I
It was Sunday. It was early morning. It was raining,--a fine quiet,determined rain, that blurred the lower reaches of the valley, andentirely hid the mountain-tops, so that one found it hard not to doubt alittle whether they were still there. Near at hand the garden was as ifa thin web of silver had been cast over it, pale and dim, where wetsurfaces reflected the diffused daylight. And just across the Rampio, onthe olive-clad hillside that rose abruptly from its brink, rather aninteresting process was taking place,--the fabrication of clouds, noless. The hillside, with its rondure of blue-grey foliage, would lie fora moment quite bare and clear; then, at some high point, a mist wouldbegin to form, would appear indeed to issue from the earth, as smokefrom a subterranean fire, white smoke with pearly shadows; would thickenand spread out; would draw together and rise in an irregular spiralcolumn, curling, swaying, poising, as if uncertain what to do next; andat last, all at once making up its mind, (how like a younker or aprodigal!), would go sailing away, straggling away, amorphous, on a puffof wind, leaving the hillside clear again;--till, presently, the processwould recommence _da capo_.
John and Annunziata, seated together on a marble bench in the shelter ofthe great cloister, with its faded frescoes, at the north-easternextremity of the castle buildings, had been watching this element-playfor some minutes in silence. But by-and-by Annunziata spoke.
"What makes the cloud come out of the hill like that?" she asked, hereyes anxiously questioning his. "I have seen it happen many times, but Icould never understand it. There cannot be a fire underneath?"
"If _you_ can't understand it, Mistress Wisdom," responded John, smilingon her, "you surely mustn't expect a featherpate like me to. Betweenourselves, I don't believe any one can really understand it, thoughthere's a variety of the human species called scientists who mightpretend they could. It's all a part of that great scheme of miracles bywhich God's world goes on, Nature, which nobody can really understand inthe very least. All that the chaps called scientists can really do is toobserve and more or less give names to the miracles. They can't explain'em."
"It is great pleasure to watch such things," said Annunziata. "It is agreat blessing to be allowed to see a miracle performed with your owneyes."
"So it is," agreed John. "And if you keep your eyes well open, there'snot a minute of the livelong day when you mayn't see one."
"It is very strange," said Annunziata, "but when the sun shines, then Ilove the sunny weather, and am glad that it does not rain. Yet when itdoes rain, then I find that I love the rain too, that I love it just asmuch as the sun,--it is so fresh, it smells so good, the raindrops areso pretty, and they make such a pretty sound where they fall, and thegrey light is so pleasant."
"Our loves," said John, "are always very strange. Love is the rummestmiracle of them all. It is even more difficult to account for than theformation of clouds on the hillside."
"We love the things that give us pleasure," said Annunziata.
"And the people, sometimes, who give us pain," said John.
"We love the people, first of all, who are related to us," saidAnnunziata, "and then the people we see a great deal of--just as I love,first of all, my uncle, and then you and Marcella the cook."
"Who brings in the inevitable veal," said John. "Thank you, Honeymouth."He bowed and laughed, while Annunziata's grave eyes wondered what he waslaughing at. "But it isn't every one," he pointed out, "who has yoursolid and well-balanced little head-piece. It isn't every one who keepshis love so neatly docketed, or so sanely submitted to the sway ofreason. Some of us love first of all people who aren't related to us inthe remotest degree, and people we've seen hardly anything of and knownext to nothing about."
Annunziata deprecatingly shook her head.
"It is foolish to love people we know nothing about," she declared, inher deep voice, and looked a very sage delivering judgment.
"True enough," said John. "But what would you have? Some of us are bornto folly, as the sparks fly upward. You see, there's a mighty differencebetween love and love. There's the love which is affection, there's thelove which is cupboard-love, and there's the love which is just simplylove-love and nothing else. The first, as you have truly observed, hasits roots in consanguinity or association, the second in a lively hopeof future comfits, and either is sufficiently explicable. But the thirdhas its roots apparently in mere haphazard and causelessness, and isn'texplicable by any means whatsoever, and yet is far and away theviolentest of the three. It falls as the lightning from the clouds, andstrikes whom it will. Though I mix my metaphors fearlessly, like a man,I trust, with your feminine intuition, you follow me?"
"No," said Annunziata, without compunction, her eyes on the distance. "Idon't know what you mean."
"Thank Heaven you don't, pray Heaven you never may," said herinconsequential friend. "For love-love is a plague. You meet a person,for example, in a garden. You know nothing whatever about her, not evenher name, though you fear it may be Schmidt. You meet her not more thanhalf a dozen times all told. And suddenly one morning you wake up todiscover that she has become to you the person of first importance inthe world. She is practically a total stranger to you, she's of adifferent nationality, a different rank, yet she's infinitely the mostprecious and important person in the world. When you're absent from heryou can do nothing but think of her, gloating with throes of aromaticpain over the memory of your last meeting with her, longing withsoul-hunger for your next. The merest flutter of her gown, modulation ofher voice, glance of her eye, will throw your heart into a palpitation.You look in the direction of the house that she inhabits, and you feelthe emotions of a Peri looking at the gate of Eden. And it gives you thestrangest sort of strange joy to talk about her, though of course youtake pains to talk about her in veiled terms, obliquely, so that yourlistener shan't guess _whom_ you are talking about. In short, she is thebe-all and the end-all of your existence,--and you don't even know hername, though you fear it may be Schmidt."
He lolled back at ease on the marble bench, and twirled his yellow-redmoustaches, fancy free.
"But you do know her name," said Annunziata, simply, in her deepestvoice, holding him with a gaze, lucent and serious, that seemed almostreproachful. "Her name is Maria Dolores."
The thing was tolerably unexpected. What wonder if it put my hero out ofcountenance? His attitude grew rigid, his pink skin three shades pinker;his blue eyes stared at her, startled. So for a second; then he relaxed,and laughed, laughed long and heartily, perhaps a little despitefullytoo, at his own expense. ... But he must try, if he might, to repair themischief.
"My poor child," he said, resting his hand on her curls, and gentlysmoothing them. "You are what the French call an _enfant terrible_. Youare what the English call a deuced sharp little pickle. And I must try,if I can, without actually lying, to persuade you that you are utterlymistaken, utterly and absolutely mistaken,"--he raised his voice, forgreater convincingness,--"and that her name is nothing distantlyresembling the name that you have spoken, and that in fact her name isMrs. Harris, and that in fine there is no such person, and that I wasmerely talking hypothetically, in abstractions; I must draw a herringacross the trail, I must raise a dust, and throw a lot of it into youramazingly clear-sighted little eyes. Now, is it definitely impressedupon you that her name is _not_--the thrice-adorable name youmentioned?"
"I thought it was," answered Annunziata. "I am sorry it is not." Andthen she dismissed the subject. "See, it is raining harder. See how therain comes down in long strings of beads,--see how it is like a networkof long strings of glass beads falling through the air. When the raincomes down like that, it means that after the rain stops it will be veryhot. To-morrow it will be very hot."
The bell in the clock-tower tolled out seven solemn strokes; then thelighter-toned and nimbler-tongued bell of the church began to ring.
"Come," peremptorily said Annunziata, jumping up. "Mass."
She held out her hand, took John's, and, like a mother, led the meek andunquestioning young m
an to his duties.
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