My Friend Prospero Part 22

III

"Rain before seven, clear before eleven," is as true, or as untrue, in Lombardy as it is in other parts of the world. The rain had held up, and now, in that spirited phrase of Corvo's, "here came my lord the Sun,"

splendidly putting the clouds to flight, or chaining them, transfigured, to his chariot-wheels; clothing the high snow-peaks in a roseate glory, (that seemed somehow, I don't know why, to accent their solitude and their remoteness); flooding the valley with ethereal amber; turning the swollen Rampio to a river of fire while the nearer hillsides, the olive woods, the trees in the Castle garden, glistened with a million million crystals, and the petals of the flowers were crystal-tipped; while the breath of the earth rose in long streamers of luminous incense, and the sky gleamed with every tender, every brilliant, tint of blue, from the blue of pale forgetmenots to the blue of larkspur.

John, contemplating this spectacle, (and thinking of Maria Dolores?

revolving still her cryptic valediction?), all at once, as his eye rested on the s.h.i.+mmer at the valley's end which he knew to be the lake, lifted up his hand and clapped his brow. "By Jove," he muttered, "if I wasn't within an ace of clean forgetting!" The sight of the lake had fortunately put him in mind that he was engaged to-day to lunch with Lady Blanchemain at Roccadoro.

He found her ladys.h.i.+p, in a frock all concentric whirls of crisp white ruffles, vigorously wielding a fan, and complaining of the heat.

(Indeed, as Annunziata had predicted, it had grown markedly warmer.) "I shall fly away, if this continues; I shall fly straight to town, and set my house in order for the season. When do _you_ come?" she asked, smiling on him from her benign old eyes.

"I don't come," answered John. "I rather like town in autumn and winter, when it's too dark to see its ugliness, but save me from it in the clear light of summer."

"Fudge," said Lady Blanchemain. "London's the most beautiful capital in Europe--it's grandiose. And it's the only place where there are any people.

"Yes," said John, "but, as at Nice and Homburg, too many of them are English. And there's a liberal scattering, I've heard, of Jews?"

"Oh, Jews are all right--when they aren't Jewy," said Lady Blanchemain, with magnanimity. "I know some very nice ones. I was rather hoping you would be a feature of my Sunday afternoons."

"I'm not a society man," said John. "I've no apt.i.tude myself for patronizing or toadying, and I don't particularly enjoy being patronized or toadied to."

"Is that the beginning and end of social life in England?" Lady Blanchemain inquired, delicately sarcastic.

"As I have seen it, yes," a.s.severated John. "The beginning, end, and middle of social life in England, as in Crim-Tartary, is wors.h.i.+p of the longest pigtail,--a fetichism sometimes grosser, sometimes subtler, sometimes deliberate, often unconscious and instinctive. Every one you meet is aware that his pigtail is either longer or shorter than yours, and accordingly, more or less subtly, grossly, unconsciously or deliberately, swaggers or bends the knee. It's a state of things I've tried in vain to find diverting."

"It's a state of things you'll find prevailing pretty well in all places where the human species breeds," said Lady Blanchemain. "The only difference will be a question of what const.i.tutes the pigtail. And are you, then, remaining at Sant' Alessina?"

"For the present," answered John.

"Until--?" she questioned.

"Oh, well, until she sends me away, or leaves herself," said he, "and so my fool's paradise achieves its inevitable end."

Lady Blanchemain laughed--a long, quiet laugh of amused contentment.

"Come in to luncheon," she said, putting her soft white hand upon his arm, "and tell me all about it." And when they were established at her table, a round table, gay with flowers, in a window at the far end of the cool, terazza-paved, stucco-columned dining-room of the Hotel Victoria, "Why do you call it a fool's paradise?" she asked.

"Well, you see, I'm in love," said he.

"You really are?" she doubted, with sprightliness, looking gleeful.

"All too really," he a.s.sured her, in a sinking voice.

"What an old witch I was!" mused she, with satisfaction. "Accept my heart-felt felicitations." She beamed upon him.

"I should prefer your condolences," said he, in a voice from the depths.

"_Allons donc!_ Cheer up," laughed she, dallying with her bliss. "Men have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for love."

"I wonder," said John. "That is a statement, it seems to me, which would be the better for some proving."

"At all events," said she, "you, for one, are not dead yet."

"No," admitted he; "though I could almost wish I was."

"Do you mean to say she has definitely rejected you?" she demanded, alarmed.

"Fortune has spared her that necessity," said John. "I haven't asked her, and I never shall. I haven't any money."

"Pooh! Is that all?" scoffed her ladys.h.i.+p, relieved. "You have prospects."

"Remote ones--the remoter the better. I won't count on dead men's shoes," said John.

"What is it your little fortune-teller at the Castle calls you?" asked Lady Blanchemain, shrewdly, her dark old eyebrows up.

"She calls me _lucus a non lucendo_," was John's quick riposte; and the lady laughed.

But in a moment she pulled a straight face. "I seriously counsel you to have more faith," she said. "Go home and ask her to marry you; and if she accepts,--you'll see. Money will come. Besides, your rank and your prospective rank are a.s.sets which you err in not adding to the balance.

Go home, and propose to her."

"'Twould do no good," said John, dejectedly. "She regards me with imperturbable indifference. I've made the fieriest avowals to her, and she's never turned a hair."

Lady Blanchemain looked bewildered. "You've made avowals--?" she falteringly echoed.

"I should rather think so," John affirmed. "Indirect ones, of course, and I hope inoffensive, but fiery as live coals. In the third person, you know. I've given her two and two; she has, you may be sure, enough skill in mathematics to put 'em together."

"And she never turned a hair?" the lady marvelled.

"She jeered at me, she mocked me, she laughed and rode away," said he.

"She's probably in love with you," said Lady Blanchemain. "If a woman will listen, if a woman will laugh! If you don't propose to her now, having ensnared her young affections, you'll be something worse than the wicked n.o.bleman of song and story."

"Oh, well," John responded, conciliatory, "I dare say some of these days a proposal will slip out when I least intend it. So I shall have done the honourable thing--and I'm sure I can trust her to play fair and say me nay."

Lady Blanchemain slowly shook her head. "I'm glad you're not _my_ lover," she devoutly murmured, plying her fan.

"Oh, but I am," cried John, with a bow, and an admiring flash of the eyes.

Her soft old face lighted up; then it took on an expression of resolution, and she set her strong old jaws.

"In that case," she remarked, "you will have the less reluctance in granting a favour I'm about to ask you."

"What's the favour?" said John, in a tone of readiness.

"I want you to buy a pig in a poke," said she.

"Oh?" questioned he.