“Come! Let us be calm, let us be judicial. The consequences of our actions, here below, if hardly ever so good as we could hope, are hardly ever so bad as we might fear. Let us regard this matter in the light of that guiding principle. True, she does n't dream that you are Wildmay. True, if you were abruptly to say to her, 'I am Wildmay--you are the woman,' she would be astonished--even, if you will, at first, more or less taken aback, disconcerted. But indignant? Why? What is this gulf that separates you from her? What are these conventional barriers of which you make so much? She is a duchess, she is the daughter of a lord, and she is rich. Well, all that is to be regretted. But you are neither a plebeian nor a pauper yourself. You are a man of good birth, you are a man of some parts, and you have a decent income. It amounts to this--she is a great lady, you are a small gentleman. In ordinary circumstances, to be sure, so small a gentleman could not ask so great a lady to become his wife. But here the circumstances are not ordinary. Destiny has meddled in the business. Small gentleman though you are, an unusual and subtle relation-ship has been established between you and your great lady. She herself says, 'Ordinary rules cannot apply--he ought to tell her.' Very good: tell her. She will be astonished, but she will see that there is no occasion for resentment. And though the odds are, of course, a hundred to one that she will not accept you, still she must treat you as an honourable suitor. And whether she accepts you or rejects you, it is better to tell her and to have it over, than to go on forever dangling this way, like the poor cat in the adage. Tell her--put your fate to the touch--hope nothing, fear nothing--and bow to the event.”
But even this temperate answer provoked its counter-answer.
“The odds are a hundred to one, a thousand to one, that she will not accept you. And if you tell her, and she does not accept you, she will not allow you to see her any more, you will be exiled from her presence. And I thought, you did not wish to be exiled from her presence, You would stake, then, this great privilege, the privilege of seeing her, of knowing her, upon a. chance that has a thousand to one against it. You make light of the conventional barriers--but the principal barrier of them all, you are forgetting. She is a Roman Catholic, and a devout one. Marry a Protestant? She would as soon think of marrying a Paynim Turk.”
In the end, no doubt, a kind of exhaustion followed upon his excitement. Questions and answers suspended themselves; and he could only look up towards Ventirose, and dumbly wish that he was there. The distance was so trifling--in five minutes he could traverse it--the law seemed absurd and arbitrary, which condemned him to sit apart, free only to look and wish.
It was in this condition of mind that Marietta found him, when she came to announce dinner.
Peter gave himself a shake. The sight of the brown old woman, with her homely, friendly face, brought him back to small things, to actual things; and that, if it was n't a comfort, was, at any rate, a relief.
“Dinner?” he questioned. “Do peris at the gates of Eden DINE?”
“The soup is on the table,” said Marietta.
He rose, casting a last glance towards the castle.
Towers and battlements... Bosomed high in tufted trees, Where perhaps some beauty lies, The cynosure of neighbouring eyes.”
He repeated the lines in an undertone, and went in to dinner. And then the restorative spirit of nonsense descended upon him.
“Marietta,” he asked, “what is your attitude towards the question of mixed marriages?”
Marietta wrinkled her brow.
“Mixed marriages? What is that, Signorino?”
“Marriages between Catholics and Protestants,” he explained.
“Protestants?” Her brow was still a network. “What things are they?”
“They are things--or perhaps it would be less invidious to say people--who are not Catholics--who repudiate Catholicism as a deadly and soul-destroying error.”
“Jews?” asked Marietta.
“No--not exactly. They are generally classified as Christians. But they protest, you know. Protesto, protestare, verb, active, first conjugation. 'Mi pare che la donna protesta troppo,' as the poet sings. They're Christians, but they protest against the Pope and the Pretender.”
“The Signorino means Freemasons,” said Marietta.
“No, he does n't,” said Peter. “He means Protestants.”
“But pardon, Signorino,” she insisted; “if they are not Catholics, they must be Freemasons or Jews. They cannot be Christians. Christian--Catholic: it is the same. All Christians are Catholics.”
“Tu quoque!” he cried. “You regard the terms as interchangeable? I 've heard the identical sentiment similarly enunciated by another. Do I look like a Freemason?”
She bent her sharp old eyes upon him studiously for a moment. Then she shook her head.
“No,” she answered slowly. “I do not think that the Signorino looks like a Freemason.”
“A Jew, then?”
“Mache! A Jew? The Signorino!” She shrugged derision.
“And yet I'm what they call a Protestant,” he said.
“No,” said she.
“Yes,” said he. “I refer you to my sponsors in baptism. A regular, true blue moderate High Churchman and Tory, British and Protestant to the backbone, with 'Frustrate their Popish tricks' writ large all over me. You have never by any chance married a Protestant yourself?” he asked.
“No, Signorino. I have never married any one. But it was not for the lack of occasions. Twenty, thirty young men courted me when I was a girl. But--mica!--I would not look at them. When men are young they are too unsteady for husbands; when they are old they have the rheumatism.”
“Admirably philosophised,” he approved. “But it sometimes happens that men are neither young nor old. There are men of thirty-five--I have even heard that there are men of forty. What of them?”
“There is a proverb, Signorino, which says, Sposi di quarant' anni son mai sempre tiranni,” she informed him.
“For the matter of that,” he retorted, “there is a proverb which says, Love laughs at locksmiths.”
“Non capisco,” said Marietta.
“That's merely because it's English,” said he. “You'd understand fast enough if I should put it in Italian. But I only quoted it to show the futility of proverbs. Laugh at locksmiths, indeed! Why, it can't even laugh at such an insignificant detail as a Papist's prejudices. But I wish I were a duke and a millionaire. Do you know any one who could create me a duke and endow me with a million?”
“No, Signorino,” she answered, shaking her head.
“Fragrant Cytherea, foam-born Venus, deathless Aphrodite, cannot, goddess though she is,” he complained. “The fact is, I 'm feeling rather undone. I think I will ask you to bring me a bottle of Asti-spumante--some of the dry kind, with the white seal. I 'll try to pretend that it's champagne. To tell or not to tell--that is the question.
'A face to lose youth for, to occupy age With the dream of, meet death with--
And yet, if you can believe me, the man who penned those lines had never seen her. He penned another line equally pat to the situation, though he had never seen me, either
'Is there no method to tell her in Spanish?”
But you can't imagine how I detest that vulgar use of 'pen' for 'write'--as if literature were a kind of pig. However, it's perhaps no worse than the use of Asti for champagne. One should n't be too fastidious. I must really try to think of some method of telling her in Spanish.”
Marietta went to fetch the Asti.
XXIII
When Peter rose next morning, he pulled a grimace at the departed night.
“You are a detected cheat,” he cried, “an unmasked impostor. You live upon your reputation as a counsellor--'tis the only reason why we bear with you. La nuit porte conseil! Yet what counsel have you brought to me?--and I at the pass where my need is uttermost. Shall I go to her this afternoon, and unburden my soul--or shall I not? You have left me where you found me--in the same fine, free, and liberal state of vacillation. Discredited oracle!”
He was standing before his dressing-table, brushing his hair. The image in the glass frowned back at him. Then something struck him.
“At all events, we'll go this morning to Spiaggia, and have our hair cut,” he resolved.
So he walked to the village, and caught the ten o'clock omnibus for Spiaggia. And after he had had his hair cut, he went to the Hotel de Russie, and lunched in the garden. And after luncheon, of course, he entered the grounds of the Casino, and strolled backwards and forwards, one of a merry procession, on the terrace by the lakeside. The gay toilets of the women, their bright-coloured hats and sunshades, made the terrace look like a great bank of monstrous moving flowers. The band played brisk accompaniments to the steady babble of voices, Italian, English, German. The pure air was shot with alien scents--the women's perfumery, the men's cigarette-smoke. The marvellous blue waters crisped in the breeze, and sparkled in the sun; and the smooth snows of Monte Sfiorito loomed so near, one felt one could almost put out one's stick and scratch one's name upon them.... And here, as luck would have it, Peter came face to face with Mrs. O'Donovan Florence.