Annunziata's delirium had passed, but in spite of all their efforts to
persuade her not to talk, talk she would.
"This is the month of May, isn't it?" she asked, next morning.
"Yes, dear one," said Maria Dolores, whose watch it was.
"And that is the month of Mary. San Luca ought to hurry up and make me
well, so that I can keep flowers on the Lady Altar."
"Then if you wish to get well quickly," said Maria Dolores, "you must
try not to talk,--nor even to think, if you can help it. You know the
doctor does not want you to talk."
"All right. I won't talk. A going clock may be always wrong, but a
stopped clock is right twice a day. So stop your tongue, and avoid
folly. My uncle told me that. He never talks."
"And now shall you and I imitate his example?" proposed Maria Dolores.
Her lips, compressed, were plainly the gaolers of a laugh.
"Yes," said Annunziata. "But I can't help thinking of those poor
flowers. All May flowers are born to be put on the Lady Altar. Those
poor flowers are missing what they were born for. They must be very
sad."
"This afternoon, every afternoon," Maria Dolores promised, "I will put
flowers on the Lady Altar. Now see if you can't shut your eyes, and rest
for a little while."
"I once found a toad on the Lady Altar. What do you think he was there
for?" asked Annunziata.
"I can't think, I'm sure," said Maria Dolores.
"Well, when I first saw him I was angry, and I was going to get a broom
and sweep him away. But then I thought it must be very hard to be a
toad, and that you can't help being a toad if you are born one, and I
thought that perhaps that toad was there praying that he might be
changed from a toad to something else. So I didn't sweep him away. Have
you ever heard of the little Mass of Corruption that lay in a garden?"
"No," said Maria Dolores.
"Well," said Annunziata, "once upon a time a little Mass of Corruption
lay in a garden. But it did not know it was a Mass of Corruption, and it
did not wish to be a Mass of Corruption, and it never did any harm or
wished any harm to any one, but just lay there all day long, and thought
how beautiful the sky was, and how good and warm the sun, and how sweet
the flowers were and the bird-songs, and thanked God with all its heart
for having given it such a lovely place to lie in. Yet all the while,
you know, it couldn't help being what it was, a little Mass of
Corruption. And at the close of the day some people who were walking in
the garden saw it, and cried out, 'Oh, what a horrible little Mass of
Corruption!' and they called the gardener, and had it buried in the
earth. But the little Mass of Corruption, when it heard that it _was_ a
little Mass of Corruption, felt very, very sad, and it made a
supplication to Our Lady. 'I do not wish to be a Mass of Corruption,' it
said. 'Queen of Heaven, pray for me, that I may be purified, and made
clean, and not be a Mass of Corruption any longer, and that I may then
go back to the garden, out of this dark earth.' So Our Lady prayed for
it, and it was cleansed with water and purified, and--what do you think
the Little Mass of Corruption became? It became a rose--a red rose in
that very garden, just where they had buried it. From which we see--But
I don't quite remember what we see from it," she broke off the pain of
baffled effort on her brow. "My uncle could tell you that."
Afterwards, for a few minutes, she was silent, lying quite still, with
her eyes on the ceiling.
"Why do sunny lands produce dark people, and dark lands light people?"
she asked all at once.
"Ah, don't begin to talk again, dear," Maria Dolores pleaded. "The
doctor will he coming soon now, and he will be angry if he finds that I
have let you talk."
"Oh, I will tell him that it isn't your fault," said Annunziata. "I will
tell him that you didn't let me, but that I talked because it is so hard
to lie here and think, think, think, and not be allowed to say what you
are thinking. Prospero asked me that question about sunny lands a long
time ago. I've been thinking and thinking, but I can't think it out.
Have you a great deal of money? Are you very rich?"
"Darling, won't you please not talk any more?" Maria Dolores implored
her.
"I'll stop pretty soon," said Annunziata. "I think you are very rich. I
think, in spite of his saying her name is not Maria Dolores, that you
are the dark woman whom Prospero is to marry. He is to marry a dark
woman who will be very rich. But then he will also he very rich himself.
Is Austria a sunny land? England must be a dark land, for Prospero is
light. Let me see your left hand, please, and I will tell you whether
you are to marry a light man.
"Hush!" said Maria Dolores, trying not to laugh. "That shall be some
other time."
"Wouldn't you like to marry Prospero? I would," said Annunziata.
"I think I hear the wheels of the doctor's gig," said Maria Dolores.
"Now we shall both be scolded."
"But of course, if you do marry him, I can't," Annunziata pursued,
undaunted by this menace. "A man isn't allowed to have two
wives,--unless he is a king. He may have two sisters or two daughters,
but not two wives or two mothers. There was once a king named Salomone
who had a thousand wives, but even he had only one mother, I think. I
hope you will live at Sant' Alessina after your marriage. Will you?"
Maria Dolores bit her lip and vouchsafed no answer; and again for a
minute or two Annunziata lay silent. But presently, "Have you ever waked
up in the middle of the night, and felt terribly frightened?" she asked.
"Yes, dear, sometimes. I suppose every one has," said Maria Dolores.
"Well, do you know why people feel so frightened when they wake like
that?" pursued the child.
"No," said Maria Dolores.
"I do," said Annunziata. "The middle of the night is the Devil's Noon.
Nobody is awake in the middle of the night except wicked people, like
thieves or roysterers, or people who are suffering. All people who are
good, and who are well and happy, are sound asleep. So it is the time
the Devil likes best, and he and all his evil spirits come to the earth
to enjoy the great pleasure of seeing people wicked or suffering. And
that is why we feel so frightened when we wake. The air all round us is
full of evil spirits, though we can't see them, and they are watching
us, to run and tell the Devil if we do anything wicked or suffer any
pain. But it is foolish of us to feel frightened, because our Guardian
Angels are always there too, and they are a hundred times stronger than
the evil spirits. Angels, you know, are very big, very much bigger than
men. Some of them are as tall as mountains, but even the quite small
ones are as tall as trees."
"This time I really do hear wheels," said Maria Dolores, with an accent
of thanksgiving.
And she rose to meet the doctor.
V
John sat in his room, absorbed in contemplation of a tiny lace-edged
pocket-handkerchief. He spread it out upon his knee, and laughed. He
crumpled it up in his palm, and pressed it to his face, and drank deep
of its faint perfume,--faint, but powerfully provocative of visions and
emotions. He had found it during the night on the floor of the
sick-room, and had captured and borne it away like a treasure. He spread
it out on his knee again, and was again about to laugh at its small size
and gauzy texture, when his eye was caught by something in its corner.
He held it nearer to the window. The thing that had caught his eye was a
cypher surmounted by a crown, embroidered so minutely as almost to call
for a magnifying glass. But without a glass he could see that the cypher
was composed of the initials M and D, and that the crown was not a
coronet, but a closed crown, of the pattern worn by mediatised princes.
"What on earth can be the meaning of this?" he wondered, frowning, and
breathing quick.
But he was stopped from further speculation for the moment by a knock at
the door. The postman entered with two letters, for one of which, as it
was registered, John had to sign. When he had tipped the postman and was
alone again, he put his registered letter on the dressing-table (with a
view to disciplining curiosity and exercising patience, possibly) and
turned his attention to the other. In a handsome, high old hand, that
somehow reminded him of the writer's voice, it ran as follows:--
"DEAR JOHN,
"I was heart-broken not to see you when I drove over to say
good-bye this afternoon, but chance favoured me at least to the
extent of letting me see your miller's daughter, and you may
believe that I was glad of an opportunity to inspect her at close
quarters. My dear boy, she is no more a miller's daughter than you
are. Her beauty--there's _race_ in it. Her manner and carriage,
her voice, accent, her way of dressing, (I'd give a sovereign for
the name of her dressmaker), the fineness of her skin, her hair,
everything--there's race in 'em all, race and consciousness of
race, pride, dignity, distinction. These things don't come to pass
in a generation. I'm surprised at your lack of perspicacity. And
those blue eyes of yours look so sharp, too. But perhaps your wish
was father to your thought. You felt (well, and so to some extent
did I) that it would be more _romantic_. She's probably a very
great swell indeed, and I expect the Frau What's-her-name she's
staying with will turn out to be her old governess or nurse or
something. When those Austrians _can_ show quarterings, (of course
you must bar recent creations--they're generally named Cohen), they
can show them to some effect. They think nothing of thirty-two. All
of which, _au fond_, rather rejoices me, for if she really had been
a miller's daughter, it would have seemed a good deal like throwing
yourself away, and who knows what your rusty, crusty old uncle B.
might have said? I've long had a rod in pickle for _him_, and
t'other day I applied it. _Attendez_.
"Don't forget the pig you purchased--so gallantly and confidingly.
I would not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments--your
pig will gobble 'em up. You should by this have received a
communication from my solicitors. Remember, you have pledged your
sacred promise. There must be no question of trying to shirk or
burke it. Remember that I am quite outrageously rich. I have no
children of my own, and no very near relatives, (and my distant
ones are intensely disagreeable), and I can't help looking upon the
heir of the Blanchemains as a kind of spiritual son. In your
position there's no such thing as having too much money. Take all
that comes, and never mind the quarter whence. They're Plymouth
Brethren, and send me tracts.
"Good-bye now till August, if not before. For of course in August
you must come to me at Fring. Will you bring your bride? When and
where the wedding? I suppose they'll want it in Austria. Beware of
long engagements--or of too short ones. The autumn's the time,--the
only pretty ring-time. You see, you'll need some months for the
preparation of your trousseau. I love a man to be smart. Well,
good-bye. I was so sorry about that child's illness, but thankful
to hear she was mending.
"Yours affectionately,
"LINDA BLANCHEMAIN."