In thoughtless freedom bold.”
“Only that I can't wander, in thoughtless freedom bold, over dale and
hill in this fair false land of Italy,” cried Ruth, exasperated, “I
should start at once for a fortnight's walking tour. I feel an excessive
desire to remove myself from a deluge of poetic allusions which
threatens to get on my nerves. Moreover,” she added severely, “I quite
fail to see their application.”
She sat down, drew her gloves off with a little militant air, and
prepared to pour the tea which the servant had placed upon a table
at her elbow. In the fine October weather the terrace, provided with
abundance of tables, chairs and rugs, made, with its superb view over
Florence, the pleasantest of _al fresco_ extensions to the drawing-room.
“There, there, there, Ruthie!” soothed Pontycroft, “don't resent a
little natural avuncular chaff. _I must play the fool or play the
devil_. You wouldn't wish to suppress my devouring curiosity, would you?
Here's a situation brimful of captivating possibilities. You wouldn't
have me sit in unremunerative silence, in sterile torpor before this
case of a little American girl, who, on any day of the week, may be
called to assume the exalted rôle of Crown Princess of Altronde?”
“Yes,” frowned Ruth, “I should very much like to suppress your
devouring curiosity; I should like extremely to reduce you to a state
of unremunerative silence, torpor, on that verily sterile topic. And,
moreover, so far as I can see, the Royal Incident may now be billeted
closed, for weal or for woe.”
“One can never be quite sure about these Royal Incidents,” her tormentor
persisted, “that's the lark about 'em--they're never closed. For sheer
pig-headed obstinacy give me a Crown Prince. Our friend Bertram is
capable of letting his Queen Mamma in for a deal of trouble in view of
present circumstances, if she should, as she's likely to do--want now to
marry him off to some Semi-Royalty or German Grand Duchess or another.”
“_Si puo_,” riposted Ruth with hauteur, “I withdraw myself in advance
from the competition. And I should like, please, to be spared any more
allusions to the subject.”
But here Lucilla, who had been sipping her tea and worshipping the view,
interrupted them:
“Do _please_ cease from wrangling,” she implored. “Hold your breaths
both of you--and behold!”
A haze all golden,--an impalpable dust of gold,--filled the entire
watch-tower of the Heavens. Florence, twice glorified, lay bathed in
yellow light that filtered benignantly upon roofs and gardens, played,
glanced, upon Duomo, Campanile, and Baptistry. The Arno had become a way
of gold. Webs of yellow gauze, spun across the streets and reflected by
a thousand windows, made, among the many gardens, a burnished background
for the twigs and branches of dark aspiring cypresses, glossy leaved
ilexes.
Ruth and Pontycroft held their breaths, and, for a moment, there was a
silence.
“I wonder,” Lucilla said at length,--she gave a little soft sigh
of satisfaction,--“I wonder what Prince Bertrandoni has done with
Balzatore.... Taken him, do you suppose, to reign over the dogs of
Altronde? I miss that dog sadly.”
“Balzatore?--Oh,” said Ponty, “Balzatore is throning it at the Palazzo
Reale.... He has a special attendant who waits on him, sees to his
bodily comforts; prepares his food, takes him for his walks,--for of
course Bertram is far too involved in Court functions, too tied by
etiquette and the fear of Anarchists to go for long solitary rambles;
and Balzatore bullies the servants, one and all, you may be sure. Dogs,
even the best of 'em, are shocking snobs. In a measure Balzatore is
enjoying himself. It hardly requires a pen'orth of imagination to be
positive of it. And,” Pontycroft continued, “I hear that the Palazzo
Bertrandoni has been leased for a number of years to an American
painter. By the way, it seems that Bertram's bookcases, which,
saving your presences, I grieve to state, were filled with very light
literature--the writings of decadent poets, people who begin with a
cynicism”--Pontycroft paused, hesitated for the just word.
“A cynicism with which nobody ends!” Ruth interjected.
“Invaluable young thing! Thanks awfully. Who begin, as you say, with a
cynicism with which nobody ends, as you quite aptly infer. Filled, too,
I regret to state, with rare editions, a trifle, well--perhaps a bit
eighteenth century--and with yellow paper-covered French novels. These
bookcases are expiating a life of frivolity within the four walls of
a Convent. They were offered by Bertram's mother to some Sisters of
Charity whose temporal welfare she looks after. The good nuns were glad
to have the shelves for their poor schools and have packed them with
edifying books.... So it happens that to-day they ornament both sides
of the Convent-Parloir, and thus it is that Bertram's bookshelves are
atoning for the gay, wild, extravagant, old days within convent walls.”
Lucilla tittered. “Shall our end be as exemplary?” Ruth asked, pensive,
“or will it fade away into chill and nothingness--like the glory of
this,” she smiled at Pontycroft, “April afternoon? B-r-r-r-----” She
gave a little shiver.
Pontycroft pulled himself to his feet.
“Tut, tut!” said he. He proffered two white garments which lay over the
back of a chair to Ruth and to his sister. “What are these melancholy
sentiments? Aren't you contented? Aren't you satisfied, aren't you
pleased here?” he asked, and he eyed Ruth inquisitorially.
“Oh yes,--oh yes, I am,” Ruth quickly assured him. “But I do get, now
and then, tiresome conscientious scruples. In these halcyon hours I
wonder if it isn't my duty to go and have a look at my dear old uncle,
all alone there, in America.”
“Ruth--my dear Ruth!” cried Lucilla.
“Why doesn't your 'dear old uncle' come and have a look at you? I think
it's _his_ duty to do so; I've thought so for many a day.”
“Oh, he's bound to his fireside, I suppose,” Ruth answered, a touch of
melancholy in her voice. “He's wedded to his chimney corner, his books.
At seventy-two it's a bore, perhaps, to go wandering into foreign
parts.”
“Foreign parts!” Lucilla cried with some scorn. “Are we Ogres?
Barbarians? Do we live in the Wilds of America?”
“My dear infant, beware,” cautioned Pontycroft, “beware of the
rudiments in your nature of that terrible New England instrument of
torture, the Nonconformist Conscience. Despite your Catholic upbringing
it will, if you indulge it, I fear, lead you to your ruin. The
Nonconformist conscience, I beg you to believe, makes cowards of us all.
Now I should suggest a much better plan, and one I have always approved
of. Let's _pack up our duds_, as the saying goes, in your country; let's
return to sane and merry England; let us for the future and since the
pinch of Winter is at our heels, Summer in the South and Winter in the
North.”
“England?” gasped Lucilla and Ruth in one breath.
“Why not?” enquired the man of the family. “You are, after all, never so
comfortable anywhere, in Winter, as in an English Country House. Roaring
fires, invisible hot-water pipes; cozy dark days, libraries full of
books, Mudie by post two hours away. Wassailing and Christmas waits;
holly and mistletoe, hey for an English winter, sing I! Plum pudding,
mince pies, tenants to tip, neighbours, hospitalities.”
“Ugh,” Lucilla wailed, “Perish the awful thought! Neighbours 'calling in
sensible, slightly muddy boots' (as your favourite author too truthfully
has it), in tweeds and short skirts;--and for conversation--Heaven
defend us! The turnip crops, the Pytchley, penny readings, and the
latest gossip anent a next-door neighbour. Night all the day--night
again at night--and whisky-and-soda at eleven, day or night,--eternally
variegated by that boring, semper-eternal Bridge. You'll have to go
without me,” declared Lucilla flatly.
“Have you generally Wintered in the North, Summered in the South?” Ruth
queried with a gleam.
“No--No,--” replied Pontycroft reflectively, “no,--but if one hasn't
really tried it since one's callow days the idea does speak to one. It
isn't all beautiful prattle,” he assured her, “but the idea does appeal
to one. As one grows old one prefers to be comfortable. A pabulum of
beauty is all very well for young things like yourself here and Lucilla
who still hug the precious foolish delusion that Beauty is Truth, Truth
Beauty.”
Pontycroft's indolent glance encompassed Florence,--that fair spectacle
she presents, in the aura of twilight,--the exquisite hour, _l'heure
exquise_. Her amphitheatre of hills,--her white villas, even now charged
with rose by the evening glow,--aglow her churches, her gardens
and black cypresses. “Yet this is all too like,” he commented, “the
enchanter's dream,--at a puff!... No! Fact, Fact, solid Fact is the
desideratum! Fact's your miracle in a nutshell. What you and Lucilla
call Truth alters with every fresh discovery of man, his climate,
education, point of view. Man carries your Beauty in his eye, ears,
senses. But Fact, humanly speaking, Fact doesn't give you the least
trouble. There it is. Did it never occur to you how splendidly reposeful
a fact it is that a turnip field's a turnip field, until you sow beans
to rejuvenate it? And here's another, equally comforting: The spider
spins its web from its own vitals. Ah, Facts spare one such a deal of
thinking, such a lot of enthusiasm!... In your country, my dear young
thing,” Pontycroft turned to Ruth, “in your strange, weird, singular,
incomprehensible country they sow buckwheat cakes when the turf on the
lawn's been killed by frosts; and when the buckwheat cakes have grown,
and blossomed--they plough them back into the earth, and sow their
grass--and in a month you have your velvet robe again. In similar manner
the fact that a cozy English Winter's a cozy English Winter is one
agreeably worthy your attention.”
“This flummery of rose bushes,” went on Pontycroft, while his arm
described a semicircle,--“this romance of nodding trees laden with
oranges ornamental to the landscape; this volubility of heliotrope,
mimosa, violets in January, all, all--in a conspiracy to lure one to sit
out o' doors and catch an internal, infernal chill,” he sneezed; “all
this taken together is not worth that one fine solid indisputable
British Fact, a comfortable English Winter! Uncompromising cold without,
cheer within.”
“But it's not Winter yet,” Lucilla argued plaintively, “it's only
October. Hadn't you better apply the fact of an overcoat to what you've
been telling us? You've plunged _me_ into anything but a state of cheer
with your sophistries--this absurd juggling with the doleful joys of an
English Winter!”
“_Apropos_ of the joys of an English Winter, I wonder whether the post
has come?” said Ruth, jumping up. “Pietro's delicacy about disturbing
us at tea Lucilla won't call mere laziness. I'll send him for your
overcoat,” she added, with a laughing nod, and vanished through the
French windows.