My Friend Prospero. Harland Henry
subtle, brave, shy, pious, pleasure-loving women of the long ago. With them; with their hair and eyes and jewels, their tip-tilted, scornful, witty little noses, their 'throats so round and lips so red,' their splendid raiment; with their mirth, pathos, passion, kindness and cruelty, their infinite variety, their undying youth. Ah, the pity of it! Their undying youth—and they so irrevocably dead. Peace be to their souls! See," he suddenly declaimed, laughing, "how the sun, the very sun in heaven, is contending with me, as to which of us shall do them the greater homage, the sun that once looked on their living forms, and remembers—see how he lights memorial lamps about them," for the sun, reflected from the polished floor, threw a sheen upon the ancient canvases, and burned bright in the bosses of the frames. "Give me these," he wound up, "a book or two, and a jug of the parroco's 'included wine'—my wilderness is paradise enow."
Lady Blanchemain's eyes, as she listened, had become deep wells of disappointment, then gushing fountains of reproach.
"Oh, you villain!" she groaned, when he had ended, shaking her pretty fist. "So to have raised my expectations, and so to dash them!—Do you really mean," still clinging to a shred of hope, she pleaded, "really, really mean that there's no—no actual woman?"
"I'm sorry," said John, "but I'm afraid I really, really do."
"And you're not—not really in love with any one?"
"No—not really," he said, with a mien that feigned contrition.
"But at your age—how old are you?" she broke off to demand.
"Somewhere between twenty-nine and thirty, I believe," he laughed.
"And in such a romantic environment, and not on account of a woman! It's downright unnatural," she declared. "It's flat treason against the kingly state of youth."
"I'm awfully sorry," said John. "Yet, after all, what's the good of repining? Nothing could happen even if there were a woman."
Lady Blanchemain looked alarmed.
"Nothing could happen? What do you mean? You're not married? If you are, it must be secretly, for you're put down as single in Burke."
"To the best of my knowledge," John reassured her, laughing, "Burke is right. And I prayerfully trust he may never have occasion to revise his statement."
"For mercy's sake," cried she, "don't tell me you're a woman-hater!"
"That's just the point," said he. "I'm an adorer of the sex."
"Well, then?" questioned she, at a loss. "How can you 'prayerfully' wish to remain a bachelor? Besides, aren't you heir to a peerage? What of the succession?"
"That's just the point," he perversely argued. "And you know there are plenty of cousins."
"Just the point! just the point!" fretted Lady Blanchemain. "What's just the point? Just the point that you aren't a woman-hater?—just the point that you're heir to a peerage? You talk like Tom o' Bedlam."
"Well, you see," expounded John, unruffled, "as an adorer of the sex, and heir to a peerage, I shouldn't want to marry a woman unless I could support her in what they call a manner becoming her rank—and I couldn't."
"Couldn't?" the lady scoffed. "I should like to know why not?"
"I'm too—if you will allow me to clothe my thought in somewhat homely language—too beastly poor."
"You—poor?" ejaculated Lady Blanchemain, falling back.
"Ay—but honest," asseverated John, to calm her fears.
She couldn't help smiling, though she resolutely frowned.
"Be serious," she enjoined him. "Doesn't your uncle make you a suitable allowance?"
"I should deceive you," answered John, "if I said he made me an unsuitable one. He makes me, to put it in round numbers, exactly no allowance whatsoever."
"The—old—curmudgeon!" cried Lady Blanchemain, astounded, and fiercely scanning her words.
"No," returned John, soothingly, "he isn't a curmudgeon. But he's a very peculiar man. He's a Spartan, and he lacks imagination. It has simply never entered his head that I could need an allowance. And, if you come to that, I can't say that I positively do. I have a tiny patrimony—threepence a week, or so—enough for my humble necessities, though scarcely perhaps enough to support the state of a future peeress. No, my uncle isn't a curmudgeon; he's a very fine old boy, of whom I'm immensely proud, and though I've yet to see the colour of his money, we're quite the best of friends. At any rate, you'll agree that it would be the deuce to pay if I were to fall in love.
"Ffff," breathed Lady Blanchemain, fanning. "What did I say of an age of prose and prudence? Yet you don't look cold-blooded. What does money matter? Dominus providebit. Go read Browning. What's 'the true end, sole and single' that we're here for? Besides, have you never heard that there are such things as marriageable heiresses in the world?"
"Oh, yes, I've heard that," John cheerfully assented. "But don't they almost always squint or something? I've heard, too, that there are such things as tufted fortune-hunters, but theirs is a career that requires a special vocation, and I'm afraid I haven't got it."
"Then you're no true Marquis of Carabas," the lady took him smartly up.
"You've found me out—I'm only a faux-marquis," he laughed.
"Thrrr!" breathed Lady Blanchemain, and for a little while appeared lost in thought. By-and-by she got up and went to the window, and stood looking out. "I never saw a lovelier landscape," she said, musingly. "With the grey hills, and the snow-peaks, and the brilliant sky, with the golden light and the purple shadows, and the cypresses and olives, with the river gleaming below there amongst the peach-blossoms, and—isn't that a blackcap singing in the mimosa? It only needs a pair of lovers to be perfect—it cries for a pair of lovers. And instead of them, I find—what? A hermit and celibate. Look here. Make a clean breast of it. Are you cold-blooded?" she asked from over her shoulder.
John merely giggled.
"It would serve you right," said she, truculently, "if some one were to rub your eyes with love-in-idleness, to make you dote upon the next live creature that you see."
John merely chuckled.
"I'll tell you what," she proceeded, "I'm a bit of an old witch, and I'll risk a soothword. As there isn't already a woman, there'll shortly be one—my thumbs prick. The stage is set, the scene is too appropriate, the play's inevitable. It was never in the will of Providence that a youth of your complexion should pass the springtime in a spot all teeming with romance like this, and miss a love adventure. A castle in a garden, a flowering valley, and the Italian sky—the Italian sun and moon! Your portraits of these smiling dead women too, if you like, to keep your imagination working. And blackcaps singing in the mimosa. No, no. The lady of the piece is waiting in the wings—my thumbs prick. Give her but the least excuse, she'll enter, and … Good Heavens, my prophetic soul!" she suddenly, with a sort of catch in her throat, broke off.
She turned and faced him, cheeks flushed, eyes flashing.
"Oh, you hypocrite! You monstrous fibber!" she cried, on a tone of jubilation, looking daggers.
"Why? What's up? What's the matter?" asked John, at fault.
"How could you have humbugged me so?" she wailed, in delight, reverting to the window. "Anyhow, she's charming. She's made for the part. I couldn't pray for a more promising heroine."
"She? Who?" asked he, crossing to her side.
"Who? Fie, you slyboots!" she crowed with glee.
"Ah, I see," said John.
For, below them, in the garden, just beyond the mimosa (all powdered with fresh gold) where the blackcap was singing, stood a woman.
IX