Chapter 6

"Ah," said Anthony, nodding, "that's because our English novelists are such dabs at the art of omission." And after the briefest pause, "Mere idle and impertinent curiosity," he postulated, "is one thing: honest neighbourly interest is another. If I were a bolder man, I should ask you point-blank what part of Italy your part of Italy is."

Susanna (all a soft whiteness, in her white frock, in the mellow penumbra of the pine-grove) leaned back, and softly laughed.

"My part of Italy? That is not altogether easy to tell," she said, considering. "In one sense, my part of Italy is Rome. I belong to a Roman family, and am politically a subject of the Holy Father,--what though, for the moment, his throne be usurped by the Duke of Savoy, and his prerogatives exercised by the Camorra. But then my part of Italy is also Venice. We are Venetians, if to have had a house in Venice for some four hundred years is sufficient to constitute folk Venetians. But the part of Italy where I most often live, the part I like best, is a part you will never have heard of--a little castaway island in the Adriatic, about fifty miles north from Ancona: a little mountainous island, all fragrant of rosemary and basil, all grey with olive-trees,--all grey, save where the grey is broken by the green of vineyards, or the white and green of villas with their gardens, or the white and red of villages, with their red roofs, and white walls and campanili,--all grey, and yet all blue and gold, between the blue sea and the blue sky, in the golden light,--the little, unknown, beautiful island of Sampaolo."

She was actress enough to look unconscious and unconcerned, as she pronounced the name of Sampaolo. Her eyes gazed dreamily far away, as if they could behold an air-vision of her island. At the same time, I suspect, they kept a vigilant side-watch on Anthony.

Did Anthony give never so slightly perceptible a start? Did _his_ eyes quicken? Did he colour a little? At all events, we need not question, he was aware of a sudden throb of excitement,--on the spur of which, without stopping to reflect, "Really?" he exclaimed. "That is a very odd coincidence. Sampaolo--I know all about it."

"Indeed?" said Susanna, looking surprise. "You have been there? It is rarely visited by travellers--except commercial ones."

"No, I have never been there," he answered, so far truthfully enough. "But--but I know--I used to know--a man whose--a man who had," he concluded lamely. For, when he did stop to reflect, "If you care for an amusing situation," he reflected, "you 'll leave her in the dark touching your personal connection with Sampaolo."

Susanna, being quite in the light touching that connection, could not help smiling.

"I must play the game on his conditions, and feign ignorance of all that he does n't tell," she reminded herself. "But fancy his being so secretive!"

"I hope the 'man who had' reported favourably of us?" she threw out.

"H'm--yes," said Anthony, with deliberation. "The truth is, he reported nothing. He was one of those inarticulate fellows who travel everywhere, and can give no better account of their travels than just a catalogue of names. He chanced to let fall that he had visited Sampaolo, and I thus learned that such a place existed. I can't tell why, but the fact struck me, and stuck in my mind, and I have ever since been curious to know something about it."

"You said you knew _all_ about it," Susanna complained, her eyes rebukeful, her tone a tone of disappointment.

"Oh, that was a manner of speaking," Anthony quibbled, plausible and unperturbed. "I meant that I knew of its existence--which, after all, is relatively a good deal, being vastly more than most people know."

"It would be worth your while," said Susanna, "the next time you find yourself in its vicinity, to do Sampaolo the honour of an inspection. It is easily reached. The Austrian-Lloyd coasting steamers from Venice call there once a week, and there is a boat every Monday and Thursday from Ancona. Sampaolo is an extremely interesting spot,--interesting by reason of its natural beauty, its picturesque population, and (to me, at least) by reason of its absurdly romantic, serio-comic, lamentable little history."

"Ah--?" said Anthony, but with a suspension of the voice, with a solicitude of eye and posture, that pressed her to continue.

"He is a poor dissembler," thought Susanna. "As if any mere chance outsider would care a fig to hear about Sampaolo. However, so much the better."

"Yes," she said, and again she seemed rapt in dreamy contemplation of an air-vision. "The natural beauty of Sampaolo is to my thinking unparalleled. At a distance, as your ship approaches it, Sampaolo lies on the horizon like a beautiful soft cloud, all vague rose-colours and purples, a beautiful soft pinnacle of cloud. Then gradually, as you come nearer, the cloud changes, crystallises; and Sampaolo is like a great wonderful carving, a great wonderful carved jewel, a cameo cut on the sea, with a sort of aureole about it, an opalescence of haze and sunshine. Nearer still, its aspect is almost terrible, a scene of breath-taking precipices, spire-like mountains, wild black gorges, ravines; but, to humanise it, you can count at least twenty villages, villages clinging to every hillside, perched on almost every hill-top, each with its group of cypresses, like sentinels, and its campanile. At last you pass between two promontories, the Capo del Turco and the Capo del Papa, from the summits of which two great Crucifixes look down, and you enter the Laguna di Vallanza, a land-locked bay, tranquil as a lake. And there, floating on the water as it seems, there is a palace like a palace in Fairyland, a palace of white marble, all stately colonnades and terraces, yet looking, somehow, as light as if it were built of the sea's foam. This is one of the palaces--the summer palace--of the Counts of Sampaolo. It seems to float on the water, but it really occupies a tiny mite of an islet, called Isola Nobile; and connected with Isola Nobile by marble bridges are two other tiny Islets, laid out in gardens, Isola Fratello and Isola Sorella. The Counts of Sampaolo are one of the most ancient and illustrious families in Europe, the Valdeschi della Spina, descendants of San Guido Valdeschi, a famous soldier-saint of the Twelfth Century. They have another palace in the town of Vallanza, their winter palace, the Palazzo Rosso; and a splendid old mediaeval castle, Castel San Guido, on the hill behind the town; and two or three delightful villas in different parts of the island. A highly enviable family, are they not? Orange-trees are in blossom at Sampaolo the whole year round, in blossom and in fruit at the same time. The olive orchards of Sampaolo are just so many wildernesses of wild flowers: violets, anemones, narcissus; irises, white ones and purple ones; daffodils, which we call asphodels; hyacinths, tulips, arums, orchids--oh, but a perfect riot of wild flowers. In the spring the valleys of Sampaolo are pink with blossoming peach-trees and almond-trees, where they are not scarlet with pomegranates. Basil, rosemary, white heather, you can pluck where you will. And everywhere that they can find a footing, oleanders grow, the big double red ones, great trees of them, such wonder-worlds of colour, such fountains of perfume. The birds of Sampaolo never cease their singing--they sing as joyously in December as in June. And the nightingales of Sampaolo sing all day, as well as all night. _Tiu, tiu, tiu--will, will, will--weep, weep, weep_--I can hear them now. But I must stop, or I shall go on for ever. Believe me, the beauties of Sampaolo are very great."

It was a long speech, but it had had an attentive listener. It was a long speech, but it had been diversified by the varying modulations of Susanna's voice, the varying expressions of her face, by little pauses, hesitations, changes of time and of rhythm, by occasional little gestures.

It had had an attentive, even an absorbed listener: one who, already interested in the speaker, happened to have a quite peculiar interest in her theme. As she spoke, I think Anthony beheld his own air-vision of Sampaolo; I fancy the familiar park of Craford, the smooth, well-groomed, well-fed English landscape, melted away; I doubt if he saw anything of the actual save the white form, the strenuous face, the shining eyes, of his informant.

But now, her voice ceasing, suddenly the actual came back--the brown brook swirling at their feet, the tall pines whispering above, the warm pine-incense, the tesserae of sun and shadow dancing together on the carpet of pine-needles, as the tassels overhead swung in the moving air.

"You paint Elysium," he said. "You paint a veritable Island of the Blessed."

Susanna's eyes clouded.

"Once upon a time Sampaolo _was_ a veritable Island of the Blessed," she answered sadly. "But now no more. Since its union with what they call the Kingdom of Italy, Sampaolo has been, rather, an Island of the Distressed."

"Ah--?" said Anthony, again on a tone, with a mien, that pressed her to continue.

But all at once, as if recalled from an abstraction, Susanna gave a little laugh,--what seemed a slightly annoyed, half-apologetic little laugh,--and lifted her hands in a gesture of deprecation, of self-reprehension.

"I beg your pardon," she said. "I can't think how I have allowed myself to become so tiresome. One prates of one's parish pump."

"_Tiresome_?" cried out Anthony, in spontaneous protest. "I can't tell you how much you interest me."

"He is the poorest of poor dissemblers," thought Susanna.

"You are extremely civil," she said. "But how can the condition of our parish pump possibly interest a stranger?"

"H'm," thought Anthony, taken aback, "I expect my interest _does_ seem somewhat improbable."

So, speciously, he sought to justify it.

"For more reasons than a few," he alleged. "To begin with, if I dared, I should say because it is _your_ parish pump." He ventured a little bow. "But, in the next place, because it is an Italian parish pump, and somehow everything connected with Italy interests one. Then, because it is the parish pump of Sampaolo, and I have always been curious about Sampaolo. And finally, because it is a _human_ parish pump--_et nihil humanum_ . . . . So please go on. How did Sampaolo come to be an Island of the Distressed?"

"He 's not such a poor dissembler, after all,--when roused to action," thought Susanna. "But perhaps we have had enough Sampaolo for one session. I must leave him with an appetite for more."

"Hark," she said, raising a finger, while her face became intent. "Is n't that a skylark?"

Somewhere--just where one could n't tell at first--a bird was singing. Many birds were singing, innumerable birds were chirruping, all about. But this bird's song soared clear above the others, distinct from them, away from them, creating for itself a kind of airy isolation. It was an exquisitely sweet, liquid song, it was jocund, joyous, and it was sustained for an astonishing length of time. It went on and on and on, never faltering, never pausing, in soft trills and gay roulades, shrill skirls or flute-like warblings, a continuous outpour, for I don't know how many minutes. It was a song marvellously apposite to the bright day and the wide countryside. The freshness of the air, the raciness of the earth, the green of grass and trees, the laughing sunlight,--one might have fancied it was the spirits of all these singing together in unison.

"It's a skylark, sure enough," said Anthony, looking skywards. "But where the mischief is he?"

And they gave eyes and ears to trying to determine, searching the empyrean. Now his voice seemed to come from the west, now from the north, the south, the east; it was the most deceptive, the most elusive thing.

"Ah--there he is," Anthony cried, of a sudden, and pointed.

"Where? Where?" breathlessly asked Susanna, anxious as if life and death hung on the question.

"There--look!" said Anthony, pointing again.

High, high up in the air, directly over their heads, they could discern a tiny speck of black against the blue of the sky. They sat with their necks craned back as far as they would go, and gazed at it like people transfixed, whilst the sky pulsated to their dazzled sight.

"It is incredible," said Susanna. "A mere pin-point in that immensity, yet he fills it full with his hosannas."

But the pin-point grew bigger, the hosannas louder; the bird was descending.

"Literally it is music coming down upon us from heaven," she said.

"Yes--but when it reaches us, it will stop, we shall lose it," said Anthony. "It is music too ethereal to survive the contact of this gross planet."

Singing, singing, the bird sank, with folded wings; and sure enough, the very instant he touched the earth, his song stopped short--a bubble pricked, a light extinguished.

"He has come to drink and bathe," said Susanna.

He was hopping towards the water, on the other side of the brook, for a poet the most prosaic-looking fellow, in the soberest brown coat. Evidently he did n't dream that he was not alone. The trees had no doubt hidden his watchers. But now Susanna's voice startled him. With one wild glance at them, and a wild twitter of surprise, self-rebuke, consternation, he bounded into the air, and in a second was a mere speck again.

"Oh, how silly of him," Susanna sighed. "Does he think we are dragons?"

"No," said Anthony. "He would n't be half so frightened if he thought we were dragons. He thinks we are much worse."

"Oh--?" guilelessly questioned she. "What is that?"

"He thinks we are human beings," Anthony explained.

Susanna laughed, but it was rather a rueful laugh.

"Anyhow," she said, "he 'll not come back so long as we remain here. Yet he is hot and thirsty--and who knows from what a distance he may have flown, just for this disappointment? Don't you think it would be gracious on our part if we were to remove the cause of his alarm?"

She rose, and led the way out of the pine-grove, towards her house. When they reached the open, it was to discover, walking together from the opposite direction, Adrian and Miss Sandus,--Adrian bending towards his companion in voluble discourse, which he pointed and underlined by copious gesticulation.

"Enter Rumour, painted full of tongues," Anthony murmured, more or less in his sleeve.

But at sight of him, Adrian halted, and struck an attitude.

"Oh, the underhand, the surreptitious villain!" he cried out. Then he turned his pink face towards Susanna. "Lady, beauteous lady, vision of loveliness," he saluted her, bowing to the ground. "But oh, to think of that dark, secret villain! He 's gone and made your acquaintance without waiting for me to introduce him, which I was so counting upon doing to-morrow morning. Already he groans and totters under the weight of obligations I 've heaped upon him. I wanted to add one more--and now he 's gone and circumvented me."

"You will add one more if you 'll be so good as to introduce me to Miss Sandus," said Anthony.

And when the introduction was accomplished, he proceeded to make himself as agreeable to that lady as he possibly could. In the first place, he liked her appearance, he liked her brisk, frank manner; and then, is n't it always well to have a friend near the rose?

The result was that when she and Susanna were alone, Miss Sandus succinctly remarked, "My dear, your cousin is a trump."

X

The shadows were long, as he and Adrian strolled back to Craford Old Manor.

"Well, now, Truepenny," Adrian began, "now that you 've met her, speak out, and tell me on your heart and conscience how she impresses you."

"She seems all right," was Anthony's temperate reply.

"_All right_?" cried Adrian, looking scorn and pity. "My dear Malaprop, she 's just simply the nicest person of her sex within the confines of the Solar System. She is to other women what--well, I 'll name no names--what somebody I _could_ name is to other men. And with such eyes--hey? Are they bright? Are they sharp? Are they trusty? Are they knowing?"

"I expect she can see with them," said Anthony.

"_See_ with them," Adrian sniffed. "I 'll tell you what she can do--she can see round a corner with them. And then such pretty little ears, besides. Did you notice her ears?"

"I noticed she was n't earless," Anthony admitted.

"_Earless_," cried Adrian. "Her ears are like roses and white lilies. Earless, says he. I 'll bet three-halfpence you 'll presently be denying that she 's witty."

"She seems witty enough," assented Anthony.

"_Witty_," Adrian scoffed, cutting a caper to signify his disdain for the weak expression. "Witty is n't the word for it. And then, with all her years, she 's so _young_, is n't she? She breathes the fresh, refreshing savour of an unspoiled soul."

"Yes, she's young--for the time being," Anthony agreed. "By the bye, do you know where she comes from?"

"_Do_ I know? I should rather think I know," said Adrian, swaggering. "She has n't a secret from me. She comes from Westmoreland. They 're an old Westmoreland family. But she lives in Kensington. She has one of those jolly old houses in Kensington Square. Historic, romantic, poetic Kensington Square, where burning Sappho loved and sang, and Thackeray wrote the What-do-you-call-'ems. Who fears to speak of Ninety-eight? That's her number. Ninety-eight, Kensington Square, W. And whenever I have occasion to run up to town, mind, I 'm not to think of going to an hotel, I 'm to drive straight to Ninety-eight, and it will be her joy to take me in. So it sometimes pays to be charming, after all."

"I see," said Anthony.

"You see? The deuce you do. What do you see?" asked Adrian, opening his blue eyes wide, and peering about, as one who would fain see too.

"You patter of Miss Sandus," said Anthony.

Adrian came to a standstill, and raised his hands towards heaven.

"Now I call upon the choirs of blessed Cherubim and Seraphim," he exclaimed. "I call upon them to suspend their singing for an instant, and to witness this. He sees that I patter of Miss Sandus. What perspicuity. And he just a mortal man, like anybody--nay, by all accounts, just a bluff country squire. Ah, what a noble understanding. Well, then, my dear Hawkshaw, since there's no concealing anything from you,--_fine mouche, allez_!--I own up. I patter of Miss Sandus."

"Do you happen to know where Madame Torrebianca comes from?" Anthony asked.

"Oho!" cried Adrian. "It's Madame Torrebianca that _you 've_ been raving about. Ah, yes. Oh, I concede at once that Madame Torrebianca is very nice too. None readier than I to do her homage. But for fun and devilment give me Peebles. Give me old ladies, or give me little girls. You 're welcome to the betwixts and the betweens. Old ladies, who have passed the age of folly, or little girls, who have n't reached it. But women in the prime of their womanhood are always thinking of fashion-plates and curling-irons and love and shopping. Name me, if you can, four vainer, tiresomer, or more unfruitful topics. Have you never waked in your bed at midnight to wonder how it has come to pass that I, at my time of life, with my attractions, am still a bachelor? To wonder what untold disappointment, what unwritten history of sorrow, has left me the lonely, brooding celibate you see? I 'll lift the veil--a moment of épanchement. It's because I 've never met a marriageable woman who had n't her noddle stuffed with curling-irons and fashion-plates and love and shopping."

"Do you happen to know where she comes from?" Anthony repeated.

"She--? Who?" asked Adrian, looking vague. Then, as Anthony vouchsafed no answer, but merely twirled his stick, and gazed with indifferent eyes at the horizon, "Oh--Madame Torrebianca?" he conjectured. "Still harping on my daughter? Of course I know where _she_ comes from. She comes from the land where the love of the turtle now melts into sweetness, now maddens to crime--as who should say a land of Guildhall banquets. She comes from Italy. Have you ever eaten ortolans in Italy?"

"Do you happen to know what part of Italy?" Anthony persisted.

"From Rome, the pomp and pageant of imperial Rome," returned Adrian promptly. "I 've got it in the lease. Nothing like having things in leases. The business instinct--what? Put it in black and white, says I. 'La Nobil Donna Susanna Torrebianca, of the Palazzo Sebastiani, via Quattro Fontane, Rome, party of the second part.' A _beau vers_, is n't it? The lilt, the swelling cadence, the rich rhyme, the hidden alliterations,--and then the sensitive, haunting pathos, the eternal verities adumbrated by its symbolism. I 've stood upon Achilles' tomb, and heard Troy doubted. Time--that monster-mother, who brings forth her children only to devour them--Time shall doubt of . . ."

"Rome may be the official sort of address she gives to land-agents and people," Anthony interposed. "But the part of Italy where she really lives is a little castaway island in the Adriatic, some fifty miles north from Ancona,--the little, unknown, beautiful island of Sampaolo."

Adrian came to a standstill again, and dropped his jaw in sign of astonishment.

"Oh, come. Not really?" he gasped at length.

"Yes, really," said Anthony.

"My eye!" Adrian exclaimed.

"It _is_ odd, is n't it?" said Anthony.

"_Odd_?" cried Adrian. "It's--it--it beggars the English tongue."

"Well, if it beggars yours, it is doing pretty well," said Anthony.

"You goose," said Adrian, resuming his walk. "Can you actually suppose that I 've passed all these golden days and weeks in friendly hob-nobbings with her, and not learned that she came from the island of Sampaolo? A fellow of penetration, like me? I appeal to your honour--is it likely?"

"Why the devil have you never told me?" Anthony demanded, with asperity.

"You 've never asked me--you 've never given me a chance. You talk, when you have me for a listener, you talk such an uninterrupted stream, it's a miracle if I ever get a word in edgewise," Adrian explained.

"I trust, at least, that you 've been equally taciturn with her," said Anthony.

"My good Absolute, I am the soul of taciturnity," Adrian boasted, expanding his chest, and thumping it. "This bosom is a sealed sanctuary for the confidences of those who confide in me. Besides, when I 'm with Madame Torrebianca, believe me, we have other subjects of conversation than the poor Squire o' Craford."

"You see," said Anthony, "for the lark of the thing, I should like, for the present, to leave her in ignorance of my connection with Sampaolo."

"That's right," cried Adrian. "Dupe, cozen, jockey the trustful young creature. Do. There 's a great-hearted gentleman. You need n't fear _my_ undeceiving her. I know my place; I know who holds the purse-strings; I know which side my bread is buttered on. Motley's my wear. So long as you pay my wages, you may count upon my connivance."

"I shall see her to-morrow morning at Mass. I wonder whether I am in love with her," Anthony was thinking.

XI

He gave her holy water at the door of the chapel, and her eyes acknowledged it with a glance that sent something very pleasant into his heart.

Then, with an impulse of discretion, to efface himself, he knelt at the first prie-dieu he came to. But Susanna, instead of going forward, knelt at the prie-dieu next to his.