My Friend Prospero Part 3

"Not exactly," said John. "But the Parroco of Sant' Alessina does. I board at the presbytery."

"Oh," said Lady Blanchemain, beginning to see light, while her eyebrows went up, went down. "You board at the presbytery?"

"For six francs fifty a day--wine included," chuckled John.

"Wine, and apparently the unhindered enjoyment of--the whole blessed thing," supplemented she, with a reminder of his comprehensive gesture.

"Yes--the run of the house and garden, the freedom of the hills and valley."

"I understand," she said, and was mute for a s.p.a.ce, readjusting her impressions. "I had supposed," she went on at last, "from the handsome way in which you snubbed that creature in shoulder-knots, and proceeded to do the honours of the place, that you were little less than its proprietor."

"Well, and so I could almost feel I am," laughed John. "I'm alone here--there's none my sway to dispute. And as for the creature in shoulder-knots, what becomes of the rights of man or the bases of civil society, if you can't snub a creature whom you regularly tip? For five francs a week the creature in shoulder-knots cleans my boots (indifferent well), brushes my clothes, runs my errands (indifferent slow),--and swallows my snubs as if they were polenta."

"And tries to shoo intrusive trippers from your threshold--and gets an extra plateful for his pains," laughed the lady. "Where," she asked, "does the Prince of Zelt-Neuminster keep himself?"

"In Vienna, I believe. Anyhow, at a respectful distance. The parroco, who is also his sort of intendant, tells me he practically never comes to Sant' Alessina."

"Good easy man," quoth she. "Yes, I certainly supposed you were his tenant-in-fee, at the least. You have an air." And her bob of the head complimented him upon it.

"Oh, we Marquises of Carabas!" cried John, with a flourish.

She regarded him doubtfully.

"Wouldn't you find yourself in a slightly difficult position, if the Prince or his family should suddenly turn up?" she suggested.

"I? Why?" asked John, his blue eyes blank.

"A young man boarding with the parroco for six francs a day--" she began.

"Six francs fifty, please," he gently interposed.

"Make it seven if you like," her ladys.h.i.+p largely conceded. "Wouldn't your position be slightly false? Would they quite realize who you were?"

"What could that possibly matter? wondered John, eyes blanker still.

"I could conceive occasions in which it might matter furiously," said she. "Foreigners can't with half an eye distinguish amongst us, as we ourselves can; and Austrians have such oddly exalted notions. You wouldn't like to be mistaken for Mr. Snooks?"

"I don't know," John reflected, vistas opening before him. "It might be rather a lark."

"Whrrr!" said Lady Blanchemain, fanning herself with her pocket-handkerchief. Then she eyed him suspiciously. "You're hiding the nine million other causes up your sleeve. It isn't merely the 'whole blessed thing' that's keeping an eaglet of your feather alone in an improbable nest like this--it's some one particular thing. In my time,"

she sighed, "it would have been a woman."

"And no wonder," riposted John, with a flowery bow.

"You're very good--but you confuse the issue," said she. "In my time the world was young and romantic. In this age of prose and prudence--_is_ it a woman?"

"The world is still, is always, young and romantic," said John, sententious. "I can't admit that an age of prose and prudence is possible. The poetry of earth is never dead, and no more is its folly.

The world is always romantic, if you have the three gifts needful to make it so."

"_Is_ it a woman?" repeated Lady Blanchemain.

"And the three gifts are," said he, "Faith, and the sense of Beauty, and the sense of Humour."

"And I should have thought, an attractive member of the opposite s.e.x,"

said she. "_Is_ it a woman?"

"Well," he at last replied, appearing to take counsel with himself, "I don't know why I should forbid myself the relief of owning up to you that in a sense it is."

"Hurray!" cried she, moving in her seat, agog, as one who scented her pet diversion. "A love affair! I'll be your confidante. Tell me all about it."

"Yes, in a sense, a love affair," he confessed.

"Good--excellent," she approved. "But--but what do you mean by 'in a sense'?"

"Ah," said he, darkly nodding, "I mean whole worlds by that."

"I don't understand," said she, her face prepared to fall.

"It isn't one woman--it's a score, a century, of the dear things," he announced.

Her face fell. "Oh--?" she faltered.

"It's a love affair with a type," he explained.

She frowned upon him. "A love affair with a type--?"

"Yes," said he.

She shook her head. "I give you up. In one breath you speak like a Mohammedan, in the next like--I don't know what."

"With these," said John, his band stretched towards the wall. "With the type of the Quattrocento."

He got upon his feet, and moved from picture to picture; and a fire, half indeed of mischief; but half it may be of real enthusiasm, glimmered in his eyes.

"With these lost ladies of old years; these soft-coloured shadows, that were once rosy flesh; these proud, humble, innocent, subtle, brave, shy, pious, pleasure-loving women of the long ago. With them; with their hair and eyes and jewels, their tip-tilted, scornful, witty little noses, their 'throats so round and lips so red,' their splendid raiment; with their mirth, pathos, pa.s.sion, kindness and cruelty, their infinite variety, their undying youth. Ah, the pity of it! Their undying youth--and they so irrevocably dead. Peace be to their souls! See," he suddenly declaimed, laughing, "how the sun, the very sun in heaven, is contending with me, as to which of us shall do them the greater homage, the sun that once looked on their living forms, and remembers--see how he lights memorial lamps about them," for the sun, reflected from the polished floor, threw a sheen upon the ancient canvases, and burned bright in the bosses of the frames. "Give me these," he wound up, "a book or two, and a jug of the parroco's 'included wine'--my wilderness is paradise enow."

Lady Blanchemain's eyes, as she listened, had become deep wells of disappointment, then gus.h.i.+ng fountains of reproach.

"Oh, you villain!" she groaned, when he had ended, shaking her pretty fist. "So to have raised my expectations, and so to dash them!--Do you _really_ mean," still clinging to a shred of hope, she pleaded, "really, really mean that there's no--no actual woman?"

"I'm sorry," said John, "but I'm afraid I really, really do."

"And you're not--not really in love with any one?"

"No--not really," he said, with a mien that feigned contrition.

"But at your age--how old are you?" she broke off to demand.

"Somewhere between twenty-nine and thirty, I believe," he laughed.