Peter happened to be engaged in the amiable pastime of tossing
bread-crumbs to his goldfinches.
But a score or so of sparrows, vulture-like, lurked under cover of the
neighbouring foliage, to dash in viciously, at the critical moment, and
snatch the food from the finches' very mouths.
The Duchessa watched this little drama for a minute, smiling, in silent
meditation: while Peter--who, for a wonder, had his back turned to the
park of Ventirose, and, for a greater wonder still perhaps, felt no
pricking in his thumbs--remained unconscious of her presence.
At last, sorrowfully, (but there was always a smile at the back of her
eyes), she shook her head.
“Oh, the pirates, the daredevils,” she sighed.
Peter started; faced about; saluted.
“The brigands,” said she, with a glance towards the sparrows' outposts.
“Yes, poor things,” said he.
“Poor things?” cried she, indignant. “The unprincipled little monsters!”
“They can't help it,” he pleaded for them. “'It is their nature to.'
They were born so. They had no choice.”
“You actually defend them!” she marvelled, rebukefully.
“Oh, dear, no,” he disclaimed. “I don't defend them. I defend nothing.
I merely recognise and accept. Sparrows--finches. It's the way of the
world--the established division of the world.”
She frowned incomprehension.
“The established division of the world--?”
“Exactly,” said he. “Sparrows--finches the snatchers and the
snatched-from. Everything that breathes is either a sparrow or a finch.
'T is the universal war--the struggle for existence--the survival of
the most unscrupulous. 'T is a miniature presentment of what's going on
everywhere in earth and sky.”
She shook her head again.
“YOU see the earth and sky through black spectacles, I 'm afraid,”
she remarked, with a long face. But there was still an underglow of
amusement in her eyes.
“No,” he answered, “because there's a compensation. As you rise in the
scale of moral development, it is true, you pass from the category of
the snatchers to the category of the snatched-from, and your ultimate
extinction is assured. But, on the other hand, you gain talents and
sensibilities. You do not live by bread alone. These goldfinches, for a
case in point, can sing--and they have your sympathy. The sparrows
can only make a horrid noise--and you contemn them. That is the
compensation. The snatchers can never know the joy of singing--or of
being pitied by ladies.”
“N... o, perhaps not,” she consented doubtfully. The underglow of
amusement in her eyes shone nearer to the surface. “But--but they can
never know, either, the despair of the singer when his songs won't
come.”
“Or when the ladies are pitiless. That is true,” consented Peter.
“And meanwhile they get the bread, crumbs,” she said.
“They certainly get the bread-crumbs,” he admitted.
“I 'm afraid “--she smiled, as one who has conducted a syllogism
safely to its conclusion--“I 'm afraid I do not think your compensation
compensates.”
“To be quite honest, I daresay it does n't,” he confessed.
“And anyhow”--she followed her victory up--“I should not wish my garden
to represent the universal war. I should not wish my garden to be a
battle-field. I should wish it to be a retreat from the battle--an abode
of peace--a happy valley--a sanctuary for the snatched-from.”
“But why distress one's soul with wishes that are vain?” asked he. “What
could one do?”
“One could keep a dragon,” she answered promptly. “If I were you, I
should keep a sparrow-devouring, finch-respecting dragon.”
“It would do no good,” said he. “You'd get rid of one species of
snatcher, but some other species of snatcher would instantly pop UP.”
She gazed at him with those amused eyes of hers, and still again,
slowly, sorrowfully, shook her head.
“Oh, your spectacles are black--black,” she murmured.
“I hope not,” said he; “but such as they are, they show me the
inevitable conditions of our planet. The snatcher, here below, is
ubiquitous and eternal--as ubiquitous, as eternal, as the force of
gravitation. He is likewise protean. Banish him--he takes half a minute
to change his visible form, and returns au galop. Sometimes he's an
ugly little cacophonous brown sparrow; sometimes he's a splendid florid
money-lender, or an aproned and obsequious greengrocer, or a trusted
friend, hearty and familiar. But he 's always there; and he's always--if
you don't mind the vernacular--'on the snatch.'”
The Duchessa arched her eyebrows.
“If things are really at such a sorry pass,” she said, “I will commend
my former proposal to you with increased confidence. You should keep a
dragon. After all, you only wish to protect your garden; and that”--she
embraced it with her glance--“is not so very big. You could teach
your dragon, if you procured one of an intelligent breed, to devour
greengrocers, trusted friends, and even moneylenders too (tough though
no doubt they are), as well as sparrows.”
“Your proposal is a surrender to my contention,” said Peter. “You would
set a snatcher to catch the snatchers. Other heights in other lives,
perhaps. But in the dark backward and abysm of space to which our lives
are confined, the snatcher is indigenous and inexpugnable.”
The Duchessa looked at the sunny landscape, the bright lawns, the high
bending trees, with the light caught in the network of their million
leaves; she looked at the laughing white villas westward, the pale-green
vineyards, the yellow cornfields; she looked at the rushing river, with
the diamonds sparkling on its surface, at the far-away gleaming snows of
Monte Sfiorito, at the scintillant blue shy overhead.
Then she looked at Peter, a fine admixture of mirth with something like
gravity in her smile.
“The dark backward and abysm of space?” she repeated. “And you do not
wear black spectacles? Then it must be that your eyes themselves are
just a pair of black-seeing pessimists.”
“On the contrary,” triumphed Peter, “it is because they are optimists,
that they suspect there must be forwarder and more luminous regions than
the Solar System.”
The Duchessa laughed.
“I think you have the prettiest mouth, and the most exquisite little
teeth, and the eyes richest in promise, and the sweetest laughter, of
any woman out of Paradise,” said Peter, in the silence of his soul.
“It is clear I shall never be your match in debate,” said she.
Peter made a gesture of deprecating modesty.
“But I wonder,” she went on, “whether you would put me down as 'another
species of snatcher,' if I should ask you to spare me just the merest
end of a crust of bread?” And she lifted those eyes rich in promise
appealingly to his.
“Oh, I beg of you--take all I have,” he responded, with effusion.
“But--but how--?”
“Toss,” she commanded tersely.
So he tossed what was left of his bread into the air, above the river;
and the Duchessa, easily, deftly, threw up a hand, and caught it on the
wing.
“Thank you very much,” she laughed, with a little bow.
Then she crumbled the bread, and began to sprinkle the ground with it;
and in an instant she was the centre of a cloud of birds. Peter was at
liberty to watch her, to admire the swift grace of her motions, their
suggestion of delicate strength, of joy in things physical, and the
lithe elasticity of her figure, against the background of satiny lawn,
and the further vistas of lofty sunlit trees. She was dressed in white,
as always--a frock of I know not what supple fabric, that looked as if
you might have passed it through your ring, and fell in multitudes of
small soft creases. Two big red roses drooped from her bodice. She wore
a garden-hat, of white straw, with a big daring rose-red bow, under
which the dense meshes of her hair, warmly dark, dimly bright, shimmered
in a blur of brownish gold.
“What vigour, what verve, what health,” thought Peter, watching
her, “what--lean, fresh, fragrant health!” And he had, no doubt, his
emotions.
She bestowed her bread crumbs on the birds; but she was able, somehow,
to discriminate mightily in favour of the goldfinches. She would make a
diversion, the semblance of a fling, with her empty right hand; and the
too-greedy sparrows would dart off, avid, on that false lead. Whereupon,
quickly, stealthily, she would rain a little shower of crumbs, from
her left hand, on the grass beside her, to a confiding group of finches
assembled there. And if ever a sparrow ventured to intrude his ruffianly
black beak into this sacred quarter, she would manage, with a kind of
restrained ferocity, to “shoo” him away, without thereby frightening the
finches.
And all the while her eyes laughed; and there was colour in her cheeks;
and there was the forceful, graceful action of her body.
When the bread was finished, she clapped her hands together gently,
to dust the last mites from them, and looked over at Peter, and smiled
significantly.
“Yes,” he acknowledged, “you outwitted them very skilfully. You, at any
rate, have no need of a dragon.”
“Oh, in default of a dragon, one can do dragon's work oneself,” she
answered lightly. “Or, rather, one can make oneself an instrument of
justice.”
“All the same, I should call it uncommonly hard luck to be born a
sparrow--within your jurisdiction,” he said.
“It is not an affair of luck,” said she. “One is born a sparrow--within
my jurisdiction--for one's sins in a former state.--No, you little
dovelings”--she turned to a pair of finches on the greensward near her,
who were lingering, and gazing up into her face with hungry, expectant
eyes--“I have no more. I have given you my all.” And she stretched out
her open hands, palms downwards, to convince them.
“The sparrows got nothing; and the goldfinches, who got 'your all,'
grumble because you gave so little,” said Peter, sadly. “That is what
comes of interfering with the laws of Nature.” And then, as the two
birds flew away, “See the dark, doubtful, reproachful glances with which
they cover you.”
“You think they are ungrateful?” she said. “No--listen.”
She held up a finger.
For, at that moment, on the branch of an acacia, just over her head, a
goldfinch began to sing--his thin, sweet, crystalline trill of song.
“Do you call that grumbling?” she asked.
“It implies a grumble,” said Peter, “like the 'thank you' of a
servant dissatisfied with his tip. It's the very least he can do. It's
perfunctory--I 'm not sure it is n't even ironical.”
“Perfunctory! Ironical!” cried the Duchessa. “Look at him! He's warbling
his delicious little soul out.”
They both paused to look and listen.
The bird's gold-red bosom palpitated. He marked his modulations by
sudden emphatic movements of the head. His eyes were fixed intently
before him, as if he could actually see and follow the shining thread of
his song, as it wound away through the air. His performance had all the
effect of a spontaneous rhapsody. When it was terminated, he looked
down at his auditors, eager, inquisitive, as who should say, “I hope you
liked it?”--and then, with a nod clearly meant as a farewell, flew out
of sight.
The Duchessa smiled again at Peter, with intention.
“You must really try to take a cheerier view of things,” she said.
And next instant she too was off, walking slowly, lightly, up the green
lawns, between the trees, towards the castle, her gown fluttering in the
breeze, now dazzling white as she came into the sun, now pearly grey as
she passed into the shade.
“What a woman it is,” said Peter to himself, looking after her. “What
vigour, what verve, what sex! What a woman!”
And, indeed, there was nothing of the too-prevalent epicene in the
Duchessa's aspect; she was very certainly a woman. “Heavens, how she
walks!” he cried in a deep whisper.
But then a sudden wave of dejection swept over him. At first he could
not account for it. By and by, however, a malicious little voice began
to repeat and repeat within him, “Oh, the futile impression you must
have made upon her! Oh, the ineptitudes you uttered! Oh, the precious
opportunity you have misemployed!”
“You are a witch,” he said to Marietta. “You've proved it to the hilt. I
've seen the person, and the object is more desperately lost than ever.”
X
That evening, among the letters Peter received from England, there was
one from his friend Mrs. Winchfield, which contained certain statistics.
“Your Duchessa di Santangiolo 'was' indeed, as your funny old servant
told you, English: the only child and heiress of the last Lord Belfont.
The Belfonts of Lancashire (now, save for your Duchessa, extinct) were
the most bigoted sort of Roman Catholics, and always educated their
daughters in foreign convents, and as often as not married them to
foreigners. The Belfont men, besides, were ever and anon marrying
foreign wives; so there will be a goodish deal of un-English blood in
your Duchessa's own ci-devant English veins.
“She was born, as I learn from an indiscretion of my Peerage, in 1870,
and is, therefore, as near to thirty (the dangerous age!) as to the
six-and-twenty your droll old Marietta gives her. Her Christian names
are Beatrice Antonia Teresa Mary--faites en votre choix. She was
married at nineteen to Baldassarre Agosto, Principe Udeschini, Duca di
Santangiolo, Marchese di Castellofranco, Count of the Holy Roman Empire,
Knight of the Holy Ghost and of St. Gregory, (does it take your breath
away?), who, according to Frontin, died in '93; and as there were no
children, his brother Felipe Lorenzo succeeded to the titles. A younger
brother still is Bishop of Sardagna. Cardinal Udeschini is the uncle.
“That, dear child, empties my sack of information. But perhaps I have
a bigger sack, full of good advice, which I have not yet opened. And
perhaps, on the whole, I will not open it at all. Only, remember that
in yonder sentimental Italian lake country, in this summer weather, a
solitary young man's fancy might be much inclined to turn to thoughts
of--folly; and keep an eye on my friend Peter Marchdale.”
Our solitary young man brooded over Mrs. Winchfield's letter for a long
while.
“The daughter of a lord, and the widow of a duke, and the niece-in-law
of a cardinal,” he said. “And, as if that were not enough, a bigoted
Roman Catholic into the bargain.... And yet--and yet,” he went on,
taking heart a little, “as for her bigotry, to judge by her assiduity
in attending the village church, that factor, at least, thank goodness,
would appear to be static, rather than dynamic.”
After another longish interval of brooding, he sauntered down to the
riverside, through his fragrant garden, fragrant and fresh with the
cool odours of the night, and peered into the darkness, towards Castel
Ventirose. Here and there he could discern a gleam of yellow, where
some lighted window was not entirely hidden by the trees. Thousands
and thousands of insects were threading the silence with their shrill
insistent voices. The repeated wail, harsh, prolonged, eerie, of some
strange wild creature, bird or beast, came down from the forest of
the Gnisi. At his feet, on the troubled surface of the Aco, the stars,
reflected and distorted, shone like broken spearheads.
He lighted a cigarette, and stood there till he had consumed it.
“Heigh-ho!” he sighed at last, and turned back towards the villa. And
“Yes,” he concluded, “I must certainly keep an eye on our friend Peter
Marchdale.”
“But I 'm doubting it's a bit too late--troppo tardo,” he said to
Marietta, whom he found bringing hot water to his dressing-room.
“It is not very late,” said Marietta. “Only half-past ten.”
“She is a woman--therefore to be loved; she is a duchess--therefore to
be lost,” he explained, in his native tongue.
“Cosa.” questioned Marietta, in hers.