VI

The man in the little shop in which, well after this, they

lingered longest, the small but interesting dealer in the

Bloomsbury street who was remarkable for an insistence not

importunate, inasmuch as it was mainly mute, but singularly,

intensely coercive--this personage fixed on his visitors an

extraordinary pair of eyes and looked from one to the other while

they considered the object with which he appeared mainly to hope

to tempt them. They had come to him last, for their time was

nearly up; an hour of it at least, from the moment of their

getting into a hansom at the Marble Arch, having yielded no

better result than the amusement invoked from the first. The

amusement, of course, was to have consisted in seeking, but it

had also involved the idea of finding; which latter necessity

would have been obtrusive only if they had found too soon. The

question at present was if they were finding, and they put it to

each other, in the Bloomsbury shop, while they enjoyed the

undiverted attention of the shopman. He was clearly the master,

and devoted to his business--the essence of which, in his

conception, might precisely have been this particular secret that

he possessed for worrying the customer so little that it fairly

made for their relations a sort of solemnity. He had not many

things, none of the redundancy of "rot" they had elsewhere seen,

and our friends had, on entering, even had the sense of a muster

so scant that, as high values obviously wouldn't reign, the

effect might be almost pitiful. Then their impression had

changed; for, though the show was of small pieces, several taken

from the little window and others extracted from a cupboard

behind the counter--dusky, in the rather low-browed place,

despite its glass doors--each bid for their attention spoke,

however modestly, for itself, and the pitch of their

entertainer's pretensions was promptly enough given. His array

was heterogeneous and not at all imposing; still, it differed

agreeably from what they had hitherto seen.

Charlotte, after the incident, was to be full of impressions, of

several of which, later on, she gave her companion--always in the

interest of their amusement--the benefit; and one of the

impressions had been that the man himself was the greatest

curiosity they had looked at. The Prince was to reply to this

that he himself hadn't looked at him; as, precisely, in the

general connection, Charlotte had more than once, from other

days, noted, for his advantage, her consciousness of how, below a

certain social plane, he never SAW. One kind of shopman was just

like another to him--which was oddly inconsequent on the part of

a mind that, where it did notice, noticed so much. He took

throughout, always, the meaner sort for granted--the night of

their meanness, or whatever name one might give it for him, made

all his cats grey. He didn't, no doubt, want to hurt them, but he

imaged them no more than if his eyes acted only for the level of

his own high head. Her own vision acted for every relation--this

he had seen for himself: she remarked beggars, she remembered

servants, she recognised cabmen; she had often distinguished

beauty, when out with him, in dirty children; she had admired

"type" in faces at hucksters' stalls. Therefore, on this

occasion, she had found their antiquario interesting; partly

because he cared so for his things, and partly because he cared--

well, so for them. "He likes his things--he loves them," she was

to say; "and it isn't only--it isn't perhaps even at all--that he

loves to sell them. I think he would love to keep them if he

could; and he prefers, at any rate, to sell them to right people.

We, clearly, were right people--he knows them when he sees them;

and that's why, as I say, you could make out, or at least _I_

could, that he cared for us. Didn't you see"--she was to ask it

with an insistence--"the way he looked at us and took us in? I

doubt if either of us have ever been so well looked at before.

Yes, he'll remember us"--she was to profess herself convinced of

that almost to uneasiness. "But it was after all"--this was

perhaps reassuring--"because, given his taste, since he HAS

taste, he was pleased with us, he was struck--he had ideas about

us. Well, I should think people might; we're beautiful--aren't

we?--and he knows. Then, also, he has his way; for that way of

saying nothing with his lips when he's all the while pressing you

so with his face, which shows how he knows you feel it--that is a

regular way."

Of decent old gold, old silver, old bronze, of old chased and

jewelled artistry, were the objects that, successively produced,

had ended by numerously dotting the counter, where the shopman's

slim, light fingers, with neat nails, touched them at moments,

briefly, nervously, tenderly, as those of a chess-player rest, a

few seconds, over the board, on a figure he thinks he may move

and then may not: small florid ancientries, ornaments, pendants,

lockets, brooches, buckles, pretexts for dim brilliants,

bloodless rubies, pearls either too large or too opaque for

value; miniatures mounted with diamonds that had ceased to

dazzle; snuffboxes presented to--or by--the too-questionable

great; cups, trays, taper-stands, suggestive of pawn-tickets,

archaic and brown, that would themselves, if preserved, have been

prized curiosities. A few commemorative medals, of neat outline

but dull reference; a classic monument or two, things of the

first years of the century; things consular, Napoleonic, temples,

obelisks, arches, tinily re-embodied, completed the discreet

cluster; in which, however, even after tentative reinforcement

from several quaint rings, intaglios, amethysts, carbuncles, each

of which had found a home in the ancient sallow satin of some

weakly-snapping little box, there was, in spite of the due

proportion of faint poetry, no great force of persuasion. They

looked, the visitors, they touched, they vaguely pretended to

consider, but with scepticism, so far as courtesy permitted, in

the quality of their attention. It was impossible they shouldn't,

after a little, tacitly agree as to the absurdity of carrying to

Maggie a token from such a stock. It would be--that was the

difficulty--pretentious without being "good"; too usual, as a

treasure, to have been an inspiration of the giver, and yet too

primitive to be taken as tribute welcome on any terms. They had

been out more than two hours and, evidently, had found nothing.

It forced from Charlotte a kind of admission.

"It ought, really, if it should be a thing of this sort, to take

its little value from having belonged to one's self."

"Ecco!" said the Prince--just triumphantly enough. "There you

are."

Behind the dealer were sundry small cupboards in the wall. Two or

three of these Charlotte had seen him open, so that her eyes

found themselves resting on those he had not visited. But she

completed her admission. "There's nothing here she could wear."

It was only after a moment that her companion rejoined. "Is there

anything--do you think--that you could?"

It made her just start. She didn't, at all events, look at the

objects; she but looked for an instant very directly at him.

"No."

"Ah!" the Prince quietly exclaimed.

"Would it be," Charlotte asked, "your idea to offer me

something?"

"Well, why not--as a small ricordo."

"But a ricordo of what?"

"Why, of 'this'--as you yourself say. Of this little hunt."

"Oh, I say it--but hasn't my whole point been that I don't ask

you to. Therefore," she demanded--but smiling at him now--

"where's the logic?"

"Oh, the logic--!" he laughed.

"But logic's everything. That, at least, is how I feel it. A

ricordo from you--from you to me--is a ricordo of nothing. It

has no reference."

"Ah, my dear!" he vaguely protested. Their entertainer,

meanwhile, stood there with his eyes on them, and the girl,

though at this minute more interested in her passage with her

friend than in anything else, again met his gaze. It was a

comfort to her that their foreign tongue covered what they said--

and they might have appeared of course, as the Prince now had one

of the snuffboxes in his hand, to be discussing a purchase.

"You don't refer," she went on to her companion. "_I_ refer."

He had lifted the lid of his little box and he looked into it

hard. "Do you mean by that then that you would be free--?"

"'Free'--?"

"To offer me something?"

This gave her a longer pause, and when she spoke again she might

have seemed, oddly, to be addressing the dealer. "Would you allow

me--?"

"No," said the Prince into his little box.

"You wouldn't accept it from me?"

"No," he repeated in the same way.

She exhaled a long breath that was like a guarded sigh. "But

you've touched an idea that HAS been mine. It's what I've

wanted." Then she added: "It was what I hoped."

He put down his box--this had drawn his eyes. He made nothing,

clearly, of the little man's attention. "It's what you brought me

out for?"

"Well, that's, at any rate," she returned, "my own affair. But

it won't do?"

"It won't do, cara mia."

"It's impossible?"

"It's impossible." And he took up one of the brooches.

She had another pause, while the shopman only waited. "If I were

to accept from you one of these charming little ornaments as you

suggest, what should I do with it?"

He was perhaps at last a little irritated; he even--as if HE

might understand--looked vaguely across at their host. "Wear it,

per Bacco!"

"Where then, please? Under my clothes?"

"Wherever you like. But it isn't then, if you will," he added,

"worth talking about."

"It's only worth talking about, mio caro," she smiled, "from your

having begun it. My question is only reasonable--so that your

idea may stand or fall by your answer to it. If I should pin one

of these things on for you would it be, to your mind, that I

might go home and show it to Maggie as your present?"

They had had between them often in talk the refrain, jocosely,

descriptively applied, of "old Roman." It had been, as a

pleasantry, in the other time, his explanation to her of

everything; but nothing, truly, had even seemed so old-Roman as

the shrug in which he now indulged. "Why in the world not?"

"Because--on our basis--it would be impossible to give her an

account of the pretext."

"The pretext--?" He wondered.

"The occasion. This ramble that we shall have had together and

that we're not to speak of."

"Oh yes," he said after a moment "I remember we're not to speak

of it."

"That of course you're pledged to. And the one thing, you see,

goes with the other. So you don't insist."

He had again, at random, laid back his trinket; with which he

quite turned to her, a little wearily at last--even a little

impatiently. "I don't insist."

It disposed for the time of the question, but what was next

apparent was that it had seen them no further. The shopman, who

had not stirred, stood there in his patience--which, his mute

intensity helping, had almost the effect of an ironic comment.

The Prince moved to the glass door and, his back to the others,

as with nothing more to contribute, looked--though not less

patiently--into the street. Then the shopman, for Charlotte,

momentously broke silence. "You've seen, disgraziatamente,

signora principessa," he sadly said, "too much"--and it made the

Prince face about. For the effect of the momentous came, if not

from the sense, from the sound of his words; which was that of

the suddenest, sharpest Italian. Charlotte exchanged with her

friend a glance that matched it, and just for the minute they

were held in check. But their glance had, after all, by that

time, said more than one thing; had both exclaimed on the

apprehension, by the wretch, of their intimate conversation, let

alone of her possible, her impossible, title, and remarked, for

mutual reassurance, that it didn't, all the same, matter. The

Prince remained by the door, but immediately addressing the

speaker from where he stood.

"You're Italian then, are you?"