The Cardinal's Snuff-Box Part 14

And after that, for I forget how many days, Peter and the d.u.c.h.essa did not meet; and so he sank low and lower in his mind.

Nothing that can befall us, optimists aver, is without its value; and this, I have heard, is especially true if we happen to be literary men.

All is grist that comes to a writer's mill.

By his present experience, accordingly, Peter learned--and in the regretful prose of some future masterpiece will perhaps be enabled to remember--how exceeding great is the impatience of the lovesick, with what febrile vehemence the smitten heart can burn, and to what improbable lengths hours and minutes can on occasions stretch themselves.

He tried many methods of distraction.

There was always the panorama of his valley--the dark-blue lake, pale Monte Sfiorito, the frowning Gnisi, the smiling uplands westward. There were always the sky, the clouds, the clear sunshine, the crisp-etched shadows; and in the afternoon there was always the wondrous opalescent haze of August, filling every distance. There was always his garden--there were the great trees, with the light sifting through high s.p.a.ces of feathery green; there were the flowers, the birds, the bees, the b.u.t.terflies, with their colour, and their fragrance, and their music; there was his tinkling fountain, in its nimbus of prismatic spray; there was the swift, symbolic Aco. And then, at a half-hour's walk, there was the pretty pink-stuccoed village, with its hill-top church, its odd little shrines, its grim-grotesque ossuary, its faded frescoed house-fronts, its busy, vociferous, out-of-door Italian life:--the cobbler tapping in his stall; women gossiping at their toilets; children sprawling in the dirt, chasing each other, shouting; men drinking, playing mora, quarrelling, laughing, singing, tw.a.n.ging mandolines, at the tables under the withered bush of the wine-shop; and two or three more pensive citizens swinging their legs from the parapet of the bridge, and angling for fish that never bit, in the impetuous stream below.

Peter looked at these things; and, it is to be presumed, he saw them.

But, for all the joy they gave him, he, this cultivator of the sense of beauty, might have been the basest unit of his own purblind Anglo-Saxon public. They were the background for an absent figure. They were the stage-accessories of a drama whose action was arrested. They were an empty theatre.

He tried to read. He had brought a trunkful of books to Villa Floriano; but that book had been left behind which could fix his interest now.

He tried to write--and wondered, in a kind of daze, that any man should ever have felt the faintest ambition to do a thing so thankless and so futile.

"I shall never write again. Writing," he generalised, and possibly not without some reason, "when it is n't the sordidest of trades, is a mere fatuous a.s.sertion of one's egotism. Breaking stones in the street were a n.o.bler occupation; weaving ropes of sand were better sport. The only things that are worth writing are inexpressible, and can't be written.

The only things that can be written are obvious and worthless--the very crackling of thorns under a pot. Oh, why does n't she turn up?"

And the worst of it was that at any moment, for aught he knew, she might turn up. That was the worst of it, and the best. It kept hope alive, only to torture hope. It encouraged him to wait, to watch, to expect; to linger in his garden, gazing hungry-eyed up the lawns of Ventirose, striving to pierce the foliage that embowered the castle; to wander the country round-about, scanning every vista, scrutinising every shape and shadow, a tweed-clad Gastibelza. At any moment, indeed, she might turn up; but the days pa.s.sed--the hypocritic days--and she did not turn up.

Marietta, the kind soul, noticing his despondency, sought in divers artless ways to cheer him.

One evening she burst into his sitting-room with the effect of a small explosion, excitement in every line of her brown old face and wiry little figure.

"The fireflies! The fireflies, Signorino!" she cried, with strenuous gestures.

"What fireflies?" asked he, with phlegm.

"It is the feast of St. Dominic. The fireflies have arrived. They arrive every year on the feast of St. Dominic. They are the beads of his rosary. They are St. Dominic's Aves. There are thousands of them. Come, Signorino, Come and see."

Her black eyes snapped. She waved her hands urgently towards the window.

Peter languidly got up, languidly crossed the room, looked out.

There were, in truth, thousands of them, thousands and thousands of tiny primrose flames, circling, fluttering, rising, sinking, in the purple blackness of the night, like snowflakes in a wind, palpitating like hearts of living gold--Jove descending upon Danae invisible.

"Son carin', eh?" cried eager Marietta.

"Hum--yes--pretty enough," he grudgingly acknowledged. "But even so?"

the ingrate added, as he turned away, and let himself drop back into his lounging-chair. "My dear good woman, no amount of prettiness can disguise the fundamental ba.n.a.lity of things. Your fireflies--St.

Dominic's beads, if you like--and, apropos of that, do you know what they call them in America?--they call them lightning-bugs, if you can believe me--remark the difference between southern euphuism and western bluntness--your fireflies are pretty enough, I grant. But they are tinsel pasted on the Desert of Sahara. They are condiments added to a dinner of dust and ashes. Life, trick it out as you will, is just an incubus--is just the Old Man of the Sea. Language fails me to convey to you any notion how heavily he sits on my poor shoulders. I thought I had suffered from ennui in my youth. But the malady merely plays with the green fruit; it reserves its serious ravages for the ripe. I can promise you 't is not a laughing matter. Have you ever had a fixed idea? Have you ever spent days and nights racking your brain, importuning the unanswering Powers, to learn whether there was--well, whether there was Another Man, for instance? Oh, bring me drink. Bring me Seltzer water and Vermouth. I will seek nepenthe at the bottom of the wine-cup."

Was there another man? Why should there not be? And yet was there? In her continued absence, the question came back persistently, and scarcely contributed to his peace of mind.

A few days later, nothing discouraged, "Would you like to have a good laugh, Signorino?" Marietta enquired.

"Yes," he answered, apathetic.

"Then do me the favour to come," she said.

She led him out of his garden, to the gate of a neighbouring meadow. A beautiful black-horned white cow stood there, her head over the bars, looking up and down the road, and now and then uttering a low distressful "moo."

"See her," said Marietta.

"I see her. Well--?" said Peter.

"This morning they took her calf from her--to wean it," said Marietta.

"Did they, the cruel things? Well--?" said he.

"And ever since, she has stood there by the gate, looking down the road, waiting, calling."

"The poor dear. Well--?" said he.

"But do you not see, Signorino? Look at her eyes. She is weeping--weeping like a Christian."

Peter looked-and, sure enough, from the poor cow's eyes tears were falling, steadily, rapidly: big limpid tears that trickled down her cheek, her great homely hairy cheek, and dropped on the gra.s.s: tears of helpless pain, uncomprehending endurance. "Why have they done this thing to me?" they seemed dumbly to cry.

"Have you ever seen a cow weep before? Is it comical, at least?"

demanded Marietta, exultant.

"Comical--?" Peter gasped. "Comical--!" he groaned....

But then he spoke to the cow.

"Poor dear--poor dear," he repeated. He patted her soft warm neck, and scratched her between the horns and along the dewlap.

"Poor dear--poor dear."

The cow lifted up her head, and rested her great chin on Peter's shoulder, breathing upon his face.

"Yes, you know that we are companions in misery, don't you?" he said.

"They have taken my calf from me too--though my calf, indeed, was only a calf in an extremely metaphorical sense--and it never was exactly mine, anyhow--I daresay it's belonged from the beginning to another man. You, at least, have n't that gall and wormwood added to your cup. And now you must really try to pull yourself together. It's no good crying. And besides, there are more calves in the sea than have ever been taken from it. You'll have a much handsomer and fatter one next time. And besides, you must remember that your loss subserves someone else's gain--the farmer would never have done it if it hadn't been to his advantage.

If you 're an altruist, that should comfort you. And you must n't mind Marietta,--you must n't mind her laughter. Marietta is a Latin. The Latin conception of what is laughable differs by the whole span of heaven from the Teuton. You and I are Teutons."

"Teutons--?" questioned Marietta wrinkling her brow.

"Yes--Germanic," said he.

"But I thought the Signorino was English?"

"So he is."

"But the cow is not Germanic. White, with black horns, that is the purest Roman breed, Signorino."