My Friend Prospero

by Henry Harland

  V

  A curious little intimate inward glow, a sense, somewhere deep down inhis consciousness, of elation and well-being, accompanied John all theway to Roccadoro, mingling with and sweetening whatever thoughts orperceptions occupied his immediate attention. This was a "soul-state"that he knew of old, and he had no difficulty in referring it to itscause. It was the glow and the elation which he was fortunate enoughalways to experience when his eye had been fed with a fresh impressionof beauty; and he knew that he owed it to-day to the glimpse he had had,in the cool light under the ilexes, of a slender figure in lilac and atiny figure in grey, beside a soft-complexioned old marble bench in themidst of a shadowy, sunny, brown and green Italian garden.

  The drive to Roccadoro from Sant' Alessina is a pleasant drive. The roadfollows for the most part the windings of the Rampio, so that you areseldom out of sight of its gleaming waters, and the brawl of it, nowlouder, now less loud, is perpetually in your ears. To right and leftyou have the tender pink of blossoming almonds, with sometimes thescarlet flame of a pomegranate; and then the blue-grey hills, mantled ina kind of transparent cloth-of-gold, a gauze of gold, woven of haze andsunshine; and then, rosy white, with pale violet shadows, thesnow-peaks, cut like cameos upon the brilliant azure of the sky. Andsometimes, of course, you rattle through a village, with its crumbling,stained, and faded yellow-stuccoed houses, its dazzling white canvasawnings, its church and campanile, and its life that seems to passentirely in the street: men in their shirt sleeves, lounging, smoking,spitting (else the land were not Italy!), or perhaps playing cards at atable under the leafless bush of the wine-shop; women gossiping overtheir needlework, or, gathered in sociable knots, combing and binding uptheir sleek black hair; children sprawling in the kindly dirt; thepriest, biretta on head, nose in breviary, drifting slowly upon somepriestly errand, and "getting through his office;" and the immemorialgoatherd, bare-legged, in a tattered sugar-loaf hat, followed by hisflock, with their queer anxious faces, blowing upon his Pan's-pipes(shrill strains, in minor mode and plagal scale, a music older thanTheocritus), or stopping, jealously watched by the customer's avidItalian eyes, to milk "_per due centesimi_"--say, a farthing'sworth--into an outstretched, close-clutched jug. Sometimes the almondorchards give place to vineyards, or to maize fields, or to dusky grovesof walnut, or to plantations of scrubby oak where lean black pigs foragefor the delectable acorn. Sometimes the valley narrows to a ravine, andsigns of cultivation disappear, and the voice of the Rampio swells to aroar, and you become aware, between the hills that rise gloomy andalmost sheer beside you, of a great solitude: a solitude that isintensified rather than diminished by the sight of somelonely--infinitely lonely--grange, perched far aloft, at a height thatseems out of reach of the world. What possible manner of human beings,you wonder, can inhabit there, and what possible dreary manner ofexistence can they lead? But even in the most solitary places you arewelcomed and sped on by a chorus of bird-songs. The hillsides resoundwith bird-songs continuously for the whole seven miles,--andcontinuously, at this season, for the whole four-and-twenty hours.Blackbirds, thrushes, blackcaps, goldfinches, chaffinches, sing from thefirst peep of dawn till the last trace of daylight has died out, andthen the nightingales begin and keep it up till dawn again. Andeverywhere the soft air is aromatic with a faint scent of rosemary, forrosemary grows everywhere under the trees. And everywhere you have thepurity and brilliancy and yet restraint of colour, and the crisp economyof line, which give the Italian landscape its look of having beendesigned by a conscious artist.

  In and through his enjoyment of all these pleasantnesses, John felt thatagreeable glow which he owed to his glimpse of the woman in the garden;and when at last he reached the Hotel Victoria, and, having dressed,found himself alone for a few moments with Lady Blanchemain, in the dimand cool sitting-room where she awaited her guests, he hastened to lether know that he shared her own opinion of the woman's charms.

  "Your beauty decidedly _is_ a beauty," he declared. "I wish you couldhave seen her as I saw her an hour ago, with a white sunshade, against abackground of ilexes. It's a thousand pities that painting should be aforgotten art."

  But Lady Blanchemain (magnificent in purple velvet, with diamonds roundher throat and in her hair) didn't seem interested.

  "Do you know," she said, "I made yesterday one of the most ridiculousblunders of my life. It's been preying upon my mind ever since. Igenerally have pretty trustworthy perceptions, and perhaps this is asymptom of failing powers. I told myself positively that you were anEton and Balliol man. It never occurred to me till I was halfway homethat, as a Papist, you'd be nothing of the sort."

  "No," said John; "I'm afraid I'm Edgbaston and Paris. The way her hairgrows low about her brow, and swoops upwards and backwards in a sort oftidal wave, and breaks loose in little curling tendrils,--it'sabsolutely lyrical. And the smile at the bottom of her eyes is exactlylike silent music. And her mouth is a couplet in praise of love, withtwo red lips for rhymes. And her chin is a perfect epithalamium of achin. And then her figure! And then her lilac frock! Oh, it's athousand, thousand pities that painting should he a forgotten art."

  "What, the same lilac frock?" said Lady Blanchemain, absently. "Yet youcertainly have the Eton voice," she mused. "And if I don't pay you thedoubtful compliment of saying that you have the Balliol manner, you haveat least a kind of subtilized reminiscence of it."

  "I must keep a guard upon myself," said John. "She's visiting anAustrian woman who lives in a remote wing of the castle,--the pavilionbeyond the clock, in fact,--an Austrian woman of the exhilarating nameof 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 arrivedhere this morning with her aunt, Lady Louisa. Of course I'm putting younext 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 fartoo high a plane for a groundling like me. She's intellectual andearnest, 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,--seriousnovels, probably,--which she'll illuminate with beautiful irrelevantquotations 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--agrandson 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'srelentless answer.

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

  "What a jolly fan," said John.

  "Well, well," said Lady Blanchemain, reconciling herself. Then, after aninstant of pensiveness, "So you're already laid low by her beauty. Butyou 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. "Iarrived 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 admirablematerial for a painting, and regret that such material should go beggingfor 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'svisiting an Austrian Signora Brandi, who lives (I can't think why) inthe pavilion beyond the clock. But by this time to-morrow!" His gesturespoke volumes of prospective information.

  "She looked like a gentlewoman," reflected h
is 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. "AmongAustrians, unless you're born, you're impossible, you're nowhere. Brandidoesn't sound born, does it? We mustn't let you become enamoured of herif she isn't born."

  "Brandi sounds tremendously _un_born," assented John. "And if likevisits like, Signora Brandi's visitor will probably be unborn too. Butto me that would rather add an attraction,--provided she's _bred_. I'mnot 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 thedaughter of a miller,--of a rising miller, who has given his daughteradvantages. 'Bred, not Born: or the Lady of the Mill'--that shall be thetitle of my humble heart-history. If this woman could prove to me thatshe was the daughter of a miller, I'm not sure I shouldn't becomeenamoured of her on the spot. Well, I shall know to-morrow. By this timeto-morrow I shall possess her entire _dossier_. It may interest you tolearn 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 cometo 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 wormits inmost secrets from my sphinx's heart."

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

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