What passed for breakfast at the presbytery was the usual Continental
evasion of that repast,--bread and coffee, despatched in your apartment.
But at noon the household met to dine.
The dining-room, on the ground floor, long and low, with a vaulted
ceiling, whitewashed, and a pavement of worn red tiles, was a clean,
bare room, that (pervaded by a curious, dry, not unpleasant odour)
seemed actually to smell of bareness, as well as of cleanliness. There
was a table, there was a dresser, there were a few unpainted deal
chairs, rush-bottomed (exactly like the chairs in the church, in all
Italian churches), and there was absolutely nothing else, save a great
black and white Crucifix attached to the wall. But, by way of
compensation, its windows opened southwards, flooding it with sunshine,
and commanding the wonderful perspective of the valley,--the blue-grey
hills, the snow-peaks, the blossoming low-lands, and the far-away
opalescence that you knew to be the lake.
At noon the parroco, his niece Annunziata, and his boarder met to dine.
The parroco was a short, stout, florid, black-haired, hawk-nosed,
fierce-looking, still youngish man, if five-and-forty may be reckoned
youngish, with a pair of thin lips and powerful jaws which, for purposes
of speech, he never opened if he could help it. Never,--till Sunday
came: when, mounting the pulpit, he opened them indeed, and his pent-up
utterance burst forth in a perfect torrent of a sermon, a wild gush of
words, shouted at the topmost stress of a remarkably lusty voice,
arresting for a minute or two by reason of the sheer physical energy it
represented, and then for a long half hour exquisitely tiresome. But on
week-days he maintained a prodigious silence, and this (as, though
fierce-looking, he wasn't in the least really fierce) it would often be
John's malicious study to tempt him to break. Besides, to-day, John was
honestly concerned with the pursuit of knowledge.
Accordingly, grace being said, "You never told me," he began, assuming a
mien of intelligent interest, "that the castle was haunted." He looked
at the Napoleonic profile of Don Ambrogio, but from the tail of his eye
he kept a watch as well upon Annunziata, and he saw that that wise
little maiden became attentive.
"No," said Don Ambrogio, between two spoonfuls of soup.
"You will conceive my astonishment, then," continued John, urbanely,
"when I discovered that it was."
"It isn't," said Don Ambrogio. He gave himself diligently to the
business of the hour; his spoon flew backwards and forwards like a
shuttle. His napkin, tucked into his Roman collar, protected his bosom,
an effective white cuirass.
"Oh? Not the castle?" questioned John. "Only the garden? And the olive
wood? True, on reflection, I've never seen it in the house."
"Nothing here is haunted," said the parroco. He made a signal to
Annunziata, who rose to change the plates. Her big eyes were alight, her
serious little face was alert; but she would never dream of speaking in
the presence of her uncle. Marcella, the cook, brought in the inevitable
veal.
"Oh, for that," insisted John, courteous but firm, "I beg your pardon. I
myself have seen it on two occasions; and, lest you should fancy it a
subjective illusion, I may tell you that it was yesterday seen
simultaneously by another."
"It? It? What is _it_?" asked the parroco, his beaked and ensanguined
visage fiercer-looking than ever, as he fell upon the inevitable veal
with a somewhat dull carving-knife.
"Ah," said John, "now you make me regret that I haven't a talent for
word-painting. It's the form of a woman, a young woman, tall, slender,
in some pale diaphanous garment, that appears here, appears there,
remaining distinctly visible for some minutes, and then disappears. No,
it isn't a subjective illusion. And it isn't, either," the unscrupulous
creature added, after a pause, raising his voice, and speaking with
emphasis, as if to repel the insinuation, while the darkness of
disenchantment swept the face of Annunziata, "it isn't, either, as some
imaginative people might too hastily conclude, a wraith, a phantom, an
insubstantial vapour. It's a real material form, that lives and
breathes, and even, if driven to it, speaks. There's nothing
supernatural about it,--unless, indeed, we take the transcendental view
that Nature herself is supernatural. I was wondering, Don Ambrogio,
whether, without violating a confidence, you could tell me whose form it
is?"
"Nossignore," said Don Ambrogio, economizing his breath.
"Ah," sighed John, nodding resignedly, "I feared as much. Divining that
I would institute inquiries, she has stolen a march upon me, and pledged
you to secrecy."
"Nossignore," disavowed Don Ambrogio, raising eyes the sincerity of
which there could be no suspecting.
John's face took on an expression of aggrieved surprise.
"But then why won't you tell me?"
"I cannot tell you because I do not know," said Don Ambrogio.
"Oh, I see," said John. "And yet," he argued meditatively, "that's hard
to conceive. I don't for a moment mean that I doubt it--but it's hard to
conceive, like the atomic theory, and some of the articles of religion.
(I hear, by-the-by, that the scientists are throwing the atomic theory
over. Oh, fickle scientists! Oh, shifting sands of science!) Surely
there can't be many such tall slender forms, in diaphanous garments,
appearing and disappearing here and there in your parish? And one would
suppose, antecedently, that you'd know them all."
"A peasant, a villager," said Don Ambrogio.
"I put it to you as an observer of life," said John, "do peasants, do
villagers, wear diaphanous garments?"
"A visitor, a sight-seer, from some place on the lake," said Don
Ambrogio.
"I put it to you as a student of probabilities," said John, "would a
visitor, would a sight-seer, from some place on the lake, walk in the
garden of the castle without a hat? And would she appear at Sant'
Alessina on two days in succession?"
But Don Ambrogio had finished his veal, and when he had finished his
veal he always left the table, first twice devoutly making the sign of
the Cross, and then with a bow to John, pronouncing the formula, "You
will graciously permit? My affairs call me. A thousand regrets." To-day
he slightly amplified that formula. "A thousand regrets," he said, "and
as many excuses for my inability to afford the information desired."
After his departure, John turned to Annunziata, where, in her grey
cotton pinafore, her lips parted, her big eyes two lively points of
interrogation, she sat opposite to him, impatient to take up the theme.
"Well, Mistress Wisdom!" he saluted her, smiling, and waving his hand.
"It is a good and wholesome thing for the young to witness the
discomfiture of the wicked. Your uncle retreats with flying colours. He
made, to be sure, a slender dinner, but that's his daily habit. If you
have tears to shed, shed them for me. I have made none at all."
From points of interrogation, Annunziata's eyes changed to abysses of
wonder, and, big as they were, seemed to grow measurably bigger.
"You have made no dinner?" she protested, in that strangely deep voice
of hers, with its effect of immense solemnity.
"No, poor dear," said John, with pathos, "no, I have made no dinner."
"But you have eaten a great deal," exclaimed Annunziata, frowning,
nonplussed. "And you are still eating."
"Quite so," responded John, "though I think it's perhaps the merest
trifle unhandsome of you to fling it in my face. I have eaten a great
deal, and I am still eating. That is what I come to table for. In an
orderly life like mine there is a place for everything. I come to table
to eat, just as I go to bed to sleep and to church to say my prayers.
Would you have me sleep at table, eat in church, and say my prayers in
bed? Eating, however, has nothing to do with the case. I spoke of
dining--I said I had not dined. Now you shall be the judge. The question
is, can a Christian man dine twice on the same day? Answer me that."
"Oh, no," answered Annunziata, her pale face very sober, and she
lengthened out her vowels in deprecation of the idea. "At least, it
would be gluttony if he did."
"There you are," cried John. "And gluttony is not the undeadliest of the
Seven Deadly Sins. So, then, unless you would have me guilty of the
deadly sin of gluttony, you must agree that I have not dined. For I am
going to dine this evening. I am going to dine at the Hotel Victoria at
Roccadoro. I am going to dine with a lady. I am going to dine in all the
pomp and circumstance of my dress-suit, with a white tie and pumps. And
you yourself have said it, a Christian man may not, without guilt of
gluttony, dine twice on the same day. Therefore it is the height of
uncharitableness, it's a deliberate imputation of sin, to contend that I
have dined already."
Annunziata followed his reasoning thoughtfully, and then gravely set him
right.
"No," she said, with a drop of the eyelids and a quick little shake of
the head, "you do not understand. I will explain." Her eyes were wide
open again, and bright with zeal for his instruction. "You have dined
already. That is a certain truth, because this meal is dinner, and you
have eaten it. But to-night you are going to a dinner of ceremony--and
that is different. A dinner of ceremony does not count. It is the same
as a supper. My uncle himself once went to a dinner of ceremony at
Bergamo. No, it will not be gluttony for you to go to a dinner of
ceremony."
"You speak like a little pope," said John, with enthusiasm. "In matters
of Faith and Morals I believe you are infallible. If you could guess the
load you have lifted from my conscience!" And he pushed a hearty ouf.
"I am glad," said Annunziata. And then she attempted to hark back.
Curiosity again lighting her eyes, "This form that you have seen in the
garden--" she began.
"Don't try to change the subject," John interrupted. "Let us cultivate
sequence in our ideas. What I am labouring with hammer and tongs to drag
from you is the exact date at which, somewhere between the years of our
salvation 1387 and 1455, you sat for your portrait to the beatified
painter Giovanni of Fiesole. Now, be a duck, and make a clean breast of
it."
Annunziata's eyes clouded. A kind of scorn, a kind of pity, and a kind
of patient longanimity looked from them.
"That is folly," she said, on the deepest of her deep notes, with a
succession of slow, reflective, side-wise nods.
"Folly--?" repeated John, surprised, but bland. "Oh? Really?"
"Sit for my portrait between the years 1387 and 1455,--how could I?"
scoffed Annunziata.
"Why? What was to prevent you?" innocently questioned he.
"_Ma come!_ I was not yet alive," said she.
John looked at her with startled eyes, and spoke with animation.
"Weren't you? Word of honour? Are you sure? How do you know? Have you
any definite recollection that you weren't? Can you clearly recall the
period in question, and then, reviewing it in detail, positively attest
that you were dead? For there's no third choice. A person must either be
alive or dead. And how, if you weren't alive, how ever did it come to
pass that there should be a perfect portrait of you from Giovanni's
brush in the Convent of Saint Mark at Florence? Your grave little white
face, and your wise little big eyes, and your eager little inquisitive
profile, and your curls flowing about your shoulders, and your pinafore
that's so like a peplum,--there they all are, precisely as I see them
before me now. And how was Giovanni able to do them if you weren't
alive? Perhaps you were pre-mortally alive in Heaven? Giovanni's cell,
as is well known, had a window that opened straight into Heaven. Perhaps
he saw you through that window, and painted you without your knowing it.
The name they give your portrait, by-the-by, would rather seem to
confirm that theory. What do you think they call it? They call it an _un
angiolo_. I've got a copy of it in England. When you come to London to
visit the Queen I'll show it to you."
Annunziata gave her flowing curls a toss.
"The form of the young woman which you have seen in the garden--" she
began anew.
"Ah," said John, "observe how differently the big fish and the little
fish will be affected by the same bait."
"When you first spoke of it," said she, "I thought you had seen a holy
apparition."
"Yes," said he. "That was because I couched my communication in language
designedly misleading. I employed the terminology of ghost-lore. I said
'haunted' and 'appear,' and things like that. And you were very properly
and naturally deceived. I confidently expected that you would be. No, it
is not given to world-stained and world-worn old men like me to see holy
apparitions."
"Old men? You are not an old man," said Annunziata.
"Oh? Not? What am I, then?" said John.
"You are a middle-aged man," said she.
"Thank you, Golden Tongue," said he, with a bow.
"And you are sure that it was merely a real person?" she pursued.
"No," said he. "I am too profoundly imbued with the basic principles of
metaphysics ever to be sure of the objective reality of phenomena. I can
only swear to my impression. My impression was and is that it was merely
a real person."
"Then," said Annunziata, with decision, "it must be the person who is
visiting the Signora Brandi."
"The Signora Brandi?" repeated John. "What a nice name! Who is the
Signora Brandi?"
"She is an Austrian," said Annunziata.
"Oh--?" said John.
"She lives in the pavilion beyond the clock-tower," said Annunziata.
"I wasn't aware," said John, "that the pavilion beyond the clock-tower
was inhabited. I wasn't aware that any part of this castle was
inhabited, except the porter's lodge and the part that we inhabit. Why
have I been left till now in this state of outer darkness?"
"The Signora Brandi has been absent," said Annunziata. "She has been in
her own country--in Austria. But the other day she returned. And with
her came a person to visit her. That is the person whose form you have
seen in the garden."
"How do you know it wasn't the form of the Signora Brandi herself?" John
said.
"Oh, no," said Annunziata. "The Signora Brandi is not young. She is old.
She is as old as--"
"Methuselah? Sin? The hills?" suggested John, Annunziata having paused
to think.
"No," said Annunziata, repudiating the suggestion with force. "No one is
so old as Methuselah. She is as old as--well, my uncle."
"I see," said John. "Yes, it's all highly mysterious."
"Mysterious?" said Annunziata.
"I should think so," asseverated he. "Cryptic, enigmatic, esoteric to
the last degree. To begin with, how does the Signora Brandi, being an
Austrian, come by so characteristically un-Austrian a name? Is that
mysterious? And in the next place, why does an Austrian Signora Brandi
so far forget what is due to her nationality as to live, not in Austria,
but in Lombardy? And--as if that were not enough--at Castel Sant'
Alessina? And--as if that were not more than enough--in the pavilion
beyond the clock? Come, come! Mysterious!"
"You are living in Lombardy, you are living at Castel Sant' Alessina,
yourself," said Annunziata.
"I hardly think so," said John. "You can scarcely with precision call
this living--this is rather what purists call sojourning. But even were
it otherwise, there's all the difference in the world between my case
and the Signora Brandi's. I am middle-aged and foolish, but she is as
old as your uncle. Don't you see the mysterious significance of that
coincidence? And I haven't a young woman visiting me. _Who is the young
woman?_ Is that a mystery? My sweet child, we tread among mysteries. We
are at the centre of a coil of mysteries. _Who is the young woman?_ And
how--consider well upon this--how does it happen that the young woman
speaks English? Mysterious, indeed!"
He rose, and bowed, with ceremony.
"But we burn daylight. I must not detain you longer. Suffer me to
imprint upon your hand of velvet a token of my high regard."
And taking Annunziata's frail little white hand, he bent low to kiss it;
and though his blue eyes were full of laughter, I think that behind the
laughter there was a great deal of real fondness and admiration.