The Cardinal's Snuff-Box Part 36

Marietta said.

Peter knelt down at her bedside.

"Marietta! Your conscience is too sensitive. As for killing Francesco--we are all mortal, he could not have lived forever. And as for deceiving the Signorino, you did it for his own good. I remember that chicken-pasty. It was the best chicken-pasty I have ever tasted.

You must not worry any more about the little pig."

Marietta turned her face towards him, and smiled.

"The Signorino forgives his servant?" she whispered.

Peter could not help it. He bent forward, and kissed her brown old cheek.

"She will be easier now," said the Cardinal. "I will stay with her a little longer."

Peter went out. The scene had been childish--do you say?--ridiculous, almost farcical indeed? And yet, somehow, it seemed to Peter that his heart was full of unshed tears. At the same time, as he thought of the Cardinal, as he saw his face, his smile, as he heard the intonations of his voice, the words he had spoken, as he thought of the way he had held Marietta's hand and patted it--at the same time a kind of strange joy seemed to fill his heart, a strange feeling of exaltation, of enthusiasm.

"What a heavenly old man," he said.

In the garden Sister Scholastica and Emilia were still walking together.

They halted, when Peter came out; and Emilia said, "With your consent, Signore, Sister Scholastica has accepted me as her lieutenant. I will come every morning, and sit with Marietta during the day. That will relieve the sister, who has to be up with her at night."

And every morning after that, Emilia came, walking through the park, and crossing the river by the ladder-bridge, which Peter left now permanently in its position. And once or twice a week, in the afternoon, the Cardinal would drive up in the brougham, and, having paid a little visit to Marietta, would drive Emilia home.

In the sick-room Emilia would read to Marietta, or say the rosary for her.

Marietta mended steadily day by day. At the end of a fortnight she was able to leave her bed for an hour or two in the afternoon, and sit in the sun in the garden. Then Sister Scholastica went back to her convent at Venzona. At the end of the third week Marietta could be up all day.

But Gigi's stalwart Carolina Maddalena continued to rule as vicereine in the kitchen. And Emilia continued to come every morning.

"Why does the d.u.c.h.essa never come?" Peter wondered. "It would be decent of her to come and see the poor old woman."

Whenever he thought of Cardinal Udeschini, the same strange feeling of joy would spring up in his heart, which he had felt when he had left the beautiful old man with Marietta, on the day of his first visit. In the beginning he could only give this feeling a very general and indefinite expression. "He is a man who renews one's faith in things, who renews one's faith in human nature." But gradually, I suppose, the feeling crystallised; and at last, in due season, it found for itself an expression that was not so indefinite.

It was in the afternoon, and he had just conducted the Cardinal and Emilia to their carriage. He stood at his gate for a minute, and watched the carriage as it rolled away.

"What a heavenly old man, what a heavenly old man," he thought.

Then, still looking after the carriage, before turning back into his garden, he heard himself repeat, half aloud

"Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbour's creed hath lent."

The words had come to his lips, and were p.r.o.nounced, were addressed to his mental image of the Cardinal, without any conscious act of volition on his part. He heard them with a sort of surprise, almost as if some one else had spoken them. He could not in the least remember what poem they were from, he could not even remember what poet they were by. Were they by Emerson? It was years since he had read a line of Emerson's.

All that evening the couplet kept running in his head. And the feeling of joy, of enthusiasm, in his heart, was not so strange now. But I think it was intensified.

The next time the Cardinal arrived at Villa Floriano, and gave Peter his hand, Peter did not merely shake it, English fas.h.i.+on, as he had hitherto done.

The Cardinal looked startled.

Then his eyes searched Peter's face for a second, keenly interrogative.

Then they softened; and a wonderful clear light shone in them, a wonderful pure, sweet light.

"Benedicat te Omnipotens Deus, Pater, et Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus,"

he said, making the Sign of the Cross.

XXVII

Up at the castle, Cardinal Udeschini was walking backwards and forwards on the terrace, reading his Breviary.

Beatrice was seated under the white awning, at the terrace-end, doing some kind of needlework.

Presently the Cardinal came to a standstill near her, and closed his book, putting his finger in it, to keep the place.

"It will be, of course, a great loss to Casa Udeschini, when you marry,"

he remarked.

Beatrice looked up, astonishment on her brow.

"When I marry?" she exclaimed. "Well, if ever there was a thunderbolt from a clear sky!"

And she laughed.

"Yes-when you marry," the Cardinal repeated, with conviction. "You are a young woman--you are twenty-eight years old. You will, marry. It is only right that you should marry. You have not the vocation for a religious.

Therefore you must marry. But it will be a great loss to the house of Udeschini."

"Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof," said Beatrice, laughing again. "I haven't the remotest thought of marrying. I shall never marry."

"Il ne faut jamais dire a la fontaine, je ne boirai pas de ton eau,"

his Eminence cautioned her, whilst the lines of humour about his mouth emphasised themselves, and his grey eyes twinkled. "Other things equal, marriage is as much the proper state for the laity, as celibacy is the proper state for the clergy. You will marry. It would be selfish of us to oppose your marrying. You ought to marry. But it will be a great loss to the family--it will be a great personal loss to me. You are as dear to me as any of my blood. I am always forgetting that we are uncle and niece by courtesy only."

"I shall never marry. But nothing that can happen to me can ever make the faintest difference in my feeling for you. I hope you know how much I love you?" She looked into his eyes, smiling her love. "You are only my uncle by courtesy? But you are more than an uncle--you have been like a father to me, ever since I left my convent."

The Cardinal returned her smile.

"Carissima," he murmured. Then, "It will be a matter of the utmost importance to me, however," he went on, "that, when the time comes, you should marry a good man, a suitable man--a man who will love you, whom you will love--and, if possible, a man who will not altogether separate you from me, who will perhaps love me a little too. It would send me in sorrow to my grave, if you should marry a man who was not worthy of you."

"I will guard against that danger by not marrying at all," laughed Beatrice.

"No--you will marry, some day," said the Cardinal. "And I wish you to remember that I shall not oppose your marrying--provided the man is a good man. Felipe will not like it--Guido will pull a long nose--but I, at least, will take your part, if I can feel that the man is good. Good men are rare, my dear; good husbands are rarer still. I can think, for instance, of no man in our Roman n.o.bility, whom I should be content to see you marry. Therefore I hope you will not marry a Roman. You would be more likely to marry one of your own countrymen. That, of course, would double the loss to us, if it should take you away from Italy. But remember, if he is a man whom I can think worthy of you, you may count upon me as an ally."

He resumed his walk, reopening his Breviary.

Beatrice resumed her needlework. But she found it difficult to fix her attention on it. Every now and then, she would leave her needle stuck across its seam, let the work drop to her lap, and, with eyes turned vaguely up the valley, fall, apparently, into a muse.

"I wonder why he said all that to me?" was the question that kept posing itself.