John stepped forth from behind the rhododendrons, with a kind of
devil-may-care, loose, aimless gait, the brim of his Panama pulled
brigandishly down over one ear, his hands in the pockets of his coat,
his head bent, his brow creased, his eyes sombre, every line and fibre
of his person advertising him the prey of morose disgust. But when he
saw Maria Dolores, he hastily straightened up, unpocketed his hands,
took off his hat (giving it a flap that set the brim at a less truculent
angle), and smiled. And when, the instant after, he caught sight of the
flying form of Annunziata, his smile turned into a glance of wonder.
"What is the matter with Annunziata? Why is she running with all her
legs like that?" he asked.
Maria Dolores had the tiniest catch of laughter. "She is running away
from you," she answered.
"From _me_?" marvelled John. "_Je suis donc un foudre de guerre?_ What
on earth is she running away from me for?"
Maria Dolores smiled mysteriously.
"Ah," she said, "she asked me not to tell you. 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."
John raised his eyebrows, the blue eyes under them becoming expressive
of dismay.
"Crying?" he echoed. "The poor little kiddie! What had she been crying
about!"
"That is a long story, and involves some of her peculiar theological
tenets," said Maria Dolores. "But, in a single word, about your
friend."
John's eyebrows descended to their normal level, and drew together.
"Crying about my friend? What friend?" he puzzled.
"Your friend the priest--the man who has been passing the day here with
you," explained Maria Dolores.
John gave a start, threw back his head, and eyed her with astonishment.
"That is extraordinary," he exclaimed.
"What?" asked she, lightly glancing up.
"That you should call him my friend the priest," said John, wagging a
bewildered head.
"Why? Isn't he a priest? He has all the air of one," said Maria Dolores.
"No; he's an American millionaire," said John, succinctly.
Maria Dolores moved in her place, and laughed.
"Dear me!" she said, "I did strike wide of the mark. An American
millionaire should cultivate a less deceptive appearance. With that
thin, shaven face of his, and that look of an early Christian martyr in
his eyes, and the dark clothes he wears, wherever he goes he's sure to
be mistaken for a priest."
"Yes," said John, with a kind of grimness; "that's what's extraordinary.
He comes of a long line of bigoted Protestants, he's a reincarnation of
some of his stern old Puritan forebears, and you find that he looks like
their pet abomination, a Romish priest. Well, you have a prophetic eye."
Maria Dolores gazed up inquiringly. "A prophetic eye?" she questioned.
"I merely mean," said John, with thaumaturgic airiness, "that the man is
on his way to Rome to study for the priesthood." And he gave a
thaumaturgic toss to his bearded chin.
"Oh!" cried Maria Dolores, and leaned back against her eucalyptus tree,
and laughed again.
John, however, dejectedly shook his head, and gloomed.
"Laugh if you will," he said, "though it seems to me as far as possible
from a laughing matter, and I think Annunziata chose the better part
when she cried."
"I beg your pardon," said Maria Dolores, perhaps a trifle stiffly. "I
was only laughing at the coincidence of my having supposed him to be a
priest, and then learning that, though he isn't, he is going to become
one. I was not laughing at the fact itself. Nor was it," she added, her
stiffness leaving her, and a little glimmer of amusement taking its
place, "that fact which made Annunziata cry."
"I dare say not," responded John, "seeing that she couldn't possibly
have known it. But it might well have done so. It's enough to bring
tears to the eyes of a brazen image." He angrily jerked his shoulders.
"What?" cried Maria Dolores, surprised, rebukeful. "That a man is to
become a holy priest?"
"Oh, no," said John. "That fact alone, detached from special
circumstances, might be a subject for rejoicing. But the fact that this
particular man, _in_ his special circumstances, is to become a
priest--well, I simply have no words to express my feeling." He threw
out his arms, in a gesture of despair. "I'm simply sick with rage and
pity. I could gnash my teeth and rend my garments."
"Mercy!" cried Maria Dolores, stirring. "What are the special
circumstances?"
"Oh, it's a grisly history," said John. "It's a tale of the wanton,
ruthless, needless, purposeless sacrifice of two lives. It's his old
black icy Puritan blood. Winthorpe--that's his name--had for years been
a freethinker, far too intellectual and enlightened, and that sort of
thing, you know, to believe any such old wives' tale as the Christian
Religion. He and I used to have arguments, tremendous ones, in which, of
course, neither in the least shook the other. Darwin and Spencer, with a
dash of his native Emerson, were religion enough for him. Then this
morning he arrived here, and said, 'Congratulate me. A month ago I was
received into the Church.'"
Maria Dolores looked up, animated, her dark eyes sparkling.
"How splendid!" she said.
"Yes," agreed John, "so I thought. 'Congratulate me,' he said. I should
think I did congratulate him,--with all my heart and soul. But then,
naturally, I asked him how it had happened, what had brought it to
pass."
"Yes--?" prompted Maria Dolores, as he paused.
"Well," said John, his face hardening, "he thereupon proceeded to tell
me in his quiet way, with his cool voice (it's like smooth-flowing cold
water), absolutely the most inhuman story I have ever had to keep my
patience and listen to."
"What was the story?" asked Maria Dolores.
"If you can credit such inhumanity, it was this," answered John. "It
seems that he fell in love--with a girl in Boston, where he lives. And
what's more, and worse, the girl fell in love with him. So there they
were, engaged. But she was a Catholic, and his state of unbelief was a
cause of great grief to her. So she pleaded with him, and persuaded,
till, merely to comfort her, and without the faintest suspicion that his
scepticism could be weakened, he promised to give the Catholic position
a thorough reconsideration, to read certain books, and to put himself
under instruction with a priest: which he did. Which he did, if you
please, with the result, to his own unutterable surprise, that one fine
day he woke up and discovered that he'd been convinced, that he
_believed_."
"Yes?" said Maria Dolores, eagerly. "Yes--? And then? And the girl?"
"Ah," said John, with a groan, "the girl That's the pity of it. That's
where his black old Puritan blood comes in. Blood? It isn't blood--it's
some fluid form of stone--it's flint dissolved in vinegar. The girl!
Mind you, she loved him, they were engaged to be married. Well, he went
to her, and said, 'I have been converted. I believe in the Christian
religion--your religion. But I can't believe a thing like that, and go
on living as I lived when I didn't believe it,--go on living as if it
weren't true, or didn't matter. 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.
"After all, he had to obey his conscience," she said. "After all, he was
logical, he was consistent."
"Oh, his conscience! Oh, consistency!" cried John, with an intolerant
fling of the body. "At bottom it's nothing better than common
self-indulgence, as I took the liberty of telling him to his face. It's
the ardour of the convert, acting upon that acid solution of flint which
takes the place of blood in his veins, and causing sour puritanical
impulses, which (like any other voluptuary) he immediately gives way to.
It's nothing better than unbridled passion. Conscience, indeed! Where
was his conscience when it came to _her_? Think of that poor girl--that
poor pale girl--who _loved_ him. Oh, Mother of Mercy!"
He moved impatiently three steps to the left, three steps to the right,
beating the palm of one hand with the back of the other.
"What did she do? How did she take it?" asked Maria Dolores.
"What she ought to have done," said John, between his teeth, "was to
scratch his eyes out. What she did do, as he informed me with a seraphic
countenance, was not merely to approve of everything he said, but to
determine to do likewise. So, while he's on his way to Rome, to get
himself tonsured and becassocked, she's scrubbing the floors of an
Ursuline convent, as a novice. And there are two lives spoiled." He
shrugged his shoulders.
"Oh, no, no," contended Maria Dolores, earnestly, shaking her head, "not
spoiled. On the contrary. It is sad, in a way, if you like, but it is
very beautiful, it is heroic. Their love must have been a very beautiful
love, that could lead them to such self-sacrifice. Two lives given to
God."
"Can't people give their lives to God without ceasing to _live_?" cried
John. "If marriage is a sacrament, how can they better give their lives
to God than by living sanely and sweetly in Christian marriage? But
these people withdraw from life, renounce life, shirk and evade the life
that God had prepared for them and was demanding of them. It's as bad as
suicide. Besides, it implies such a totally perverted view of religion.
Religion surely is given to us to help us to _live_, to show us _how_ to
live, to enable us to meet the difficulties, emergencies,
responsibilities of life. But these people look upon their religion as
a mandate to turn their backs on the responsibilities of life, and
scuttle away. And as for _love_! Well, she no doubt did love, poor lady.
But Winthorpe! No. When a man loves he doesn't send his love into a
convent, and go to Rome to get himself becassocked." He gave his head a
nod of finality.
"That, I fancy, is a question of temperament," said Maria Dolores. "Your
friend has the ascetic temperament. And it does not by any means follow
that he loves less because he resigns his love. What you call an inhuman
story seems to me a wonderfully noble one. I saw your friend this
morning, when he and you were walking together, and I said to myself,
'That man looks as if he had listened to the Counsels of Perfection. His
vocation shines through him.' I think you should reconcile yourself to
his accepting it."
"Well," said John, on the tone of a man ready to change the subject, "I
owe him at least one good mark. His account of his 'heart-state' led me
to examine my own, and I discovered that I am in love myself,--which is
a useful thing to know."
"Oh?" said Maria Dolores, with a little effect of reserve.
"Yes," said John, nothing daunted, "though unlike his, mine is an
unreciprocated flame, and unavowed."
"Ah?" said Maria Dolores, reserved indeed, but not without an undertone
of sympathy.
"Yes," said John, playing with fire, and finding therein a heady mixture
of fearfulness and joy. "The woman I love doesn't dream I love her, and
dreams still less of loving me,--for which blessed circumstance may
Heaven make me truly thankful."
The sentiment sounding unlikely, Maria Dolores raised doubtful eyes.
They shone into John's; his drank their light; and something violent
happened in his bosom.
"Oh--?" she said.
"Yes," said he, thinking what adorable little hands she had, as they lay
loosely clasped in her lap, thinking how warm they would be, and
fragrant; thinking too what fun it was, this playing with fire, how
perilous and exciting, and how egotistical he must seem to her, and how
nothing on earth should prevent him from continuing the play. "Yes," he
said, "it's a circumstance to be thankful for, because, like Winthorpe
himself, though for different reasons, I'm unable to contemplate
marriage." His voice sank sorrowfully, and he made a sorrowful movement.
"Oh--?" said Maria Dolores, her sympathy becoming more explicit.
"Winthorpe's too beastly puritanical--and I'm too beastly poor," said
he.
"Oh," she murmured. Her eyes softened; her sympathy deepened to
compassion.
"She must certainly put me down as the most complacent egotist in two
hemispheres, so to regale her with unsolicited information about
myself," thought John; "but surely it would need six hemispheres to
produce another pair of eyes as beautiful as hers."--"Yes," he said, "I
should be 'looking up' if I asked even a beggar-maid to marry me."
Maria Dolores' beautiful eyes became thoughtful as well as
compassionate.
"But men who are poor work and earn money," she said, on the tone that
young women adopt when the spirit moves them to preach to young men. And
when the spirit does move them to that, things may be looked upon as
having advanced an appreciable distance, the ball may be looked upon as
rolling.
"So I've heard," said John, his head in the clouds. "It must be dull
business."
Maria Dolores dimly smiled. "Do _you_ do no work?" she asked.
"I've never had time," said John. "I've been too busy enjoying life."
"Oh," said Maria Dolores, with the intonation of reproach.
"Yes," said he, "enjoying the Humour, the Romance, the Beauty of
it,--and combine the three together, make a chord of 'em, you get the
Divinity. Or, to take a lower plane, the world's a stage, and life's the
drama. I could never leave off watching and listening long enough to do
any work."
"But do you not wish to play a part in the drama, to be one of the
actors?" asked his gentle homilist. "Have you no ambition?"
"Not an atom," he easily confessed. "The part of spectator seems to me
by far the pleasantest. To sit in the stalls and watch the incredible
jumble-show, the reason-defying topsy-turvydom of it, the gorgeous,
squalid, tearful, and mirthful pageantry, the reckless inconsequences,
the flagrant impossibilities; to watch the Devil ramping up and down
like a hungry lion, and to hear the young-eyed cherubim choiring from
the skies: what better entertainment could the heart of man desire?"
"But are we here merely to be entertained?" she sweetly preached, while
John's blue eyes somewhat mischievously laughed, and he felt it hard
that he couldn't stop her rose-red mouth with kisses. "Aren't we here to
be, as the old-fashioned phrase goes, of use in the world? Besides, now
that you are in love, surely you will never sit down weakly, and say, 'I
am too poor to marry,' and so give up your love,--like your friend
Winthorpe indeed, but for ignoble instead of noble motives. Surely you
will set to work with determination, and earn money, and make it
possible to marry. Or else your love must be a very poor affair." And
her adorable little hands, as they lay ("like white lilies," thought
John) upon the pale-green fabric of her gown, unclasped themselves,
opened wide for an instant, showing the faint pink of their palms, then
lightly again interlaced their fingers.
He laughed. "You are delicious," he said to her fervently, in silence.
"My love is all right," he said aloud. "I love her as much as it is
humanly possible to love. I love her with passion, with tenderness; with
worship, with longing; I love her with wonder; I love her with sighs,
with laughter. I love her with all I have and with all I am. And I owe
one to Winthorpe for having unwittingly opened my eyes to my condition.
But earning money? I've a notion it's difficult. What could I do?"
"Have you no profession?" she asked.
"Not the ghost of one," said he, with nonchalance.
"But is there no profession that appeals to you--for which you feel that
you might have a taste?" Her dark eyes were very earnest.
"Not the ghost of one," said he, dissembling his amusement.
"Professions--don't they all more or less involve sitting shut up in
stuffy offices, among pigeon-holes full of dusty and futile papers,
doing tiresome tasks for the greater glory of other people, like a slave
in the hold of a galley? No, if I'm to work, I must work at something
that will keep me above decks--something that will keep me out of
doors, in touch with the air and the earth. I might become an
agricultural labourer,--but that's not very munificently paid; or a
farmer,--but that would require perhaps more capital than I could
command, and anyhow the profits are uncertain. I've an uncle who's a bit
of a farmer, and year in, year out, I believe he makes a loss. 'Well,
what's left? ... Ah, a gardener. I don't think I should half mind being
a gardener."
Maria Dolores looked as if she weren't sure whether or not to take him
seriously.
"A gardener? That's not very munificently paid either, is it?" she
suggested, trying her ground.
"Alas, I fear not," sighed John. Then he made a grave face. "But would
you have me entirely mercenary? Money isn't everything here below."
Maria Dolores smiled. She saw that for the moment at least he was not to
be taken seriously.
"True," she agreed, "though it ran in my mind that to earn money, so
that you might marry, was your only motive for going to work at all."
"I had forgotten that," said the light-minded fellow. "I was thinking of
occupations that would keep one in touch with the earth. A gardener's
occupation keeps him constantly in the charmingest possible sort of
touch with her, and the most intimate."
"Do they call the earth _her_ in English?" asked Maria Dolores. "I
thought they said _it_."
"I'm afraid, for the greater part, they do," answered John. "But it's
barbarous of them, it's unfilial. Our brown old mother,--fancy
begrudging her the credit of her sex! Our brown and green old mother;
our kindly, bounteous mother; our radiant, our queenly mother, old, and
yet perennially, radiantly young. Look at her now," he cried, circling
the garden with his arm, and pointing to the farther landscape, "look at
her, shining in her robes of pearl and gold, shining and smiling,--one
would say a bride arrayed for the altar. 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."
Maria Dolores leaned back, softly laughing.
"Your infatuation for the earth is so great," she said, "mightn't your
lady-love, if she suspected it, be jealous?"
"No," said John, "it is the earth that might be jealous, for, until I
saw my lady-love, she was the undivided mistress of my heart. For the
rest, my lady-love enjoys, upon this point, my entire confidence. I have
kept nothing from her."
"That is well," approved Maria Dolores. "And the sky and the sea," still
softly laughing, she asked, "have they no place in your affections?
"The sky is her tiring-maiden, and I love the sky for that," said John.
"'Tis the sky that clothes her in her many-coloured raiment, and holds
the light whereby her beauty is made manifest. And the sea is a jewel
that she bears upon her bosom,--a magical jewel, whence, with the sky's
aid, she draws the soft rain that is her scent and her cosmetic.
'Fragrant the fertile earth after soft showers.' Do you know, I could
almost forgive the dour and detestable Milton everything for the sake of
those seven words. They show that in the sense of smell he had at least
one attribute of humanity."
Maria Dolores' dark eyes were quizzical.
"The dour and detestable Milton?" she exclaimed. "Poor Milton! What has
he done to merit such anathema?
"It isn't what he has done, but what he was," said John. "That he was
dour nobody will deny, dour and sour and inhuman. Ask those unfortunate,
long-suffering daughters of his, if you doubt it. _They_ could tell you
stories. But he was worse. He was a scribe and a Pharisee, a
pragmatical, self-righteous, canting old scribe and Pharisee. And he was
worse still, and still worse yet. He was--what seems to me to-day the
worstest thing unhung--he was a Puritan. Like Winthorpe's, his blood was
black and icy and vinegarish. Like Winthorpe--But there. I mustn't
abuse Winthorpe any more, and I must try to forgive Milton. Milton wrote
seven good words, and Winthorpe unwittingly opened a lover's eyes to his
condition."
He paused, and smiled down upon her, and his newly opened (and very
blue) blue eyes said much. Her eyes were dreaming on the landscape,
where it shone in pearl and gold. However, as she gave no sign of
finding his conversation wearisome, he took heart, and continued.
"For when he told me how he had put his love away, never again to see
her, and how at that moment she would be scrubbing floors (or taking the
discipline, perhaps?) in a convent of Ursulines, suddenly, and without
any action of the will on my part, there rose before me the vision of a
certain woman;--a woman I knew a little, admired immensely, very much
liked, but didn't for an instant suppose I was seriously in love with.
And involuntarily, with the vision of her before me, I asked myself
whether, _mutatis mutandis_, I could have done as he had, and in a flash
I saw that I could not,--that not for the wealth of Ormus and of Ind
could I or would I give her up, if once I had her. So, by that token,
and by the uncommon wrath with which his tale inflamed me," John, with a
rhetorical flourish, perorated, "I discovered that I loved." And again
his eyes said much.
Hers were still on the prospect.
"Yet if you only know her a little, how can you love her?" she asked, in
a musing voice.
"Did I say I only know her a little?" asked John. "I know her a great
deal. I know her through and through. I know that she is pure gold, pure
crystal; that she is made of all music, all light, all sweetness, and of
all shadow and silence and mystery too, as women should be. I know that
earth holds naught above her. I do not care to employ superlatives, so,
to put it in the form of an understatement, I know that she is simply
and absolutely perfect. If you could see her! If you could see her eyes,
her deep-glowing, witty, humorous, mischievous, innocent eyes, with the
soul that burns in them, the passion that sleeps. If you could see the
black soft masses of her hair, and her white brow, and the pale-rose of
her cheeks, and the red-rose of her lovely smiling mouth. If you could
see her figure, slender and strong, and the grace and pride of her
carriage,--the carriage of an imperial princess. If you could see her
hands,--they lie in her lap like languid lilies. And her voice,--'tis
the colour of her mouth and the glow of her eyes made audible. And if
you could whisper to yourself her melodious and thrice adorable name. I
know her a great deal. When I said that I only knew her a little, I
meant it in the sense that she only knows me a little,--which after all,
alas, for practical purposes comes to the same thing."
He had spoken with emphasis, with fervour, his pink face animated and
full of intention. Maria Dolores kept her soft-glowing eyes resolutely
away from him, but I think the soul that burned in them (if not the
passion that slept) was vaguely troubled. _Qui pane d'amour_--how does
the French proverb run? Did she vaguely feel perhaps that the seas they
were sailing were perilous? Anyhow, as John saw with sinking heart, she
was at the point of putting an end to their present conjunction,--she
was preparing to rise. He would have given worlds to offer a helping
hand, but (however rich in worlds) he was, for the occasion, poor in
courage. When love comes in at the door, assurance as like as not will
fly out of the window. So she rose unaided.
"Let us hope," she said, giving him a glance in which he perceived an
under-gleam as of not unfriendly mockery, "that she will soon come to
know you better."
"Heaven forbid!" cried he, with a fine simulation of alarm. "It is upon
her ignorance of my true character that I base such faint hopes as I
possess of some day winning her esteem."
Maria Dolores laughed, nodded, and lightly moved away.
"My son," said John to himself, "you steered precious close to the wind.
You had best be careful."
And then he was conscious of a sudden change in things. The garden
smiled about him, the valley below laughed in the breeze, the blackcaps
sang, the many windows of the Castle glistened in the sun; but their
beauty and their pleasantness had departed, had retired with her into
the long, low, white-walled, red-roofed pavilion. He was conscious of a
sudden change in things, and of a sudden acute and bitter depression
within himself.
"These are great larks," he said; "great larks while they last,--but
what's the good of them in the end? What do they lead to? What's the
good of coquetting with blisses that can't be yours?" And he breathed a
prodigious sigh. "When shall I see her again?" he asked, and thereupon
was seized by his old terror--his terror of yesterday, though it seemed
to him a terror he had known all his life--lest he should never see her
again. "She's only a visitor. What's to prevent her leaving this very
night?"
The imagination was intolerable. He entered the Castle court, and
climbed the staircase of honour, and rambled through the long suites of
great empty rooms, empty of everything save the memory of the past and
the portraits of the dead, there, if he might, for a time at least, to
lose himself and to forget her.
V
"Who is the young man you have been talking with so long?" asked Frau
Brandt, as Maria Dolores came into her sitting-room, a vast, square,
bare room, with a marble floor and a painted ceiling, with Venetian
blinds to shelter it from the sun, and a bitter-sweet smell, as of
rosemary or I know not what other aromatic herb, upon its cool air.
"Oh? You saw us?" said Maria Dolores, answering the question with
question.
"Him I have seen many times--every day for a week at least," said Frau
Brandt. "But I never before saw you talking with him. Who is he?" She
was a small, brown, square-built, black-haired, homely-featured old
woman, in a big, round starched white cap and a flowing black silk gown.
She sat in an uncushioned oaken armchair by the window, with some
white knitting in her bony, blunt-fingered brown hands, and
tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles on her nose. But the spectacles
couldn't hide the goodness or the soundness or the sweetness that looked
forth from her motherly old honest brown eyes.
"He is a young man who lives _en pension_ at the presbytery," said Maria
Dolores, "a young Englishman."
"So?" said Frau Brandt. "What is his name?"
"I don't know," said Maria Dolores, with disengagement real or feigned.
"His Christian name, I believe, is John."
"But his family name?" persisted Frau Brandt.
"It is probably Brown, Jones, or Robinson," said Maria Dolores. "Or it
may even be Black, Smith, or Johnson. Most Englishmen are named one or
the other."
"So?" said Frau Brandt. "But is it prudent or seemly for you to talk
familiarly with a young man whose name is unknown to you?"
"Why not?" asked Maria Dolores, raising her eyebrows, as if surprised.
"He seems a very harmless young man. I don't think he will eat me. And
he is English,--and I like English people. And he is intelligent,--his
conversation amuses me. And he has nice easy, impetuous manners,--so
different from the formality and restraint of Austrian young men. What
can his name matter?"
"But"--Frau Brandt looked up impressively over her spectacles, and her
voice was charged with gravity, for she was about to ask a question to
the Teutonic mind of quite supreme importance--"but is he noble?" It was
to her what--nay, more than what--the question, "Is he respectable?"
would have been to an Englishwoman.
Maria Dolores laughed.
"Oh, no," she said. "At least I have every reason to believe not, and I
devoutly hope not. He belongs I expect to what they call in England the
middle class. He has an uncle who is a farmer."
Frau Brandt's good old brown eyes showed her profoundly shocked, and
expressed profound reprehension.
"But you were speaking with him familiarly--you were speaking with him
almost as an equal," she pronounced in bated accents, in accents of
consternation.
Again Maria Dolores laughed.
"True," she assented gaily, "and that is exactly what I couldn't do if
he _were_ noble. Then I should have to remember our respective
positions. But where the difference of rank is so great, one can talk
familiarly without fear. _Ça n'engage à rien_."
Frau Brandt nodded her head, for full half a minute, with many meanings;
she nodded it now up and down, and now shook it sidewise.
"I do not like it," she said, at last. "Your brother would not like it.
It is not becoming. Well, thanks be to Heaven, he is only English."
"Oh, of course," agreed Maria Dolores, "if he were Austrian, it would be
entirely different."
"But is it fair to the young man himself?" pursued Frau Brandt. "Is he
aware that he is hobanobbing with a Serene Highness? You treat him as an
equal. What if he should fall in love with you?"
"What indeed! But he won't," laughed Maria Dolores, possibly with a
mental reservation.
"Who can tell?" said Frau Brandt. "His eyes, when he looked at you, had
an expression. But there is a greater danger still. You are both at the
dangerous age. He is good-looking. What if your heart should become
interested in him?"
"Oh, in that case," answered Maria Dolores, lightly, her chin a little
in the air, "I should marry him--if he asked me."
"What!" cried Frau Brandt, half rising from her chair.
"Yes," said Maria Dolores, cheerfully unexcited. "He is a man of
breeding and education, even if he isn't noble. If I loved a man, I
shouldn't give one thought to his birth. I'm tired of all our Austrian
insistence upon birth, upon birth and quarterings and precedencies. If
ever I love, I shall love some one just for what he is, for what God has
made him, and for nothing else. It wouldn't matter if his father were a
cobbler--if I loved him, I'd marry him." Her chin higher in the air, she
had every appearance of meaning what she said.
Frau Brandt had sunk back in her chair, and was nodding her white-capped
old head again.
"Oh, my child, my child," she grieved. "Will you never rid your fancy of
these high-flown, unpractical, romantic whimsies? It all comes of
reading poetry." She herself, good woman, read little but her prayers.
"Oh, my dear true Heart," responded Maria Dolores, laughing. She crossed
the room, and placed her hand affectionately upon Frau Brandt's
shoulder. "My dearest old Nurse! Do not distress yourself. This is not
yet a question of actuality. Let us not cry before we are hurt." And she
stooped, and kissed her nurse's brown old brow.
But afterwards she stood looking with great pensiveness out of the
window, stood so for a long while; and I fancy there was a softer glow
than ever in her soft-glowing eyes, and perhaps a livelier rose in her
pale-rose cheeks.
"What are you thinking so deeply about?" Frau Brandt asked by-and-by.
Maria Dolores woke with a little start, and turned from the window, and
laughed again.
"Oh, thinking about my cobbler's son, of course," she said.