There was, however, no such scene at Villa Santa Cecilia as the man of
the family (I'm afraid with some malicious glee) had anticipated. The
ladies indeed recognised in his friend their gallant rescuer, and no
doubt experienced the appropriate emotions, but they made no violent
demonstration of them. They laughed, and shook hands, and bade him
welcome; Bertram laughed a good deal, too--you know how easily he
laughs; and that was all. Then they went in to luncheon, during which
meal, while the ball of conversation flew hither, thither, he could
observe (and admire) Ruth Adgate to his heart's content: her slender
figure, her oddly pretty face, her crinkling dark hair with its
wine-coloured lights, her brown eyes with their red underglow, their
covert laughter. “High energies quiescent”--his own first phrase came
back to him. “There's something tense in her--there's a spring--there's
a tense chord. If it were touched--well, one feels how it could
vibrate.” A man, in other words, felt that here was a woman with
womanhood in her. 'Tis a quality somewhat infrequently met with in women
nowadays, and, for men, it has a singular interest and attraction.
Pontycroft, I am sorry to record it, behaved very badly at table.
He began by stealing Ruth's bread; then he played balancing
tricks--sufficiently ineffectual--with his knife and fork, announcing
himself as _élève de Cinquevalli_; then, changing his title to _élève
du regretté Sludge_, he produced a series of what he called
spirit-rappings, though they sounded rather like the rappings of
sole-leather against a chair-round; then he insisted on smoking
cigarettes between the courses--“after the high Spanish fashion,” he
explained; and finally, assuming the wheedling tone of a spoiled child,
he pleaded to be allowed to have his fruit before the proper time. “I
want my fruit--mayn't I have my fruit? Ah, _please_ let me.”
“Patience, patience,” said Lucilla, in her most soothing voice, with
her benignant smile. “Everything comes at last to him who knows how to
wait.”
“Everything comes at once to him who will not wait,” Ponty brazenly
retorted, and leaning forward, helped himself from the crystal dish,
piled high with purple figs and scarlet africani.
They returned to the garden for coffee, and afterwards Ponty engaged his
sister in a game of lawn-golf, leaving Ruth and Bertram to look on
from the terrace, where Ruth sat among bright-hued cushions in a wicker
chair, and Bertram (conscious of a pleasant agitation) leaned on the
lichen-stained marble balustrade.
“Poor Lucilla,” she said to him, the laughter in her eyes coming to the
surface, “she hates it, you know. But I suppose Harry honestly thinks it
amuses her, and she's too good-natured to undeceive him.”
“There are red notes in her very voice,” said Bertram to himself. “Poor
lady,” he said aloud. “'Tis her penalty for having an English brother.
A game of one sort or another is an Englishman's sole conception of
happiness. And that is the real explanation of Anglo-Saxon superiority.
Englishmen take the most serious businesses of life as games--war,
politics, commerce, literature, everything. It's that which keeps them
sane and makes them successful.”
Ruth looked doubtful. “Anglo-Saxon superiority?” she questioned. “Do you
believe in Anglo-Saxon superiority? To be sure, we're always thanking
Heaven that we're so much better than our neighbours; but apart from
fond delusions, _are_ we better?”
“You're at any rate fresher and lighter-hearted,” Bertram asseverated.
“Englishmen always remain boys. We poor Continentals, especially we poor
Latins, grow old and sad, or else sour, or else dry and hard. We take
life either as a grand melodrama, or as a monotonous piece of prose; and
it's all because we haven't your English way of taking it as a game--the
saving spirit of sport.”
Ruth laughed a little. “Yes, and a good many Englishwomen remain boys,
too,” she added musingly. “How is that beautiful dog of yours?” she
asked. “Have you brought him with you to Florence?”
“Balzatore? No, I left him in Venice. He's rather a stickler for his
creature-comforts, and the accommodations for dogs in Italian trains are
not such as he approves of.”
Ruth opened wide her eyes. “Can they be worse than the accommodations
for human beings?” she wondered.
“All I can tell you,” Bertram replied, “is that I once took Balzatore
with me to Padua, and he howled conscientiously the whole way. I have
never known a human being (barring babies) to do that. They shut him in
a kind of drawer, a kind of black hole, under the carriage.”
“Brutes,” said Ruth, with a shudder. “Don't you rather admire our view?”
she asked, first glancing up at her companion, and then directing her
gaze down the valley.
“There never _were_ such eyes,” said Bertram to himself. “There never
_was_ such a view,” he said to her. “With the sky and the clouds and the
sun--and the haze, like gold turned to vapour--and the purple domes and
pinnacles of Florence. How is it possible for a town to be at the same
time so lovely and so dull?”
Ruth glanced up at him again. “Is Florence _dull?_”
“Don't you think so?” he asked, smiling down.
“I'm afraid I don't know it very well,” she answered. “The Ponte Vecchio
seems fairly animated--and then there are always the Botticellis.”
“I dare say there are always the Botticellis,” Bertram admitted,
laughing. “But the Ponte Vecchio doesn't count--the people there are all
Jews. I was thinking of the Florentines.”
“Ah, yes; I see,” said Ruth. “They're chiefly retired Anglo-Indians,
aren't they?”
“Well, isn't that,” demanded Bertram, with livelier laughter, “an entire
concession of my point?”
“What are you people so silent about?” asked Pontycroft, coming up with
Lucilla from the lawn. Lucilla sank with an ouf of thankfulness into one
of the cushioned chairs. Ponty seated himself on the balustrade, near
Bertram, and swung his legs.
“Never play lawn-golf with Lucilla,” he warned his listeners. “She
cheats like everything. She even poked a ball into a hole with her toe.”
“A very good way of making it go in,” Lucilla answered. “Besides, if
I cheated, it was for two good purposes: first, to hurry up the game,
which would otherwise have lasted till I dropped; and then to show you
how much more inventive and resourceful women are than men.”
She fanned her soft face gently with her pocket-handkerchief.
Ponty turned to Bertram. “Tell us the latest secret tidings from
Altronde. What are the prospects of the rightful party?”
“Oh yes, do tell us of Altronde,” said Lucilla, dropping her
handkerchief into her lap, and looking up with eagerness in her soft
eyes. “I've never met a Pretender before. Do tell us all about it.”
Bertram laughed. “Alas,” he said, “there's nothing about it. There are
no tidings from Altronde, and the rightful party (if there is one)
has no prospects. And I am not a Pretender--I am merely the son of a
Pretender, and my father maintains his pretensions merely as a matter of
form--not to let them, in a legal sense, lapse. He is as well aware as
any one that there'll never be a restoration.”
“Oh?” said Lucilla, her eyes darkening with disappointment; then, hope
dying hard: “But one constantly sees paragraphs in the papers headed
'Unrest in Altronde,' and they seem to enjoy a change of ministry with
each new moon.”
“Yes,” admitted Bertram, “there's plenty of unrest--the people being
exorbitant drinkers of coffee; and as every deputy aspires to be a
minister in turn, they change their ministry as often as they have
a leisure moment. 'Tis a state very much divided against itself. But
there's one thing they're in a vast majority agreed upon, and that is
that they don't want a return of the Bertrandoni.”
“Were you such dreadful tyrants?” questioned Ruth, artlessly serious.
Pontycroft laughed aloud.
“There spoke the free-born daughter of America,” he cried.
“I'm afraid we were, rather,” Bertram seriously answered her. “If
History speaks the truth, I'm afraid we rather led the country a dance.”
“In that respect you couldn't have held a candle to your successors,”
put in Ponty.
“The Ceresini really are a handful. Let alone their extravagances,
and their squabbles with their wives--I've seen Massimiliano
staggering-drunk in the streets of his own capital. And then, if you
drag in History, History never does speak truth.”
“I marvel the people stand it,” said Lucilla.
“They won't stand it for ever,” said Bertram. “Some day there'll be a
revolution.”
“Well----? But then----? Won't your party come in?” she asked.
“Then,” he predicted, “after perhaps a little interregnum, during which
they'll try a republic, Altronde will be noiselessly absorbed by the
Kingdom of Italy.”
“History never speaks truth, and prophets (with the best will in
the world) seldom do,” said Ponty. “Believe as much or as little of
Bertram's vaticination as your fancy pleases. In a nation of hot-blooded
Southrons like the Altrondesi, anything is possible. For my part, I
shouldn't be surprised if their legitimate sovereign were recalled in
triumph to-morrow.”
“Perish the thought,” cried Bertram, throwing up his hand, “unless
you can provide a substitute to fill what would then become my highly
uncomfortable situation.”
Ruth was looking curiously at Pontycroft. “What has History been doing,”
she inquired, “to get into your bad graces?”
Pontycroft turned towards her, and made a portentous face.
“History,” he informed her in his deepest voice, “is the medium in which
lies are preserved for posterity, just as flies are preserved in amber.
History consists of the opinions formed by fallible and often foolish
literary men from the testimony of fallible, contradictory, often
dishonest, and rarely dispassionate witnesses. The witnesses, either
with malice aforethought, or because their faculties are untrained, see
falsely, malobserve; then they make false, or at best, faulty records
of their malobservations. A century later comes your Historian; studies
these false, faulty, contradictory records; picks and chooses among 'em;
forms an opinion, the character of which will be entirely determined
by his own character--his temperament, prejudices, kind and degree of
intelligence, and so forth; and finally publishes his opinion under the
title of _The History of Ballywhack_. But the history, please to remark,
remains nothing more nor less than an exposition of the private views
of Mr. Jones. And please to remark further that no two histories of
Ballywhack will be in the least agreement--except upon unessentials. So
that if Mr. Jones's history is true, those of Messrs. Brown and Robinson
must necessarily be false. No, no, no; if you go to seek Truth in the
printed page, seek it in novels, seek it in poems, seek it in fairy
tales or fashion papers, but don't waste your time seeking it in
histories.”
While the others greeted his peroration with some laughter, Pontycroft
lighted a cigarette.
“I'm sure I'd much rather seek it in fashion papers,” drawled Lucilla.
“They're so much lighter and easier to hold than great heavy history
books, and besides they sometimes really give one ideas.”
“But don't, above all things,” put in Ruth, “seek it in a small volume
which I am preparing for the press, and which is to be entitled, _The
Paradoxes of Pontycroft._”