Meanwhile he plainly knew a tremendous lot about Italian art. Lady
Blanchemain herself knew a good deal, and could recognize a pundit. He
illumined their progress by a running fire of exposition and commentary,
learned and discerning, to which she encouragingly listened, and, as
occasion required, amiably responded. But Boltraffios, Bernardino
Luinis, even a putative Giorgione, could not divert her mind from its
human problem. What was he doing at Castel Sant' Alessina, the property,
according to her guide-book, of an Austrian prince? What was his status
here, apparently (bar servants) in solitary occupation? Was he its
tenant? He couldn't, surely, this well-dressed, high-bred, cultivated
young compatriot, he couldn't be a mere employé, a steward or curator?
No: probably a tenant. Antecedently indeed it might seem unlikely that a
young Englishman should become the tenant of an establishment so huge
and so sequestered; but was it conceivable that this particular young
Englishman should be a mere employé? And was there any other
alternative? She hearkened for a word, a note, that might throw light;
but of such notes, such words, a young man's conversation, in the
circumstances, would perhaps naturally yield a meagre crop.
"You mustn't let me tire you," he said presently, as one who had
forgotten and suddenly remembered that looking at pictures is exhausting
work. "Won't you sit here and rest a little?"
They were in a smaller room than any they had previously traversed, an
octagonal room, which a single lofty window filled with sunshine.
"Oh, thank you," said Lady Blanchemain, and seated herself on the
circular divan in the centre of the polished terrazza floor. She wasn't
really tired in the least, the indefatigable old sight-seer; but a
respite from picture-gazing would enable her to turn the talk. She put
up her mother-of-pearl lorgnon, and glanced round the walls; then,
lowering it, she frankly raised her eyes, full of curiosity and
kindness, to her companion's.
"It's a surprise, and a delightful one," she remarked, "having pushed so
far afield in a foreign land, to be met by the good offices of a
fellow-countryman--it's so nice of you to be English."
And her eyes softly changed, their curiosity being veiled by a kind of
humorous content.
The young man's face, from its altitude of six-feet-something, beamed
responsively down upon her.
"Oh," he laughed, "you mustn't give me too much credit. To be English
nowadays is so ingloriously easy--since foreign lands have become merely
the wider suburbs of London."
Lady Blanchemain's eyes lighted approvingly. Afterwards she looked half
serious.
"True," she discriminated, "London has spread pretty well over the whole
of Europe; but England, thanks be to goodness, still remains mercifully
small."
"Yes," agreed the young man, though with a lilt of dubiety, and a frown
of excogitation, as if he weren't sure that he had quite caught her
drift.
"The mercy of it is," she smilingly pointed out, "that English folk,
decent ones, have no need to fight shy of each other when they meet as
strangers. We all know more or less about each other by hearsay, or
about each other's people; and we're all pretty sure to have some common
acquaintances. The smallness of England makes for sociability and
confidence."
"It ought to, one would think," the young man admitted. "But does it, in
fact? It had somehow got stuck in my head that English folk, meeting as
strangers, were rather apt to glare. We're most of us in such a funk,
you see, lest, if we treat a stranger with civility, he should turn out
not to be a duke."
"Oh," cried Lady Blanchemain, with merriment, "you forget that I said
_decent_. I meant, of course, folk who _are_ dukes. We're all dukes--or
bagmen."
The young man chuckled; but in a minute he pulled a long face, and made
big, ominous eyes.
"I feel I ought to warn you," he said in a portentous voice, "that some
of us are mere marquises--of the house of Carabas."
Lady Blanchemain, her whole expansive person, simmered with enjoyment.
"Bless you," she cried, "those are the ducalest, for marquises--of the
house of Carabas--are men of dash and spirit, born to bear everything
before them, and to marry the King's daughter."
With that, she had a moment of abstraction. Again, her eyeglass up, she
glanced round the walls--hung, in this octagonal room, with dim-coloured
portraits of women, all in wonderful toilets, with wonderful hair and
head-gear, all wonderfully young and pleased with things, and all four
centuries dead. They caused her a little feeling of uneasiness, they
were so dead and silent, and yet somehow, in their fixed postures, with
their unblinking eyes, their unvarying smiles, so--as it seemed to
her--so watchful, so intent; and it was a relief to turn from them to
the window, to the picture framed by the window of warm, breathing,
heedless nature. But all the while, in her interior mind, she was busy
with the man before her. "He looks," she considered, "tall as he is, and
with his radiant blondeur--with the gold in his hair and beard, and the
sea-blue in his eyes--he looks like a hero out of some old Norse saga.
He looks like-what's his name?--like Odin. I must really compel him to
explain himself."
It very well may be, meantime, that he was reciprocally busy with her,
taking her in, admiring her, this big, jolly, comely, high-mannered old
woman, all in soft silks and drooping laces, who had driven into his
solitude from Heaven knew where, and was quite unquestionably Someone,
Heaven knew who.
She had a moment of abstraction; but now, emerging from it, she used her
eyeglass as a pointer, and indicatively swept the circle of painted
eavesdroppers.
"They make one feel like their grandmother, their youth is so flagrant,"
she sighed, "these grandmothers of the Quattrocento. Ah, well, we can
only be old once, and we should take advantage of the privileges of age
while we have 'em. Old people, I am thankful to say, are allowed,
amongst other things, to be inquisitive. I'm brazenly so. Now, if one of
our common acquaintances were at hand--for with England still mercifully
small, we're sure to possess a dozen, you and I--what do you think is
the question I should ask him?--I should ask him," she avowed, with a
pretty effect of hesitation, and a smile that went as an advance-guard
to disarm resentment, "to tell me who you are, and all about you--and to
introduce you to me."
"Oh," cried the young man, laughing. He laughed for a second or two. In
the end, pleasantly, with a bow, "My name," he said, "if you can
possibly care to know, is Blanchemain."
His visitor caught her breath. She sat up straight, and gazed hard at
him.
"Blanchemain?" she gasped.