My Friend Prospero by Henry Harland

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"I am sorry--it is in Vienna." And after an instant's pause, she
ventured, "What, if it isn't indiscreet to inquire, do you wish to look
up?"

"I wish to look up a lady--a dream lady--a lady who walks in beauty like
the night of cloudless climes--and whose pocket-handkerchiefs are
embroidered with the initials M.D., in a cypher, under a princely
crown."

"I should think," said Maria Dolores, considering, "that she would
probably be a member of one of the mediatised princely houses. But if
you have nothing more than her initials to go by, you would find it
difficult to trace her in the Almanach de Gotha."

"No doubt," said John. "But to a man of spirit a difficulty is a
challenge."

"Do you make a practice," asked she, "of appropriating people's
handkerchiefs?"

"Certain people's--yes," unblushing, he promptly owned.

"M.D. under a princely crown, I think you said?" she mused. "It occurs
to me that Maria Dolores of Zelt-Neuminster's pocket-handkerchiefs might
be so embroidered."

"Ah?" said John. "Zelt-Neuminster? That would be a daughter of the man
who owns this Castle?"

"No, she is a sister of the man who owns this Castle."

"I understand," said John. "I wonder that the sister of the man who owns
this Castle never comes here to see how fine it is."

"She has been here quite recently," said Maria Dolores. "She has been
here visiting her foster-mother, who lives in the pavilion beyond the
clock. She came to make a sort of retreat--to think something over."

"Yes--?" questioned he.

"Her brother is very anxious to marry her off. He is anxious that she
should marry her second cousin, the Prince of Zelt-Zelt. She came here
to make up her mind."

"Has she made it up?" he asked.

"I am not sure," said she.

"Yet you seem to be deep in her confidence," said he.

"Yes--but she is not quite sure herself."

"Oh--?" said John.

"She is one of those foolish women who dream of marriage as a high
romance."

"Wise men," said John, "dream of it as the highest."

She shook her head.

"A marriage with her cousin would be an end to all romance for ever. She
was thinking a little while ago, I believe, of marrying a plain
commoner, the nephew of a farmer. That would have been indeed romantic.
Now, I hear, she is considering, a future member of your English House
of Lords."

"Wouldn't even that be rather romantic--if a step down constitutes
romance?" John suggested.

"Oh, a British peer is scarcely a step down," she returned. "Besides,
there are people who don't care--what is the expression?--twopence about
rank."

"When I said that," John explained, "I had no inkling that her rank was
so exalted."

"Did you think she was the daughter of a cobbler?" Maria Dolores
quickly, with some haughtiness, inquired.

"I thought she was a daughter of the stars," John answered.

"And you feared her name was Smitti," she said, haughtiness dissolving
in mirth. "I will never tell you what she feared that yours was."

"See," said John, "how they are hanging the heavens with banners. It
must be in honour of some great impending event."

Yesterday the west had been a sea. To-day it was a city, a vast grey and
violet city, with palaces and battlemented towers, and countless airy
spires and pinnacles; and here, there, everywhere, its walls were gay
with gold and crimson, as with drooping banners.

"'Tis a city _en fete_," said John. "'Tis the city where marriages are
made. They must have one in hand."

"Hark," said she, putting up a finger. "There are your nightingales
beginning."

But the raised finger reminded him of something. "Have you a rooted
objection to rings?" he asked.

"Why?" asked she.

"I notice that you don't wear any."

"Oh, sometimes I wear many," she said. "Then one has moods in which one
leaves them off."

"I have a ring in my pocket which I think belongs to you," said he.

"Really? I don't know that any of my rings are missing."

"Here it is," said he. He produced the little old shagreen case he had
received from Lady Blanchemain, opened, and offered it.

"It is a singularly beautiful ring," said she, her eyes admiring. "But
it doesn't belong to me."

"I think it does," said he. "May I try it on your finger?"

She put forth her right hand.

"No--your left hand, please," he said. He dropped upon one knee before
her, and when the delicate white hand was surrendered, I imagine he made
of getting the ring upon the alliance finger a longer business by a good
deal than was necessary. "There," he said in the end, "you see. It looks
as if it had grown there. Of course it belongs to you." He still held
her hand, warm and firm and velvet-soft. I think in another second he
would have touched it with his lips. But she drew it away.

She gazed into the depths of the heart-shaped ruby, tremulous with
liquid light, and smiled as at secret thoughts.

"But I don't see," said John, getting to his feet, "how any man can ask
a Princess of the House of Zelt to marry him and live on six hundred
pounds a year."

"She would have to modify her habits a good deal, that is very certain,"
said Maria Dolores.

"She would have to modify them utterly," said John. "Six hundred a year
is poverty even for a single man. For a married couple it would be
beggary. She would have to live like the wife of a petty employe. She
would have to travel second class and stay at fourth-rate hotels. She
would have to turn her old dresses and trim her own bonnets. She would
have to do without a maid. And all this means that she would have
virtually to renounce her caste, to give up the society of her equals,
who demand a certain scale of appearances, and to live among pariahs or
to live in isolation. Don't you think a man would be a monster of
selfishness to exact such sacrifices?"

"Oh, some men have excessively far-fetched and morbid notions of
honour," said she.

"Do you think the Princess, with all this brought to her attention,
would ever dream of consenting?"

"Women in love are weak--they will consent to almost anything," said
she, her dark eyes smiling for an instant into his.

Why didn't he take her in his arms? Hope deferred maketh the heart sick,
but to defer the consummation of a joy assured (observes the Persian
poet) giveth the heart a peculiar sweet excitement.

"Well," said John. "I'm glad to think she is weak; but I'll never ask my
wife to consent to anything so unpleasant. A Princess and a future
peeress, living on six hundred pounds a year! It's unheard of."

She looked at him, puzzled, incredulous.

"Oh--? Can you possibly mean--that you will--take back your condition?"

"Yes," said he, humbly. "Who am I to make conditions?"

"You will let her spend as much of her own money as she likes?" she
wondered, wide-eyed.

"As a lover of thrift, I shall deprecate extravagance," said John. "But
as a submissive husband, I shall let her do in all things as her fancy
dictates."

"Well," marvelled she, "here is a surprise--here is a volte-face
indeed."

And she looked at the city in the sky, and appeared to turn things over.

John was mysteriously chuckling.

"Haven't you your opinion," he asked, "of men who eat their words and
put their scruples in their pockets?"

"I don't understand," said she, looking wild. "There is, of course, some
joke."

"There is a joke, indeed," said he; "the joke is that I'm ten times
richer than I told you I was."

She started back, and fixed him with a glance.

"Then all that about your being poor was only humbug?" There was
reproach in her voice, I'm not sure there wasn't disappointment.

"No," said he, "it was the exact and literal truth. But I have come into
a modest competency over-night."

"I don't understand," said she.

"My own part in the story is a sufficiently inglorious one," said he.
"I'm the benefactee. Lady Blanchemain and my uncle have put their heads
together, and endowed me. I feel rather small at letting them, but it
enables me to look my affianced boldly in the money-eye."

"Oh? You are affianced? Already?" she asked gaily.

"No--not unless you are," gaily answered John.

She looked down at her ring.

VII

The quiet-coloured end of evening smiled fainter, fainter. The aerial
city, its cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces, had crumbled into
ruins, and stars twinkled among their shattered and darkened walls. The
moon burned icily above the eastern hills. The nightingales (or John was
no true prophet) sang better than they had ever sung before, while bats,
hither, thither, flew in startling zig-zags, as if waltzing to the
music. And all the air was sweet with the breath of dew-wet roses.

The clock struck eight.

"There--you must go," said Maria Dolores.

"Go? Where to?" asked John, feigning vagueness.

"This is no subject for jest," said she, feigning severity.

"I can't go yet--I can't leave you yet," said he. "Besides, it is an
education in aesthetics to watch the moonlight on these marble columns,
and the pale shadows of the vine-leaves."

"Well, then," said she, "stay you here and pursue your education. I will
go in your place. For Marcella Cuciniera must be relieved." She rose,
and moved towards the darkling front of the Castle.

"Hang education! I'll go with you," said John, following.

"I shall only stop a moment, to see how she is," said Maria Dolores.
"Then I must hurry home, to get my packing begun."

"Your packing?" faltered John.

"To-morrow morning Frau Brandt and I are leaving for Austria--for
Schloss Mischenau, where my brother lives."

"Good Lord!" said John. "Ah, well, I suppose it is what they would call
the proper course," he admitted with gloomy resignation. "But think how
dreadfully you'll be missed--by Annunziata."

"Annunziata is so much better, I can easily be spared," said Maria
Dolores; "and anyhow--'tis needs must. I think you will probably soon
receive a letter from my brother, asking you to visit him. Mischenau is
a place worth seeing, in its northern style. And, in his northern style,
my brother is a man worth meeting. I counsel you to go."

"I shall certainly go," said John. "I shall linger here at Sant'
Alessina like a soul in durance, counting the hours till my release. I
shall be particularly glad to meet your brother, as I have matters of
importance to arrange with him."

"Until then," said she, smiling, "I think we must do with those--matters
of importance"--her voice quavered on the word--"what is it that the
Pope sometimes does with Cardinals?"

"Yes," moodily consented John, "I suppose we must. But oh me, what a
dreary, blank, stale, and unprofitable desolation this garden will
become,--and at every turn the ghost of some past joy!"

Annunziata looked up with eyes that seemed omniscient.

"I was thinking about you," she greeted them.

"About which of us?" asked John.

"About both of you. I always now, since a long while, think of you both
together. I think Maria Dolores is the dark woman whom Prospero is to
marry."

John laughed. Maria Dolores looked out of the window.

"And I was thinking," Annunziata went on, "how strange it was that if
you hadn't both at the same time just happened to come to Sant'
Alessina, you might have lived and died and never have known each
other."

"Perish that thought," laughed John. "But I have sometimes thought it
myself."

"And then," Annunziata rounded out her tale, "I thought that perhaps you
had not just happened--that probably you had been led."

"That is a thing I haven't a doubt of," John with energy affirmed.

"You look as if you were very glad about something--both of you," said
Annunziata, those omniscient eyes of hers studying their faces. "What is
it that you are both so glad of?"

"We are so glad to find you feeling so well," answered Maria Dolores.

But Annunziata shook her head, as one who knew better. "No--that is not
the only thing. You are glad of something else besides."

"There's no taking you in," said John. "But we are under bonds to treat
that Something Else as the Pope sometimes treats Princes of the Church."

"He gives them red hats," said Annunziata.

"I shall give this thing a crown of myrtle," said John.

"You sometimes say things that sound as if they hadn't any sense,"
Annunziata informed him, with patient indulgence, nodding at the
ceiling.

Maria Dolores leaned over the bed, and kissed Annunziata's brow. "Good
night, carina," she murmured.

Annunziata put up her little white arms, and encircled Maria Dolores'
neck. Then she kissed her four times--on the brow, on the chin, on the
left cheek, on the right. "That is a cross of kisses," she explained.
"It is the way my mother used to kiss me. It means may the four Angels
of Peace, Grace, Holiness, and Wisdom watch over your sleep."

But early next morning, John being still on duty, Maria Dolores came
back,--booted and spurred for her journey, in tailor-made tweeds, with a
little felt toque and a veil: a costume of which Annunziata's eyes were
quick to catch the suggestion.

"Why are you dressed like that?" she asked, uneasily. "I never saw you
dressed like that before. You look as if you were going away somewhere."

"I have got to go away--I have got to go to my home, in Austria. I have
come to bid you good-bye," Maria Dolores answered.

Annunziata's eyes were dark with pain. "Oh," she said, in a voice of
deep dismay.

"We shan't be separated long, though," Maria Dolores promised. "I have
asked your uncle to lend you to me. As soon as you are strong enough to
travel, you are coming to Austria to pay me a long visit. Then I will
come back with you to Sant' Alessina. And then--well, wherever I go you
will always go with me. For of course I can never live happily again
without you."

"One moment, please," put in John. "Here is a small difficulty. I can
never live happily without her, either. I also have asked her uncle to
lend her to me. And wherever _I_ go, she is always to go with me. How
are we to adjust our rival claims?"

Annunziata's eyes lighted up.

"Oh, that will be easy enough," she pointed out. "You will have to go
everywhere together."

THE END

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