My Friend Prospero Part 12

"I will tell you," said Annunziata, her eyes heavy with thought.

"Listen, and I will tell you." She seated herself on the big round ottoman, and raised her face to his. "Have you ever been at a pantomime?" she asked.

"Yes," said John, wondering what could possibly be coming.

"Have you been at the pantomime," she continued earnestly, "when there was what they call a transformation-scene?"

"Yes," said John.

"Well," said she, "last winter I was taken to the pantomime at Bergamo, and I saw a transformation-scene. You ask me, what is Death? It is exactly like a transformation-scene. At the pantomime the scene was just like the world. There were trees, and houses, and people, common people, like any one. Then suddenly click! Oh, it was wonderful. Everything was changed. The trees had leaves of gold and silver, and the houses were like fairy palaces, and there were strange lights, red and blue, and there were great garlands of the most beautiful flowers, and the people were like angels, with gems and s.h.i.+ning clothes. Well, you understand, at first we had only seen one side of the scene;--then click! everything was turned round, and we saw the other side. That is like life and death. Always, while we are alive, we can see only one side of things.

But there is the other side, the under side. Never, so long as we are alive, we can never, never see it. But when we die,--click! It is a transformation-scene. Everything is turned round, and we see the other side. Oh, it will be very different, it will be wonderful. That is what they call Death."

It was John's turn to be grave. It was some time before he spoke. He looked down at her, with a kind of grave laughter in his eyes, admiring, considering. What could he say? ... What he did say, at last, was simply, "Thank you, my dear."

Annunziata jumped up.

"Oh, come," she urged. "Let's go into the garden. It is so much nicer there than here. There are lots of c.o.c.kchafers. Besides"--she held out as an additional inducement--"we might meet Maria Dolores."

"No," said John. "Though the c.o.c.kchafers are a temptation, I will stop here. But go you to the garden, by all means. And if you do meet Maria Dolores, tell her what you have just told me. I think she would like to hear it."

"All right," consented Annunziata, moving towards the door. "I'll see you at dinner. You won't forget the marchpane?"

II

John was in a state of mind that perplexed and rather annoyed him. Until the day before yesterday, his detachment here at Sant' Alessina from ordinary human society, the absence of people more or less of his own sort, had been one of the elements of his situation which he had positively, consciously, rejoiced in,--had been an appreciable part of what he had summarized to Lady Blanchemain as "the whole blessed thing."

He had his castle, his pictures, his garden, he had the hills and valley, the birds, the flowers, the clouds, the sun, he had the Rampio, he had Annunziata, he even had Annunziata's uncle; and with all this he had a sense of having stepped out of a world that he knew by heart, that he knew to satiety, a world that was stale and stuffy and threadbare, with its gilt rubbed off and its colours tarnished, into a world where everything was fresh and undiscovered and full of savour, a great cool blue and green world that from minute to minute opened up new perspectives, made new promises, brought to pa.s.s new surprises. And this sense, in some strange way, included Time as well as s.p.a.ce. It was as if he had entered a new region of Time, as if he had escaped from the moving current of Time into a stationary moment. Alone here, where modern things or thoughts had never penetrated, alone with the earth and the sky, the mediaeval castle, the dead ladies, with Annunziata, and the parroco, and the parroco's Ma.s.ses and Benedictions--to-day, he would please himself by fancying, might be a yesterday of long ago that had somehow dropped out of the calendar and remained, a fragment of the Past that had been forgotten and left over. The presence of a person of his own sort, a fellow citizen of his own period, wearing its clothes, speaking its speech, would have broken the charm, would have seemed as undesirable and as inappropriate as the introduction of an English meadow into the Italian landscape.

Yet now such a person had come, and behold, her presence, so far from breaking the charm, merged with and intensified it,--supplied indeed the one feature needed to perfect it. A person of his own sort? The expression is convenient. A fellow citizen, certainly, of his period, wearing its clothes, speaking its speech. But a person, happily, not of his own s.e.x, a woman, a beautiful woman; and what her presence supplied to the poetry of Sant' Alessina, making it complete, was, if you like, the Eternal Feminine. As supplied already by the painted women on the walls about him, this force had been static; as supplied by a woman who lived and breathed, it became dynamic. That was all very well; if he could have let it rest at that, if he could have confined his interest in her, his feeling about her, to the plane of pure aesthetics, he would have had nothing to complain of. But the mischief was that he couldn't.

The thing that perplexed and annoyed him,--and humiliated him too, in some measure,--was a craving that had sprung up over-night, and was now strong and constant, to get into personal touch with her, to make her acquaintance, to talk with her; to find out a little what manner of soul she had, to establish some sort of human relation with her. It wasn't in the least as yet a sentimental craving; or, if it was, John at any rate didn't know it. In its essence, perhaps, it was little more than curiosity. But it was disturbing, upsetting, it destroyed the peace and the harmonious leisure of his day. It perplexed him, it was outside his habits, it was unreasonable. "Not unreasonable to think it might be fun to talk to a pretty woman," he discriminated, "but unreasonable to yearn to talk to her as if your life hung in the balance." And in some measure, too, it humiliated him: it was a confession of weakness, of insufficiency to himself, of dependence for his contentment upon another. He tried to stifle it; he tried to fix his mind on subjects that would lead far from it. Every subject, all subjects, subjects the most discrepant, seemed to possess one common property, that of leading straight back to it. Then he said, "Well, if you can't stifle it, yield to it. Go down into the garden--hunt her up--boldly engage her in conversation." a.s.surance was the note of the man; but when he pictured himself in the act of "boldly engaging her in conversation," his a.s.surance oozed away, and he was conscious of a thrice-humiliating shyness. Why? What _was_ there in the woman that should turn a brave man shy?

However, the stars were working for him. That afternoon, coming home from a stroll among the olives, he met her face to face at the gate of the garden, whither she had arrived from the direction of the village.

Having made his bow, which she accepted with a smile, he could do no less than open the gate for her; and as their ways must thence lie together, up the long ilex-shaded avenue to the castle, it would be an awkward affectation not to speak. And yet (he ground his teeth at having to admit it) his heart had begun to pound so violently, (not from emotion, he told himself,--from a mere ridiculous sort of nervous excitement: what _was_ there in the woman that should excite a sane man like that?) he was afraid to trust his voice, lest it should quaver and betray him. But fortunately this pounding of the heart lasted only a few seconds. The short business of getting the gate open, and of closing it afterwards, gave it time to pa.s.s. So that now, as they set forwards towards the house, he was able to look her in the eye, and to observe, with impressiveness, that it was a fine day.

She had accepted his bow with a smile, amiable and unembarra.s.sed; and at this, in quite the most unembarra.s.sed manner, smiling again,--perhaps with just the faintest, just the gentlest shade of irony, and with just the slightest quizzical upward tremor of the eyebrows,--"Isn't it a day rather typical of the land and season?" she inquired.

It was the first step that had cost. John's a.s.surance was coming swiftly back. Her own air of perfect ease in the circ.u.mstances very likely accelerated it. "Yes," he answered her. "But surely that isn't a reason for begrudging it a word of praise?"

By this he was lucky enough to provoke a laugh, a little light gay trill, sudden and brief like three notes on a flute.

"No," she admitted. "You are right. The day deserves the best we can say of it."

"Her voice," thought John, availing himself of a phrase that had struck him in a book he had lately read, "her voice is like ivory and white velvet." And the touch, never so light, of a foreign accent with which she spoke, rendered her English piquant and pretty,--gave to each syllable a crisp little clean-cut outline. They sauntered on for a minute or two in silence, with half the width of the road-way between them, the shaded road-way, where the earth showed purple through a thin green veil of mosses, and where irregular shafts of sunlight, here and there, turned purple and green to red and gold. The warm air, woven of garden-fragrances, hung round them palpable, like some infinitely subtile fabric. And of course blackbirds were calling, blackcaps and thrushes singing, in all the leafy galleries overhead. A fine day indeed, mused John, and indeed worthy of the best that they could say.

His nervousness, his excitement, had entirely left him, his a.s.surance had come completely back; and with it had come a curious deep satisfaction, a feeling that for the moment at any rate the world left nothing to be wished for, that the cup of his desire was full. He didn't even, now that he might do so, wish to talk to her. To walk with her was enough,--to enjoy her companions.h.i.+p in silence. Yes, that was it--companions.h.i.+p. He caught at the word. "That is what I have been unconsciously needing all along. I flattered myself that I was luxuriating in the very absence of it. But man is a gregarious animal, and I was deceived." So he could refer the effect of her propinquity to the mere gregarious instinct, not suspecting that a more powerful instinct was already awake. Anyhow, his sense of that propinquity,--his consciousness of her, gracefully moving beside him in the sweet weather, while her summery garments fluttered, and some strange, faint, elusive perfume was shaken from them,--filled him with a satisfaction that for the moment seemed ultimate. He had no wish to talk. Their progress side by side was a conversation without words. They were getting to know each other, they were breaking the ice. Each step they took was as good as a spoken sentence, was a mutual experience, drawing them closer, helping to an understanding. They walked slowly, as by a tacit agreement.

Silence, however, couldn't in the nature of things last for ever. It was she who presently broke it.

"I owe you," she said, in her ivory voice, with her clean-cut enunciation, "a debt of thanks." And still again she smiled, as she looked over towards him, her dark eyes glowing, her dark hair richly drooping, in the shadow of a big hat of wine-coloured straw.

John's eyes were at a loss. "Oh--?" he wondered.

"For a pleasure given me by our friend Annunziata," she explained. "This morning she told me a most interesting parable about Death. And she mentioned that it was you who had suggested to her to tell it me."

"Oh," said John, laughing, while the pink of his skin deepened a shade.

"She mentioned that, did she? I'm glad if you don't feel that I took a good deal upon myself. But she had just told the same parable to me, and it seemed a pity it shouldn't have a larger audience."

Then, after a few more paces taken again in silence, "What a marvellous little person she is, Annunziata!" said Maria Dolores.

"She's to a marvellous degree the right product of her milieu," said John.

Maria Dolores did not speak, but her eyes questioned, "Yes? How do you mean?"

"I mean that she's a true child of the presbytery," he replied, "and at the same time a true child of this Italy, where Paganism has never perfectly died. She has been carefully instructed in her catechism, and she has fed upon pious legends, she has breathed an ecclesiastical atmosphere, until the things of the Church have become a part of her very bone. She sees everything in relation to them, translates everything in terms of them. But at the same time odd streaks of Paganism survive in her. They survive a little--don't they?--in all Italians. Wherever she goes her eye reads omens. She will cast your fortune for you with olive-stones. The woods are peopled for her by fauns and dryads. When she takes her walks abroad, I've no doubt, she catches glimpses of Proteus rising from the lake, and hears old Triton blow his wreathed horn."

Maria Dolores looked interested.

"Yes," she said, slowly, thoughtfully, and meditated for an interval.

By-and-by, "You know," she recommenced, "she's a sort of little person about whom one can't help feeling rather frightened." And her eyes looked to his for sympathetic understanding.

But his were interrogative. "No? Why should one feel frightened about her?"

"Oh," said Maria Dolores, with a movement, "it isn't exactly easy to tell why. One's fears are vague. But--well, for one thing, she thinks so much about Death. Death and what comes after,--they interest her so much. It doesn't seem natural, it makes one uneasy. And then she's so delicate-looking. Sometimes she's almost transparent. In every way she is too serious. She uses her mind too much, and her body too little. She ought to have more of the gaiety of childhood, she ought to have other children to romp with. She's too much like a disembodied spirit. It all alarms one."

John, as she spoke, frowned, pondering. When she had done, his frown cleared, he shook his head.

"I don't think it need," he said. "Her delicacy, her frailness, have never struck me as indicating weakness,--they seem simply the proper physical accompaniments of her crystalline little soul,--she's made of a fine and delicate clay. She thinks about Death, it is true, but not in a morbid way,--and that's a part of her ecclesiastical tradition; and she thinks quite as much about life,--she thinks about everything. I agree with you, it's a pity she has no other children. But she isn't by any means deficient in the instincts of childhood. She can enjoy a chocolate cigar, for instance, as well as another; and as for marchpane, I have her own word that she adores it."

Maria Dolores gave another light trill of laughter.

"Yes, I'm aware of her pa.s.sion for marchpane. She confided it to me this morning. And as, in reply to her questions, I admitted that I rather liked it myself, she very generously offered to bring me some this afternoon,--which, to be sure, an hour ago, she did."

She laughed again, and John laughed too.

"All the same" she insisted, "I can't help that feeling of uneasiness about her. Sometimes, when I look at her, I can almost see her wings.

What will be her future, if she grows up? One would rather not think of her as married to some poor Italian, and having to give herself to the prosaic sort of existence that would mean."

"The sordid sort of existence," augmented John. "No, one would decidedly rather not. But she will never marry. She will enter religion. Her uncle has it all planned out. He destines her for the Servites."

"Oh? The Servites--the Mantellate? I am glad of that," exclaimed Maria Dolores. "It is a most beautiful order. They have an especial devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows."

"Yes," said John, and remembered it was for Our Lady of Sorrows that she who spoke was named.

Slow though their march had been, by this time they had come to the end of the avenue, and were in the wide circular sweep before the castle.

They stopped here, and stood looking off over the garden, with its sombre cypresses and bright beds of geranium, down upon the valley, dim and luminous in a mist of gold. Great, heavy, fantastic-shaped clouds, pearl-white with pearl-grey shadows, piled themselves up against the scintillant dark blue of the sky. In and out among the rose-trees near at hand, where the sun was hottest, heavily flew, with a loud bourdonnement, the c.o.c.kchafers promised by Annunziata,--big, blundering, clumsy, the scorn of their light-winged and business-like compet.i.tors, the bees. Lizards lay immobile as lizards cast in bronze, only their little glittering, watchful pin-heads of eyes giving sign of life. And of course the blackcaps never for a moment left off singing.

They stood side by side, within a yard of each other, in silent contemplation of these things, during I don't know how many long and, for John, delicious seconds. Yes, he owned it to himself; it was delicious to feel her standing there beside him, in silent communion with him, contemplating the same things, enjoying the same pleasantnesses. Companions.h.i.+p--companions.h.i.+p: it was what he had been unconsciously needing all along! ... At last she turned, and, withdrawing her eyes lingeringly from the landscape, looked into his, with a smile. She did not speak, but her smile said, just as explicitly as her lips could have done, "What a scene of beauty!"