“In that case it will probably be found,” said Beatrice.
Peter had gone to Spiaggia, I imagine, in the hope of meeting Mrs. O'Donovan Florence; but the printed visitors' list there told him that she had left nearly a fortnight since. On his return to the villa, he was greeted by Marietta with the proud tidings that her Excellency the Duchessa di Santangiolo had been to see her.
“Oh--? Really?” he questioned lightly. (His heart, I think, dropped a beat, all the same.)
“Ang,” said Marietta. “She came with the most Eminent Prince Cardinal. They came in the carriage. She stayed half an hour. She was very gracious.”
“Ah?” said Peter. “I am glad to hear it.”
“She was beautifully dressed,” said Marietta.
“Of that I have not the shadow of a doubt,” said he.
“The Signorina Emilia drove away with them,” said she.
“Dear, dear! What a chapter of adventures,” was his comment.
He went to his rustic table, and picked up his book.
“How the deuce did that come there?” he wondered, discovering the snuff box.
It was, in truth, an odd place for it. A cardinal may inadvertently drop his snuff box, to be sure. But if the whole College of Cardinals together had dropped a snuff box, it would hardly have fallen, of its own weight, through the covers of an open book, to the under-side thereof, and have left withal no trace of its passage.
“Solid matter will not pass through solid matter, without fraction--I learned that at school,” said Peter.
The inference would be that someone had purposely put the snuff box there.
But who?
The Cardinal himself? In the name of reason, why?
Emilia? Nonsense.
Marietta? Absurd.
The Du--
A wild surmise darted through Peter's soul. Could it be? Could it conceivably be? Was it possible that--that--was it possible, in fine, that this was a kind of signal, a kind of summons?
Oh, no, no, no. And yet--and yet--
No, certainly not. The idea was preposterous. It deserved, and (I trust) obtained, summary deletion.
“Nevertheless,” said Peter, “it's a long while since I have darkened the doors of Ventirose. And a poor excuse is better than none. And anyhow, the Cardinal will be glad to have his snuff.”
The ladder-bridge was in its place.
He crossed the Aco.
XXVIII
He crossed the Aco, and struck bravely forward, up the smooth lawns, under the bending trees, towards the castle.
The sun was setting. The irregular mass of buildings stood out in varying shades of blue, against varying, dying shades of red.
Half way there, Peter stopped, and looked back.
The level sunshine turned the black forests of the Gnisi to shining forests of bronze, and the foaming cascade that leapt down its side to a cascade of liquid gold. The lake, for the greater part, lay in shadow, violet-grey through a pearl-grey veil of mist; but along the opposite shore it caught the light, and gleamed a crescent of quicksilver, with roseate reflections. The three snow-summits of Monte Sfiorito, at the valley's end, seemed almost insubstantial--floating forms of luminous pink vapour, above the hazy horizon, in a pure sky intensely blue.
A familiar verse came into Peter's mind.
“Really,”' he said to himself, “down to the very 'cataract leaping in glory,' I believe they must have pre-arranged the scene, feature for feature, to illustrate it.” And he began to repeat the vivid, musical lines, under his breath...
But about midway of them he was interrupted.
“It's not altogether a bad sort of view--is it?” a voice asked, behind him.
Peter faced about.
On a marble bench, under a feathery acacia; a few yards away, a lady was seated, looking at him, smiling.
Peter's eyes met hers--and suddenly his heart gave a jump. Then it stood dead still for a second. Then it flew off, racing perilously. Oh, for the best reasons in the world. There was something in her eyes, there was a glow, a softness, that seemed--that seemed... But thereby hangs my tale.
She was dressed in white. She had some big bright-yellow chrysanthemums stuck in her belt. She wore no hat. Her hair, brown and warm in shadow, sparkled, where the sun touched it, transparent and iridescent, like crinkly threads of glass.
“You do not think it altogether bad--I hope?” she questioned, arching her eyebrows slightly, with a droll little assumption of concern.
Peter's heart was racing--but he must answer her.
“I was just wondering,” he answered, with a tolerably successful feint of composure, “whether one might not safely call it altogether good.”
“Oh--?” she exclaimed.
She threw back her head, and examined the prospect critically. Afterwards, she returned her gaze to Peter, with an air of polite readiness to defer to his opinion.
“It is not too sensational? Not too much like a landscape on the stage?”
“We must judge it leniently,” said he; “we must remember that it is only unaided Nature. Besides,” he added, “to be meticulously truthful, there is a spaciousness, there is a vivacity in the light and colour, there is a sense of depth and atmosphere, that we should hardly find in a landscape on the stage.”
“Yes--perhaps there is,” she admitted thoughtfully.
And with that, they looked into each other's eyes, and laughed.
“Are you aware,” the lady asked, after a brief silence, “that it is a singularly lovely evening.”
“I have a hundred reasons for thinking it so,” Peter answered, with the least approach to a meaning bow.
In the lady's face there flickered, perhaps, for half a second, the faintest light, as of a comprehending and unresentful smile. But she went on, with fine detachment
“How calm and still it is. The wonderful peace of the day's compline. It seems as if the earth had stopped breathing--does n't it? The birds have already gone to bed, though the sun is only just setting. It is the hour when they are generally noisiest; but they have gone to bed--the sparrows and the finches, the snatchers and the snatched-from, are equal in the article of sleep. That is because they feel the touch of autumn. How beautiful it is, in spite of its sadness, this first touch of autumn--it is like sad distant music. Can you analyse it, can you explain it? There is no chill, it is quite warm, and yet one knows somehow that autumn is here. The birds know it, and have gone to bed. In another month they will be flying away, to Africa and the Hesperides--all of them except the sparrows, who stay all winter. I wonder how they get on during the winter, with no goldfinches to snatch from?”
She turned to Peter with a look of respectful enquiry, as one appealing to an authority for information.
“Oh, they snatch from each other, during the winter,” he explained. “It is thief rob thief, when honest victims are not forthcoming. And--what is more to the point--they must keep their beaks in, against the return of the goldfinches with the spring.”
The Duchessa--for I scorn to deceive the trustful reader longer; and (as certain fines mouches, despite my efforts at concealment, may ere this have suspected) the mysterious lady was no one else--the Duchessa gaily laughed.
“Yes,” she said, “the goldfinches will return with the spring. But isn't that rather foolish of them? If I were a goldfinch, I think I should make my abode permanent in the sparrowless south.”
“There is no sparrowless south,” said Peter. “Sparrows, alas, abound in every latitude; and the farther south you go, the fiercer and bolder and more impudent they become. In Africa and the Hesperides, which you have mentioned, they not infrequently attack the caravans, peck the eyes out of the camels, and are sometimes even known to carry off a man, a whole man, vainly struggling in their inexorable talons. There is no sparrowless south. But as for the goldfinches returning--it is the instinct of us bipeds to return. Plumed and plumeless, we all return to something, what though we may have registered the most solemn vows to remain away.”
He delivered his last phrases with an accent, he punctuated them with a glance, in which there may have lurked an intention.
But the Duchessa did not appear to notice it.
“Yes--true--so we do,” she assented vaguely. “And what you tell me of the sparrows in the Hesperides is very novel and impressive--unless, indeed, it is a mere traveller's tale, with which you are seeking to practise upon my credulity. But since I find you in this communicative vein, will you not push complaisance a half-inch further, and tell me what that thing is, suspended there in the sky above the crest of the Cornobastone--that pale round thing, that looks like the spectre of a magnified half-crown?”
Peter turned to the quarter her gaze indicated.
“Oh, that,” he said, “is nothing. In frankness, it is only what the vulgar style the moon.”
“How odd,” said she. “I thought it was what the vulgar style the moon.”
And they both laughed again.
The Duchessa moved a little; and thus she uncovered, carved on the back of her marble bench, and blazoned in red and gold, a coat of arms.
She touched the shield with her finger.
“Are you interested in canting heraldry?” she asked. “There is no country so rich in it as Italy. These are the arms of the Farfalla, the original owners of this property. Or, seme of twenty roses gules; the crest, on a rose gules, a butterfly or, with wings displayed; and the motto--how could the heralds ever have sanctioned such an unheraldic and unheroic motto?