My Friend Prospero Part 8

"Yes," the lady admitted, "that is just long enough." And she laughed again.

"What is _your_ name?" inquired Annunziata.

"My name is Maria Dolores," the lady answered. "You see, we are both named Maria."

"Of course," said Annunziata. "All Christians should be named Maria."

"So they should," agreed the lady. "Do you ever tell people how old you are?"

"Yes," said Annunziata, "if they wish to know. Why not?"

The smile in the lady's eyes shone brighter than ever. "Do you think you could be persuaded to tell me?"

"With pleasure," said Annunziata. "I am eleven years and five months.

And you?"

"I am just twice as old. I am twenty-two years and ten months. So, when you are fifty, how old shall I be?"

"No," said Annunziata, shaking her head. "That trick has been tried with me before. My friend Prospero has tried it with me. You hope I will say that you will be a hundred. But it is not so. When I am fifty, you will be sixty-one, going on sixty-two."

Still again the lady laughed, apparently with great amus.e.m.e.nt.

"What a little bundle of wisdom you are!" she exclaimed.

"Yes. My friend Prospero also says that I am wise," answered Annunziata.

"I like to see you laugh," she mentioned, looking critically at the face above her. "You have beautiful teeth, they are so white and s.h.i.+ning, and so small, and your lips are so red."

"Oh," said the lady, laughing more merrily than ever. "Then you must be very entertaining, and I will laugh a great deal."

Still looking critically at the lady's face, "Are you not," demanded Annunziata, "the person who has come to visit the Signora Brandi?"

"Signora Brandi?" The lady considered. "Yes, I suppose I must be. At any rate, I am the person who has come to visit Frau Brandt."

"Frao Branta? We call her Signora Brandi here," said Annunziata. "Are you related to her?"

"No," said the lady, who always seemed inclined to laugh, though Annunziata had no consciousness of being very entertaining. "I am not related to her. I am only her friend."

"She is an Austrian," said Annunziata. "This castle belongs to Austrians. Once upon a time, very long ago, before I was born, all this country belonged to Austrians. Are you, too, an Austrian?"

"Yes." The lady nodded. "I, too, am an Austrian."

"And yet," remarked Annunziata, "you speak Italian just as I do."

"It is very good of you to say so," laughed the lady.

"No--it is the truth," said Annunziata.

"But is it not good to tell the truth?" the lady asked.

"No," said Annunziata. "It is only a duty." And again she shook her head, slowly, darkly, with an effect of philosophic melancholy. "That is very strange and very hard," she pointed out. "If you do not do that which is your duty, it is bad, and you are punished. But if you do do it, that is not good,--it is only what you ought to do, and you are not rewarded." And she fetched her breath in the saddest of sad little sighs. Then, briskly covering her cheerfulness, "And you speak English, besides," she said.

"Oh?" wondered the lady. "Are you a clairvoyante? How do you know that I speak English?"

"My friend Prospero told me so," said Annunziata.

"Your friend Prospero?" the lady repeated. "You quote your friend Prospero very often. Who is your friend Prospero?"

"He is a signore," said Annunziata. "He has seen you, he has seen your form, in the garden and in the olive wood."

"Oh," said the lady.

"And I suppose he must have heard you speak English," Annunziata added.

"He lives at the presbytery."

"And where, by-the-by, do _you_ live?" asked the lady.

"I live at the presbytery too," said Annunziata. "I am the niece of the parroco. I am the orphan of his only brother. My friend Prospero lives with us as a boarder. He is English."

"Indeed?" said the lady. "Prospero is a very odd name for an Englishman."

"Prospero is not his name," said Annunziata. "His name is Gian. That is English for Giovanni."

"But why, then," the lady puzzled, "do you call him Prospero?"

"Prospero is a name I have given him," explained Annunziata. "One day I told his fortune. I can tell fortunes--with olive-stones, with playing-cards, or from the lines of the hand. I will tell you yours, if you wish. Well, one day, I told Prospero's, and everything came out so prosperously for him, I have called him Prospero ever since. He will be rich, though he is poor; and he will marry a dark woman, who will also be rich; and they will have many, many children, and live in peace to the end of their lives. But there!" Annunziata cried out suddenly, with excitement, waving the hand that held her narcissus. "There is my friend Prospero now, coming in the gig."

Down the avenue, sure enough, a gig was coming, a sufficiently shabby, ancient gig, drawn, however, at a very decent pace by a very decent-looking horse, and driven by John Blanchemain.

"_Ciao_, Prospero!" called Annunziata, as he pa.s.sed.

And John took off his hat, a modish Panama, and bowed and smiled to her and to the lady. And one adept in reading the meaning of smiles might have read three or four separate meanings in that smile of his. It seemed to say to Annunziata, "Ah, you rogue! So already you have waylaid her, and made her acquaintance." To the lady: "I congratulate you upon your companion. Isn't she a diverting little monkey?" To himself: "And I congratulate _you_, my dear, upon being clothed and in your right mind, and upon having a proper hat to make your bow with." And to the universe at large "By Jove, she _is_ good-looking. Standing there before that marble bench, in the cool green light, under the great ilexes, with her lilac frock and her white sunshade, and Annunziata all in grey beside her,--what a subject for a painting, if only there were any painters who knew how to paint!"

"He is going to a dinner at Roccadoro," said Annunziata, while John's back grew small and smaller in the distance. "Did you see, he had a portmanteau under the seat? He is going to a dinner of ceremony, and he will have his costume of ceremony in the portmaneau. I wonder what he will bring back with him for me. When he goes to Roccadoro he always brings something back for me. Last time it was a box of chocolate cigars. I should like to see him in his costume of ceremony. Wouldn't you?"

But the lady merely laughed. And then, taking Annunziata's chin in her hand, she looked down into her big clear eyes, and said, "I must be off now, to join Signora Brandi. But I cannot leave without telling you how glad I am to have met you, and what pleasure I have derived from your conversation. I hope we shall meet often. Good-bye."

"Good-bye, Signorina," said Annunziata, becoming formally polite again.

"I shall always be at your service." And she dropped another courtesy.

"If you will come to see me at the presbytery," she hospitably added, "I will show you my tame kid."

"You are all that is most kind," responded the lady, and went off smiling towards the castle.

Annunziata curled herself up in her old corner of the marble bench, and appeared to relapse into profound thought.

V