My Friend Prospero

  III

  "My romance is over, my April dream is ended," said the Princess, withan air, perhaps a feint, of listless melancholy, to Frau Brandt.

  "What mean you?" asked Frau Brandt, unmoved.

  "My cobbler's son has disappeared--has vanished in a blaze of glory,"her Serene Highness explained, and laughed.

  "I don't understand," said Frau Brandt. "He has not left Sant'Alessina?"

  "No, but he isn't a cobbler's son at all--he's merely been masqueradingas one--his name is not Brown, Jones, or Robinson--his name is thehigh-sounding name of Blanchemain, and he's heir to an English peerage."

  "Ah, so? He is then noble?" Frau Brandt inferred, raising her eyes, withsatisfaction.

  "As noble as need be. An English peer is marriageable. So here's adieuto my cottage in the air."

  "Here's good riddance to it," said Frau Brandt.

  That evening, at the hour of sunset, Maria Dolores met John in thegarden.

  "You had a visitor this afternoon," she announced. "A most inspiritinglyyoung old lady, as soft and white as a powder-puff, in a carriage thatwas like a coach-and-four. Lady Blanchemain. She is leaving to-morrowfor England. She desired me to give you her farewell blessing."

  "It will be doubly precious to me by reason of the medium through whichit comes," said John, with his courtliest obeisance.

  There was a little pause, during which she looked at the western sky.But presently, "Why did you tell me you had an uncle who was a farmer?"she asked, beginning slowly to pace down the pathway.

  "Did I tell you that? I suppose I had a boastful fit upon me," Johnreplied.

  "But it very much misled me," said Maria Dolores.

  "Oh, it's perfectly true," said John.

  "You are the heir to a peerage," said Maria Dolores.

  John had a gesture.

  "There you are," he said; "and my uncle, the peer, spends much of histime and most of his money breeding sheep and growing turnips. If thatisn't a farmer, I should like to know what is."

  "I hope you displayed less reticence regarding your station in the worldto that woman you were in love with," said she.

  "That woman I _was_ in love with?" John caught her up. "That woman I_am_ in love with, please."

  "Oh? Are you still in love with her?" Maria Dolores wondered. "It is solong since you have spoken of her, I thought your heart was healed."

  "If I have not spoken of her, it has been because I was under theimpression that you had tacitly forbidden me to do so," John informedher.

  "So I had," she admitted. "But I find that there is such a thing--asbeing too well obeyed."

  She brought out her last words, after the briefest possible suspension,hurriedly, in a voice that quailed a little, as if in terror of its ownaudacity. John, with tingling pulses, turned upon her. But she,according to her habit at such times, refused him her eyes. He couldsee, though, that her eyelashes trembled.

  "Oh," he cried, "I love her so much, I need her so, I suppose I shallend by doing the dishonourable thing."

  "Did you ever tell her that you were Lord Blanchemain's heir?" sheasked.

  "I never thought of it. Why should I?" said John.

  "When you were bemoaning your poverty, as an obstacle to marriage, youmight have remembered that your birth counted for something. With usAustrians, for example, birth counts for almost everything,--forinfinitely more than money."

  "I think," said John, as one impersonally generalizing, "that afortune-hunter with a tuft is the least admirable variety of thatanimal. I wish you could see what beautiful little rose-white ears shehas, and the lovely way in which her dark hair droops about them."

  "How long ago was it," mused she, "that love first made people fancythey saw beauties which had no real existence?"

  "Oh, the moment you see a thing, it acquires real existence," Johnreturned. "The act of seeing is an act of creation. The thing you seehas real existence on your retina and in your mind, if nowhere else, andthat is the realest sort of real existence."

  "Then she must thank you as the creator of her 'rose-white' ears,"laughed Maria Dolores. "I wonder whether that sunset has any realexistence, and whether it is really as splendid as it seems."

  The west had become a vast sea of gold, a pure and placid sea ofmany-tinted gold, bounded and intersected and broken into innumerablewide bays and narrow inlets by great cloud-promontories, purple and roseand umber. Directly opposite, just above the crest-line of the hills,hung the nearly full moon, pale as a mere phantom of itself.And from somewhere in the boscage at the garden's end came alool-lool-lool-lioo-lio, deep and long-drawn, liquid and complaining,which one knew to be the preliminary piping-up of Philomel.

  "If some things," said John, "derive their beauty from the eye of thebeholder, the beauty of other things is determined by the presence orabsence of the person you long to share all beautiful visions with. Thesky, the clouds, the whole air and earth, this evening, seem to mebeauty in its ultimate perfection."

  Maria Dolores softly laughed, softly, softly. And for a long time, bythe marble balustrade that guarded this particular terrace of thegarden, they stood in silence. The western gold burned to red, and moresombre red; the cloud-promontories gloomed purpler; the pale moonkindled, and shone like ice afire, with its intense cold brilliancy; theolive woods against the sky lay black; a score of nightingales, near andfar, were calling and sobbing and exulting; and two human spiritsyearned with the mystery of love.

  "My income," said John, all at once, brusquely coming to earth, "isexactly six hundred pounds a year. I suppose two people _could_ live onthat, though I'm dashed if I see how. Of course we couldn't live inEngland, where that infernal future peerage would put us under athousand obligations; but I dare say we might find a garret here inItaly. The question is, would she be willing, or have I any right toask her, to marry me, on the condition of leaving her own moneyuntouched, and living with me on mine?

  "Apropos of future peerages and things," said Maria Dolores, "do youhappen to know whether she has any rank of her own to keep up?"

  "I don't care twopence about her rank," said John.

  "Do you happen to know her name?" she asked.

  "I know what I wish her name was," John promptly answered. "I wish toHeaven it was Blanchemain."

  Maria Dolores gazed, pensive, at the moon. "He does not even know hername," she remarked, on a key of meditation, "though he fears," shesadly shook her head, "he fears it may be Smitti."

  "Oh, I say!" cried John, wincing, with a kind of sorry giggle; and Idon't know whether he looked or felt the more sheepish. His face showedevery signal of humiliation, he tugged nervously at his beard, but hiseyes, in spite of him, his very blue blue eyes were full of vexedamusement.

  The bell in the clock-tower struck eight.

  "There--it is your hour for going to Annunziata," said Maria Dolores.

  "You have not answered my question?" said John.

  "I will think about it," said she.