. He piled his plate with ham and omelette.

"You 'd better write a song about it," fleered Anthony. "'The Homesick Glutton's Dream.'" Then, making a face, "Why did you order coffee?" he grumbled. "Why did n't you order tea?"

"Tut, don't be peevish," said Adrian. "Sit up, and tie your table-napkin round your neck, and try to be polite when the kind gentleman speaks to you. I did order tea. But tea at Sampaolo is regarded in the light of a pharmaceutical preparation. Pia said she thought I might be able to procure some at the _farmacia_. This omelette really is n't bad. You 'd better take some--before it disappears in the darkness."

But Anthony declined the omelette--and it disappeared in the darkness.

"Come, cheer up, goodman Dull," Adrian exhorted him, selecting the truffled portions from a plateful of gallantine. "'Men have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.' Ginger is still hot in the mouth, and there are more fish in the sea than have ever yet nibbled at your bait and spurned it. Do you know why there are no mosquitoes at Sampaolo, and no bandits? There are none--Pia gave me her word for it, Pia mia gave me her pretty feminine word. But do you know why? Pia told me why. The wind, Signore. The wind blows them away--away, away, and far away, over the bright blue sea. Every afternoon we get a wind, sweeping in from the north. Sometimes it is only a _venticello_, sometimes a _temporale_, sometimes an _orogano terribile_, but it is always sufficient to blow away the mosquitoes and the bandits. Pia told me so. Sweet Pia."

"Humph," said Anthony.

"Humph, by all means," Adrian hastened to agree. "I have a sort of humphy feeling myself--a sort of unsatisfied yearning, that is scarcely akin to pain, and resembles sorrow only as the mist resembles the rain. I think it may be imputed to inadequate nourishment. I think I will try some of that mortadella, if you 'll be so good as to pass it. Thank you. And another cup of coffee, with plenty of whipped cream on top, please. How cruel dairymaids must be, to whip such nice stuff as cream. But they 're cruel only to be kind, are n't they?--cruel to the cream, to be kind to us, the dear creatures. If you 'd give up smoking and drinking, you 'd have a healthy appetite yourself. Come! Be comforted. Cast off this green and yellow melancholy. Take me for your exemplar. I too, when I first visited my ancestral home, I too was filled with horror and resentment. I entered it screaming, as I am credibly informed, kicking and screaming, protesting with all the passion of latent genius, with all the force of a brand-new pair of lungs. But I 've enjoyed it very well ever since. Ah, the strange tale of Man. Conceived in sin, brought forth in pain, to live and amuse himself in an impenetrable environment of mystery--in an impenetrable fog. And never to see, of all things, his own face! To see the faces of others, to see the telescopic stars and the microscopic microbes, yet never to see his own face. And even the reflection, the shadow of it, which he can see in a looking-glass, even that he perforce sees _à rebours_. You can't deny it's rum. But if I had a face as long as yours, I solemnly believe, I should deem it likewise providential."

"To think, to think," Anthony, long-faced, was brooding, "that she in mere wilfulness has condemned me to a whole mortal week of this."

"We lunch," said Adrian, "at one, though Pia suggested twelve, and dine at seven, though Pia suggested six. At four we shall have a little _goûté_--_caffé con pasticceria_--to take the place of tea. And now, if you can tear yourself from the pleasures of the table, let's be up and doing. We 'll begin with the Cathedral, and if we look sharp, we 'll be in time to hear a Mass. There are Masses every half hour till ten. Then the Palazzo Rosso. After luncheon and a brief siesta, Isola Nobile. And after our _caffé con pasticceria_, a donkey-ride in the country."

When they had heard their Mass, they were approached by the Sacristan, a little, shrunken, brown old man in a cassock, who offered to serve them as a guide. The church was very dim and very silent. Here and there a woman knelt at prayer; here and there a candle burned. The Sacristan removed the frontal from the High Altar, to show them the golden reliquary that enshrines the dust of San Guido, and unveiled the three fine altar-pieces, attributed to Giacomo Fiorentino, "San Guido Shipwrecked," "San Guide's Return," and "The Good Death of San Guido." He showed them also, in its glass case, the Sword of the Golden Thorn, reciting its history; and finally he conducted them to the crypt, where, under masses of sculptured ner'-antico, emblazoned with their armorials, some five-and-twenty generations of Valdeschi lie entombed. What were Anthony's emotions? He must have had emotions.

At the Palazzo Rosso they were invited to write their names and nationality in the visitors' book; and then a silver-haired, soft-voiced, gentle-mannered servitor in livery led them up the grand marble staircase and through an endless suite of airy, stately rooms--rooms with floors of polished concrete, displaying elaborate patterns, with tapestried walls and frescoed ceilings, with sparse but ancient and precious articles of furniture, chandeliers of Venetian glass, Venetian mirrors, and innumerable paintings, many of them portraits.

"It's astonishing," said Adrian, "how, by some occult process of selection, in spite of perpetual marriage with new blood, in spite of the thousand vicissitudes of time and circumstance, in a given family a particular feature will persist. There 's the Habsburg lip, for instance. And here is the Valdeschi nose. From generation to generation, from century to century, one can recognize in these dead forefathers of yours the identical nose that is on your face to-day."

It was quite true. Again and again you saw repeated the same high-bridged, slenderly aquiline nose.

"Sala del trono," announced their cicerone (only, he pronounced it _Sa' do truno_).

And there, sure enough, at the end of a vast chamber, was "the great scarlet throne, with the gilded coronet topping the canopy above," just as Susanna had described it. What were Anthony's emotions?

But the white-haired serving-man (as Adrian noticed) from time to time allowed his eyes to fix themselves studiously upon Anthony's face, and appeared to fall into a muse. Now he stopped before a high white-and-gold double-door. "The entrance to the private apartments," he said, and placed his hand upon the fancifully-wrought ormolu door-knob.

"Are the public admitted to the private apartments," Anthony doubted, holding back.

"No, Signore," said the old man. "But I think, if the Signore will pardon me, that the Signore's Excellency will be a connection of the family."

Anthony all but jumped.

"Why on earth should you think that?" he wondered.

"It's the persistent feature," said Adrian, in English, with a chuckle. "The Signore's Excellency is betrayed by the Signore's Excellency's beak."

"If the Signore will pardon me, I observed that the Signore's name, when he wrote in the visitors' book, was Crahforrdi of England," the old man explained. "But the Crahforrdi of England are a house cognate to ours. The consort of the Conte who was Conte when I had the honour of entering the family, nearly sixty years ago, was a Crahforrdi of England, a lordessa. Moreover it is in the Signore's face. If the Signori will favour me, it will give me great pleasure to show them what they will think is the Signore's own portrait."