"I must keep a guard upon myself," said John. "She's visiting an Austrian woman who lives in a remote wing of the castle,—the pavilion beyond the clock, in fact,—an Austrian woman of the exhilarating name of Brandi."

"I'm rather in luck for my dinner to-night," said Lady Blanchemain. "I've got Agnes Scope, the niece of the Duke of Wexmouth. She arrived here this morning with her aunt, Lady Louisa. Of course I'm putting you next to her. As, besides being an extremely nice girl and an heiress, she's an ardent pervert to Romanism,—well, a word to the wise."

"Yes, I know her," said John. "We don't get on a bit. She moves on far too high a plane for a groundling like me. She's intellectual and earnest, and my ignorance and light-mindedness wound her to the quick. She'll end, as I've told her to her face, by writing books,—serious novels, probably,—which she'll illuminate with beautiful irrelevant quotations from Browning and Cardinal Newman."

"Bother," said Lady Blanchemain. "You're perverse."

"Besides," said John, "she's engaged."

"Engaged—?" faltered Lady Blanchemain.

"Yes—to an intellectual and earnest man, named Blake—Bernard Blake—a grandson of the famous Blake of Cambridge."

Lady Blanchemain fixed him with darkening eyes.

"Are you sure?" she pleaded.

"I saw it officially stated in the Morning Post," was John's relentless answer.

"What a nuisance," said Lady Blanchemain, fanning. Her fan was of amber tortoise-shell, with white ostrich feathers, and the end sticks bore her cypher and coronet in gold.

"What a jolly fan," said John.

"Well, well," said Lady Blanchemain, reconciling herself. Then, after an instant of pensiveness, "So you're already laid low by her beauty. But you haven't found out yet who she is?"

"Who who is?" said John, looking all at sea.

"Tut. Don't tease. Your woman at the castle."

"My woman at the castle appeared to leave you cold," he complained. "I arrived full of her, and you wouldn't listen."

"So you're already in love with her?" said Lady Blanchemain.

"No—not yet," said he. "As yet I merely recognize in her admirable material for a painting, and regret that such material should go begging for the lack of a painter. But by this time to-morrow—who can tell?"

"Have you found out who she is?" asked Lady Blanchemain.

"No—not yet," said he. "As yet I've merely found out that she's visiting an Austrian Signora Brandi, who lives (I can't think why) in the pavilion beyond the clock. But by this time to-morrow!" His gesture spoke volumes of prospective information.

"She looked like a gentlewoman," reflected his friend.

"For all the world," said he.

"Yet, if she's an Austrian—" She paused and pondered.

"Why? What's the difficulty?" said he.

"To know whether she is born," said Lady Blanchemain. "Among Austrians, unless you're born, you're impossible, you're nowhere. Brandi doesn't sound born, does it? We mustn't let you become enamoured of her if she isn't born."

"Brandi sounds tremendously unborn," assented John. "And if like visits like, Signora Brandi's visitor will probably be unborn too. But to me that would rather add an attraction,—provided she's bred. I'm not an Austrian. I'm a Briton and a democrat. I feel it is my destiny, if ever I am to become enamoured at all, to become enamoured of the daughter of a miller,—of a rising miller, who has given his daughter advantages. 'Bred, not Born: or the Lady of the Mill'—that shall be the title of my humble heart-history. If this woman could prove to me that she was the daughter of a miller, I'm not sure I shouldn't become enamoured of her on the spot. Well, I shall know to-morrow. By this time to-morrow I shall possess her entire dossier. It may interest you to learn that I am employing a detective to investigate her."

"A detective? What do you mean?" said Lady Blanchemain.

"A private detective, a female detective, whom, the next time you come to Sant' Alessina, I'll introduce to you," said John.

"What on earth do you mean?" said Lady Blanchemain.

"The most amusing, the most adorable little detective unhung," said he. "People are all love and laughter whenever they look at her. She'll worm its inmost secrets from my sphinx's heart."

"What pleasure can you take in practising upon a poor old woman who only by a sort of fluke isn't your grandmother?" said she.

"Lady Louisa FitzStephen, Miss Scope," said her servant, opening the door.



VI

The nightingales sang him home, and the moon lighted him, the liquid moon of April and Italy. As he approached the castle, through the purple and silver garden, amid the mysterious sweet odours of the night, he glanced up vaguely at the pavilion beyond the clock. He glanced up vaguely, but next second he was no longer vague.

There, on a low-hung balcony, not ten feet above him, full in the moonlight, stood a figure in white—all in white, with a scarf of white lace thrown over her dark hair. The nightingales sang and sobbed, the moon rained its amethystine fire upon the earth, the earth gave forth its mysterious sweet night odours, and she stood there motionless, and breathed and gazed and listened.

But at the sound of wheels in the avenue, she turned slightly, and looked down. Her face was fair and delicate and pure in the moonlight, and her eyes shone darkly bright.

She turned, and looked down, and her eyes met John's.

"Given the hour and the place, I wonder whether I ought to bow," he thought.

Before he could make up his mind, however, his hand had automatically raised his hat.

She inclined her head in acknowledgment, and something softly changed in her face.

"She smiled!" he said, and caught his breath, with a kind of astonished exultancy.

That soft change in her face came and went and came again through all his dreams.



PART THIRD



I

"Good morning, Prospero," said Annunziata.

"Good morning, Wide-awake," responded John.

He was in the octagonal room on the piano nobile of the castle, where his lost ladies of old years smiled on him from their frames. He had heard an approaching patter of feet on the pavement of the room beyond; and then Annunziata's little grey figure, white face, and big grave eyes, had appeared, one picture the more, in the vast carved and gilded doorway.

"I have been looking everywhere for you," she said, plaintive.

"Poor sweetheart," he commiserated her. "And can't you find me?"

"I couldn't," said Annunziata, bearing on the tense. "But I have found you now."

"Oh? Have you? Where?" asked he.

"Where?" cried she, with a disdainful movement. "But here, of course."

"I wouldn't be too cocksure of that," he cautioned her. "Here is a mighty evasive bird. For, suppose we were elsewhere, then there would be here, and here would be somewhere else."

"No," said Annunziata, with resolution. "Where a person is, that is always here."

"You speak as if a person carried his here with him, like his hat," said John.

"Yes, that is how it is," said Annunziata, nodding.

"You have a remarkably solid little head,—for all its curls, there's no confusing it," said he. "Well, have you your report, drawn up, signed, sealed, sworn to before a Commissioner for Oaths, and ready to be delivered?"

"My report—?" questioned Annunziata, with a glance.

"About the Form," said John. "I caught you yesterday red-handed in the fact of pumping it."

"Yes," said Annunziata. "Her name is Maria Dolores."

"A most becoming name," said he.

"She is very nice," said Annunziata.

"She looks very nice," said he.

"She is twenty-two years and ten months old," continued his informant.

"Fancy. As middle-aged as that," commented he.

"Yes. She is an Austrian."

"Ah."

"And as I told you, she is visiting the Signora Brandi. Only, she calls her Frao Branta."

"Frao Branta?" John turned the name on his tongue. "Branta? Branta?" What familiar German name, at the back of his memory, did it half evoke? Suddenly he had a flash. "Can you possibly mean Frau Brandt?"

Annunziata gave a gesture of affirmation.

"Yes, that is it," she said. "You sound it just as she did!"

"I see," said John. "And Brandt, if there are degrees of unbirth, is even more furiously unborn than Brandi."

"Unborn—?" said Annunziata, frowning.

"Not noble—not of the aristocracy," John explained.

"Very few people are noble," said Annunziata.

"All the more reason, then, why you and I should be thankful that we are," said he.

"You and I?" she expostulated, with a shrug of her little grey shoulders. "Mache! We are not noble."

"Aren't we? How do you know?" asked John. "Anyhow," he impressively moralized, "we can try to be."

"No," said she, with conclusiveness, with fatalism. "It is no good trying. Either you are noble or simple,—God makes you so,—you cannot help it. If I were noble, I should be a contessina. If you were noble, you would be a gransignore.

"And my unassuming appearance assures you that I'm not?" said he, smiling.

"If you were a gransignore," she instructed him, "you would never be such friends with me—you would be too proud."

John laughed.

"You judge people by the company they keep. Well, I will apply the same principle of judgment to your gossip, Maria Dolores. By-the-by," he broke off to inquire, "what is her Pagan name?"

"Her Pagan name? What is that?" asked Annunziata.

"Maria Dolores, I take it, is her Christian name, come by in Holy Baptism," said John. "But I suppose she will have a Pagan name, come by in the way of the flesh, to round it off with,—just as, for instance, a certain flame of mine, whose image, when I die, they'll find engraved upon my heart, has the Pagan name of Casalone."

Annunziata looked up, surprised. "Casalone? That is my name," she said.

"Yes," said John. "Yours will be the image."

Annunziata gave her head a toss. "Maria Dolores did not tell me her Pagan name," she said.

"At any rate," said he, "to judge by the company she keeps, we may safely classify her as unborn. She is probably the daughter of a miller,—of a miller (to judge also a little by the frocks she wears) in rather a large way of business, who (to judge finally by her cultivated voice, her knowledge of languages, and her generally distinguished air) has spared no expense in the matter of her education. I shouldn't wonder a bit if she could even play the piano."

"No," agreed Annunziata, "that is very likely. But why"—she tilted upwards her inquisitive little profile—"why should you think she is the daughter of a miller?"

"Miller," said John, "I use as a generic term. Her father may be a lexicographer or a dry-salter, a designer of dirigible balloons or a manufacturer of air-pumps; he may even be a person of independent means, who lives in a big, new, stuccoed villa in the suburbs of Vienna, and devotes his leisure to the propagation of orchids: yet all the while a miller. By miller I mean a member of the Bourgeoisie: a man who, though he be well to do, well educated, well bred, does not bear coat-armour, and is therefore to be regarded by those who do with their noses in the air,—especially in Austria. Among Austrians, unless you bear coat-armour, you're impossible, you're nowhere. We mustn't let you become enamoured of her if she doesn't bear coat-armour."

Annunziata's eyes, during this divagation, had wandered to the window, the tall window with its view of the terraced garden, where the mimosa bloomed and the blackcaps carolled. Now she turned them slowly upon John, and he saw from their expression that at last she was coming to what for her (as he had known all along) was the real preoccupation of the moment. They were immensely serious, intensely concerned, and at the same time, in their farther recesses, you felt a kind of fluttering shyness, as if I dare not were hanging upon I would.

"Tell me," she began, on a deep note, a deep coaxing note.... Then I dare not got the better, and she held back.... Then I would took his courage in both hands, and she plunged. "What have you brought for me from Roccadoro?" And after one glance of half-bashful, all-impassioned supplication, she let her eyes drop, and stood before him suspensive, as one awaiting the word of destiny.

John's "radiant blondeur," his yellow beard, pink face, and sea-blue eyes, lighted up, more radiant still, with subcutaneous laughter.

"The shops were shut," he said. "I arrived after closing time."

But something in his tone rendered this grim announcement nugatory. Annunziata drew a long breath, and looked up again. "You have brought me something, all the same," she declared with conviction; and eagerly, eyes gleaming, "What is it? What is it?" she besought him.

John laughed. "You are quite right," he said. "If one can't buy, beg, or borrow, in this world, one can generally steal."

Annunziata drew away, regarded him with misgiving. "Oh, no; you would never steal," she protested.

"I'm not so sure—for one I loved," said he. "What would you have liked me to bring you?"

Annunziata thought. "I liked those chocolate cigars," she said, her face soft with reminiscence of delight.

"Ah, but we mustn't have it toujours perdrix," said John. "Do you, by any chance, like marchpane?"

"Marchpane?—I adore it," she answered, in an outburst of emotion.

"You have your human weaknesses, after all," John laughed. "Well, I stole a pocketful of marchpane."

Annunziata drew away again, her little white forehead furrowed. "Stole?" she repeated, reluctant to believe.

"Yes," said he, brazenly, nodding his head.

"Oh, that was very wrong," said Annunziata, sadly shaking hers.

"No," said he. "Because, in the first place, it's a matter of proverbial wisdom that stolen marchpane's sweetest. And, in the next place, I stole it quite openly, under the eye of the person it belonged to, and she made no effort to defend her property. Seeing which, I even went so far as to explain to her why I was stealing it. 'There's a young limb o' mischief with a sweet tooth at Sant' Alessina,' I explained, 'who regularly levies blackmail upon me. I'm stealing this for her.' And then the lady I was stealing from told me I might steal as much as ever I thought good."

"Oh-h-h," said Annunziata, a long-drawn Oh of relief. "Then you didn't steal it—she gave it to you."

"Well," said John, "if casuistry like that can ease your conscience—if you feel that you can conscientiously receive it—" And he allowed his inflection to complete the sentence.

"Give it to me," said Annunziata, holding out her hands, and dancing up and down in glee and in impatience.

"Nenni-da," said John. "Not till after dinner. I'm not going to be a party to the spoiling of a fair, young, healthy appetite."

Pain wrote itself upon Annunziata's brow. "Oh," she grieved, "must I wait till after dinner?"

"Yes," said John.

For a breathing-space she struggled. "Would it be bad of me," she asked, "if I begged for just a little now?"

"Yes," said John, "bad and bootless. You'd find me as unyielding as adamant."

"Ah, well," sighed Annunziata, a deep and tremulous sigh. "Then I will wait."

And, like a true philosopher, she proceeded to occupy her mind with a fresh interest. She looked round the room, she looked out of the window. "Why do you stay here? It is much pleasanter in the garden," she remarked.

"I came here to seek for consolation. To-day began for me with a tragic misadventure," John replied.

Annunziata's eyes grew big, compassionating him, and, at the same time, bespeaking a lively curiosity.

"Poor Prospero," she gently murmured. "What was it?" on tip-toe she demanded.

"Well," he said, "when I rose, to go for my morning swim, I made an elaborate toilet, because I hoped to meet a certain person whom, for reasons connected with my dignity, I wished to impress. But it was love's labour lost. The certain person is an ornament of the uncertain sex, and didn't turn up. So, to console myself, I came here."

Annunziata looked round the room again. "What is there here that can console you?"

"These," said John. His hand swept the pictured walls.

"The paintings?" said she, following his gesture. "How can they console you?"

"They're so well painted," said he, fondly studying the soft-coloured canvases. "Besides, these ladies are dead. I like dead ladies."

Annunziata looked critically at the pictures, and then at him with solemn meaning. "They are very pretty—but they are not dead," she pronounced in her deepest voice.

"Not dead?" echoed John, astonished. "Aren't they?"

"No," said she, with a slow shake of the head.

"Dear me," said he. "And, when they're alone here and no one's looking, do you think they come down from their frames and dance? It must be a sight worth seeing."

"No," said Annunziata. "These are only their pictures. They cannot come down from their frames. But the ladies themselves are not dead. Some of them are still in Purgatory, perhaps. We should pray for them." She made, in parenthesis as it were, a pious sign of the Cross. "Some are perhaps already in Heaven. We should ask their prayers. And others are perhaps in Hell," she pursued, inexorable theologian that she was. "But none of them is dead. No one is dead. There's no such thing as being dead."

"But then," puzzled John, "what is it that people mean when they talk of Death?"

"I will tell you," said Annunziata, her eyes heavy with thought. "Listen, and I will tell you." She seated herself on the big round ottoman, and raised her face to his. "Have you ever been at a pantomime?" she asked.

"Yes," said John, wondering what could possibly be coming.

"Have you been at the pantomime," she continued earnestly, "when there was what they call a transformation-scene?"

"Yes," said John.

"Well," said she, "last winter I was taken to the pantomime at Bergamo, and I saw a transformation-scene. You ask me, what is Death? It is exactly like a transformation-scene. At the pantomime the scene was just like the world. There were trees, and houses, and people, common people, like any one. Then suddenly click! Oh, it was wonderful. Everything was changed. The trees had leaves of gold and silver, and the houses were like fairy palaces, and there were strange lights, red and blue, and there were great garlands of the most beautiful flowers, and the people were like angels, with gems and shining clothes. Well, you understand, at first we had only seen one side of the scene;—then click! everything was turned round, and we saw the other side. That is like life and death. Always, while we are alive, we can see only one side of things. But there is the other side, the under side. Never, so long as we are alive, we can never, never see it. But when we die,—click! It is a transformation-scene. Everything is turned round, and we see the other side. Oh, it will be very different, it will be wonderful. That is what they call Death."

It was John's turn to be grave. It was some time before he spoke. He looked down at her, with a kind of grave laughter in his eyes, admiring, considering. What could he say? ... What he did say, at last, was simply, "Thank you, my dear."

Annunziata jumped up.

"Oh, come," she urged. "Let's go into the garden. It is so much nicer there than here. There are lots of cockchafers. Besides"—she held out as an additional inducement—"we might meet Maria Dolores."

"No," said John. "Though the cockchafers are a temptation, I will stop here. But go you to the garden, by all means. And if you do meet Maria Dolores, tell her what you have just told me. I think she would like to hear it."

"All right," consented Annunziata, moving towards the door. "I'll see you at dinner. You won't forget the marchpane?"



II

John was in a state of mind that perplexed and rather annoyed him. Until the day before yesterday, his detachment here at Sant' Alessina from ordinary human society, the absence of people more or less of his own sort, had been one of the elements of his situation which he had positively, consciously, rejoiced in,—had been an appreciable part of what he had summarized to Lady Blanchemain as "the whole blessed thing." He had his castle, his pictures, his garden, he had the hills and valley, the birds, the flowers, the clouds, the sun, he had the Rampio, he had Annunziata, he even had Annunziata's uncle; and with all this he had a sense of having stepped out of a world that he knew by heart, that he knew to satiety, a world that was stale and stuffy and threadbare, with its gilt rubbed off and its colours tarnished, into a world where everything was fresh and undiscovered and full of savour, a great cool blue and green world that from minute to minute opened up new perspectives, made new promises, brought to pass new surprises. And this sense, in some strange way, included Time as well as space. It was as if he had entered a new region of Time, as if he had escaped from the moving current of Time into a stationary moment. Alone here, where modern things or thoughts had never penetrated, alone with the earth and the sky, the mediaeval castle, the dead ladies, with Annunziata, and the parroco, and the parroco's Masses and Benedictions—to-day, he would please himself by fancying, might be a yesterday of long ago that had somehow dropped out of the calendar and remained, a fragment of the Past that had been forgotten and left over. The presence of a person of his own sort, a fellow citizen of his own period, wearing its clothes, speaking its speech, would have broken the charm, would have seemed as undesirable and as inappropriate as the introduction of an English meadow into the Italian landscape.

Yet now such a person had come, and behold, her presence, so far from breaking the charm, merged with and intensified it,—supplied indeed the one feature needed to perfect it. A person of his own sort? The expression is convenient. A fellow citizen, certainly, of his period, wearing its clothes, speaking its speech. But a person, happily, not of his own sex, a woman, a beautiful woman; and what her presence supplied to the poetry of Sant' Alessina, making it complete, was, if you like, the Eternal Feminine. As supplied already by the painted women on the walls about him, this force had been static; as supplied by a woman who lived and breathed, it became dynamic. That was all very well; if he could have let it rest at that, if he could have confined his interest in her, his feeling about her, to the plane of pure aesthetics, he would have had nothing to complain of. But the mischief was that he couldn't. The thing that perplexed and annoyed him,—and humiliated him too, in some measure,—was a craving that had sprung up over-night, and was now strong and constant, to get into personal touch with her, to make her acquaintance, to talk with her; to find out a little what manner of soul she had, to establish some sort of human relation with her. It wasn't in the least as yet a sentimental craving; or, if it was, John at any rate didn't know it. In its essence, perhaps, it was little more than curiosity. But it was disturbing, upsetting, it destroyed the peace and the harmonious leisure of his day. It perplexed him, it was outside his habits, it was unreasonable. "Not unreasonable to think it might be fun to talk to a pretty woman," he discriminated, "but unreasonable to yearn to talk to her as if your life hung in the balance." And in some measure, too, it humiliated him: it was a confession of weakness, of insufficiency to himself, of dependence for his contentment upon another. He tried to stifle it; he tried to fix his mind on subjects that would lead far from it. Every subject, all subjects, subjects the most discrepant, seemed to possess one common property, that of leading straight back to it. Then he said, "Well, if you can't stifle it, yield to it. Go down into the garden—hunt her up—boldly engage her in conversation." Assurance was the note of the man; but when he pictured himself in the act of "boldly engaging her in conversation," his assurance oozed away, and he was conscious of a thrice-humiliating shyness. Why? What was there in the woman that should turn a brave man shy?

However, the stars were working for him. That afternoon, coming home from a stroll among the olives, he met her face to face at the gate of the garden, whither she had arrived from the direction of the village. Having made his bow, which she accepted with a smile, he could do no less than open the gate for her; and as their ways must thence lie together, up the long ilex-shaded avenue to the castle, it would be an awkward affectation not to speak. And yet (he ground his teeth at having to admit it) his heart had begun to pound so violently, (not from emotion, he told himself,—from a mere ridiculous sort of nervous excitement: what was there in the woman that should excite a sane man like that?) he was afraid to trust his voice, lest it should quaver and betray him. But fortunately this pounding of the heart lasted only a few seconds. The short business of getting the gate open, and of closing it afterwards, gave it time to pass. So that now, as they set forwards towards the house, he was able to look her in the eye, and to observe, with impressiveness, that it was a fine day.

She had accepted his bow with a smile, amiable and unembarrassed; and at this, in quite the most unembarrassed manner, smiling again,—perhaps with just the faintest, just the gentlest shade of irony, and with just the slightest quizzical upward tremor of the eyebrows,—"Isn't it a day rather typical of the land and season?" she inquired.

It was the first step that had cost. John's assurance was coming swiftly back. Her own air of perfect ease in the circumstances very likely accelerated it. "Yes," he answered her. "But surely that isn't a reason for begrudging it a word of praise?"

By this he was lucky enough to provoke a laugh, a little light gay trill, sudden and brief like three notes on a flute.

"No," she admitted. "You are right. The day deserves the best we can say of it."

"Her voice," thought John, availing himself of a phrase that had struck him in a book he had lately read, "her voice is like ivory and white velvet." And the touch, never so light, of a foreign accent with which she spoke, rendered her English piquant and pretty,—gave to each syllable a crisp little clean-cut outline. They sauntered on for a minute or two in silence, with half the width of the road-way between them, the shaded road-way, where the earth showed purple through a thin green veil of mosses, and where irregular shafts of sunlight, here and there, turned purple and green to red and gold. The warm air, woven of garden-fragrances, hung round them palpable, like some infinitely subtile fabric. And of course blackbirds were calling, blackcaps and thrushes singing, in all the leafy galleries overhead. A fine day indeed, mused John, and indeed worthy of the best that they could say. His nervousness, his excitement, had entirely left him, his assurance had come completely back; and with it had come a curious deep satisfaction, a feeling that for the moment at any rate the world left nothing to be wished for, that the cup of his desire was full. He didn't even, now that he might do so, wish to talk to her. To walk with her was enough,—to enjoy her companionship in silence. Yes, that was it—companionship. He caught at the word. "That is what I have been unconsciously needing all along. I flattered myself that I was luxuriating in the very absence of it. But man is a gregarious animal, and I was deceived." So he could refer the effect of her propinquity to the mere gregarious instinct, not suspecting that a more powerful instinct was already awake. Anyhow, his sense of that propinquity,—his consciousness of her, gracefully moving beside him in the sweet weather, while her summery garments fluttered, and some strange, faint, elusive perfume was shaken from them,—filled him with a satisfaction that for the moment seemed ultimate. He had no wish to talk. Their progress side by side was a conversation without words. They were getting to know each other, they were breaking the ice. Each step they took was as good as a spoken sentence, was a mutual experience, drawing them closer, helping to an understanding. They walked slowly, as by a tacit agreement.

Silence, however, couldn't in the nature of things last for ever. It was she who presently broke it.

"I owe you," she said, in her ivory voice, with her clean-cut enunciation, "a debt of thanks." And still again she smiled, as she looked over towards him, her dark eyes glowing, her dark hair richly drooping, in the shadow of a big hat of wine-coloured straw.

John's eyes were at a loss. "Oh—?" he wondered.

"For a pleasure given me by our friend Annunziata," she explained. "This morning she told me a most interesting parable about Death. And she mentioned that it was you who had suggested to her to tell it me."

"Oh," said John, laughing, while the pink of his skin deepened a shade. "She mentioned that, did she? I'm glad if you don't feel that I took a good deal upon myself. But she had just told the same parable to me, and it seemed a pity it shouldn't have a larger audience."

Then, after a few more paces taken again in silence, "What a marvellous little person she is, Annunziata!" said Maria Dolores.

"She's to a marvellous degree the right product of her milieu," said John.

Maria Dolores did not speak, but her eyes questioned, "Yes? How do you mean?"

"I mean that she's a true child of the presbytery," he replied, "and at the same time a true child of this Italy, where Paganism has never perfectly died. She has been carefully instructed in her catechism, and she has fed upon pious legends, she has breathed an ecclesiastical atmosphere, until the things of the Church have become a part of her very bone. She sees everything in relation to them, translates everything in terms of them. But at the same time odd streaks of Paganism survive in her. They survive a little—don't they?—in all Italians. Wherever she goes her eye reads omens. She will cast your fortune for you with olive-stones. The woods are peopled for her by fauns and dryads. When she takes her walks abroad, I've no doubt, she catches glimpses of Proteus rising from the lake, and hears old Triton blow his wreathed horn."

Maria Dolores looked interested.

"Yes," she said, slowly, thoughtfully, and meditated for an interval. By-and-by, "You know," she recommenced, "she's a sort of little person about whom one can't help feeling rather frightened." And her eyes looked to his for sympathetic understanding.

But his were interrogative. "No? Why should one feel frightened about her?"

"Oh," said Maria Dolores, with a movement, "it isn't exactly easy to tell why. One's fears are vague. But—well, for one thing, she thinks so much about Death. Death and what comes after,—they interest her so much. It doesn't seem natural, it makes one uneasy. And then she's so delicate-looking. Sometimes she's almost transparent. In every way she is too serious. She uses her mind too much, and her body too little. She ought to have more of the gaiety of childhood, she ought to have other children to romp with. She's too much like a disembodied spirit. It all alarms one."

John, as she spoke, frowned, pondering. When she had done, his frown cleared, he shook his head.

"I don't think it need," he said. "Her delicacy, her frailness, have never struck me as indicating weakness,—they seem simply the proper physical accompaniments of her crystalline little soul,—she's made of a fine and delicate clay. She thinks about Death, it is true, but not in a morbid way,—and that's a part of her ecclesiastical tradition; and she thinks quite as much about life,—she thinks about everything. I agree with you, it's a pity she has no other children. But she isn't by any means deficient in the instincts of childhood. She can enjoy a chocolate cigar, for instance, as well as another; and as for marchpane, I have her own word that she adores it."

Maria Dolores gave another light trill of laughter.

"Yes, I'm aware of her passion for marchpane. She confided it to me this morning. And as, in reply to her questions, I admitted that I rather liked it myself, she very generously offered to bring me some this afternoon,—which, to be sure, an hour ago, she did."

She laughed again, and John laughed too.

"All the same" she insisted, "I can't help that feeling of uneasiness about her. Sometimes, when I look at her, I can almost see her wings. What will be her future, if she grows up? One would rather not think of her as married to some poor Italian, and having to give herself to the prosaic sort of existence that would mean."

"The sordid sort of existence," augmented John. "No, one would decidedly rather not. But she will never marry. She will enter religion. Her uncle has it all planned out. He destines her for the Servites."

"Oh? The Servites—the Mantellate? I am glad of that," exclaimed Maria Dolores. "It is a most beautiful order. They have an especial devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows."

"Yes," said John, and remembered it was for Our Lady of Sorrows that she who spoke was named.

Slow though their march had been, by this time they had come to the end of the avenue, and were in the wide circular sweep before the castle. They stopped here, and stood looking off over the garden, with its sombre cypresses and bright beds of geranium, down upon the valley, dim and luminous in a mist of gold. Great, heavy, fantastic-shaped clouds, pearl-white with pearl-grey shadows, piled themselves up against the scintillant dark blue of the sky. In and out among the rose-trees near at hand, where the sun was hottest, heavily flew, with a loud bourdonnement, the cockchafers promised by Annunziata,—big, blundering, clumsy, the scorn of their light-winged and business-like competitors, the bees. Lizards lay immobile as lizards cast in bronze, only their little glittering, watchful pin-heads of eyes giving sign of life. And of course the blackcaps never for a moment left off singing.

They stood side by side, within a yard of each other, in silent contemplation of these things, during I don't know how many long and, for John, delicious seconds. Yes, he owned it to himself; it was delicious to feel her standing there beside him, in silent communion with him, contemplating the same things, enjoying the same pleasantnesses. Companionship—companionship: it was what he had been unconsciously needing all along! ... At last she turned, and, withdrawing her eyes lingeringly from the landscape, looked into his, with a smile. She did not speak, but her smile said, just as explicitly as her lips could have done, "What a scene of beauty!"

And John responded aloud, with fervour, "Indeed, indeed it is."

"And so romantic," she added. "It is like a scene out of some old high musical romance."

"The most romantic scene I know," said he. "All my life I have thought so."

"Oh?" said she, looking surprise. "Have you known it all your life?"

"Well,—very nearly," said he, with half a laugh. "I saw it first when I was ten. Then for long years I lost it,—and only recovered it, by accident, a month ago."

Her face showed her interest. "Oh? How was that? How did it happen?"

"When I was ten," John recounted, half laughing again, "I was travelling with my father, and, among the many places we visited, one seemed to me a very vision of romance made real. A vast and stately castle, in a garden, in a valley, with splendid halls and chambers, and countless beautiful pictures of women. All my life I remembered it, dreamed of it, longed to see it again. But I hadn't a notion where it was, save vaguely that it was somewhere in Italy; and, my poor father being dead, there was no one I could ask. Then, wandering in these parts a month ago, I stumbled upon it, and recognized it. Though shrunken a good deal in size, to be sure, it was still recognizable, and as romantic as ever."

Maria Dolores listened pensively. When he had reached his period, her eyes lighted up. "What a charming adventure!" she said. "And so, for you, besides its general romance, the place has a personal one, all your own. I, too, have known it for long years, but only from photographs. I suppose I should never have seen the real thing, except for a friend of mine coming to live here."

"I wonder," said John, "that the people who own it never live here."

"The Prince of Zelt-Neuminster?" said she. "No,—he doesn't like the Italian Government. Since Lombardy passed from Austria to Italy, the family have entirely given up staying at Sant' Alessina."

"In those circumstances," said John, "practical-minded people, I should think, would get rid of the place."

"Oh," said she, laughing, "the Prince, in some ways, is practical-minded enough. He has this great collection of Italian paintings, which, by Italian law, he mayn't remove from Italian soil; and if he were to get rid of Sant' Alessina, where could he house them? In other ways, though, he is perhaps not so practical. He is one of those Utopians who believe that the present Kingdom of Italy must perforce before long make shipwreck; and I think he holds on to Sant' Alessina in the dream of coming here in triumph, and grandly celebrating that event."

"I see," said John, nodding. "That is a beautiful ideal."

"Good-bye," said she, flashing a last quick smile into his eyes; and she moved away, down a garden path, towards the pavilion beyond the clock.



III

And now, I should have imagined, for a single session, (and that an initial one), he had had enough. I should have expected him to spend the remainder of his day, a full man, in thankful tranquillity, in agreeable retrospective rumination. But no. Indulgence, it soon appeared, had but whetted his appetite. After a quarter-hour of walking about the garden, during which his jumble of sensations and impressions,—her soft-glowing eyes, her soft-drooping hair, under her wine-red hat; her slender figure, in its fluttering summery muslin, and the faint, faint perfume (like a far-away memory of rose-leaves) that hovered near her; her smile, and the curves, when she smiled, of her rose-red lips, and the gleam of her snow-white teeth; her laugh, her voice, her ivory voice; her pretty crisp-cut English; her appreciation of Annunziata, her disquieting presentiments concerning her; and his deep satisfaction in her propinquity, her "companionship;" and the long shaded fragrant avenue, and the bird-songs, and the gentle weather,—after a quarter-hour of anything but thankful tranquillity, a quarter-hour of unaccountable excitement and exaltation, during which his jumble of impressions and sensations settled themselves, from ebullition, into some sort of quiescence, he began to grow restlessly aware that, so far from having had enough, he had had just a sufficient taste to make him hunger keenly for more and more. It was ridiculous, but he couldn't help it. And as there seemed no manner of likelihood that his hunger would soon be fed, it was trying. At the best, he could not reasonably hope to see her again before to-morrow; and even then—? What ghost of a reason had he to hope that even then he could renew their conversation? He had owed that to-day to the bare hazard of their ways lying together. To-morrow, very likely, at the best, he might get a bow and a smile. Very likely it might be days before he should again have anything approaching a real talk with her. And what—a new consideration, that struck a sudden terror to his soul—what if her visit to Frau Brandt was to be a short one? What if to-morrow even, she were to depart? "Her very ease in talking with me, a stranger, may quite well have been due to the fact that she knew she would never see me again," he argued. ... So he was working himself into a fine state of despondency, and the world was rapidly being resolved into dust and ashes, when Heaven sent him a diversion. Nay, indeed, Heaven sent him two diversions.



IV

There was a sound of wheels on gravel, of horses' hoofs on stone, and Lady Blanchemain's great high-swung barouche, rolling superbly forth from the avenue, drew up before the Castle, Lady Blanchemain herself, big and soft and sumptuous in silks and laces, under a much-befurbelowed, much-befringed, lavender-hued silk sunshade, occupying the seat of honour. John hastened across the garden, hat in hand, to welcome her.

"Jump in," she commanded, with a smile, and an imperious sweep of the arm. "I have come to take you for a drive."

The footman (proud man) held open the door, and John jumped in. But just as the footman (with an air) had closed the door behind him, and before the coachman had touched up his horses, there came a rhythm of running footsteps, and the voice of Annunziata called, insistently, "Prospero! Prospero!" Then, all out of breath, her pale cheeks pink, her curls in disarray, Annunziata arrived beside the carriage, and, no wise abashed by that magnificent equipage, nor by the magnificent old lady throning in it, (no wise abashed, but, from the roundness of her eyes, a good deal surprised and vastly curious), she explained, gasping, "A telegram," and held up to John a straw-coloured envelope.

"Thank you," said he, taking it, and waving a friendly hand. "But you should not run so fast," he admonished her, with concern.

Whereupon the carriage drove off, Annunziata standing and watching, always round-eyed, till it was out of sight.

"What an interesting-looking child!" said Lady Blanchemain.

"Yes," said John. "I should have liked to introduce her to you."

"Who is she?" asked the lady.

"She's the private detective I told you of. She's my affinity. She's the young limb o' mischief for whom I ravaged your stores of marchpane. She's the niece of the parroco."

"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain. "Why does she call you—what was it?—Prospero?"

"She's an optimist. She's a bird of good omen," answered John. "She's satisfied herself, by consulting an oracle, that Fortune has favours up her sleeve for me. She encouragingly anticipates them by calling me Prospero before the fact."

Lady Blanchemain softly laughed. "That's very nice of her, and very wise. Aren't you going to read your telegram?"

"I didn't know whether you'd permit," said John.

"Oh pray," said she, with a gesture.

The carriage by this time had left the garden, and the coachman had turned his horses' heads northwards, away from the lake, towards the Alps, where their snowy summits, attenuated by the sun and the distance and the blue air, looked like vapours rising into the sky.

John tore open his envelope, read, frowned, and uttered a half-stifled ejaculation,—something that sounded rather like "I say!" and vaguely like "By Jove!"

"No bad news, I hope?" inquired the lady, sympathetic, and trying to speak as if she didn't know what curiosity meant.

"Excellent news, on the contrary," said John, "but a bolt from the blue." And he offered her the paper.

"Am on my way to Rome," she read aloud. "Could I come to you for a day? Winthorpe, Hotel Cavour, Milan."—"Winthorpe?" She pursed her lips, as one tasting something. "I don't know the name. Who is he? What's his County?" she demanded,—she, who carried the County Families in her head.

John chuckled. "He hasn't got a County—he's only an American," he said, pronouncing that genial British formula with intention.

"Oh," sighed Lady Blanchemain, her expectations dashed; and drawing in her skirts, she sank a little deeper into her corner.

"He hasn't got a County," repeated John. "But he's far and away the greatest swell I know."

"A swell? An American?" Lady Blanchemain pressed down her lips, and gave a movement to her shoulders.

"An aristocrat, a patrician," said John.

"Fudge!" said Lady Blanchemain. "Americans and Australians—they're anything you like, but they're never that."

John laughed. "I adore," he said, "our light and airy British way of tarring Americans and Australians with the same brush,—the descendants of transported convicts and the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers!"

"Is your Winthorpe man a descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers?" asked Lady Blanchemain, dryly.

"Indeed he is," said John. "He's descended from ten separate individuals who made the first voyage in the Mayflower. And he holds, by-the-by, intact, the lands that were ceded to his family by the Indians the year after. That ought to recommend him to your Ladyship,—an unbroken tenure of nearly three hundred years."

"Old acres," her ladyship admitted, cautiously, "always make for respectability."

"Besides," John carelessly threw out, "he's a baronet."

Lady Blanchemain sat up. "A baronet?" she said. "An American?"

"Alas, yes," said John, "a mere American. And one of the earliest creations,—by James the First, no less. His patent dates from 1612. But he doesn't use the title. He regards it, he pretends, as merged in a higher dignity."

"What higher dignity?" asked the lady, frowning.

"That of an American citizen, he says," chuckled John.

"Brrr!" she breathed, impatient.

"And moreover," John gaily continued, "besides being descended from the Pilgrim Fathers, he's descended in other lines from half the peerage of Seventeenth Century England. And to top up with, if you please, he's descended from Alfred the Great. He's only an American, but he can show a clear descent bang down from Alfred the Great! I think the most exquisite, the most subtle and delicate pleasure I have ever experienced has been to see English people, people of yesterday, cheerfully patronizing him."

"You've enlarged my sphere of knowledge," said Lady Blanchemain, grimly. "I had never known that there was blood in America. Does this prodigious personage talk through his nose?"

"Worse luck, no," said John. "I wish he did—a little—just enough to smack of his soil, to possess local colour. No, he talks for all the world like you or me,—which exposes him to compliments in England. 'An American? Really?' our tactful people cry, when he avows his nationality 'Upon my word, I should never have suspected it.'"

"I suppose, with all the rest, he's rich?" asked Lady Blanchemain.

"Immensely," assented John. "Speaking of Fortune and her favours, she's withheld none from him."

"Then he's good-looking, too?"

"He looks like a Man," said John.

"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain, moving. "If I had received a wire from a creature of such proportions, I've a feeling I'd answer it."

"I've a very similar feeling myself," laughed John. "When we turn back, if you think your coachman can be persuaded to stop at the telegraph office in the village, I'll give my feeling effect."

"I think we might turn back now," said Lady Blanchemain. "It's getting rather gloomy here." She looked round, with a little shudder, and then gave the necessary order. The valley had narrowed to what was scarcely more than a defile between two dark and rugged hillsides, —pine-covered hillsides that shut out the sun, smiting the air with chill and shadow, and turning the Rampio, whose brawl seemed somehow to increase the chill, turning the sparkling, sportive Rampio to the colour of slate. "It puts one in mind of brigands," she said, with another little shudder. But though the air was chilly, it was wonderfully, keenly fragrant with the incense of the pines.

"Well," she asked, when they were facing homewards, "and your woman? What of her?"

"Nothing," said John. "Or, anyhow, very little." (It would be extremely pleasant, he felt suddenly, to talk of her; but at the same time he felt an extreme reluctance to let his pleasure be seen.)

"But your private detective?" said Lady Blanchemain. "Weren't her investigations fruitful?"

"Not very," said he. "She learnt little beyond her name and age."

"And what is her name?" asked the lady.

"Her name is Maria Dolores," answered John, (and he experienced a secret joy, strange to him, in pronouncing it).

"Maria Dolores?" said Lady Blanchemain, (and he experienced a secret joy in hearing it). "Maria Dolores—what?"

"My detective didn't discover her Pagan name," said John.

"So that you are still in doubt whether she's the daughter of a miller?" Lady Blanchemain raised her eyebrows.

"Oh, no: I think she's a miller's daughter safely enough," said he. "But she's an elaborately chiselled and highly polished one. Her voice is like ivory and white velvet; and to hear her speak English is a revelation of the hidden beauties of that language."

"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain, eyeing him. "So you've advanced to the point of talking with her?"

"Well," answered John, weighing his words, "I don't know whether I can quite say that. But accident threw us together for a minute or two this afternoon, and we could scarcely do less, in civility, than exchange the time of day."

"And are you in love with her?" asked Lady Blanchemain.

"I wonder," said he. "What do you think? Is it possible for a man to be in love with a woman he's seen only half a dozen times all told, and spoken with never longer than a minute or two at a stretch?"

"Was it only a minute or two—really?" asked Lady Blanchemain, wooing his confidence with a glance.

"No," said John. "It was probably ten minutes, possibly fifteen. But they passed so quickly, it's really nearer the truth to describe them as one or two."

Lady Blanchemain shifted her sunshade, and screwed herself half round, so as to face him, her soft old eyes full of smiling scrutiny and suspicion.

"I never can tell whether or not you're serious," she complained. "If you are serious,—well, a quand le mariage?"

"The marriage?" cried John. "How could I marry her? Such a thing's out of all question.

"Why?" asked she.

"A miller's daughter!" said John. "Would you have me marry the daughter of a miller?"

"You said yourself yesterday—" the lady reminded him.

"Ah, yes," said he. "But night brings counsel."

"If she's well educated," said Lady Blanchemain, "if she's well-bred, what does it matter about her father? Though a nobody in Austria, where nothing counts but quarterings, he's probably what we'd call a gentleman in England. Suppose he's a barrister? Or the editor of a newspaper? Or—"

She paused, thoughtful-eyed, to think of respectable professions. At last she gave up the effort.

"Well, anything decent," she concluded, "so long as he had plenty of money."

"Ah," said John, sadly, and with perhaps mock humility. "If he had plenty of money, he'd never consent to his daughter marrying a son of poverty like me."

"Pooh! For a title?" cried Lady Blanchemain. "Besides, you have prospects. Isn't your name Prospero?"

"I have precious little faith in oracles," said John.

"I advise you to have more," said Lady Blanchemain, with a smile that seemed occult.

And now her carriage entered the village, and she put him down at the telegraph office.

"Don't wait," said John. "The walk from here to the Castle is nothing, and it would take you out of your way."

"Well, good-bye, then," said she. "And cultivate more faith in oracles—when they're auspicious."

Alone, she drew from some recondite fold of her many draperies a letter, an unsealed letter, which she opened, spread out, and proceeded to read. It was a long letter in her ladyship's own handsome, high-bred, old-fashioned handwriting; and it was addressed to Messrs. Farrow, Bernscot, and Tisdale, Solicitors, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London. She read it twice through, and at last (with a smile that seemed occult) restored it to its envelope. "Stop at the Post Office," she said to her coachman, as they entered Roccadoro; and to her footman, giving him the letter, "Have that registered, please."

Annunziata lay in wait for John in the garden. She ran up, and seized him by the arm. Then, skipping beside him, as he walked on, "Who was she? Where did she come from? Where did she take you? Whom was the telegram from?" she demanded in a breath, nestling her curls against his coat-sleeve.

"Piano, piano," remonstrated John. "One question at a time. Now, begin again."

"Whom was the telegram from?" she obeyed, beginning at the end.

"Ah," said he, "the telegram was from my friend Prospero. He's coming here to-morrow. We must ask your uncle whether he can give him a bed."

"And the old lady?" pursued Annunziata. "Who was she?"

"The old lady was my fairy godmother," said John, building better than he knew.



PART FOURTH



I

Pacing together backwards and forwards, as they talked, John and his friend Winthorpe presented a striking and perhaps interesting contrast. John was tall, but Winthorpe seemed a good deal taller—though, (trifles in these matters looming so large), had actual measurements been taken, I dare say half an inch would have covered the difference. John was lean and sinewy, but rounded off at the joints, and of a pliant carriage, so that it never occurred to you to think of him as thin. Winthorpe's spare figure, spare and angular, with its greater height, held unswervingly to the plane of the perpendicular, appeared absolutely to be constructed of nothing but bone and tendon. John's head, with its yellow hair, its curly beard verging towards red, its pink skin, and blue eyes full of laughter, might have served a painter as a model for the head of Mirth. Winthorpe's,—with brown hair cropped close, and showing the white of the scalp; clean-shaven, but of a steely tint where the razor had passed; with a marked jaw-bone and a salient square chin; with a high-bridged determined nose, and a white forehead rising vertical over thick black eyebrows, and rather deep-set grey eyes,—well, clap a steeple-crowned hat upon it, and you could have posed him for one of his own Puritan ancestors. The very clothes of the men carried on their unlikeness,—John's loose blue flannels and red sailor's knot, careless-seeming, but smart in their effect, and showing him careful in a fashion of his own; Winthorpe's black tie and dark tweeds, as correct as Savile Row could turn them out, yet somehow, by the way he wore them, proclaiming him immediately a man who never gave two thoughts to his dress. If, however, Winthorpe's face was the face of a Puritan, it was the face of a Puritan with a sense of humour—the lines about the mouth were clearly the footprints of smiles. It seemed the face of a sensitive Puritan, as well, and (maugre that high-bridged nose) of a gentle—the light in his clear grey eyes was a kindly and gentle light. After all, Governor Bradford, as his writings show,—though he tried hard, perhaps, not to let them show it—was a Puritan with a sense of humour; John Alden and Priscilla were surely sensitive and gentle: and Winthorpe was descended from Governor Bradford, and from John Alden and Priscilla. The two friends walked backwards and forwards in the great open space before the Castle, and talked. They had not met for nearly two years, and had plenty to talk about.



II

Seated at one of the open windows of the pavilion beyond the clock, Maria Dolores (in a pale green confection of I know not what airy, filmy tissue) looked down, and somewhat vaguely watched them,—herself concealed by the netted curtain, which, according to Italian usage, was hung across the casement, to mitigate the heat and shut out insects. She watched them at first vaguely, and only from time to time, for the rest going on with some needlework she had in her lap. But by-and-by she dropped her needlework altogether, and her watching became continuous and absorbed.

"What a singular-looking man!" she thought, studying Winthorpe. "What an ascetic-looking man! He looks like an early Christian martyr. He looks like a priest. I believe he is a priest. English priests," she remembered, "when they travel, often dress as laymen. Yes, he is a priest, and a terribly austere one—I shouldn't like to go to him for confession. But in spite of his austerity, he seems to be extraordinarily happy about something just at present. That light in his eyes,—it is almost a light of ecstasy. It is a light I have never seen in any eyes, save those of priests and nuns."

Winthorpe, while that "almost ecstatic" light shone in his eyes, had been speaking.

Now, as he paused, John, with a glance of gay astonishment, halted, and turned so as to face him. John's lips moved, and it was perfectly plain that he was exclaiming, delightedly, "Really? Really?"

Winthorpe joyously nodded: whereupon John held out both hands, got hold of his friend's, and, his pink face jubilant, shook them with tremendous heartiness.

"The priest has received advancement—he is probably to be made a bishop," inferred Maria Dolores; "and Signor Prospero is congratulating him."

The men resumed their walk; but for quite a minute John kept his hand on Winthorpe's shoulder, and again and again gently patted it, murmuring, "I am so glad, so immensely glad." Maria Dolores was quite sure that this was what he murmured, for, though no word could reach her, John's beaming face spoke louder than his voice.

At last John let his hand drop, and, eyebrows raised a little, asked a question.

"But how did it happen? But tell me all about it," was what he seemed to say.

And Winthorpe (always with something of that ecstatic light in his eyes) proceeded to answer. But it was a longish story, and lasted through half a dozen of their forward and backward ambulations. Apparently, furthermore, it was a story which, as it developed, became less and less agreeable to the mind of John; for his face, at first all awake with interest, all aglow with pleasure, gradually sobered, gradually darkened, took on a frown, expressed dissent, expressed disapprobation, till, finally, with an impatient movement, he interrupted, and began—speaking rapidly, heatedly—to protest, to remonstrate.

"Ah," thought Maria Dolores, "the priest is to be made a bishop, sure enough,—but a missionary bishop. It isn't for nothing that he looks like an early Christian martyr. He is going to some outlandish, savage part of the world, where he will be murdered by the natives, or die of fever or loneliness. He is a man who has listened to the Counsels of Perfection. But his unascetic friend Prospero (one would say June remonstrating with December) can't bring himself to like it."

John remonstrated, protested, argued. Winthorpe, calmly, smilingly, restated his purpose and his motives. John pleaded, implored, appealed (so the watcher read his gesture) to earth, to heaven. Winthorpe took his arm, and calmly, smilingly, tried to soothe, tried to convince him. John drew his arm free, and, employing it to add force and persuasiveness to his speech, renewed his arguments, pointed out how unnecessary, inhuman, impossible the whole thing was. "It's monstrous. It's against all nature. There's no reason in it. What does it rhyme with? It's wilfully going out of your way to seek, to create, wretchedness. My mind simply refuses to accept it." It was as if Maria Dolores could hear the words. But Winthorpe, calm and smiling, would not be moved. John shook his head, muttered, shrugged his shoulders, threw up his hands, muttered again. "Was ever such pig-headed obstinacy! Was ever such arbitrary, voluntary blindness! I give you up, for a perverse, a triple-pated madman!" And so, John muttering and frowning, Winthorpe serenely smiling, reiterating, they passed round the corner of the Castle buildings, and were lost to Maria Dolores' view.



III

That afternoon, seated on the moss, under a tall eucalyptus tree near to Frau Brandt's pavilion, Maria Dolores received a visit from Annunziata.

Annunziata's pale little face was paler, her big grave eyes were graver, even than their wont. She nodded her head, slowly, portentously; and her glance was heavy with significance.

Maria Dolores smiled. "What is the matter?" she cheerfully inquired.

"Ah," sighed Annunziata, deeply, with another portentous head-shake, "I wish I knew."

Maria Dolores laughed. "Sit down," she suggested, making room beside her on the moss, "and try to think."

Annunziata sat down, curled herself up. "Something has happened to Prospero," she said, de profundis.

"Oh?" asked Maria Dolores. "What?" She seemed heartlessly cheerful, and even rather amused.

"Ah," sighed Annunziata, "that is what I wish I knew. He has had a friend to pass the day with him."

"Yes?" said Maria Dolores. "I expect I saw his friend walking with him this morning?"

"Gia," said Annunziata. "They have been walking about all day. His friend Prospero he calls him. But he doesn't look very prosperous. He looks like a slate-pencil. He is long and thin, and dark and cold, and hard, just like a slate-pencil. He would not stay the night, though we had a bed prepared for him. He is going to Rome, and Prospero has driven him to the railway station at Cortello. I hate him," wound up Annunziata, simply.

"Mercy!" exclaimed Maria Dolores, opening her eyes. "Why do you hate him?"

"Because he must have said or done something very unkind to Prospero," answered Annunziata. "Oh, you should see him. He is so sad—so sad and so angry. He keeps scowling, and shaking his head, and saying things in English, which I cannot understand, but I am sure they are sad things and angry things. And he would not eat any dinner,—no, not that much," (Annunziata measured off an inch on her finger), "he who always eats a great deal,—eh, ma molto, molto," and, separating her hands, she measured off something like twenty inches in the air.

Maria Dolores couldn't help laughing a little at this. But afterwards she said, on a key consolatory, "Ah, well, he has gone away now, so let us hope your friend Prospero will promptly recover his accustomed appetite."

"Yes," said Annunziata, "I hope so. But oh, that old slate-pencil man, how I hate him! I would like to—uhhh!" She clenched her little white fist, and shook it, threateningly, vehemently, while her eyes fiercely flashed. ... Next instant, however, her mien entirely changed. Like a light extinguished, all the fierceness went out of her face, making way for what seemed pain and terror. "There," she cried, pain and terror in her voice, "I have offended God. Oh, I am so sorry, so sorry. My sin, my sin, my sin," she murmured, bowing her head, and thrice striking her breast.

"I take back every word I said. I do not hate him. I would not hurt him—I would not even stick a pin in him—if I had him at my mercy. No—I would do anything I could to help him. I would give him anything I had that he could want. I would give him my coral rosary. I would give him"—she hesitated, struggled, and at last, drawing a deep breath, gritting her teeth, in supreme renunciation—"yes, I would give him my tame kid," she forced herself to pronounce, with a kind of desperate firmness. "But see," she wailed, her little white brow a mesh of painful wrinkles, "it is all no good. God is still angry. Oh, what shall I do?" And, to the surprise and distress of Maria Dolores, she burst into a sudden passion of tears, sobbing, sobbing, with that abandonment of grief which only children know.

"My dear, my dear," exclaimed Maria Dolores, drawing her to her. "My dearest, you mustn't cry like that. Dear little Annunziata. What is it? Why do you cry so, dear one? Answer me. Tell me."

But Annunziata only buried her face in Maria Dolores' sleeve, and moaned, while long, tremulous convulsions shook her frail little body. Maria Dolores put both arms about her, hugged her close, and laid her cheek upon her hair.

"Darling Annunziata, don't cry. Why should you cry so, dearest? God is not angry with you. Why should you think that God is angry with you? God loves you, darling. Everyone loves you. There, there—dearest—don't cry. Sweet one, dear one."

Transitions, with Annunziata, were sometimes inexplicably rapid. All at once her sobbing ceased; she looked up, and smiled, smiled radiantly, from a face that was wet and glistening with tears. "Thanks be to God," she piously exulted; "God is not angry any more."

"Of course He isn't," said Maria Dolores, tightening her hug, and touching Annunziata's curls lightly with her lips. "But He was never angry. What made you think that God was angry?"

Annunziata's big eyes widened. "Didn't you notice?" she asked, in a hushed voice, amazed.

"No," wondered Maria Dolores. "What was there to notice?"

"He made them draw a cloud over the sun," Annunziata whispered. "Didn't you notice that when I said I would like to—when I said what I said about that friend of Prospero's—just then they drew a cloud across the sun? That is a sign that God is angry. The sun, you know, is the window in Heaven through which God looks down on the world, and through which the light of Heaven shines on the world. And when the window is open, we feel happy and thankful, and wish to sing and laugh. But when we have done something to make God angry with us, then He sends angels to draw clouds over the window, so that we may be shut out of His sight, and the light of Heaven may be shut off from us. And then we are lonely and cold, and we could quarrel with anything, even with the pigs. God wishes to show us how bad it would be always to be shut off from His sight. But now they have drawn the cloud away, so God is not angry any more. I made a good act of contrition, and He has forgiven me."

Maria Dolores smiled, but under her smile there was a look of seriousness, a look of concern.

"My dear," she said smiling, and looking concerned, "you should try to control your vivid little imagination. If every time a cloud crosses the sun, you are going to assume the responsibility for it, and to fancy that you have offended God, I'm afraid you'll have rather an agitated life."

"Oh, no; not every time," exclaimed Annunziata, and she was manifestly on the point of making a fine distinction, when abruptly the current of her ideas was diverted. "Sh-h! There comes Prospero," she cried, starting up. "I can see the top of his white hat above the rhododendron bushes. He has driven his friend to Cortello, and come home. I must run away, or he will see that I've been crying. Don't tell him," she begged, putting her finger on her lips; and she set off running, towards the presbytery, just as John stepped forth from behind the long hedge of rhododendrons.



IV

John stepped forth from behind the rhododendrons, with a kind of devil-may-care, loose, aimless gait, the brim of his Panama pulled brigandishly down over one ear, his hands in the pockets of his coat, his head bent, his brow creased, his eyes sombre, every line and fibre of his person advertising him the prey of morose disgust. But when he saw Maria Dolores, he hastily straightened up, unpocketed his hands, took off his hat (giving it a flap that set the brim at a less truculent angle), and smiled. And when, the instant after, he caught sight of the flying form of Annunziata, his smile turned into a glance of wonder.

"What is the matter with Annunziata? Why is she running with all her legs like that?" he asked.

Maria Dolores had the tiniest catch of laughter. "She is running away from you," she answered.

"From me?" marvelled John. "Je suis donc un foudre de guerre? What on earth is she running away from me for?"

Maria Dolores smiled mysteriously.

"Ah," she said, "she asked me not to tell you. I am in the delicate position of confidante."

"And therefore I hope you'll tell me with the less reluctance," said John, urbanely unprincipled. "A confidante always betrays her confidence to some one,—that's the part of the game that makes it worth while."

Maria Dolores' smile deepened.

"In that pale green frock, on that bank of dark-green moss, with her complexion and her hair,—by Jove, how stunning she is!" thought John, in a commotion.

"Well," she said, "Annunziata ran away because she didn't want you to see that she'd been crying."

John raised his eyebrows, the blue eyes under them becoming expressive of dismay.

"Crying?" he echoed. "The poor little kiddie! What had she been crying about!"

"That is a long story, and involves some of her peculiar theological tenets," said Maria Dolores. "But, in a single word, about your friend."

John's eyebrows descended to their normal level, and drew together.

"Crying about my friend? What friend?" he puzzled.

"Your friend the priest—the man who has been passing the day here with you," explained Maria Dolores.

John gave a start, threw back his head, and eyed her with astonishment.

"That is extraordinary," he exclaimed.

"What?" asked she, lightly glancing up.

"That you should call him my friend the priest," said John, wagging a bewildered head.

"Why? Isn't he a priest? He has all the air of one," said Maria Dolores.

"No; he's an American millionaire," said John, succinctly.

Maria Dolores moved in her place, and laughed.

"Dear me!" she said, "I did strike wide of the mark. An American millionaire should cultivate a less deceptive appearance. With that thin, shaven face of his, and that look of an early Christian martyr in his eyes, and the dark clothes he wears, wherever he goes he's sure to be mistaken for a priest."

"Yes," said John, with a kind of grimness; "that's what's extraordinary. He comes of a long line of bigoted Protestants, he's a reincarnation of some of his stern old Puritan forebears, and you find that he looks like their pet abomination, a Romish priest. Well, you have a prophetic eye."

Maria Dolores gazed up inquiringly. "A prophetic eye?" she questioned.

"I merely mean," said John, with thaumaturgic airiness, "that the man is on his way to Rome to study for the priesthood." And he gave a thaumaturgic toss to his bearded chin.

"Oh!" cried Maria Dolores, and leaned back against her eucalyptus tree, and laughed again.

John, however, dejectedly shook his head, and gloomed.

"Laugh if you will," he said, "though it seems to me as far as possible from a laughing matter, and I think Annunziata chose the better part when she cried."

"I beg your pardon," said Maria Dolores, perhaps a trifle stiffly. "I was only laughing at the coincidence of my having supposed him to be a priest, and then learning that, though he isn't, he is going to become one. I was not laughing at the fact itself. Nor was it," she added, her stiffness leaving her, and a little glimmer of amusement taking its place, "that fact which made Annunziata cry."

"I dare say not," responded John, "seeing that she couldn't possibly have known it. But it might well have done so. It's enough to bring tears to the eyes of a brazen image." He angrily jerked his shoulders.

"What?" cried Maria Dolores, surprised, rebukeful. "That a man is to become a holy priest?"

"Oh, no," said John. "That fact alone, detached from special circumstances, might be a subject for rejoicing. But the fact that this particular man, in his special circumstances, is to become a priest—well, I simply have no words to express my feeling." He threw out his arms, in a gesture of despair. "I'm simply sick with rage and pity. I could gnash my teeth and rend my garments."

"Mercy!" cried Maria Dolores, stirring. "What are the special circumstances?"

"Oh, it's a grisly history," said John. "It's a tale of the wanton, ruthless, needless, purposeless sacrifice of two lives. It's his old black icy Puritan blood. Winthorpe—that's his name—had for years been a freethinker, far too intellectual and enlightened, and that sort of thing, you know, to believe any such old wives' tale as the Christian Religion. He and I used to have arguments, tremendous ones, in which, of course, neither in the least shook the other. Darwin and Spencer, with a dash of his native Emerson, were religion enough for him. Then this morning he arrived here, and said, 'Congratulate me. A month ago I was received into the Church.'"

Maria Dolores looked up, animated, her dark eyes sparkling.

"How splendid!" she said.

"Yes," agreed John, "so I thought. 'Congratulate me,' he said. I should think I did congratulate him,—with all my heart and soul. But then, naturally, I asked him how it had happened, what had brought it to pass."

"Yes—?" prompted Maria Dolores, as he paused.

"Well," said John, his face hardening, "he thereupon proceeded to tell me in his quiet way, with his cool voice (it's like smooth-flowing cold water), absolutely the most inhuman story I have ever had to keep my patience and listen to."

"What was the story?" asked Maria Dolores.

"If you can credit such inhumanity, it was this," answered John. "It seems that he fell in love—with a girl in Boston, where he lives. And what's more, and worse, the girl fell in love with him. So there they were, engaged. But she was a Catholic, and his state of unbelief was a cause of great grief to her. So she pleaded with him, and persuaded, till, merely to comfort her, and without the faintest suspicion that his scepticism could be weakened, he promised to give the Catholic position a thorough reconsideration, to read certain books, and to put himself under instruction with a priest: which he did. Which he did, if you please, with the result, to his own unutterable surprise, that one fine day he woke up and discovered that he'd been convinced, that he believed."

"Yes?" said Maria Dolores, eagerly. "Yes—? And then? And the girl?"

"Ah," said John, with a groan, "the girl That's the pity of it. That's where his black old Puritan blood comes in. Blood? It isn't blood—it's some fluid form of stone—it's flint dissolved in vinegar. The girl! Mind you, she loved him, they were engaged to be married. Well, he went to her, and said, 'I have been converted. I believe in the Christian religion—your religion. But I can't believe a thing like that, and go on living as I lived when I didn't believe it,—go on living as if it weren't true, or didn't matter. It does matter—it matters supremely—it's the only thing in the world that matters. I can't believe it, and marry—marry, and live in tranquil indifference to it. No, I must put aside the thought of marriage, the thought of personal happiness. I must sell all I have and give it to the poor, take up my cross and follow Him. I am going to Rome to study for the priesthood.' Imagine," groaned John, stretching out his hands, "imagine talking like that to a woman you are supposed to love, to a woman who loves you." And he wrathfully ground his heel into the earth.

Maria Dolores looked serious.

"After all, he had to obey his conscience," she said. "After all, he was logical, he was consistent."

"Oh, his conscience! Oh, consistency!" cried John, with an intolerant fling of the body. "At bottom it's nothing better than common self-indulgence, as I took the liberty of telling him to his face. It's the ardour of the convert, acting upon that acid solution of flint which takes the place of blood in his veins, and causing sour puritanical impulses, which (like any other voluptuary) he immediately gives way to. It's nothing better than unbridled passion. Conscience, indeed! Where was his conscience when it came to her? Think of that poor girl—that poor pale girl—who loved him. Oh, Mother of Mercy!"

He moved impatiently three steps to the left, three steps to the right, beating the palm of one hand with the back of the other.

"What did she do? How did she take it?" asked Maria Dolores.

"What she ought to have done," said John, between his teeth, "was to scratch his eyes out. What she did do, as he informed me with a seraphic countenance, was not merely to approve of everything he said, but to determine to do likewise. So, while he's on his way to Rome, to get himself tonsured and becassocked, she's scrubbing the floors of an Ursuline convent, as a novice. And there are two lives spoiled." He shrugged his shoulders.

"Oh, no, no," contended Maria Dolores, earnestly, shaking her head, "not spoiled. On the contrary. It is sad, in a way, if you like, but it is very beautiful, it is heroic. Their love must have been a very beautiful love, that could lead them to such self-sacrifice. Two lives given to God."

"Can't people give their lives to God without ceasing to live?" cried John. "If marriage is a sacrament, how can they better give their lives to God than by living sanely and sweetly in Christian marriage? But these people withdraw from life, renounce life, shirk and evade the life that God had prepared for them and was demanding of them. It's as bad as suicide. Besides, it implies such a totally perverted view of religion. Religion surely is given to us to help us to live, to show us how to live, to enable us to meet the difficulties, emergencies, responsibilities of life. But these people look upon their religion as a mandate to turn their backs on the responsibilities of life, and scuttle away. And as for love! Well, she no doubt did love, poor lady. But Winthorpe! No. When a man loves he doesn't send his love into a convent, and go to Rome to get himself becassocked." He gave his head a nod of finality.

"That, I fancy, is a question of temperament," said Maria Dolores. "Your friend has the ascetic temperament. And it does not by any means follow that he loves less because he resigns his love. What you call an inhuman story seems to me a wonderfully noble one. I saw your friend this morning, when he and you were walking together, and I said to myself, 'That man looks as if he had listened to the Counsels of Perfection. His vocation shines through him.' I think you should reconcile yourself to his accepting it."

"Well," said John, on the tone of a man ready to change the subject, "I owe him at least one good mark. His account of his 'heart-state' led me to examine my own, and I discovered that I am in love myself,—which is a useful thing to know."

"Oh?" said Maria Dolores, with a little effect of reserve.

"Yes," said John, nothing daunted, "though unlike his, mine is an unreciprocated flame, and unavowed."

"Ah?" said Maria Dolores, reserved indeed, but not without an undertone of sympathy.

"Yes," said John, playing with fire, and finding therein a heady mixture of fearfulness and joy. "The woman I love doesn't dream I love her, and dreams still less of loving me,—for which blessed circumstance may Heaven make me truly thankful."

The sentiment sounding unlikely, Maria Dolores raised doubtful eyes. They shone into John's; his drank their light; and something violent happened in his bosom.

"Oh—?" she said.

"Yes," said he, thinking what adorable little hands she had, as they lay loosely clasped in her lap, thinking how warm they would be, and fragrant; thinking too what fun it was, this playing with fire, how perilous and exciting, and how egotistical he must seem to her, and how nothing on earth should prevent him from continuing the play. "Yes," he said, "it's a circumstance to be thankful for, because, like Winthorpe himself, though for different reasons, I'm unable to contemplate marriage." His voice sank sorrowfully, and he made a sorrowful movement.

"Oh—?" said Maria Dolores, her sympathy becoming more explicit.

"Winthorpe's too beastly puritanical—and I'm too beastly poor," said he.

"Oh," she murmured. Her eyes softened; her sympathy deepened to compassion.

"She must certainly put me down as the most complacent egotist in two hemispheres, so to regale her with unsolicited information about myself," thought John; "but surely it would need six hemispheres to produce another pair of eyes as beautiful as hers."—"Yes," he said, "I should be 'looking up' if I asked even a beggar-maid to marry me."

Maria Dolores' beautiful eyes became thoughtful as well as compassionate.

"But men who are poor work and earn money," she said, on the tone that young women adopt when the spirit moves them to preach to young men. And when the spirit does move them to that, things may be looked upon as having advanced an appreciable distance, the ball may be looked upon as rolling.

"So I've heard," said John, his head in the clouds. "It must be dull business."

Maria Dolores dimly smiled. "Do you do no work?" she asked.

"I've never had time," said John. "I've been too busy enjoying life."

"Oh," said Maria Dolores, with the intonation of reproach.

"Yes," said he, "enjoying the Humour, the Romance, the Beauty of it,—and combine the three together, make a chord of 'em, you get the Divinity. Or, to take a lower plane, the world's a stage, and life's the drama. I could never leave off watching and listening long enough to do any work."

"But do you not wish to play a part in the drama, to be one of the actors?" asked his gentle homilist. "Have you no ambition?"

"Not an atom," he easily confessed. "The part of spectator seems to me by far the pleasantest. To sit in the stalls and watch the incredible jumble-show, the reason-defying topsy-turvydom of it, the gorgeous, squalid, tearful, and mirthful pageantry, the reckless inconsequences, the flagrant impossibilities; to watch the Devil ramping up and down like a hungry lion, and to hear the young-eyed cherubim choiring from the skies: what better entertainment could the heart of man desire?"

"But are we here merely to be entertained?" she sweetly preached, while John's blue eyes somewhat mischievously laughed, and he felt it hard that he couldn't stop her rose-red mouth with kisses. "Aren't we here to be, as the old-fashioned phrase goes, of use in the world? Besides, now that you are in love, surely you will never sit down weakly, and say, 'I am too poor to marry,' and so give up your love,—like your friend Winthorpe indeed, but for ignoble instead of noble motives. Surely you will set to work with determination, and earn money, and make it possible to marry. Or else your love must be a very poor affair." And her adorable little hands, as they lay ("like white lilies," thought John) upon the pale-green fabric of her gown, unclasped themselves, opened wide for an instant, showing the faint pink of their palms, then lightly again interlaced their fingers.

He laughed. "You are delicious," he said to her fervently, in silence. "My love is all right," he said aloud. "I love her as much as it is humanly possible to love. I love her with passion, with tenderness; with worship, with longing; I love her with wonder; I love her with sighs, with laughter. I love her with all I have and with all I am. And I owe one to Winthorpe for having unwittingly opened my eyes to my condition. But earning money? I've a notion it's difficult. What could I do?"

"Have you no profession?" she asked.

"Not the ghost of one," said he, with nonchalance.

"But is there no profession that appeals to you—for which you feel that you might have a taste?" Her dark eyes were very earnest.

"Not the ghost of one," said he, dissembling his amusement. "Professions—don't they all more or less involve sitting shut up in stuffy offices, among pigeon-holes full of dusty and futile papers, doing tiresome tasks for the greater glory of other people, like a slave in the hold of a galley? No, if I'm to work, I must work at something that will keep me above decks—something that will keep me out of doors, in touch with the air and the earth. I might become an agricultural labourer,—but that's not very munificently paid; or a farmer,—but that would require perhaps more capital than I could command, and anyhow the profits are uncertain. I've an uncle who's a bit of a farmer, and year in, year out, I believe he makes a loss. 'Well, what's left? ... Ah, a gardener. I don't think I should half mind being a gardener."

Maria Dolores looked as if she weren't sure whether or not to take him seriously.

"A gardener? That's not very munificently paid either, is it?" she suggested, trying her ground.

"Alas, I fear not," sighed John. Then he made a grave face. "But would you have me entirely mercenary? Money isn't everything here below."

Maria Dolores smiled. She saw that for the moment at least he was not to be taken seriously.

"True," she agreed, "though it ran in my mind that to earn money, so that you might marry, was your only motive for going to work at all."

"I had forgotten that," said the light-minded fellow. "I was thinking of occupations that would keep one in touch with the earth. A gardener's occupation keeps him constantly in the charmingest possible sort of touch with her, and the most intimate."

"Do they call the earth her in English?" asked Maria Dolores. "I thought they said it."

"I'm afraid, for the greater part, they do," answered John. "But it's barbarous of them, it's unfilial. Our brown old mother,—fancy begrudging her the credit of her sex! Our brown and green old mother; our kindly, bounteous mother; our radiant, our queenly mother, old, and yet perennially, radiantly young. Look at her now," he cried, circling the garden with his arm, and pointing to the farther landscape, "look at her, shining in her robes of pearl and gold, shining and smiling,—one would say a bride arrayed for the altar. Such is her infinite variety. Her infinite variety, her infinite abundance, the fragrance and the sweetness of her,—oh, I could fall upon my face and worship her, like a Pagan of Eld. The earth and all that grows and lives upon her, the blossoming tree, the singing bird,—I could build temples to her."

"And the crawling snake?" put in Maria Dolores, a gleam at the bottom of her eyes.

"The crawling snake," quickly retorted John, "serves a most useful purpose. He establishes the raison d'etre of man. Man and his heel are here to crush the serpent's head."

Maria Dolores leaned back, softly laughing.

"Your infatuation for the earth is so great," she said, "mightn't your lady-love, if she suspected it, be jealous?"