"Rain before seven, clear before eleven," is as true, or as untrue, in
Lombardy as it is in other parts of the world. The rain had held up, and
now, in that spirited phrase of Corvo's, "here came my lord the Sun,"
splendidly putting the clouds to flight, or chaining them, transfigured,
to his chariot-wheels; clothing the high snow-peaks in a roseate glory,
(that seemed somehow, I don't know why, to accent their solitude and
their remoteness); flooding the valley with ethereal amber; turning the
swollen Rampio to a river of fire while the nearer hillsides, the olive
woods, the trees in the Castle garden, glistened with a million million
crystals, and the petals of the flowers were crystal-tipped; while the
breath of the earth rose in long streamers of luminous incense, and the
sky gleamed with every tender, every brilliant, tint of blue, from the
blue of pale forgetmenots to the blue of larkspur.
John, contemplating this spectacle, (and thinking of Maria Dolores?
revolving still her cryptic valediction?), all at once, as his eye
rested on the shimmer at the valley's end which he knew to be the lake,
lifted up his hand and clapped his brow. "By Jove," he muttered, "if I
wasn't within an ace of clean forgetting!" The sight of the lake had
fortunately put him in mind that he was engaged to-day to lunch with
Lady Blanchemain at Roccadoro.
He found her ladyship, in a frock all concentric whirls of crisp white
ruffles, vigorously wielding a fan, and complaining of the heat.
(Indeed, as Annunziata had predicted, it had grown markedly warmer.) "I
shall fly away, if this continues; I shall fly straight to town, and set
my house in order for the season. When do _you_ come?" she asked,
smiling on him from her benign old eyes.
"I don't come," answered John. "I rather like town in autumn and winter,
when it's too dark to see its ugliness, but save me from it in the clear
light of summer."
"Fudge," said Lady Blanchemain. "London's the most beautiful capital in
Europe--it's grandiose. And it's the only place where there are any
people.
"Yes," said John, "but, as at Nice and Homburg, too many of them are
English. And there's a liberal scattering, I've heard, of Jews?"
"Oh, Jews are all right--when they aren't Jewy," said Lady Blanchemain,
with magnanimity. "I know some very nice ones. I was rather hoping you
would be a feature of my Sunday afternoons."
"I'm not a society man," said John. "I've no aptitude myself for
patronizing or toadying, and I don't particularly enjoy being patronized
or toadied to."
"Is that the beginning and end of social life in England?" Lady
Blanchemain inquired, delicately sarcastic.
"As I have seen it, yes," asseverated John. "The beginning, end, and
middle of social life in England, as in Crim-Tartary, is worship of the
longest pigtail,--a fetichism sometimes grosser, sometimes subtler,
sometimes deliberate, often unconscious and instinctive. Every one you
meet is aware that his pigtail is either longer or shorter than yours,
and accordingly, more or less subtly, grossly, unconsciously or
deliberately, swaggers or bends the knee. It's a state of things I've
tried in vain to find diverting."
"It's a state of things you'll find prevailing pretty well in all places
where the human species breeds," said Lady Blanchemain. "The only
difference will be a question of what constitutes the pigtail. And are
you, then, remaining at Sant' Alessina?"
"For the present," answered John.
"Until--?" she questioned.
"Oh, well, until she sends me away, or leaves herself," said he, "and so
my fool's paradise achieves its inevitable end."
Lady Blanchemain laughed--a long, quiet laugh of amused contentment.
"Come in to luncheon," she said, putting her soft white hand upon his
arm, "and tell me all about it." And when they were established at her
table, a round table, gay with flowers, in a window at the far end of
the cool, terazza-paved, stucco-columned dining-room of the Hotel
Victoria, "Why do you call it a fool's paradise?" she asked.
"Well, you see, I'm in love," said he.
"You really are?" she doubted, with sprightliness, looking gleeful.
"All too really," he assured her, in a sinking voice.
"What an old witch I was!" mused she, with satisfaction. "Accept my
heart-felt felicitations." She beamed upon him.
"I should prefer your condolences," said he, in a voice from the depths.
"_Allons donc!_ Cheer up," laughed she, dallying with her bliss. "Men
have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for love."
"I wonder," said John. "That is a statement, it seems to me, which would
be the better for some proving."
"At all events," said she, "you, for one, are not dead yet."
"No," admitted he; "though I could almost wish I was."
"Do you mean to say she has definitely rejected you?" she demanded,
alarmed.
"Fortune has spared her that necessity," said John. "I haven't asked
her, and I never shall. I haven't any money."
"Pooh! Is that all?" scoffed her ladyship, relieved. "You have
prospects."
"Remote ones--the remoter the better. I won't count on dead men's
shoes," said John.
"What is it your little fortune-teller at the Castle calls you?" asked
Lady Blanchemain, shrewdly, her dark old eyebrows up.
"She calls me _lucus a non lucendo_," was John's quick riposte; and the
lady laughed.
But in a moment she pulled a straight face. "I seriously counsel you to
have more faith," she said. "Go home and ask her to marry you; and if
she accepts,--you'll see. Money will come. Besides, your rank and your
prospective rank are assets which you err in not adding to the balance.
Go home, and propose to her."
"'Twould do no good," said John, dejectedly. "She regards me with
imperturbable indifference. I've made the fieriest avowals to her, and
she's never turned a hair."
Lady Blanchemain looked bewildered. "You've made avowals--?" she
falteringly echoed.
"I should rather think so," John affirmed. "Indirect ones, of course,
and I hope inoffensive, but fiery as live coals. In the third person,
you know. I've given her two and two; she has, you may be sure, enough
skill in mathematics to put 'em together."
"And she never turned a hair?" the lady marvelled.
"She jeered at me, she mocked me, she laughed and rode away," said he.
"She's probably in love with you," said Lady Blanchemain. "If a woman
will listen, if a woman will laugh! If you don't propose to her now,
having ensnared her young affections, you'll be something worse than the
wicked nobleman of song and story."
"Oh, well," John responded, conciliatory, "I dare say some of these days
a proposal will slip out when I least intend it. So I shall have done
the honourable thing--and I'm sure I can trust her to play fair and say
me nay."
Lady Blanchemain slowly shook her head. "I'm glad you're not _my_
lover," she devoutly murmured, plying her fan.
"Oh, but I am," cried John, with a bow, and an admiring flash of the
eyes.
Her soft old face lighted up; then it took on an expression of
resolution, and she set her strong old jaws.
"In that case," she remarked, "you will have the less reluctance in
granting a favour I'm about to ask you."
"What's the favour?" said John, in a tone of readiness.
"I want you to buy a pig in a poke," said she.
"Oh?" questioned he.
"Yes," said she. "I want you to make me a promise blindfold. I want you
to promise in the dark that you will do something. What it is that
you're to do you're not to know till the time comes. Will you promise?"
"Dearest lady," said the trustful young man, "I'm perfectly confident
that you would never ask me to do anything that I couldn't do with
profit to myself. Buy a pig in a poke? From you, without a moment's
hesitation. Of course I promise."
"Bravo, bravo," applauded Lady Blanchemain, glowing at her easy triumph.
"In a few days you'll receive a letter. That will tell you what it is
you're pledged to. And now, to reward you, come with me to my
sitting-room, and I will make you a little present."
When they had reached her sitting-room (dim and cool, with its
half-drawn blinds and the straw-coloured linen covers of its furniture),
she put into his hands a small case of shagreen, small and hard, and at
the edges white with age.
"Go to the window and see what's in it," she said.
And obeying, "By Jove, what a stunner!" he exclaimed. The case contained
a ring, a light circle of gold, set with a ruby, surrounded by a row of
diamonds,--for my part, I think the most beautiful ruby I have ever
seen. It was as big as a hazel-nut, or almost; it was cut, with
innumerable facets, in the shape of a heart; and it quivered and burned,
and flowed and rippled, liquidly, with the purest, limpidest red fire.
"'Tis the spirit of a rose, distilled and crystallized," said Lady
Blanchemain.
"'Tis a drop of liquid light," said John. "But why do you give it to me?
I can't wear it. I don't think I ought to accept it."
"Nobody asks you to wear it," said Lady Blanchemain. "It's a woman's
ring, of course. But as for accepting it, you need have no scruples.
It's an old Blanchemain gem, that was in the family a hundred years
before I came into it. It's properly an heirloom, and you're the heir.
I give it to you for a purpose. Should you ever become engaged, I desire
you to placcit upon the finger of the adventurous woman."