When the first stress of their emotion had in some degree spent itself
Lady Blanchemain, returning to her place on the ottoman, bade John sit
down beside her.
"Now," she said, genially imperative, whilst all manner of kindly and
admiring interest shone in her face, "there are exactly nine million and
ninety-nine questions that you'll be obliged to answer before I've done
with you. But to begin, you must clear up at once a mystery that's been
troubling me ever since you dashed to my rescue at the gate. What in the
name of Reason is the cause of your residence in this ultramundane
stronghold?"
John--convict me of damnable iteration if you must: Heaven has sent me a
laughing hero--John laughed.
"Oh," he said, "there are several causes--there are exactly nine million
and ninety-eight."
"Name," commanded Lady Blanchemain, "the first and the last."
"Well," obeyed he, pondering, "I should think the first, the last, and
perhaps the chief intermediate, would be--the whole blessed thing." And
his arm described a circle which comprehended the castle and all within
it, and the countryside without.
"It has a pleasant site, I'll not deny," said Lady Blanchemain. "But
don't you find it a trifle far away? And a bit up-hill? I'm staying at
the Victoria at Roccadoro, and it took me an hour and a half to drive
here."
"But since," said John, with a flattering glance, "since you _are_ here,
I have no further reason to deplore its farawayness. So few places are
far away, in these times and climes," he added, on a note of melancholy,
as one to whom all climes and times were known.
"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain, matter-of-fact. "Have you been here long?"
"Let me see," John answered. "To-day is the 23rd of April. I arrived
here--I offer the fact for what it may be worth--on the Feast of All
Fools."
"_Absit omen_," cried she. "And you intend to stay?"
"Oh, I'm at least wise enough not to fetter myself with intentions,"
answered John.
She looked about, calculating, estimating.
"I suppose it costs you the very eyes of your head?" she asked.
John giggled.
"Guess what it costs--I give it to you in a thousand."
She continued her survey, brought it to a period.
"A billion a week," she said, with finality. John exulted.
"It costs me," he told her, "six francs fifty a day--wine included."
"What!" cried she, mistrusting her ears.
"Yes," said he.
"Fudge!" said she, not to be caught with chaff.
"It sounds like a traveller's tale, I know; but that's so often the
bother with the truth," said he. "Truth is under no obligation to be
_vraisemblable_. I'm here _en pension_."
Lady Blanchemain sniffed.
"Does the Prince of Zelt-Neuminster take in boarders?" she inquired,
her nose in the air.
"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 space, 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 ladyship 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 sex,"
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.