Chapter 8

And, indeed, her colour, her bright eyes, her animated carriage, put to scorn his apprehension.

"But we must turn back, all the same," she added, "or--we shall not be home for tea."

She spoke in bated accents, and made a grave face, as if to miss tea were to miss a function sacrosanct.

Anthony laughed, and they turned back.

"It's a bit of a coincidence," he remarked presently, "that, coming from Sampaolo, you should just have chanced to take a house at Craford."

"Nothing could be simpler," said Susanna. "I wished to pass the summer in England, and was looking for a country house. The agent in London mentioned Craford New Manor, among a number of others, and Miss Sandus and I came down to see it. The prospect of finding myself the tenant of my exiled sovereign rather appealed to me--appealed to my sense of romance and to my sense of humour. And then,"--her eyes brightened,--"when we met your perfectly irresistible Mr. Willes, hesitation was impossible. He kept breaking out with little snatches of song, while he was showing us over the place; and afterwards he invited us to his music-room, (or I think he called it his _business_-room), and sang properly to us--his own compositions. He even permitted me to play some of his accompaniments."

Anthony chuckled.

"I 'm sure he did--I see my Adrian," he said. "Well, I owe him more than he 's aware of."

"Your Excellency is the legitimate Count of Sampaolo," said Susanna. "Antonio, by the Grace of God, and the favour of the Holy See, Count of Sampaolo--thirty-fourth count, and eighteenth of the name. I am your very loyal subject. Let's conspire together for your restoration."

"You told me the other day that you were a subject of the Pope," Anthony objected.

"That is during this interregnum," she explained. "The Pope is our liege lord's liege lord, and, in our liege lord's absence, our homage reverts to him. I will never, at all events, admit myself to be a subject of the Duke of Savoy. Let's plot for your restoration."

"My 'restoration,' if that is n't too sounding a term, is a thing past praying for," said Anthony. "But I don't know that I should very keenly desire it, even if it were n't."

"What!" cried she. "Would n't it be fun to potentate it on a scarlet throne?"

"Not such good fun, I fancy, as it is to squire it in these green meadows," he responded. "Are n't scarlet thrones apt to be upholstered with worries and responsibilities?"

"Are n't green meadows sown thick with worries and responsibilities?" asked Susanna.

"Very likely," he consented. "But for a moderate stipend I can always hire a man like Willes to reap and deal with them for me."

"Could n't you hire 'a man like Willis' to extract them from your scarlet cushions? Potentates have grand viziers. Mr. Willes would make a delicious grand vizier," she reflected, with a kind of wistfulness.

"He would indeed," said Anthony. "And we should have comic opera again with interest."

"But you only look at it from a selfish point of view," said Susanna. "Think of poor Sampaolo--under the old régime, an Island of the Blessed."

"Seriously, is there at Sampaolo, the faintest sentiment in favour of a return to the old régime?" he asked.

"Seriously, and more 's the pity, not the faintest," Susanna confessed. "I believe I am the only legitimist in the island--save a few priests and nuns, and they don't count. I am the entire legitimist party."

She turned towards him, making a little bow.

"Yet there is every manner of discontent with the present régime," she said. "The taxes, the conscription, the difficulties put in the way of commerce, the monstrous number of officials, and the corruption of them one and all, are felt and hated by everyone. Under the old régime, for example," she illustrated, "Vallanza was a free port,--now we have to pay both a national duty and a municipal duty on exports as well as imports; nothing was taxed but land, and that very lightly--now nearly everything is taxed, even salt, even a working-man's tools, even a peasant's necessary donkey, so that out of every lira earned the government takes from forty to sixty centimes; the fisheries of Sampaolo, which are very valuable, were reserved for the Sampaolesi,--now they are open to all Italy, and Sampaolo, an island, cannot compete with Ancona, on the railway. In Sampaolo to-day, if you have any public business to transact, from taking out a dog license to seeking justice in the law-courts, every official you have to deal with, including the judges, expects his buonamano. If you post a letter, it is an even chance whether the Post-Office young men won't destroy the letter and steal the stamps; while, if you go to the Post-Office to buy stamps, it is highly possible that they will playfully sell you forged ones."

She gave a bitter little laugh.

"The present Prefect of Sampaolo," she continued her illustrations, "formerly kept a disreputable public house, a sailors' tavern, at Ancona. He is known to be a Camorrista; and though his salary is only a few thousand lire, he lives with the ostentation of a parvenu millionaire, and no one doubts where he gets his money. These evils are felt by everyone. But the worst evil of all is the condition of the Church. In the old days the Sampaolesi were noted for their piety; now, even in modern irreligious Italy, you would seek far to unearth a people so flagrantly irreligious. From high to low the men are atheists; and the few men who are not, have to be very careful how they show it. It is as much as a tradesman's trade is worth, as much as an employe's place is worth, to go to Mass; the one will sit behind a deserted counter, the other will learn that his services are no longer needed. The present régime is liked by no one save the officials who benefit by it; but it tickles the vanity of the Sampaolesi to call themselves citizens of a Great Power; and so, though many are republicans, many socialists, none are legitimists. They would prefer any burden to the burden of insignificance; and under the reign of the Valdeschi, though free, prosperous, and happy, Sampaolo was insignificant."

"You paint a very sad state of things," said Anthony.

"Believe me," said Susanna, "my painting is pale beside the reality."

"And, apparently, a hopeless state," he added.

"Some day the Kingdom of Italy must end in a tremendous smash-up. Afterwards, perhaps, there will be a readjustment. Our hope is in that," said she.

"Meanwhile, you make it clear, I am afraid," he argued, "that we should gain only our labour for our pains in plotting a restoration."

"We should have the excitement of plotting," laughingly argued she.

"A plotter's best reward, like an artist's, you suggest, is the pleasure he takes in his work. But now you are inciting me to look at it again from the selfish point of view, for which a moment ago you were upbraiding me," he reminded her.

"_Do_ look at it from the selfish point of view," inconsistent and unashamed, she urged. "Think of your lands, your houses, your palaces and gardens, Castel San Guido, Isola Nobile, think of your pictures, your jewels, the thousand precious heirlooms that are rightly yours, think of your mere crude money. How can you bear the thought that these are in the possession of a stranger--these, your inheritance, the inheritance of nearly eight hundred years? Oh, if I were in your place, the wrong of it would fill the universe for me. I could not endure it."

"One has no choice but to endure it," said he. "One benumbs resentment with a fatalistic 'needs must.'"

"One would do better to inflame resentment with a defiant 'where there 's a will there 's a way,'" Susanna answered.

"The way is not plain to see."

"No--but we must discover the way. That"--she smiled--"shall be the aim of our plotting."

And again for some time they walked on without speaking.

"If she could only guess how little my heart's desire is centred upon the lands and houses of Sampaolo," thought Anthony, "how entirely it is centred upon something much nearer home. I wonder what she would do if I should tell her."

And at that thought his heart winced with delight and terror.

He looked sidewise at her. Her dark hair curled about her temples, and drooped in a loose mass behind; her dark eyes shone; there was a warm colour in her cheeks. Her head held high, her body defined itself in lines of strength and beauty, as she walked by the cliff's edge, resisting the wind, with the sea and the sky for background. He looked at her, and wondered what would happen if he should tell her; and his heart glowed with delight, and winced with delight and terror,--glowed with delight in the supreme reality of her presence, winced with delight and terror at the imagination of telling her.

And then the suspended rain came down in a sudden pelting shower; and Anthony put up his umbrella. To keep in its shelter, they had to walk very close to each other, their arms touching sometimes. I daresay they were both pretty wet when they reached Craford New Manor, but I don't think either minded much.

Miss Sandus, who met them in the hall, insisted that Susanna must go upstairs and change; but to Anthony she said, "There 'll be tea in a minute or two," and led the way to the drawing-room, the big, oblong, sombre red-and-gold drawing-room, with its heavy furniture, its heavy red damask hangings, its heavy gilded woodwork, its heavy bronzes and paintings.

Wet as he was, he followed, and sat down, with his conductress, before the huge red-marble fireplace, in which a fire of logs was blazing--by no means unwelcome on this not-uncharacteristic English summer's day.

XIII

"Well, you 've had a good sousing--had you a good walk?" asked the little brisk old woman, in her pleasant light old voice.

"Yes--to Blye, or nearly," said Anthony. "The rain only caught us towards the end. But what I stand in need of now is your sympathy and counsel."

She sat back in a deep easy chair, her pretty little hands folded in her lap, her pretty little feet, in dainty slippers, high-heeled and silver-buckled, resting on a footstool. It was a pretty as well as a kind and clever face that smiled enquiringly up at him, from under her soft abundance of brown hair.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"Nothing much. I 'm merely in love," he answered.

Miss Sandus sat forward.

"In love? That's delightful. Whom with? With me? Is this a declaration? Or a confidence?"

She fixed him with her humorous bright old eyes.

"It's both. Of course, I 'm in love with you. Everyone who knows you is that," he predicated. "But also," he added, on a key of profound melancholy, "if you will forgive my forcing the confidence upon you, also with _her_."

He glanced indicatively ceilingwards.

"H'm," Miss Sandus considered, looking into the fire, "also with _her_."

"Yes," said Anthony.

"H'm," repeated Miss Sandus. "You go a bit fast. How long have you known her?"

"All my life. I never lived until I knew her," he averred.

"It was inevitable that you should say that--men always say that," the lady generalised. "I heard it for the first time fifty-five years ago."

"Then, I expect, there must be some truth in it," was Anthony's deduction. "Anyhow, I have known her long enough. One does n't need _time_ in these affairs. One recognises a perfect thing--one recognises one's affinity. One knows when one is hit. I 'm in love with her. Give me your sympathy and counsel."

"You have my sympathy. What counsel do you wish?"

"What shall I do?" asked Anthony. "Drown myself? Take to drink?"

"I should n't drown myself," said Miss Sandus. "Drowning is so wet and chilly; and I 'm told it's frightfully unbecoming, into the bargain. As for drink, I hear it's nothing like what it's cracked up to be."

"I daresay it is n't," admitted Anthony, with a sigh. "I suppose there's not the ghost of a chance for me?" he gloomed.

"H'm," said Miss Sandus.

"I suppose it would be madness on my part to speak to her?" he pursued.

"That would depend a good deal, I should think, on the nature of what you said," his counsellor suggested, smiling.

"If I said point-blank I loved her--?"

Miss Sandus looked hard at the fire, her brows drawn together, pondering. Her brows were drawn together, but the _vis comica_ played about her lips.

"I think, if I were in your place, I should try it," she decided at last.

"_Would_ you?" said Anthony, surprised, encouraged. But, in a second, despondency had closed round him again. "You see," he signified, "the situation is uncommonly delicate--one 's at a double and twisted disadvantage."

"How so?" Miss Sandus asked, looking up.

"She's established here for the summer. I, of all men, must n't be the one to make Craford impossible for her."

"I see," said Miss Sandus. "Yes, there's that to be thought of."

"There 's such a deuced lot of things to be thought of," said he, despairingly.

"Let's hear the deuced lot," said the lady, with business-like cheerfulness.

"Well, to begin with," he brought out painfully, "there 's the fact that she 's rich."

"Yes, she's rich," conceded Miss Sandus. "Does that diminish her attractions?"

"You know what I mean," groaned Anthony, with no heart for trifling.

"For the matter of that, are n't you rich yourself?" Miss Sandus retorted.

"Rich!" he cried. "I totter on the brink of destitution."

"Oh?" she murmured. "I 'd imagined you were by way of being rather an extensive land owner."

"So I am," said he. "And my rather extensive lands, what with shrinkages and mortgages, with wages, pensions, subscriptions, and general expenses,--I doubt if they yield a net income of fifteen hundred a year. And I 've not a stiver else in the world."

"Poor, poor young man," she laughingly commiserated him. "And yet I hardly think you 're poor enough to let the fact of her wealth weigh with you. If a man has enough for himself, it does n't matter how much more his wife may have, since he 'll not depend upon her for his support. I should n't lie awake o' nights, bothering about the money question."

Anthony got up, and stood at the end of the fireplace, with his elbow on the mantel.

"You 're awfully good," he said, looking down at the gracious little old figure in the easy chair.

"I 'm an old woman," said she. "All old women love a lover. You renew the romance of things for us. You transport us back, a century or so, to our hot youth, when George the Third was king, and we were lovers ourselves. _Et in Arcadia ego_--but I 've lost my Greek."

"You 'll never lose your Pierian," said Anthony, bowing.

He took her hand, bent over it, and touched it with his lips.

"If flattery can make friends, you 'll not lack 'em," said she, with a pretty, pleased old blush.

"But I 've not yet emptied my sack," said he, relapsing into gloom. "There's a further and perhaps a greater difficulty."

"Let's hear the further difficulty," cheerily proposed Miss Sandus. Then, as he appeared to hesitate, "Has it anything to do with her former marriage?"

"You divine my thoughts," he replied, in an outburst. "Yet," he more lightly added, "you know, I don't in the least believe in her former marriage. She seems so--well, if not exactly girlish, so young, so immaculately fresh, it's impossible to believe in. None the less, of course, it 's an irrevocable fact, and it's a complication. I must n't intrude on sacred ground. If she still grieves . . ."

A gesture conveyed the rest.

"Look here," said Miss Sandus, abruptly. "I'm going to betray a trust. Think what you will of me, I 'm going to violate a confidence. She does n't grieve, she has never grieved. Your intuitions about her are right to the letter. She was never married, except in name--it was purely a marriage of convenience--the man was a complete nonentity. Don't ask me the whys and the wherefores. But make what you will of that which I 've been indiscreet enough to tell you."

"I think you are an angel out of Heaven," cried Anthony, with ardour. "If you could know the load you have lifted from my heart, the balm you have poured into it."

"If you have n't wealth," Miss Sandus went on, summing the issue up, "you have a good position and--a _beau nom_. You have more than one indeed, if all I hear be true. You 're both of the old religion, you 're both at the mating age. In every way it would be a highly suitable match. Wait for a good occasion--occasion's everything. Wait for--what does the poet say?--for the time and the place and the loved one all together, and tell her that you love her. And now--here comes the tea."

And with the tea came Susanna, in a wonderful rustling blue-grey confection of the material that is known, I believe, as _voile_; and immediately after Susanna, Adrian.

XIV

Adrian was clearly in a state of excitement. His hair was ruffled, his pink face showed a deeper flush, his lips were parted, his bosom heaved.

He halted near the threshold, he threw up his hands, he rolled his eyes, he nodded. It was patent that something had happened.

"Oh, my dears! my dears!" he gasped.

His dears attended, curious, expectant. But as he stood silent, and merely cast intensely significant glances from one to the other, and thence to the walls and ceiling, Anthony, constituting himself spokesman for the company, asked, "Well--? What's the row?"

"Oh, my dears!" Adrian repeated, and advanced a few steps further into the room, his hands still raised.

"What _is_ it?" besought Susanna, breathless.

"Oh, my dearie dears!" he gasped.

He sank upon a chair.

"I must have a cup of tea before I can speak. Perhaps a cup of tea will pull me together."

Susanna hastily poured and brought him a cup of tea.

"Ministering angel!" was his acknowledgment. He tasted his tea. "But oh--unkind--you 've forgotten the sugar." He gazed helplessly at the tea-table.

Anthony brought him the sugar-bowl.

"Are those cruffins?" he asked, eyeing a dish on the cake-stand.

"They 're mumpers," said Miss Sandus, pushing the cake-stand towards him. "But you 're keeping us on tenter-hooks."

"I 'm _so_ sorry. It's beyond my control. I must eat a mumpet. Perhaps then I 'll be able to tell you all about it."

He ate his mumpet--with every sign of relish; he sipped his tea; his audience waited. In the end he breathed a deep, long sigh.

"I 've had an experience--I 've had the experience of my life," he said.

"Yes--?" said they.

"I could n't lose an instant--I had to run--to tell you of it. I felt it would consume me if I could n't share it."

Their faces proclaimed their eagerness to hear.

"May I have another cup?" he asked Susanna.

This time, however, he rose, and went to the table.

"The world is so strange," he said.

"Come! we 're waiting for the experience of your life," said Anthony.

"You must n't hurry me--you must n't worry me," Adrian remonstrated. "I 'm in a very over-wrought condition. You must let me approach it in my own way."

"I believe the flighty creature has forgotten it," said Anthony.

"Flighty creature?" Adrian levelled eyes black with reproach upon him. Then turning to the ladies: "That shows how he misunderstands me. Just because I had a witty mother,--just because I 'm not a stolid, phlegmatic ox of a John Bull,--just because I 'm sensitive and impressionable,--he calls me flighty. But you know better, _don't_ you? You, with all your fine feminine instincts and perceptions, you know that I 'm really as steady and as serious as the pyramids of Egypt. Even my very jokes have a moral purpose--and what I teach in them, I learned in sorrow. Flighty!" He shot another black glance at the offender, and held out his cup for a third filling.

"Blessings be on the man who invented tea," he devoutly murmured. "On Friday especially"--he appealed to Susanna--"_is n't_ it a boon? I don't know how one could get through Friday without it. You poor dear fortunate Protestants"--he directed his remark to Miss Sandus--"have no conception how frequently Friday comes. I think there are seven Fridays in the week."

Susanna was softly laughing, where (in that wonderful, crisp, fresh, close-fitting, blue-grey gown, with its frills and laces and embroideries) she sat in the corner of a long, red-damask-covered sofa, by the prettily decked tea-table. Anthony, standing near her, looking down at her, was conscious of a great content in his heart, and of a great craving. "How splendid she is. Was there ever such hair? Were there ever such eyes, such lips? Was there ever such a frock? And then that faint, faint, faintest perfume, like a remembrance of violets!" I daresay something to this effect was vaguely singing itself to his thoughts.

"But the experience of your life? The experience of your life?" Miss Sandus insisted.

"He's clean forgotten it," Anthony assured her.

"Forgotten it? Tush," Adrian flung back, with scorn. "But you 're all so precipitate. One has to collect one's faculties. There are fifty possible ways of telling a thing--one must select the most effective. And then, if you come to that, life has so many experiences, and so many different sorts of experience. Life, to the man with an open eye, is just one sequence of many-coloured astonishments. I never could and never shall understand how it is possible for people to be bored. What do you say "--he looked towards the piano--"to my singing you a little song?"

"You 're inimitable--but you 're inimitably exasperating." Miss Sandus gave him up, with a resigned toss of the head.

"Do sing us a little song," Susanna begged.

He set off, dancing, in the direction of the instrument. But midway there he stopped, and half turned round, poising, as it were, in his flight.

"Grave or gay? Sacred or profane?" he asked from over his shoulder.

"Anything--what you will," Susanna answered.

"I 'll sing you a little Ave Maria," he decided. Whereupon, instead of proceeding, he turned his back squarely upon the piano, and squarely faced his hearers.