My Friend Prospero Part 24

"Well," said Annunziata, with an air of deliberation, "if you are perfectly sure I shall not go to h.e.l.l, and that my Purgatory will not be long and hard, I think I will do what I said. I will lie down in the water and go to sleep, and the water will drown me, and I shall die."

Maria Dolores' face was terrified. "Annunziata!" she cried. "You don't know what you are saying. You are cruel. You won't do anything of the sort. You must give me your solemn word of honour that you won't do anything of the sort. It would be a most dreadful sin. Come. Come with me now, away from here, away from the sight of the river. You must never come here alone again. Give me your hand, and come away."

Annunziata got up, gave her hand, and moved off at Maria Dolores' side, towards the Castle. "Of course," she said, "if I want to die, I don't need to lie down in the water. I can die at any moment I wish, by just shutting my eyes, and holding my breath, and telling my heart seven times to stop beating. Heart, stop beating; heart, stop beating;--that way, seven times."

"For the love of Mercy," wailed poor Maria Dolores, almost writhing in her misery.... Then, suddenly, she breathed a deep sigh of relief, and fervently exclaimed, "Thank G.o.d." John was advancing towards them, down the rugged pathway.

"Do please come and help me with this perverse and maddening child," she called to him, in English. "She's frightening me half out of my wits by threatening to die. She even threatened to drown herself in the Rampio."

"Children of her complexion can't die," said John, in Italian, (and Annunziata p.r.i.c.ked up her ears). "They can only turn into monkeys, and then they have to live in the forests of Africa, where it is always dark, and all the men and women are negro savages, and all the other animals (except the mosquitos and the snakes) are lions and tigers.

Besides, if Annunziata were to turn into a monkey, she couldn't have the sugared chestnuts that somebody or other has brought her from Roccadoro.

On the chest of drawers in my room there has mysteriously appeared a box of sugared chestnuts. I thought they were for her, but they're not, unless she will promise never to turn into a monkey."

Annunziata's eyes had clouded.

"Of course I won't turn into a monkey," she said, in accents at once of disillusion and disdain. "I did not know there was any such danger. I should hate to be a monkey." Then her eyes brightened again. "May I go and get them now?" she asked, wistful and impatient.

"Yes," said John; "be off with you." And she went running lightly up the hill.

He turned to Maria Dolores. Her face (clear-cut, with its dark hair, against the red background of her sunshade) was white and drawn with pain. But she smiled, rather wanly, as her gaze met his, and said, in a weak voice, "Oh, I am so glad you came. I can't tell you how she was frightening me." And all at once her eyes filled with tears.

I needn't say whether John was moved, whether it was his impulse to take her in his arms and dry her tears with kisses. He did actually, on that impulse, give a perceptible start towards her, but then he restrained himself. "The child ought to be whipped," he broke out angrily. "You must not take her prattle so seriously."

"But _she_ was so serious," said Maria Dolores. "Oh, when she threatened to lie down in the river, and let herself be drowned--!" Her voice failed her, as at the inexpressible.

"No fear of that," said John. "The first touch of the cold water (and icy-cold it is, a glacier-stream, you know) would bring her to her senses. But come! You must not think of it any more. You have had a bad shock, but no bones are broken, and now you must try to banish it all from your mind."

"What an unaccountable child she is!" said Maria Dolores. "Surely it is unnatural and alarming for a child to have her head so teeming with strange freaks and fancies. Oh, I pray G.o.d to grant that nothing may happen to her."

"The most serious evil that's likely to happen to her for the present,"

said John, "will be an indigestion of marrons glaces."

Maria Dolores' tears had gone now. She smiled. But afterwards she looked grave again. "Oh, I wish I could get the dread of something happening to her out of my heart. I wish she wasn't so pale and fragile-looking," she said. Then there came a gleam in her eyes. "But you were going for a walk, and I am detaining you."

"The object of my walk has been accomplished," said John.

"Oh?" questioned she.

"I was walking in the hope, on the chance, that I might meet you," he hardily explained. "It's such an age since I've seen you. Are you making for the garden? I pray you to be kind, and let me go with you. I've been an exile and a wanderer--I've been to Roccadoro."

She had rebegun her ascension of the hill. The path was steep, as well as rugged. Sometimes John had to help her over a hard bit. The touch of her hand, soft and warm, and firm too, in his; the sense of her closeness; the faint fragrance of her garments, of her hair,--these things, you may be sure, went to his head, went to his heart. The garden lay in a white blaze of suns.h.i.+ne, that seemed almost material, like an incandescent fluid; but the entrance to the avenue was dark and inviting. "Let us," he proposed, "go and sit on a marble bench under the glossy leaves of the ilexes, in the deep, cool shade; and let's play that it's a thousand years ago, and that you're a Queen (white Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies), and that I'm your minstrel-man."

"What song will you sing me?" asked she gaily, as they took their places on the marble bench. It was semicircular, with a high carved back, (carved with the armorials of the Sforzas), and of course it was lichen-stained, grey and blue and green, yellow and scarlet.

"_White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies, Fairer and dearer than dearest and fairest, To hear me sing, if it her sweet will is,-- Sing, minstrel-man, of thy love, an thou darest_,"

trolled John, in his light barytone, to a tune, I imagine, improvised for the occasion. "But if it's a thousand years ago," he laughed, "that song smacks too much perhaps of actuality, and I had best choose another."

Maria Dolores joined in his laugh. "I did not know you sang," she said.

"Let me hear the other."

"A song," reflected he, "that I could sing with a good deal of feeling and conviction, would be 'Give her but the least excuse to love me.'"

Maria Dolores all at once looked sober.

"Oughtn't you to be careful," she said, "to give her no excuse at all to love you, if you are really resolved never to ask her to be your wife?"

"That is exactly what I have given her," answered John, "no excuse at all. I should sing in a spirit purely academic,--my song would be the utterance of a pious but hopeless longing, of the moth's desire for the star."

"But she, I suppose, isn't a star," objected Maria Dolores. "She's probably just a weak human woman. You may have given her excuses without meaning to." There was the slightest quaver in her voice.

John caught his breath; he turned upon her almost violently. But she was facing away from him, down the avenue, so that he could not get her eyes.

"In that case," she said, "wouldn't you owe her something?"

"I should owe myself a lifetime's penance with the discipline," John on a solemn tone replied, hungrily looking at her cheek, at the little tendrils of dark hair about her brow. "G.o.d knows what I should owe to her."

"You would owe it to her," said Maria Dolores, always facing away, "to tell her your love straightforwardly, and to ask her to marry you."

John thrilled, John ached. His blue eyes burned upon her. "What else do you think I dream of, night and day? But how could I, with honour? You know my poverty," he groaned.

"But if she has enough, more than enough, for two?" softly urged Maria Dolores.

"Ah, that's the worst of it," cried he. "If we were equals in penury, if she had nothing, then I might honourably ask her, and we could live on herbs together in a garret, and I could keep her respect and my own. Oh, garret-paradise! But to marry a woman who is rich, to live in luxury with her, and to try to look unconscious while she pays the bills,--she would despise me, I should abhor myself."

"Why should she despise you?" asked Maria Dolores. "The possession of wealth is a mere accident. If people are married and love each other, I can't see that it matters an atom whether their money belonged in the first place to the man or to the woman,--it would belong henceforward to them both equally."

"That is a very generous way of looking at it, but it is a woman's way.

No decent man could accept it," said John.

"Up to a certain point," said Maria Dolores, slowly, "I understand your scruples. I understand that a poor man might feel that he would not like to make the advances, if the woman he loved was rich. But suppose the woman loved him, and knew that he loved her, and knew that it was only his poverty which held him back, then _she_ might make the advances. She might put aside her pride, and go halfway to meet him, and to remove his difficulties and embarra.s.sments. If, after that, he still did not ask her, I think his scruples would have become mere vanity,--I think it would show that he cared more for his mere vanity than for her happiness."

Her voice died out. John could see that her lip quivered a little. His throat was dry. The pulses were pounding in his temples. His brain was all a confusion. He hardly knew what had befallen him, he hardly knew what she had said. He only knew that there was a great ball of fire in his breast, and that the pain of it was half an immeasurable joy.

"G.o.d forgive me," the absurd and exaggerated stickler for the dignity of his s.e.x wildly cried. "G.o.d knows how I love her, how I care for her happiness. But to go to her empty-handed,--but to put myself in the position of being kept by a woman,--G.o.d knows how impossible it is."

Maria Dolores stood up, still looking away from him.

"Well, let us hope," she said, changing her tone to one of unconcerned detachment, "that we have been discussing baseless suppositions. Let us hope that her heart is quite untouched. And for both your sakes," she concluded, her head in the air, "let us hope that you and she will never meet again. Good-bye."

She gave him a curt little nod, and walked lightly, rapidly up the avenue.

John's brain was all a confusion. He looked after her helplessly. He only knew that there was a great ball of fire in his breast, and that the pain of it was now unmixed.

V