Chapter 9

"When a musician composes an Ave Maria," he instructed them, "what he ought to try for is exactly what those nice old Fifteenth Century painters in Italy tried for when they painted their Annunciations. He should try to represent what one would have heard, if one had been there, just as they tried to represent what one would have seen. Now, how was it? What would one have heard? What did our Blessed Lady herself hear? Look. It was the springtime, and it was the end of the day. And she sat in her garden. And God sent His Angel to announce the 'great thing' to her. But she must not be frightened. She, so dear to God, the little maid of fifteen, all wonder and shyness and innocence, she must not be frightened. She sat in her garden, among her lilies. Birds were singing round her; the breeze was whispering lightly in the palm-trees; near-by a brook was plashing; from the village came the rumour of many voices. All the pleasant, familiar sounds of nature and of life were in the air. She sat there, thinking her white thoughts, dreaming her holy day-dreams. And, half as if it were a day-dream, she saw an Angel come and kneel before her. But she was not frightened--for it was like a day-dream--and the Angel's face was so beautiful and so tender and so reverent, she could not have been frightened, even if it had seemed wholly real. He knelt before her, and his lips moved, but, as in a dream, silently. All the familiar music of the world went on--the bird-songs, the whisper of the wind, the babble of the brook, the rumour of the village. They all went on--there was no pause, no hush, no change--nothing to startle her--only, somehow, they seemed all to draw together, to become a single sound. All the sounds of earth and heaven, the homely, familiar sounds of earth, but the choiring of the stars too, all the sounds of the universe, at that moment, as the Angel knelt before her, drew together into a single sound. And 'Hail,' it said, 'hail Mary full of grace!'"

For a minute, after he had finished, Adrian stood still, and no one spoke. Then he returned to the fireside, and sank back into his chair.

"What a beautiful--what a divinely beautiful--idea," Susanna said at last, with feeling.

"Beautiful," emphatically chimed in Protestant Miss Sandus.

"Stand still, true poet that you are,--I know you, let me try and name you," laughed Anthony, from the hearth-rug.

"Chrysostom--he should be named Chrysostom," said Miss Sandus.

"The world is a garden of beautiful ideas," was Adrian's modest acceptance of these tributes. "One only has to cull them. But now"--he rose--"I must toddle home. Are you going my way?" he inquired of Anthony.

"What?" protested Miss Sandus. "You're leaving us, without telling the experience of your life--the experience that you 'had to run' to tell us!"

"And without singing us your song," protested Susanna.

Adrian wrung his hands.

"Oh, cruel ladies!" he complained. "How can you be so unjust? I have told you the experience of my life. And as for singing my song--"

"He can always leave off singing when he hears a master talk," put in Anthony.

"As for singing my song," said Adrian, ignoring him, "I must go home and try to write it."

XV

And then the weather changed again. The clouds drifted away, the sun came back, the sunshine was like gold that had been washed and polished. The landscape smiled with a new radiance, gay as if it had never gloomed. The grass was greener, the flowers were brighter, the birds sang louder and clearer. The sea, with its shimmer and sheen, was like blue silk; the sky was like blue velvet. The trees lifted up their arms, greedy for the returned light and warmth, the sweeter air.

Susanna, at noon-day, in her pine grove, by her brookside, was bending down, peering intently into the transparent water.

Anthony, seeking, found her there.

"Books in the running brooks. I interrupt your reading?" he suggested, as one ready, at a hint, to retire.

"No," said she, looking up--giving, for a second, her eyes to his, her dark, half-laughing eyes. "It is not a book--it is the genius of the place."

She pointed to where, at her feet, the hurrying stream rested an instant, to take breath, in a deep, dusky little pool, overhung by a tangle of eglantine.

"See how big he is, and how old and grey and grim, and how motionless and silent. It seems almost discourteous of him, almost contemptuous, not to show any perturbation when one intrudes upon him, does n't it?"

The genius of the place, floating in the still water, his fixed small beady eyes just above the surface, was a big grey frog.

"Books in the running brooks indeed, none the less," Susanna went on, meditating. "Brooks--even artificial ones--are so mysterious, are n't they? They are filled with so many mysterious living things--frogs and tadpoles and newts and strange water-insects, nixies and pixies. Undines and Sabrinas fair and water-babies; and such strange plants grow in them; and who can guess the meaning of the tales they tell, in that never-ceasing, purling tongue of theirs? . . . And Signor Ranocchio? What do you suppose he is thinking of, as he floats there, so still, so saturnine, so indifferent to us? He is plainly in a deep, deep reverie. How wise he looks--a grey, wise old water-hermit, with his head full of strange, unimaginable water-secrets, and strange, ancient water-memories. Perhaps he is--what was his name?--the god of streams himself, the old pagan god of streams, disguised as a frog for some wicked old pagan-godish adventure. Perhaps that 's why he is n't afraid of us--mere mortals. You 'd expect a mere frog to leap away or plunge under, would n't you?"

Again, for a second, she gave Anthony her eyes. They were filled with pensiveness and laughter.

In celebration of the sun's return, she wore a white frock (some filmy crinkled stuff, crêpe-de-chine perhaps), and carried a white sunshade, a thing all frills and furbelows. This she opened, as, leaving the shadow of the pines, she moved by the brook-side, down the lawn, where the unimpeded sun shone hot, towards the pond.

"The eighth wonder of the world--an olive-tree that bears roses," she remarked.

Her glance directed his to a gnarled old willow, growing by the pond. Indeed, with the wryness of its branches, the grey-green of its leaves, you might almost have mistaken it for an olive-tree. A rose-vine had clambered up to the topmost top of it, and spread in all directions, so that everywhere, vivid against the grey-green, hung red roses.

"And now, if you will come, I 'll show you the ninth wonder of the world," she promised. She led him down a long wide pathway, bordered on each side by hortensias in full blossom, two swelling hedges of fire, where purple dissolved into blue and crimson, blue into a hundred green, mauve, and violet overtones and undertones of blue, and crimson into every palest, vaguest, most elusive, and every intensest red the broken sunbeam bleeds upon the spectrum.

"But this," she said, "though you might well think it so, is not the ninth wonder of the world."

"I think the ninth wonder of the world, as well as the first and last, is walking beside me," said Anthony, in silence, to the sky.

The path ended in an arbour, roofed and walled with rose-vines; and herein were garden-chairs and a table.

"Shall we sit here a little?" proposed Susanna.

She put down her sunshade, and they established themselves under the roof of roses. On the table stood a Chinese vase, red and gold, with a dragon-handled cover.

"Occasion 's everything, beyond a doubt," thought Anthony. "But the rub is to know an occasion when you see it. Is _this_ an occasion?"

He looked at her, and his heart trembled, and held him back.

"Oh, the fragrance of the roses," said Susanna. "How do they do it? A pinch of sunshine, a drop or two of dew, a puff of air, a handful of brown earth--and out of these they distil what seems as if it were the very smell of heaven."

But she spoke in tones noticeably hushed, as if fearing to be overheard.

Anthony looked round.

A moment ago there had not been a bird in sight (though, of course, the day was thridded through and through with the notes of those who were out of sight). But now, in the path before the arbour, all facing towards it, there must have been a score of birds--three or four sparrows, a pair of chaffinches, and then greenfinches, greenfinches, greenfinches. They were all facing expectantly towards the arbour, hopping towards it, hesitating, hopping on again, coming nearer, nearer.

Susanna, moving softly, lifted the dragon-handled cover from the Chinese vase. It was full of birdseed.

"Ah, I see," said Anthony. "Pensioners. But I suppose you have reflected that to give alms to the able-bodied is to pauperise them."

"Hush," she whispered, scorning his economics. "Please make yourself invisible, and be quiet."

Then, taking a handful of seed, and leaning forward, softly, softly she began to intone--

"Tu-ite, tu-ite, Uccelli, fringuelli, Passeri, verdonelli, Venite, venite!"

and so, da capo, over and over again.

And the birds, hesitating, gaining confidence, holding back, hopping on, came nearer, nearer. A few, the boldest, entered the arbour . . . they all entered . . . they hesitated, hung back, hopped on. Now they were at her feet; now three were in her lap; others were on the table. On the table, in her lap, at her feet, she scattered seed. Then she took a second handful, and softly, softly, to a sort of lullaby tune,

"Perlino, Perlino, Perlino Piumino, Where is Perlino? Come, Perlino,"

she sang, her open hand extended.

A greenfinch new up to the table, flew down to her knee, flew up to her shoulder, flew down to her hand, and, perching on her thumb, began to feed.

And she went on with her soft, soft intoning.

"This is Perlino, So green, oh, so green, oh. He is the bravest heart, The sweetest singer, of them all. I 'm obliged to impart my information In the form of a chant; For if I were to speak it out, prose-wise, They would be frightened, they would fly away. But I hope you admire My fine contempt for rhyme and rhythm. Is this not the ninth wonder of the world? Would you or could you have believed, If you had n't seen it? That these wild birds, Not the sparrows only, But the shy, shy finches, Could become so tame, so fearless? Oh, it took time--and patience. One had to come every day, At the same hour, And sit very still, And softly, softly, Monotonously, monotonously, Croon, croon, croon, As I am crooning now. At first one cast one's seed At a distance-- Then nearer, nearer, Till at last-- Well, you see the result."

Her eyes laughed, but she was very careful not to move. Anthony, blotted against the leafy wall behind him, sat as still as a statue. Her eyes laughed. "Oh, such eyes!" thought he. Her red lips, smiling, took delicious curves. And the hand on which Perlino perched, with its slender fingers, its soft modelling, its warm whiteness, was like a thing carved of rose-marble and made alive.

"And Perlino," she resumed her chant--

"Perlino Piumino Is the bravest of them all. And now that he has made an end Of his handful of seed, I hope he will be so good As to favour us with a little music. Sometimes he will, And sometimes he just obstinately won't. Tu-ite, tu-ite, tu-ite, Andiamo, Perlino, tu-ite! Canta, di grazia, canta."

And after some further persuasion,--you will suspect me of romancing, but upon my word,--Perlino Piumino consented. Clinging to Susanna's thumb, he threw back his head, opened his bill, and poured forth his crystal song--a thin, bright, crystal rill, swift-flowing, winding in delicate volutions. And mercy, how his green little bosom throbbed.

"Is n't it incredible?" Susanna whispered. "It is wonderful to feel him. His whole body is beating like a heart."

And when his song was finished, she bent towards him, and--never, never so softly--touched the top of his green head with her lips.

"And, now--fly away, birdlings--back to your affairs," she said. "Good-bye until to-morrow."

She rose, and there was an instant whir of fluttering wings.

"Shall we walk?" she said to Anthony. She shook her frock, to dust the last grains of birdseed from it. "If we stay here, they will think there is more to come. And they 've had quite sufficient for one day."

She put up her sunshade, and they turned back into the alley of hortensias.

"You find me speechless," said Anthony. "Of course, it has n't really happened. But how--how do you produce so strong an illusion of reality? I could have sworn I saw a greenfinch feeding from your hand, I could have sworn I saw him cling there, and heard him sing his song. I could have sworn I saw you kiss him."

Susanna, under her white sunshade, laughed, softly, victoriously.

"Speaking with all moderation," he declared, "it is the most marvellous performance I have ever witnessed. If it had been a sparrow--or a pigeon--but--a greenfinch--!"

"There are very few birds that can't be tamed," she said. "You 've only got to familiarise them with your presence at a certain spot at a certain hour, and keep very still, and be very, very gentle in your movements, and croon to them, and bring them food. I have tamed wilder birds than greenfinches, in Italy--I have tamed goldfinches, blackcaps, and even an oriole. And if you have once tamed a bird, and made him your friend, he never forgets you. Season after season, when he returns from his migration, he recognises you, and takes up the friendship where it was put down. Until at last"--her voice sank, and she shook her head--"there comes a season when he returns no more."

They had strolled beyond the hortensias, into a shady avenue of elms. Round the trunk of one of these ran a circular bench. Susanna sat down. Anthony stood before her.

"I trust, at any rate," she said, whimsically smiling, "that the moral of my little exhibition has not been lost upon you?"

"A moral? Oh?" said he. "No. I had supposed it was beauty for beauty's sake."

"Ah, but beauty sometimes points a moral in spite of itself. The very obvious moral of this is that where there 's a will there 's a way."

She looked up, making her eyes grave; then smiled again.

"We must resume our plotting. I think I have found the way by which the Conte di Sampaolo can regain his inheritance."

Anthony laughed.

"There are exactly two ways by which he can do that," he said. "One is to equip an army, and go to war with the King of Italy, and--a mere detail--conquer him. The other is to procure a wishing-cap and wish it. Which do you recommend?"

"No," said Susanna. "There is a third and simpler way."

She was tracing patterns on the ground with the point of her parasol.

"There is the way of marriage."

She completed a circle, and began to draw a star within it.

"You should go to Sampaolo, and marry your cousin. So"--her eyes on her drawing, she spoke slowly, with an effect supremely impersonal--"so you would come to your own again; and so a house divided against itself, an ancient noble house, would be reunited; and an ancient historic line, broken for a little, would be made whole."

She put the fifth point to her star.

Anthony stood off, half laughing, and held up his hands, in admiring protest.

"Dear lady, what a programme!" was his laughing ejaculation.

"I admit," said she, critically regarding the figure at her feet, "that at first blush it may seem somewhat fantastic. But it is really worth serious consideration. You are the heir to a great name, which has been separated from the estates that are its appanage, and to a great tradition, which has been interrupted. But the heir to such a name, to such a tradition, is heir also to great duties, to great obligations. He has no right to be passive, or to think only of himself. The thirty-fourth Count of Sampaolo owes it to his thirty-three predecessors--the descendant of San Guido owes it to San Guido--to bestir himself, to do the very utmost in his power to revive and maintain the tradition. He is a custodian, a trustee. He has no right to sit down, idle and contented, to the life of a country gentleman in England. He is the banner-bearer of his race. He has no right to leave the banner folded in a dark closet. He must unfurl his banner, and bear it bravely in the sight of the world. That is the justification, that is the mission, of _noblesse_. A great nobleman should not evade or hide his nobility--he should bear it nobly in the sight of the world. That is the mission of the Conte di Sampaolo--that is the work he was born to do. It seems to me that at present he is pretty thoroughly neglecting his work."

She shot a smile at him, then lowered her eyes again upon her encircled star.

"You preach a very eloquent sermon," said Anthony, "and in principle I acknowledge its soundness. But in practice--there is just absolutely nothing the Conte di Sampaolo can do."

"He can go to Vallanza, and marry his cousin," reiterated she. "Thus the name and the estates would be brought together again, and the tradition would be renewed."

She had slipped a ring from her finger, and was vaguely playing with it.

Anthony only laughed.

"Does n't my proposition deserve better than mere laughter?" said she.

"I should laugh," said he, with secret meaning, "on the wrong side of my mouth, if I thought you wished me to take it seriously." ("If I thought she seriously wished me to marry another woman!" he breathed, shuddering, to his soul.)

"Why should n't I wish you to take it seriously?" she asked, studying her ring.

"The marriage of cousins is forbidden by Holy Church," said he.

"She 's only your second or third cousin. The nearest Bishop would give you a dispensation," answered Susanna, twirling her ring round in the palm of her hand.

"There would, of course, be no question of the lady rejecting me," he laughed.

"You would naturally endeavour to make yourself agreeable to her, and to capture her affections," she retorted, slipping the ring back upon its finger, and clasping her hands. "Besides, she could hardly be indifferent to the circumstance that you have it in your power to regularise her position. She calls herself the Countess of Sampaolo. She could do so with a clear conscience if she were the wife of the legitimate Count."

"She can do so with a clear conscience as it is," said Anthony. "She has the patent of the Italian King."

"Pinchbeck to gold," said Susanna. "A title improvised yesterday--and a title dating from 1104! The real thing, and a tawdry imitation. Go to Sampaolo, make her acquaintance, fall in love with her, persuade her to fall in love with you, marry her,--and there will be the grand old House of Valdeschi itself again."

Her eyes glowed.

But Anthony only laughed.

"You counsel procedures incompatible," he said. "If I am the custodian of a tradition, which you would have me maintain, how better could I play it false, than by marrying, of all women, the granddaughter, the heiress and representative, of the man who upset it?"

"You would heal a family feud, and blot out a wrong," said she, drawing patterns again with her sunshade. "Magnanimity should be _part_ of your tradition. You would not visit the sins of the fathers upon the children? You don't hold your cousin personally responsible?"

She looked up obliquely at him.

"Personally," he answered, "my cousin may be the most innocent soul alive. She is born to a ready-made situation, and accepts it. But it is a situation which I, if I am to be loyal to my tradition, cannot accept. It is the negation of my tradition. I am obliged to submit to it, but I can't accept it. My cousin is the embodiment of the anti-tradition. You say--marry her. That is like inviting the Pope to ally himself with the Antipope."

"No, no," contended Susanna, arresting her sunshade in the midst of an intricate vermiculation. "For the Antipope must be in wilful personal rebellion; while your cousin is what she is, quite independently of her own will--perhaps in spite of it. Imagine me, for instance, in her place--me," she smiled, "the sole legitimist in Sampaolo. What could I do? I find myself in possession of stolen goods. I would, if I could, restore them at once to their rightful owner. But I can't--because I am only the tenant for life. I can't sell them, nor give them away, nor even, dying, dispose of them by will. I am only the tenant for life. After me, they must pass to the next heir. So, if I wish to restore them to their rightful owner, there 's but a single means of doing so open to me--I must induce the rightful owner to make me his wife."

She smiled again, mirthfully, but with conviction, with conclusiveness, as who should say, "I have proved my point."

"Ah," pronounced Anthony, with stress, though perhaps a trifle ambiguously, "if it were you, it would be different."

"In your cousin's case, to be sure," pursued Susanna, "there is one other means. You happen to be, on the Valdeschi side, her nearest kinsman, and therefore, until she marries and has children, you are her heir presumptive. Well, if she were to retire into a convent, taking vows of celibacy and poverty, then what they call the usufruct of her properties could be settled upon her heir presumptive for her lifetime, the properties themselves passing to him at her death."

"We will wish the young lady no such dreary fate," laughed Anthony. "Fortunately for her, she is not troubled by your scruples."

"How do you know she is n't?" asked Susanna.

"We can safely take it for granted," said he. "Besides, you have told me so yourself."

"_I_ have told you so--?" she puzzled.

"You have told me that there is but one legitimist in Sampaolo. If my cousin were troubled by your scruples, she would make a second. And of the whole population of the island, can you suggest a less probable second?"

"They say that Queen Anne was at heart a Jacobite," Susanna reminded him. "Your cousin is young. One could lay the case before her, one could work upon her conscience. And, supposing her conscience to be once roused, then, if you could n't be brought to offer her your hand, she 'd have no choice but renunciation and the Cloister."

"Let us hope, therefore, that her conscience may remain comfortably asleep," said he. "For even to save her from the Cloister, I could not offer her my hand."

Susanna, leaning back against the rugged trunk of her elm, gazed down the long shaded avenue, and appeared to muse. Here and there, the sun, finding a way through the green cloud of leaves, a visible fillet of light in the dim atmosphere, dappled the brown earth with rose. In her white frock, her dark hair loose about her brow, a faint colour in her cheeks, her dark eyes musing, musing but half smiling at the same time, I think she looked very charming, very interesting, very warmly and richly feminine, I think she looked very lovely, very lovable; and I don't wonder that Anthony--as his eyes rested upon her, fed upon her--felt something violent happen in his heart.

"Occasion is everything--the occasion has come--the occasion has come," a silent voice seemed to incite him. And as it were unseen hands seemed to push him on.

The blood rushed tumultuously to his head.

"I 'm going to risk it, I 'm going to risk everything," he decreed, suddenly, recklessly.

"There are a thousand reasons why I could not offer her my hand," he said. "One reason is that I am in love with another woman."

His throat was dry, his voice sounded strained. His heart beat hard. He had burned his first bridge. He kept his eyes on her.

She continued to gaze down the avenue. I think she caught her breath, though.