VI

Susanna was standing under the tree, gazing intently upwards; and she

was vehemently shaking her fist at its foliage, and making, from the

point of her lips, a sound, sibilant, explosive (something like

"Ts-s-s! Ts-s-s-s! Ts-s-s-s-s!"), that was clearly meant as an

intimidation. She had on a dark-blue frock, blue flannel I think,

plain to the verge of severity: a straight-falling jacket, a straight,

loose skirt: plain, but appropriate to the hour no doubt; and, instead

of a hat, she wore a scarf of black lace, draped over her black hair

mantilla-wise.

Anthony, glowing with a sense that he was in great luck, and trying to

think what practical step he should take to profit by it, watched her

for a minute before she caught sight of him. An obvious practical

step, she having evidently some trouble on her hands, might have been

to approach her with an offer of assistance. But if all who love are

poets, men near to love will be poets budding; and who was it said that

the obvious is the one thing a poet is incapable of seeing?

When, however, she did catch sight of him, abruptly, without

hesitation, she called him to her.

"Come here--come here at once," she called, and made an imperious

gesture. (I wonder whether she realised who he was, or thought no

further as yet, in her emergency, than just that here, providentially,

was a man who could help.)

Marvelling, palpitating, Anthony flew to obey.

"Look," said Susanna, breathlessly, pointing into the tree. "What is

one to do? He won't pay the slightest attention to me, and I have

nothing that I can throw."

She had, in her left hand, a small leather-bound book, apparently a

prayer-book, and, twisted round her wrist, a red-coral rosary; but I

suppose she would not have liked to throw either of these.

Bewildered a little by the suddenness with which the situation had come

to pass, but conscious, acutely, exultantly conscious of it as a

delectable situation,--exultantly conscious of her nearness to him, of

their solitude together, there in the privacy (as it were) of the

morning,--and tingling to the vibrations of her voice, to the freshness

and the warmth of her strong young beauty, Anthony was still able,

vaguely, half-mechanically, to lift his eyes, and look in the direction

whither she pointed. . .

The spectacle that met him banished immediately, for the moment, all

preoccupations personal.

On one of the lower of the flowering branches, but high enough to be

beyond arm's reach, or even cane's reach, in the crook of the bough,

crouched, making ready to spring, a big black cat, the tip of his tail

twitching with contained excitement, his yellow eyes fixed murderously

on the branch next above: where, in the agitation of supreme distress,

a chaffinch, a little grey hen-chaffinch, was hopping backwards and

forwards, sometimes rising a few inches into the air, but always

returning to the branch, and uttering a succession of terrified,

agonised, despairing tweets.

It was a hateful thing to see. It was the genius of cruelty made

manifest in a single intense tableau.

"Why does n't the bird fly away?" Susanna painfully questioned. She

was pale, and her lips were strained; she looked sick and hopeless.

"Is she fascinated? The cat will surely get her."

"No--her nest must be somewhere there--she is guarding her nestlings,"

said Anthony.

Then he raised his stick menacingly, and, in tones of stern command,

addressed the cat.

"Patapouf! I am ashamed of you. Come down--come down from there--come

down directly."

And he emphasised each staccato summons by a sharp rap of his stick

against the highest point of the tree that he could reach.

The cat turned his head, to look--and the spell was broken. His

attitude relaxed. Anthony put his hands on the tree, and made as if to

climb it. The cat gave a resigned shrug of the shoulders, and came

scrambling down. Next instant, (if you please), unabashed, tail erect,

back arched, he was rubbing his whiskers against Anthony's legs,

circling round them, s-shaping himself between them, and purring

conciliations, as who should say, "There, there. Though you _have_

spoiled sport, I won't quarrel with you, and I _am_ delighted to see

you." The bird, twittering, flew up, and disappeared in the higher

foliage.

Susanna breathed a deep sigh of relief.

"Oh, thank you, thank you," she said, with fervour. Then she shook her

finger, and frowned, at Patapouf. "Oh, you bad cat! You cruel cat!"

And raising eyes dark with reproach to Anthony's, "Yet he seems to be a

friend of yours?" she wondered. (By this time, of course, she must

have realised who he was. Very likely she had her emotions.)

Anthony, the bird in safety, could tingle anew to the deep notes of her

voice, could exult anew in their dual solitude.

"Yes," he acknowledged, "Patapouf is a friend of mine--he is even a

member of my household. You must try not to think too ill of him. He

really is n't half a bad sort at bottom. But he 's English, and he

lives in the country. So, a true English country gentleman, he has

perhaps an exaggerated passion for the pleasures of the chase--and when

questions touching them arise, seems simply to be devoid of the ethical

sense. He 's not a whit worse than his human neighbours--and he 's a

hundred times handsomer and more intelligent."

Susanna, smiling a little, looked down at Patapouf, and considered.

"He is certainly very handsome," she agreed. "And--Patapouf? I like

his name. I will not think too ill of him if he will promise never

again to try to catch a--a _fringuello_. I don't remember the English

for _fringuello_?"

Her glance and her inflection conveyed a request to be reminded.

But Anthony shook his head.

"And I shall at once proceed to forget it. _Fringuello_ is so much

prettier."

Susanna gave a light little trill of laughter.

"What a delicious laugh," thought he that heard it.

And, laughing, "But before it has quite gone from you, do, pray, for my

instruction, just pronounce it once," she pleaded.

"How extraordinarily becoming to her that mantilla is," he thought.

"How it sets off her hair and her complexion--how it brings out the

sparkle of her eyes."

Her fine black hair, curling softly about her brow, and rippling away,

under the soft black lace, in loose abundance; her warm, clear

complexion; the texture of her skin, firm and smooth, with tiny blue

veins faintly showing at the temples; her sparkling, spirited dark

eyes, their merriment, their alertness, their graver underglow; the

spirited, high carriage of her head; that dark-blue, simple,

appropriate frock; and then her figure, upright, nervous, energetic,

with its fluent lines, with its fragrance of youth and of

womanhood,--oh, he was acutely conscious of them, he was thrilled by

his deep sense of their nearness to him, alone there, in the wide sunny

circle of green landscape, in the seclusion of that unfrequented hour.

"The word comes back to me dimly," he said, "as--as something like

_finch_."

"Finch?" said Susanna. "Thank you very much. Ah, yes,"--with an air

of recalling it,--"_finch_, to be sure. You are right," she smiled,

"_fringuello_ is prettier."

"What an adorable mouth," thought he. "The red of it--the curves it

takes--and those incredible little white teeth, like snow shut in a

rose."

"And this is a morning meet for pretty words, is it not?" he suggested.

"It might strike an unprejudiced observer as rather a pretty morning."

"Oh, I should be less reticent," said Susanna. "If the unprejudiced

observer had his eyes open, would n't it strike him as a perfectly

lovely morning?"

"We must not run the risk of spoiling it," Anthony cautioned her,

diminishing his voice, "by praising it too warmly to its face."

She gave another light trill of laughter.

"Her laugh is like rainbow-tinted spray. It is a fountain-jet of

musical notes, each note a cut gem," thought the infatuated fellow.

"I trust," he hazarded, "that you will not condemn me for a swaggerer,

if I lay claim to share with you a singularity. The morning is a

morning like another. God is prodigal of lovely mornings. But we two

are singular in choosing to begin it at its sweeter end."

"Yes," Susanna assented, "that is a singularity--in England. But in

Italy, or in the part of Italy where my habits were formed, it is one

of our lazy customs. We like always to be abroad in time to enjoy what

we call 'the hours immaculate,'--_l'ure immacolae_, in our dialect."

"The hours immaculate? It is an uncommonly fine description," approved

Anthony. "They will be a race of poets in your part of Italy?"

The graver underglow in Susanna's eyes eclipsed, for an instant, their

dancing surface lights.

"They _were_ a race of poets," she said regretfully, "before they

learned how to read and write. But now, with the introduction of

popular education,"--she shook her head,--"the poetry is dying out."

"Ah," said Anthony, with a meaning flourish of his stick, "there it is.

The poetic spirit always dies at the advance of that ghastly fetich."

Then he spoke sententiously. "Popular education is a contrivance of

the devil, whereby he looks to extinguish every last saving grace from

the life of the populace. Not poetry only, but all good things and all

good feelings,--religion, reverence, courtesy,--sane contentment,

rational ambition,--the right sort of humility, the right sort of

pride,--they all go down before it: whilst, in the ignorance which it

disseminates, blasphemy, covetousness, bumptiousness, bad taste (and

bad art and bad literature, to gratify it), every form of

wrong-headedness and wrong-heartedness flourish like the seven plagues

of Egypt. But it was all inevitable from the day that meddling German

busybody invented printing--if not from the day his heathenish

precursor invented letters."

He delivered these sentiments with a good deal of warmth.

Susanna's eyes brightened. I am not sure there was n't a quick little

flash of raillery in their brightness.

"I would seem," she mused, "to have touched by accident upon a subject

that is near your heart."

Anthony threw up a deploring hand.

"There!" he grieved. "The subjects that are near my heart, it is the

study of my life to exclude from my conversation. But sometimes one

forgets oneself."

Susanna smiled,--a smile, perhaps, that implied a tacit memorandum and

reflection, a subdued, withheld, occult little smile. Again, I am not

sure it had n't its tinge of raillery.

"And since I _have_ forgotten myself," Anthony pursued, "I wonder

whether you will bear with me if I continue to do so twenty seconds

longer?"

"Oh, I beg of you," Susanna politely hastened to accede.

"There is another subject equally near my heart," said he.

Her eyes were full of expectancy.

"Yes--?" she encouraged him.

"I was disappointed not to find you at home when I called yesterday,"

said he. "I rejoice for a hundred reasons that chance has led to our

meeting this morning. Not to mention ninety-nine of them, I am anxious

to discharge, with as little loss of time as may be, the very onerous

debt I owe you."

Susanna opened her eyes, in puzzlement.

"A debt? I am your creditor unawares."

"My debt of apologies and condolences," he explained.

She knitted her brows, in mental effort.

"I am ignorant alike of my grievance and of your offence," she said.

"I am deeply sensible of your magnanimity," said he; "but I will not

abuse it. They have let you the ugliest house in the United Kingdom;

and, as the owner, the ultimate responsibility must come home to me."

"Oh," cried Susanna.

It was a gay, treble little cry, that told him he had been fortunate

enough to amuse as well as to surprise her. She shook her head, while

her eyes were liquid with mirth.

"The house is ugly?" she enquired. "I have read of it as 'a vast and

imposing edifice in the style of the Renaissance.'"

"As a confessor of the True Faith," Anthony warned her, "you must never

believe what you read in the _County History_. It was compiled by a

Protestant clergyman; it teems with misinformation; it ought to be

placed upon the Index. The house in question is a vast and pompous

contiguity of stucco, in the style of 1830. It looks like a Riviera

hotel a good deal run to seed. It looks like a shabby relation of

Buckingham Palace. It looks like a barrack decorated with the

discoloured trimmings of a bride-cake."

"Ah, well, be it so," consented Susanna. "The house is ugly--but it is

comfortable. And, in any case, your conscience is too sensitive. The

ultimate responsibility for my having taken it comes home to no one,

unless--well, to be strictly just, unless to a grandfather of mine, who

has been dead these many long years."

Which pronouncement may very possibly have struck her listener as

enigmatic. But I daresay he felt that he scarcely knew her well enough

to press for an elucidation. And, anyhow, without pause, she went on--

"Besides, everything else--the park, the country--is beyond words

beautiful."

"Yes," acquiesced Anthony, "the country is beautiful, at this season.

That's why everyone abandons it, and scuttles up to town."

Susanna's face lighted, with interest.

"Indeed? Is _that_ the reason? I had observed the fact, but I was at

a loss to think what the reason for it could be."

"No," said Anthony, eating his words, "that is not the reason. It were

base to deceive you. A normally-constituted Englishman no more objects

to beauty, than a deep-sea fish objects to dry weather or the

income-tax. He abandons the country during the three pleasantest

months of the year, not because it is beautiful, for he is sublimely

unconscious that it's beautiful, but because, during those months, in

the country, there's nothing that he can course, hunt, or shoot."

Susanna pondered.

"I see," she said. "And is--is there anything that he can course,

hunt, or shoot in town?"

"Not exactly," Anthony admitted. "But there are people--to whom he can

do the next best thing. There are people whom he can bore. It is an

interim sport. It is an annual national tournament. The good knights

flock together from the four corners of England, to tilt at one

another, and try who shall approve himself the most indefatigable, the

most indomitable bore."

Susanna gazed dreamily at the distance for a moment. Then, with sudden

actuality, "Apropos of interim sports," she demanded, "what are you

going to do about that cat of yours?" A movement of her head indicated

Patapouf.

Hovering near them, Patapouf was busy with a game of

make-believe--pretending that the longish grass was a jungle, and

himself a tiger, stalking I know not what visionary prey: now gingerly,

with slow calculated liftings and down-puttings of his feet, stealing a

silent march; now, flat on his belly, rapidly creeping forward; now

halting, recoiling, masking himself behind some inequality of the

ground, peering warily over it, while his tail swayed responsive to the

eager activity of his brain; and now, having computed the range to a

nicety, his haunches wagging, now, with a leap all grace and

ruthlessness,--a flash of blackness through the air,--springing upon

the creature of his fancy.

Susanna and Anthony watched him for a little without speaking.

"You can't deny that he has imagination," said Anthony, at length,

turning towards her.

"He is beautiful and clever," said Susanna, "I could wish he were as

virtuous. This, of course, is sheer play-acting. He 's simply waiting

till our backs are turned, to renew his designs upon the bird's nest."

"When I turn my back I 'll carry him with me," Anthony answered. But

in his soul he said: "What 's the good of telling her that that will

only be to defer the evil moment? Of course he has marked the tree.

He will come back to it at his leisure."

"I beg your pardon," said Susanna. "That will merely be to put the

evil off. The cat certainly knows the tree. Directly he 's at

liberty, he will come back."

"Oh--?" faltered Anthony, a trifle disconcerted. "Oh? Do--do you

think so?"

"Yes," she said. "There 's not a doubt of it. But I am acquainted

with a discipline, which, if I have your sanction to apply it, will

unnerve Monsieur Patapouf, so far as this particular tree is concerned,

until the end of time. Cats have a very high sense of their personal

freedom--they hate to be tied up. Well, if we tie Monsieur Patapouf to

this tree, so that he can't get away, and leave him alone here for an

hour or two, he will conceive such a distaste for everything connected

with this tree that he will never voluntarily come within speaking

distance of it again."

"Really? That seems very ingenious," commented Anthony.

"'T is an old wives' remedy," said Susanna. "You don't happen to have

such a thing as a piece of string in your pocket? It does n't matter.

But you have a penknife? Thank you. Now please catch your cat."

Anthony called Patapouf, exerting those blandishments one must exert

who would coax a hesitating cat.

Patapouf, by a series of étapes and délours, approached, and was

secured.

Susanna, meanwhile, having laid her rosary and prayer-book on the

grass, unbuttoned her blue flannel jacket, and removed from round her

waist, where it was doing duty as a belt, a broad band of

cherry-coloured ribbon. This, with Anthony's penknife, she slitted and

ripped several times lengthwise, till she had obtained a yard or two of

practicable tether.

"Now, first, we must make him a collar," she said, measuring off what

she deemed ribbon sufficient for that purpose.

Anthony held Patapouf, who, flattered by their attentions, and

unsuspicious of their ulterior aim, submitted quietly, while Susanna

adjusted the collar to his neck. They had to stand rather close

together during this process; I am not sure that sometimes their

fingers did n't touch. From Susanna's garments--from her hair?--rose

never so faint a perfume, like the perfume of violets. I am quite sure

that Anthony's heart was in a commotion.

"There," she remarked, finishing the collar with a bow, and bestowing

upon the bow a little tap of approbation; "red and black--it's very

becoming to him, is n't it?"

Then she tied Patapouf to the tree, leaving him, in charity, perhaps

twice his own length of tether free, and resumed possession of her book

and beads.

An instant later, she had slightly inclined her head, smiled a good-bye

into Anthony's eyes, and was moving briskly away, in the direction of

Craford New Manor.