Henry Harland

“ Such is her infinite variety. Her infinite variety, her infinite abundance, the fragrance and the sweetness of her,—oh, I could fall upon my face and worship her, like a Pagan of Eld. The earth and all that grows and lives upon her, the blossoming tree, the singing bird,—I could build temples to her."
"And the crawling snake?" put in Maria Dolores, a gleam at the bottom of her eyes.
"The crawling snake," quickly retorted John, "serves a most useful purpose. He establishes the raison d'être of man. Man and his heel are here to crush the serpent's head." ”

“ And for a long time, by the marble balustrade that guarded this particular terrace of the garden, they stood in silence. The western gold burned to red, and more sombre red; the cloud-promontories gloomed purpler; the pale moon kindled, and shone like ice afire, with its intense cold brilliancy; the olive woods against the sky lay black; a score of nightingales, near and far, were calling and sobbing and exulting; and two human spirits yearned with the mystery of love.
"My income," said John, all at once, brusquely coming to earth, "is exactly six hundred pounds a year. ”

“ I wish you could see what beautiful little rose-white ears she has, and the lovely way in which her dark hair droops about them."
"How long ago was it," mused she, "that love first made people fancy they saw beauties which had no real existence?"
"Oh, the moment you see a thing, it acquires real existence," John returned. "The act of seeing is an act of creation. The thing you see has real existence on your retina and in your mind, if nowhere else, and that is the realest sort of real existence."
"Then she must thank you as the creator of her 'rose-white' ears," laughed Maria Dolores. ”

“ John laughed.
"You judge people by the company they keep. Well, I will apply the same principle of judgment to your gossip, Maria Dolores. By-the-by," he broke off to inquire, "what is her Pagan name?"
"Her Pagan name? What is that?" asked Annunziata.
"Maria Dolores, I take it, is her Christian name, come by in Holy Baptism," said John. "But I suppose she will have a Pagan name, come by in the way of the flesh, to round it off with,—just as, for instance, a certain flame of mine, whose image, when I die, they'll find engraved upon my heart, has the Pagan name of Casalone." ”

“ Winthorpe took his arm, and calmly, smilingly, tried to soothe, tried to convince him. John drew his arm free, and, employing it to add force and persuasiveness to his speech, renewed his arguments, pointed out how unnecessary, inhuman, impossible the whole thing was. "It's monstrous. It's against all nature. There's no reason in it. What does it rhyme with? It's wilfully going out of your way to seek, to create, wretchedness. My mind simply refuses to accept it." It was as if Maria Dolores could hear the words. But Winthorpe, calm and smiling, would not be moved. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Suddenly he had a flash. "Can you possibly mean Frau Brandt?"
Annunziata gave a gesture of affirmation.
"Yes, that is it," she said. "You sound it just as she did!"
"I see," said John. "And Brandt, if there are degrees of unbirth, is even more furiously unborn than Brandi."
"Unborn—?" said Annunziata, frowning.
"Not noble—not of the aristocracy," John explained.
"Very few people are noble," said Annunziata.
"All the more reason, then, why you and I should be thankful that we are," said he.
"You and I?" she expostulated, with a shrug of her little grey shoulders. "Machè! We are not noble." ”

“ 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. ”

“ The way her hair grows low about her brow, and swoops upwards and backwards in a sort of tidal wave, and breaks loose in little curling tendrils,—it's absolutely lyrical. And the smile at the bottom of her eyes is exactly like silent music. And her mouth is a couplet in praise of love, with two red lips for rhymes. And her chin is a perfect epithalamium of a chin. And then her figure! And then her lilac frock! Oh, it's a thousand, thousand pities that painting should he a forgotten art."
"What, the same lilac frock?" said Lady Blanchemain, absently. ”

“ Maria Dolores was silent for a little. They had come to the southern end of the cloisters, where the buttresses of the Castle walls, all shaggy-mantled in a green overgrowth of creepers, fall precipitously away, down the steep face of a natural cliff. They stopped here, and stood looking off. The rain had held up, though the valley was still misty with its vapours. Whiffs of velvety air, warm and sweet, blew in their faces, lightly stirred the dark hair about her brow, and, catching the flowery edge of her black lace mantilla, set it fluttering. ”

“ I am in the delicate position of confidante."
"And therefore I hope you'll tell me with the less reluctance," said John, urbanely unprincipled. "A confidante always betrays her confidence to some one,—that's the part of the game that makes it worth while."
Maria Dolores' smile deepened.
"In that pale green frock, on that bank of dark-green moss, with her complexion and her hair,—by Jove, how stunning she is!" thought John, in a commotion.
"Well," she said, "Annunziata ran away because she didn't want you to see that she'd been crying." ”

“ That afternoon, seated on the moss, under a tall eucalyptus tree near to Frau Brandt's pavilion, Maria Dolores received a visit from Annunziata.
Annunziata's pale little face was paler, her big grave eyes were graver, even than their wont. She nodded her head, slowly, portentously; and her glance was heavy with significance.
Maria Dolores smiled. "What is the matter?" she cheerfully inquired.
"Ah," sighed Annunziata, deeply, with another portentous head-shake, "I wish I knew."
Maria Dolores laughed. "Sit down," she suggested, making room beside her on the moss, "and try to think." ”

“ As there isn't already a woman, there'll shortly be one—my thumbs prick. The stage is set, the scene is too appropriate, the play's inevitable. It was never in the will of Providence that a youth of your complexion should pass the springtime in a spot all teeming with romance like this, and miss a love adventure. A castle in a garden, a flowering valley, and the Italian sky—the Italian sun and moon! Your portraits of these smiling dead women too, if you like, to keep your imagination working. And blackcaps singing in the mimosa. ”

“ Maria Dolores rebuked her, frowning. "You must not say such things."
"Why not say them, if you think them?" asked Annunziata.
"You mustn't think them either," said Maria Dolores.
"Oh, I can't help thinking them," said Annunziata, with a movement. "It surely must be lovely to die and go to Heaven. If I were perfectly sure I should go to Heaven, I would shut my eyes and die now. But I should probably have to wait some time in Purgatory. And, of course, I might go to Hell."
Maria Dolores' face was full of trouble. "You must not talk like that," she said. "You must not. It is wicked of you." ”

“ Transitions, with Annunziata, were sometimes inexplicably rapid. All at once her sobbing ceased; she looked up, and smiled, smiled radiantly, from a face that was wet and glistening with tears. "Thanks be to God," she piously exulted; "God is not angry any more."
"Of course He isn't," said Maria Dolores, tightening her hug, and touching Annunziata's curls lightly with her lips. "But He was never angry. What made you think that God was angry?" ”

“ One afternoon Maria Dolores was taking the air at the open door of the presbytery, when, to a mighty clattering of horses' hoofs, a big high-swung barouche came sweeping into the court-yard, described a bold half-circle, and abruptly drew up before her. In the barouche sat a big old lady, a big soft, humorous-eyed old lady, in cool crêpe-de-chine, cream-coloured, with beautiful white hair, a very gay light straw bonnet, and a much befurbelowed lavender-hued sunshade. Coachman and footman, bolt upright, stared straight before them, as rigid as if their liveries were of papier-maché. ”

“ In and out among the rose-trees near at hand, where the sun was hottest, heavily flew, with a loud bourdonnement, the cockchafers promised by Annunziata,—big, blundering, clumsy, the scorn of their light-winged and business-like competitors, the bees. Lizards lay immobile as lizards cast in bronze, only their little glittering, watchful pin-heads of eyes giving sign of life. And of course the blackcaps never for a moment left off singing. ”

“ John, wild-eyed, was still where she had left him, in the avenue, savouring and resavouring his woe. "If only," he brooded, "she were of one's own rank in the world, then her wealth might perhaps not be such an absolutely hopeless impediment as it is. But to marry, as they say, beneath one, and to marry money into the bargain,—that would be a little too much like the fortune-hunter of tradition." He still sat where she had left him, on the marble bench, disconsolate, when the parroco approached hurriedly, from the direction of the house. ”

“ There was a sound of wheels on gravel, of horses' hoofs on stone, and Lady Blanchemain's great high-swung barouche, rolling superbly forth from the avenue, drew up before the Castle, Lady Blanchemain herself, big and soft and sumptuous in silks and laces, under a much-befurbelowed, much-befringed, lavender-hued silk sunshade, occupying the seat of honour. John hastened across the garden, hat in hand, to welcome her.
"Jump in," she commanded, with a smile, and an imperious sweep of the arm. "I have come to take you for a drive."
The footman (proud man) held open the door, and John jumped in. ”

“ Annunziata deprecatingly shook her head.
"It is foolish to love people we know nothing about," she declared, in her deep voice, and looked a very sage delivering judgment.
"True enough," said John. "But what would you have? Some of us are born to folly, as the sparks fly upward. You see, there's a mighty difference between love and love. There's the love which is affection, there's the love which is cupboard-love, and there's the love which is just simply love-love and nothing else. ”

“ Here sat a young man with plenty to think about; a young man, whose income, yesterday a bare six hundred, had sprung up over night to something near six thousand. Six thousand a year isn't opulence, if you like, but a young man possessing it can hardly look upon himself as quite empty-handed, either. This young man, however, had other things as well to think of. What of that embroidered handkerchief? What of those shrewd suspicions of Lady Blanchemain's? What of his miller's daughter?
And there was another thing still. What of his proud old honest Spartan of an unimaginative uncle? ”

“ Annunziata whispered. "Didn't you notice that when I said I would like to—when I said what I said about that friend of Prospero's—just then they drew a cloud across the sun? That is a sign that God is angry. The sun, you know, is the window in Heaven through which God looks down on the world, and through which the light of Heaven shines on the world. And when the window is open, we feel happy and thankful, and wish to sing and laugh. ”

“ The very clothes of the men carried on their unlikeness,—John's loose blue flannels and red sailor's knot, careless-seeming, but smart in their effect, and showing him careful in a fashion of his own; Winthorpe's black tie and dark tweeds, as correct as Savile Row could turn them out, yet somehow, by the way he wore them, proclaiming him immediately a man who never gave two thoughts to his dress. If, however, Winthorpe's face was the face of a Puritan, it was the face of a Puritan with a sense of humour—the lines about the mouth were clearly the footprints of smiles. ”

“ It does matter—it matters supremely—it's the only thing in the world that matters. I can't believe it, and marry—marry, and live in tranquil indifference to it. No, I must put aside the thought of marriage, the thought of personal happiness. I must sell all I have and give it to the poor, take up my cross and follow Him. I am going to Rome to study for the priesthood.' Imagine," groaned John, stretching out his hands, "imagine talking like that to a woman you are supposed to love, to a woman who loves you." And he wrathfully ground his heel into the earth.
Maria Dolores looked serious. ”

“ It can only wait, wait, wait, and think of God. But it is a short Purgatory. A few days, and the flower will fade, and the soul will be released. I think this flower's name is Cecilia, it is so white."
The smile in the lady's eyes had brightened, as she listened; and now she gave a little laugh, a little, light, musical, pleased and friendly laugh.
"Yes," she said. "I have sometimes wondered myself whether flowers might not be the Purgatory of very good souls. I am glad to learn from you that it is true. And yes, I should think that this flower's name was sure to be Cecilia. ”