My Friend Prospero by Henry Harland
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Henry Harland >> My Friend Prospero
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"Oh?" questioned John. "What message?"
"Frau Brandt has received from the owner of the Castle the privilege of
hearing Mass from the tribune; and she wished me to invite you in her
name hereafter to hear Mass from there with us. But I suppose, in view
of your 'lesson,' that is an invitation which you will decline?" The
glint of laughter shone brighter in her eyes, and her mouth had a tiny
pucker, amiably derisive.
John looked at her, his blue eyes bold.
"That is an invitation which I am terribly tempted to accept," he said,
in a voice of unconcealed emotion, of patent meaning; and beneath his
bold gaze, her dark eyes dropped, while I think a blush faintly swept
her cheeks. "And first of all," he added, "pray express to Frau Brandt
my grateful thanks for it--and let me thank you also for your kindness
in conveying it. If, in spite of my temptation, I _don't_ accept it,
that will be for a very special reason, and one quite unconnected with
my 'lesson.'"
Maria Dolores probably knew her danger. She turned, and began to walk
backwards, towards the point where you can pass from the cloisters,
through the great porte-cochere, into the garden, and so on to the
pavilion beyond the clock. She probably knew her danger; but she was
human, but she was a woman. Besides, she had reached the porte-cochere,
and thus commanded a clear means of escape. So, coming to a standstill
here, "What is the very special reason?" she asked, in a low voice,
keeping her eyes from his.
His were bolder than ever. Infinite admiration of her burned in them,
infinite delight in her, desire for her; at the same time a kind of
angry hopelessness darkened them, and a kind of bitter amusement, as of
one amused at his own sad plight.
"I wish I were rich," he exclaimed, irritably, between his teeth.
"Oh? Is _that_ the very special reason?" asked she, with two notes of
laughter.
"No," said he, "but it has a connection with it. You see, I'm in love."
"Yes," said she. "I remember your telling me so."
"Well, I wish I were rich," said he. "Then I might pluck up courage to
ask the woman I love to be my wife."
"Money isn't everything here below," said she. "I have your own word for
that."
"What else counts," said he, "when you wish to ask a woman to marry
you?"
"Oh, many things," said she. "Difference of rank, for example."
"That wouldn't count with me," said the democratic fellow, handsomely.
"I shouldn't give two thoughts to differences of rank."
Maria Dolores smiled--at her secret reflections, I suppose.
"But poverty puts it out of all question," John moodily went on. "I
couldn't ask a woman to come and share with me an income of sixpence a
week. Especially as I have grounds for believing that she's in rather
affluent circumstances herself. Oh, I wish I were rich!" He repeated
this aspiration in a groan.
"Poor, poor young man!" she commiserated him, while her eyes, which she
held perseveringly averted, were soft with sympathy and gay with mirth.
"When do you begin your gardening?"
"Oh, don't mock me!" he cried, with an imploring gesture. "You know,
joking apart, that it's child's play for a man of my age, with no
profession and no special talent, to fancy he can turn to and earn
money. I might, if I made supernatural exertions, and if Fortune went
out of her way to favour me, add a maximum of another sixpence to my
weekly budget. No, there's never a hope for me on sea or land. I must
e'en bear it, though I cannot grin withal."
"Ah, well," said Maria Dolores, to comfort him, "these attacks, I have
read, are often as short as they are sharp. Let us trust you'll soon
rally from this one. How long have they generally lasted in the past?"
John's face grew dark with upbraiding; the sea-blue of his eyes, the
gold of his hair and beard, the pink of his complexion visibly grew
dark.
"You are so needlessly unkind," he said, "that you don't deserve to hear
the true answer to your question."
She studied the half-obliterated fresco on the wall beside her.
"All the same," said he, "you _shall_ hear it. If falling in love were
my habit, no doubt I shouldn't take it so hard. But the simple truth,
though I am thirty years old, is that I have never before felt so much
as a heart-flutter for any woman. And, since you cite your reading, _I_
have read that a fire which may merely singe the surface of green wood,
will entirely consume the dry."
She continued to study the ancient painting. Her fingers were playing
with the ends of her lace veil.
"Besides," he went on, "if I had been in love a dozen times, it wouldn't
signify. For I should have been in love with ordinary usual human
women. They're the only sort I ever met--till I met her. She's of a
totally different order--as distinct from them as ... What shall
I say? Oh, as unlike them as starfire is unlike dull clay.
Starfire--starfire--the wonderful, high, white-burning starfire of her
spirit, that's the thing that strikes you most in her. It shines through
her. It shines in her eyes, it shines in her hair, her adorable, soft,
dark, warm and fragrant hair; it shines in her very voice; it shines in
every word she utters, even in the unkindest."
"Dear me! what an alarmingly refulgent person you depict!" laughed Maria
Dolores, her eyes still on the wall.
"I have no gift for word-painting," said John; "though I doubt if the
words are yet invented that could fitly paint my lady. She grows in
beauty day by day. It's a literal fact--every fresh time I see her, she
is perceptibly more lovely than the last, more love-compelling in her
loveliness. But 'tis a thing unpaintable, indescribable, as
indescribable as the perfume of a rose. Oh, why haven't I five thousand
a year?"
"You harp so persistently upon your desire for money," suggested Maria
Dolores, "one might infer she was a commodity, to be bought and sold.
You begin at the wrong end. What good would five or fifty thousand a
year do you, if you had not begun by winning her love?
"No, I begin at the proper end, worse luck," John answered, glooming.
"For, without a decent income, I have no right even to try to win her
love.
"And that being so," questioned Maria Dolores, "I hope you
conscientiously avoid her society, or, when you meet, make yourself
consistently disagreeable to her?
"There's no need for such precautions," John replied. "There's no fear
for her. She regards me as a casual and passing acquaintance. So I make
myself no more disagreeable than I am by nature. And if I avoided her
society, (which I am far from doing), it would be not for her sake, but
for my own. For, though her society is to me a kind of anticipation of
the joys of Heaven, yet when I leave it and find myself alone, the
reaction is dreary in the superlative degree; and the fear, which
perpetually haunts me (for I know nothing of her plans), lest I shall
never see her again, is agonizing as a foretaste of--Heaven's antipode.
Oh, I love her!"
He took, involuntarily I dare say, a step in her direction. She
retreated under the vaulting of the _porte-cochere_.
"You seem," she commented, "to be getting a good deal of emotional
experience,--which doubtless some day you will find of value. Why not,
instead of gardener, embark as novelist or poet? Here is material you
could then turn to account."
"Ah, there you are," he complained, piteously, "mocking me again. Ah,
well, if you must have your laugh, have it, and welcome. A man can learn
to take the bitter with the sweet."
"To spare you that discomfort," said she, moving deeper into the
archway, while John's face fell, "I will bid you good-bye. I am to
report, then, that you decline my friend's invitation with thanks?"
"With my most grateful thanks," he was able intensively to rejoin, in
spite of his dismay at the imminence of her departure.
"And for a very special reason?" she harked back, now, suddenly, for
the first time since they had touched thin ice, giving him a glance.
It was the fleetingest of fleeting glances, it was merry and ironic, but
there was something in it which brought a flame to his blue eyes.
"For the very special reason," he answered, with vehemence, "that I fear
the presence near me of--" He held his breath for a second, the flame in
his eyes enveloping her; then, with an abrupt change of tone and mien,
he ended, "--of Frau Brandt might distract my attention from the
sermon."
She laughed, and said, "Good-bye."
"Good-bye," said John. And when she was halfway through the tunnel-like
passage, "I suppose you know you are leaving me to a day as barren as
the Desert of Sahara?" he called after her.
"Oh, who can tell what a day may bring forth?" called she, but without
looking back.
For a long while John's faculties were kept busy, trying to determine
whether that was a promise, a menace, or a mere word in the air.
III
"Rain before seven, clear before eleven," is as true, or as untrue, in
Lombardy as it is in other parts of the world. The rain had held up, and
now, in that spirited phrase of Corvo's, "here came my lord the Sun,"
splendidly putting the clouds to flight, or chaining them, transfigured,
to his chariot-wheels; clothing the high snow-peaks in a roseate glory,
(that seemed somehow, I don't know why, to accent their solitude and
their remoteness); flooding the valley with ethereal amber; turning the
swollen Rampio to a river of fire while the nearer hillsides, the olive
woods, the trees in the Castle garden, glistened with a million million
crystals, and the petals of the flowers were crystal-tipped; while the
breath of the earth rose in long streamers of luminous incense, and the
sky gleamed with every tender, every brilliant, tint of blue, from the
blue of pale forgetmenots to the blue of larkspur.
John, contemplating this spectacle, (and thinking of Maria Dolores?
revolving still her cryptic valediction?), all at once, as his eye
rested on the shimmer at the valley's end which he knew to be the lake,
lifted up his hand and clapped his brow. "By Jove," he muttered, "if I
wasn't within an ace of clean forgetting!" The sight of the lake had
fortunately put him in mind that he was engaged to-day to lunch with
Lady Blanchemain at Roccadoro.
He found her ladyship, in a frock all concentric whirls of crisp white
ruffles, vigorously wielding a fan, and complaining of the heat.
(Indeed, as Annunziata had predicted, it had grown markedly warmer.) "I
shall fly away, if this continues; I shall fly straight to town, and set
my house in order for the season. When do _you_ come?" she asked,
smiling on him from her benign old eyes.
"I don't come," answered John. "I rather like town in autumn and winter,
when it's too dark to see its ugliness, but save me from it in the clear
light of summer."
"Fudge," said Lady Blanchemain. "London's the most beautiful capital in
Europe--it's grandiose. And it's the only place where there are any
people.
"Yes," said John, "but, as at Nice and Homburg, too many of them are
English. And there's a liberal scattering, I've heard, of Jews?"
"Oh, Jews are all right--when they aren't Jewy," said Lady Blanchemain,
with magnanimity. "I know some very nice ones. I was rather hoping you
would be a feature of my Sunday afternoons."
"I'm not a society man," said John. "I've no aptitude myself for
patronizing or toadying, and I don't particularly enjoy being patronized
or toadied to."
"Is that the beginning and end of social life in England?" Lady
Blanchemain inquired, delicately sarcastic.
"As I have seen it, yes," asseverated John. "The beginning, end, and
middle of social life in England, as in Crim-Tartary, is worship of the
longest pigtail,--a fetichism sometimes grosser, sometimes subtler,
sometimes deliberate, often unconscious and instinctive. Every one you
meet is aware that his pigtail is either longer or shorter than yours,
and accordingly, more or less subtly, grossly, unconsciously or
deliberately, swaggers or bends the knee. It's a state of things I've
tried in vain to find diverting."
"It's a state of things you'll find prevailing pretty well in all places
where the human species breeds," said Lady Blanchemain. "The only
difference will be a question of what constitutes the pigtail. And are
you, then, remaining at Sant' Alessina?"
"For the present," answered John.
"Until--?" she questioned.
"Oh, well, until she sends me away, or leaves herself," said he, "and so
my fool's paradise achieves its inevitable end."
Lady Blanchemain laughed--a long, quiet laugh of amused contentment.
"Come in to luncheon," she said, putting her soft white hand upon his
arm, "and tell me all about it." And when they were established at her
table, a round table, gay with flowers, in a window at the far end of
the cool, terazza-paved, stucco-columned dining-room of the Hotel
Victoria, "Why do you call it a fool's paradise?" she asked.
"Well, you see, I'm in love," said he.
"You really are?" she doubted, with sprightliness, looking gleeful.
"All too really," he assured her, in a sinking voice.
"What an old witch I was!" mused she, with satisfaction. "Accept my
heart-felt felicitations." She beamed upon him.
"I should prefer your condolences," said he, in a voice from the depths.
"_Allons donc!_ Cheer up," laughed she, dallying with her bliss. "Men
have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for love."
"I wonder," said John. "That is a statement, it seems to me, which would
be the better for some proving."
"At all events," said she, "you, for one, are not dead yet."
"No," admitted he; "though I could almost wish I was."
"Do you mean to say she has definitely rejected you?" she demanded,
alarmed.
"Fortune has spared her that necessity," said John. "I haven't asked
her, and I never shall. I haven't any money."
"Pooh! Is that all?" scoffed her ladyship, relieved. "You have
prospects."
"Remote ones--the remoter the better. I won't count on dead men's
shoes," said John.
"What is it your little fortune-teller at the Castle calls you?" asked
Lady Blanchemain, shrewdly, her dark old eyebrows up.
"She calls me _lucus a non lucendo_," was John's quick riposte; and the
lady laughed.
But in a moment she pulled a straight face. "I seriously counsel you to
have more faith," she said. "Go home and ask her to marry you; and if
she accepts,--you'll see. Money will come. Besides, your rank and your
prospective rank are assets which you err in not adding to the balance.
Go home, and propose to her."
"'Twould do no good," said John, dejectedly. "She regards me with
imperturbable indifference. I've made the fieriest avowals to her, and
she's never turned a hair."
Lady Blanchemain looked bewildered. "You've made avowals--?" she
falteringly echoed.
"I should rather think so," John affirmed. "Indirect ones, of course,
and I hope inoffensive, but fiery as live coals. In the third person,
you know. I've given her two and two; she has, you may be sure, enough
skill in mathematics to put 'em together."
"And she never turned a hair?" the lady marvelled.
"She jeered at me, she mocked me, she laughed and rode away," said he.
"She's probably in love with you," said Lady Blanchemain. "If a woman
will listen, if a woman will laugh! If you don't propose to her now,
having ensnared her young affections, you'll be something worse than the
wicked nobleman of song and story."
"Oh, well," John responded, conciliatory, "I dare say some of these days
a proposal will slip out when I least intend it. So I shall have done
the honourable thing--and I'm sure I can trust her to play fair and say
me nay."
Lady Blanchemain slowly shook her head. "I'm glad you're not _my_
lover," she devoutly murmured, plying her fan.
"Oh, but I am," cried John, with a bow, and an admiring flash of the
eyes.
Her soft old face lighted up; then it took on an expression of
resolution, and she set her strong old jaws.
"In that case," she remarked, "you will have the less reluctance in
granting a favour I'm about to ask you."
"What's the favour?" said John, in a tone of readiness.
"I want you to buy a pig in a poke," said she.
"Oh?" questioned he.
"Yes," said she. "I want you to make me a promise blindfold. I want you
to promise in the dark that you will do something. What it is that
you're to do you're not to know till the time comes. Will you promise?"
"Dearest lady," said the trustful young man, "I'm perfectly confident
that you would never ask me to do anything that I couldn't do with
profit to myself. Buy a pig in a poke? From you, without a moment's
hesitation. Of course I promise."
"Bravo, bravo," applauded Lady Blanchemain, glowing at her easy triumph.
"In a few days you'll receive a letter. That will tell you what it is
you're pledged to. And now, to reward you, come with me to my
sitting-room, and I will make you a little present."
When they had reached her sitting-room (dim and cool, with its
half-drawn blinds and the straw-coloured linen covers of its furniture),
she put into his hands a small case of shagreen, small and hard, and at
the edges white with age.
"Go to the window and see what's in it," she said.
And obeying, "By Jove, what a stunner!" he exclaimed. The case contained
a ring, a light circle of gold, set with a ruby, surrounded by a row of
diamonds,--for my part, I think the most beautiful ruby I have ever
seen. It was as big as a hazel-nut, or almost; it was cut, with
innumerable facets, in the shape of a heart; and it quivered and burned,
and flowed and rippled, liquidly, with the purest, limpidest red fire.
"'Tis the spirit of a rose, distilled and crystallized," said Lady
Blanchemain.
"'Tis a drop of liquid light," said John. "But why do you give it to me?
I can't wear it. I don't think I ought to accept it."
"Nobody asks you to wear it," said Lady Blanchemain. "It's a woman's
ring, of course. But as for accepting it, you need have no scruples.
It's an old Blanchemain gem, that was in the family a hundred years
before I came into it. It's properly an heirloom, and you're the heir.
I give it to you for a purpose. Should you ever become engaged, I desire
you to placcit upon the finger of the adventurous woman."
IV
Under a gnarled old olive, by the river's brim, Annunziata sat on the
turf, head bowed, so that her curls fell in a tangle all about her
cheeks, and gazed fixedly into the green waters, the laughing, dancing,
purling waters, green, and, where the sun reached them, shot with seams
and cleavages of light, like fluorspar. In the sun-flecked,
shadow-dappled grass near by, violets tried to hide themselves, but were
betrayed by their truant sweetness. The waters purled, a light breeze
rustled the olive-leaves, and birds were singing loud and wild, as birds
will after rain.
Maria Dolores, coming down the path that followed the river's windings,
stood for a minute, and watched her small friend without speaking. But
at last she called out, "_Ciao_, Annunziata. Are you dreaming dreams and
seeing visions?"
Annunziata started and looked up. "Sh-h!" she whispered, with an
admonitory gesture. She stole a wary glance roundabout, and then spoke
as one fearful of being overheard. "I was listening to the music of
Divopan," she said.
Maria Dolores, who had come closer, appeared at a loss. "The music
of--what?" she questioned.
"Sh-h!" whispered Annunziata. "I would not dare to say it aloud. The
music of Divopan."
"Divopan?" Maria Dolores puzzled, compliantly guarding her tone. "What
is that?"
"Divo--Pan," said Annunziata, dividing the word in two, and always with
an air of excessive caution.
But Maria Dolores helplessly shook her head. "I'm afraid I don't
understand. What is Divo--Pan?"
"Don't you know what a _divo_ is?" asked Annunziata, her clear grey eyes
surprised.
"Oh, a _divo?_" said Maria Dolores, getting a glimmer of light. "Ah,
yes, a divo is a saint, I think?
"Not exactly," Annunziata discriminated, "but something like one. The
saints, you see, are always very good, and _divi_ are sometimes bad.
But they are powerful, like saints. They can do anything they wish. Divo
Pan is the divo who makes all the music that you hear out of doors,--the
music of the wind and the water and the bird-songs. But you must be
careful never to praise his music aloud, lest Divo Apollone should hear
you. He is the divo that makes all the music you hear on instruments--on
harps and violins and pianos. He is very jealous of Divo Pan, and if he
hears you praising him, will do something to you. You know what he did
to King Mida, don't you?"
"What did he do?" asked Maria Dolores.
Annunziata stole another wary glance about.
"Once upon a time," she recounted, always in her lowest voice, "many
years ago, hundreds of years ago, the King of this country was named
Mida. And he loved very much the music of Divo Pan. He loved to sit by
the river here, and to listen to the music of the water, and of the
leaves, and of the birds. I love to do it too, and I think he was quite
right. But one day, in his house, there came a musician with a harp, and
began to play to him. And the King listened for a while, and then he
told the musician to stop. 'Your music is very good,' he said, 'but now
I am going into the fields and by the river, where I can hear a music I
like better.' But the musician with the harp was really Divo Apollone
himself; disguised. And this made him very angry and jealous. And to
punish King Mida he changed his ears to long hairy ears, like an ass's.
So, if you love the music of Divo Pan, you must be very careful not to
let Divo Apollone hear you praise it, or he will do something to you."
And to drive home this application of her theme, she held up a warning
finger.
Maria Dolores had listened, smiling. Now she gave a gay little laugh,
and then for a moment mused. "That is a very curious bit of history,"
she said, in the end. "How ever did it come to your knowledge?"
Annunziata shrugged. "Oh," she answered, "everybody knows that. I have
known it for years. My grandmother who lived in Milan told it to me.
Doesn't the water look cool and pleasant?" was her abrupt digression, as
she returned her gaze to the Rampio. "When it is hot like this, I
should like to lie down in the water, and go to sleep. Wouldn't you?"
"I'm not so sure," said Maria Dolores. "I should rather fear I might be
drowned."
"Oh, but that wouldn't hurt," said Annunziata, with security. "To be
drowned in such beautiful green water, among all those beams of light,
would be nice."
"Perhaps you are not aware," said Maria Dolores, "that when people are
drowned they die?"
"Oh, yes, I know that," said Annunziata. "But"--she raised calm pellucid
eyes--"wouldn't you like to die?"
"Certainly not," said Maria Dolores, a shadow on her face.
"I would," said Annunziata, stoutly. "It must be lovely to die."
"Hush," Maria Dolores rebuked her, frowning. "You must not say such
things."
"Why not say them, if you think them?" asked Annunziata.
"You mustn't think them either," said Maria Dolores.
"Oh, I can't help thinking them," said Annunziata, with a movement. "It
surely must be lovely to die and go to Heaven. If I were perfectly sure
I should go to Heaven, I would shut my eyes and die now. But I should
probably have to wait some time in Purgatory. And, of course, I might go
to Hell."
Maria Dolores' face was full of trouble. "You must not talk like that,"
she said. "You must not. It is wicked of you."
"Then, if I am wicked, I _should_ go to Hell?" inquired Annunziata,
looking alertly up.
Maria Dolores looked about her, looked across the river, down the
valley, as one in distress scanning the prospect for aid. "Of course you
would not," she said. "My dear child, can't we find something else to
talk of?"
"Do you think I shall have a very long and hard Purgatory?" asked
Annunziata.
Maria Dolores threw a despairing glance at the horizon.
"No, no, dear," she answered uneasily. "You will have a very short and
gentle one. Anyhow, you'll not have to consider that for years to come.
Now shall we change the subject?"
"Well," said Annunziata, with an air of deliberation, "if you are
perfectly sure I shall not go to Hell, and that my Purgatory will not
be long and hard, I think I will do what I said. I will lie down in the
water and go to sleep, and the water will drown me, and I shall die."
Maria Dolores' face was terrified. "Annunziata!" she cried. "You don't
know what you are saying. You are cruel. You won't do anything of the
sort. You must give me your solemn word of honour that you won't do
anything of the sort. It would be a most dreadful sin. Come. Come with
me now, away from here, away from the sight of the river. You must never
come here alone again. Give me your hand, and come away."
Annunziata got up, gave her hand, and moved off at Maria Dolores' side,
towards the Castle. "Of course," she said, "if I want to die, I don't
need to lie down in the water. I can die at any moment I wish, by just
shutting my eyes, and holding my breath, and telling my heart seven
times to stop beating. Heart, stop beating; heart, stop beating;--that
way, seven times."
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