My Friend Prospero
Page 9
II
She stood on one of the higher terraces, (a very charming pictureindeed, bright and erect, in the warm shadow of the olives), and wascalling down to a couple of peasants at work on the other side of thestream. Between the thumb and forefinger of an ungloved fair right hand,she held up a silver lira.
Anemones, said she! Near to where the men were working, by the river'sbrink, there was a space of level ground, perhaps a hundred feet long,and tapering from half that breadth to a point. And this was simplycrimson and purple with a countless host of anemones.
She called to the men, and one seeing and hearing her would have thoughtthey must abandon everything, and spring to do her bidding. But theydidn't. Pausing only long enough to give her a phlegmatic stare, as ifin doubt whether conceivably she could have the impertinence to beaddressing _them_, and vouchsafing not a word, each went calmly on withhis employment;--very, very calmly, _piano_, _piano_, gently, languidly,filling small baskets with fallen olives, and emptying them uponoutspread canvas sheets. There are, and more's the pity, two types ofItalian peasant. There's the old type, which we knew in our youth, andhappily it still survives in some numbers,--the peasant who, for all hisrags and tatters, has manners that will often put one's own to shame,and, with a _simpatia_ like second-sight, is before one's wishes, in hiseagerness to serve and please. And there is the new type, which we knowto our disgust, and unhappily it multiplies like vermin,--the peasantwho has lent his ear to the social democrat, and, his heart envenomed byclass hatred, meets your civility with black glances and the behaviourof a churl in the sulks.
So, though her voice was sweet to hear, and though, standing there inthe warm penumbra of the olive orchard, tall and erect and graceful, inher bright frock, she made a charming picture, and though she offered asilver lira as a prize, the men merely stared at her churlishly, andwent on with their work--languidly, sluggishly, as men who deemed thenecessity to work an outrage, and weren't going to condone it by workingwith anything like a will.
Now, John Blanchemain, as I have previously mentioned, was anunselfconscious sort of fellow. In his unselfconsciousness, forgettingseveral trifles that might properly have weighed with him, (forgettingthe tarnished gorgeousness of his Turkish slippers for example, and histowzled head, and the bathing-towel that flowed like a piece of classicdrapery from his shoulder), obeying impulse and instinct, he flunghimself into the breach.
"Brutes," he muttered between his teeth. Then, in his easiestman-of-the-worldy accents, "If you can wait two minutes," he calledaloud to her. And therewith he went scrambling down the terraces andpicked his way from stone to stone across the shallows, to the field ofanemones, where their satiny petals, like crisping wavelets, alla-ripple in the moving air, shimmered with constantly changing lights.And in a twinkling he had gathered a great armful, and was clamberingback.
"I beg of you," he said, in his abrupt fashion, holding them out toher, and slightly bowing, with that nothing-doubting assurance of his,while his blue eyes (to put her entirely at her ease) smiled, frank andfriendly and serene, into her dark ones.
But hers seemed troubled. She looked at the flowers, she looked at John,I think she even looked at her lira. Her eyes seemed undecided.
"Do pray take them," said he, still smiling, still frank and assured,but as if a little puzzled, a little amused, by her hesitation, and moreairily a man-of-the-world than ever, his tone one of high detachment, tospare her any possible feeling of personal obligation, and to place hisperformance in the light of a matter of course,--as if indeed he haddone nothing more than pick up and return, say, a handkerchief she mighthave dropped. "You were right," he owned to his thought of LadyBlanchemain; "she is beautiful." Here, at close quarters with her, one'sperception of her beauty became acute,--here, under the grey old trees,in the leafy dimness, alone with her, at two paces from her, where thebirds sang and the violets gave forth their fragrant breath. He saw thather eyes were beautiful (soft and deep and luminous, despite theirtrouble), and her low white brow, and the dark masses of her hair, underher garden-hat, and the rose in her cheeks, and the red-rose of hermouth. And he saw and felt the beauty and the vitality of her strongyoung body.
But meanwhile she had stretched forth, rather timidly, that unglovedfair hand of hers, and taken the flowers.
"You are very good, I am sure. Thank you very much," she said, ratherfaintly, with a grave little inclination of the head.
John, always with magnificent assurance, put up his hand, to doff aman-of-the-worldy hat, and bow himself away;--and it encountered hisbare locks, bare, and still wet from recent ducking. Whereupon,suddenly, the trifles he had forgotten were remembered, and at last (inthe formula of the criminologist) "he realized his position:" hatlessand uncombed, with the bathing-towel slung from his shoulder, in thatweather-beaten old frieze coat with its ridiculous buttons, in thoseawful Turkish slippers,--offering, with his grand manner, flowers to awoman he didn't know, and smiling, to put her at her ease! His pinkface burned to a livelier pink, his ears went hot, his heart went cold.The bow he finally accomplished was the blighted bud of the bow he hadprojected; and, as the earth didn't, of its charity, open and engulfhim, he hastened as best he could, and with a painful sense of slinking,to remove his crestfallen person from her range of view.
When these unselfconscious fellows are startled into selfconsciousness,I fancy they take it hard. I don't know how long it was before John haddone heaping silent curses, silent but savage, upon himself; his luck,his "beastly officiousness," upon the whole afflicting incident: cursesthat he couldn't help diversifying now and then with a catch ofsplenetic laughter, as a vision of the figure he had cut wouldrecurrently
"--_flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude_."
"Oh, you _ape!_" he groaned. "Rigged out like Pudding Jack, and, withyour ineffable simagrees, offering a strange woman flowers!"
If _she_ had only laughed, had only smiled, it wouldn't have been sobad, it would have shown that she understood. "But through it all," hewrithed to recollect, "she was as solemn as a mourner. I suppose she wasshocked--perhaps she was frightened--very likely she took me for atramp. I wonder she didn't crown my beatitude by giving me her lira.These foreigners do so lack certain discernments."
And with that rather an odd detail came back to him. _Was_ she aforeigner? For it came vaguely back that he, impulsive and unthinking,had spoken to her throughout in English. "And anyhow,"--this camedistinctly back,--"it was certainly in English that she thanked me."