The Cardinal's snuff-box
the river like bullets, sending up splashes bigger than themselves.
And the tiled roof just above his head resounded with a continual loud
crepitation, as if a multitude of iron-shod elves were dancing on it.
The thunder crashed, roared, reverberated, like the toppling of great
edifices. The lightning tore through the black cloud-canopy in long
blinding zig-zags. The wind moaned, howled, hooted--and the square
chamber where Peter stood shook and rattled under its buffetings, and
was full of the chill and the smell of it. Really the whole thing was
splendid.
His garden-paths ran with muddy brooklets; the high-road beyond his
hedge was transformed to a shallow torrent.... And, just at that moment,
looking off along the highroad, he saw something that brought his heart
into his throat.
Three figures were hurrying down it, half-drowned in the rain--the
Duchessa di Santangiolo, Emilia Manfredi, and a priest.
In a twinkling, Peter, bareheaded, was at his gate.
“Come in--come in,” he called.
“We are simply drenched--we shall inundate your house,” the Duchessa
said, as he showed them into his sitting-room.
They were indeed dripping with water, soiled to their knees with mud.
“Good heavens!” gasped Peter, stupid. “How were you ever out in such a
downpour?”
She smiled, rather forlornly.
“No one told us that it was going to rain, and we were off for a good
long walk--for pleasure.”
“You must be wet to the bone--you must be perishing with cold,” he
cried, looking from one to another.
“Yes, I daresay we are perishing with cold,” she admitted.
“And I have no means of offering you a fire--there are no fireplaces,”
he groaned, with a gesture round the bleak Italian room, to certify
their absence.
“Is n't there a kitchen?” asked the Duchessa, a faint spark of raillery
kindling amid the forlornness of her smile.
Peter threw up his hands.
“I had lost my head. The kitchen, of course. I 'll tell Marietta to
light a fire.”
He excused himself, and sought out Marietta. He found her in her
housekeeper's room, on her knees, saying her rosary, in obvious terror.
I 'm afraid he interrupted her orisons somewhat brusquely.
“Will you be so good as to start a rousing fire in the kitchen--as
quickly as ever it can be done?”
And he rejoined his guests.
“If you will come this way--” he said.
Marietta had a fire of logs and pine-cones blazing in no time. She
courtesied low to the Duchessa, lower still to the priest--in fact,
Peter was n't sure that she did n't genuflect before him, while he made
a rapid movement with his hand over her head: the Sign of the Cross,
perhaps.
He was a little, unassuming-looking, white haired priest, with a
remarkably clever, humorous, kindly face; and he wore a remarkably
shabby cassock. The Duchessa's chaplain, Peter supposed. How should it
occur to him that this was Cardinal Udeschini? Do Cardinals (in one's
antecedent notion of them) wear shabby cassocks, and look humorous and
unassuming? Do they go tramping about the country in the rain, attended
by no retinue save a woman and a fourteen-year-old girl? And are they
little men--in one's antecedent notion? True, his shabby cassock had red
buttons, and there was a red sash round his waist, and a big amethyst
glittered in a setting of pale gold on his annular finger. But Peter was
not sufficiently versed in fashions canonical, to recognise the meaning
of these insignia.
How, on the other hand, should it occur to the Duchessa that Peter
needed enlightenment? At all events, she said to him, “Let me introduce
you;” and then, to the priest, “Let me present Mr. Marchdale--of whom
you have heard before now.”
The white-haired old man smiled sweetly into Peter's eyes, and gave him
a slender, sensitive old hand.
“E cattivo vento che non e buono per qualcuno--debbo a questa burrasca
la pregustazione d' un piacere,” he said, with a mingling of ceremonious
politeness and sunny geniality that was of his age and race.
Peter--instinctively--he could not have told why--put a good deal more
deference into his bow, than men of his age and race commonly put into
their bows, and murmured something about “grand' onore.”
Marietta placed a row of chairs before the raised stone hearth, and
afterwards, at her master's request, busied herself preparing tea.
“But I think you would all be wise to take a little brandy first,” Peter
suggested. “It is my despair that I am not able to provide you with a
change of raiment. Brandy will be the best substitute, perhaps.”
The old priest laughed, and put his hand upon the shoulder of Emilia.
“You have spared this young lady an embarrassing avowal. Brandy is
exactly what she was screwing her courage to the point of asking for.”
“Oh, no!” protested Emilia, in a deep Italian voice, with passionate
seriousness.
But Peter fetched a decanter, and poured brandy for everyone.
“I drink to your health--c'est bien le cas de le dire. I hope you will
not have caught your deaths of cold,” he said.
“Oh, we are quite warm now,” said the Duchessa. “We are snug in an ingle
on Mount Ararat.”
“Our wetting will have done us good--it will make us grow. You and I
will never regret that, will we, Emilietta?” said the priest.
A lively colour had come into the Duchessa's cheeks; her eyes seemed
unusually bright. Her hair was in some disorder, drooping at the sides,
and blown over her brow in fine free wavelets. It was dark in the
kitchen, save for the firelight, which danced fantastically on the walls
and ceiling, and struck a ruddy glow from Marietta's copper pots and
pans. The rain pattered lustily without; the wind wailed in the chimney;
the lightning flashed, the thunder volleyed. And Peter looked at the
Duchessa--and blessed the elements. To see her seated there, in her wet
gown, seated familiarly, at her ease, before his fire, in his kitchen,
with that colour in her cheeks, that brightness in her eyes, and her
hair in that disarray--it was unspeakable; his heart closed in a kind
of delicious spasm. And the fragrance, subtle, secret, evasive, that
hovered in the air near her, did not diminish his emotion.
“I wonder,” she asked, with a comical little glance upwards at
him, “whether you would resent it very much if I should take off my
hat--because it's a perfect reservoir, and the water will keep trickling
down my neck.”
His joy needed but this culmination that she should take off her hat!
“Oh, I beg of you--” he returned fervently.
“You had better take yours off too, Emilia,” said the Duchessa.
“Admire masculine foresight,” said the priest. “I took mine off when I
came in.”
“Let me hang them up,” said Peter.
It was wonderful to hold her hat in his hand--it was like holding a part
of herself. He brushed it surreptitiously against his face, as he
hung it up. Its fragrance--which met him like an answering caress,
almost--did not lessen his emotion.
Then Marietta brought the tea, with bread-and-butter, and toast, and
cakes, and pretty blue china cups and saucers, and silver that glittered
in the firelight.
“Will you do me the honour of pouring the tea?” Peter asked the
Duchessa.
So she poured the tea, and Peter passed it. As he stood close to her,
to take it--oh, but his heart beat, believe me! And once, when she was
giving him a cup, the warm tips of her fingers lightly touched his hand.
Believe me, the touch had its effect. And always there was that heady
fragrance in the air, like a mysterious little voice, singing secrets.
“I wonder,” the old priest said, “why tea is not more generally drunk by
us Italians. I never taste it without resolving to acquire the habit. I
remember, when I was a child, our mothers used to keep it as a medicine;
and you could only buy it at the chemists' shops.”
“It's coming in, you know, at Rome--among the Whites,” said the
Duchessa.
“Among the Whites!” cried he, with a jocular simulation of disquiet.
“You should not have told me that, till I had finished my cup. Now I
shall feel that I am sharing a dissipation with our spoliators.”
“That should give an edge to its aroma,” laughed she. “And besides, the
Whites aren't all responsible for our spoliation--some of them are not
so white as your fancy paints them. They'd be very decent people, for
the most part--if they were n't so vulgar.”
“If you stick up for the Whites like that when I am Pope, I shall
excommunicate you,” the priest threatened. “Meanwhile, what have you to
say against the Blacks?”
“The Blacks, with few exceptions, are even blacker than they're painted;
but they too would be fairly decent people in their way--if they were
n't so respectable. That is what makes Rome impossible as a residence
for any one who cares for human society. White society is so
vulgar--Black society is so deadly dull.”
“It is rather curious,” said the priest, “that the chief of each party
should wear the colour of his adversary. Our chief dresses in white, and
their chief can be seen any day driving about the streets in black.”
And Peter, during this interchange of small-talk, was at liberty to
feast his eyes upon her.
“Perhaps you have not yet reached the time of life where men begin to
find a virtue in snuff?” the priest said, producing a smart silver snuff
box, tapping the lid, and proffering it to Peter.
“On the contrary--thank you,” Peter answered, and absorbed his pinch
like an adept.
“How on earth have you learned to take it without a paroxysm?” cried the
surprised Duchessa.
“Oh, a thousand years ago I was in the Diplomatic Service,” he
explained. “It is one of the requirements.”
Emilia Manfredi lifted her big brown eyes, filled with girlish wonder,
to his face, and exclaimed, “How extraordinary!”
“It is n't half so extraordinary as it would be if it were true, my
dear,” said the Duchessa.
“Oh? Non e poi vero?” murmured Emilia, and her eyes darkened with
disappointment.
Peter meanwhile was looking at the snuffbox, which the priest still held
in his hand, and admiring its brave repousse work of leaves and flowers,
and the escutcheon engraved on the lid. But what if he could have
guessed the part he had passively played in obtaining it for its
possessor--or the part that it was still to play in his own epopee? Mark
again the predestination!
“The storm is passing,” said the priest.
“Worse luck!” thought Peter.
For indeed the rain and the wind were moderating, the thunder had rolled
farther away, the sky was becoming lighter.
“But there's a mighty problem before us still,” said the Duchessa. “How
are we to get to Ventirose? The roads will, be ankle-deep with mud.”
“If you wish to do me a very great kindness--” Peter began.
“Yes--?” she encouraged him.
“You will allow me to go before you, and tell them to come for you with
a carriage.”
“I shall certainly allow you to do nothing of the sort,” she replied
severely. “I suppose there is no one whom you could send?”
“I should hardly like to send Marietta. I 'm afraid there is no one
else. But upon my word, I should enjoy going myself.”
She shook her head, smiling at him with mock compassion.
“Would you? Poor man, poor man! That is an enjoyment which you will have
to renounce. One must n't expect too much in this sad life.”
“Well, then,” said Peter, “I have an expedient. If you can walk a
somewhat narrow plank--?”
“Yes--?” questioned she.
“I think I can improvise a bridge across the river.”
“I believe the rain has stopped,” said the priest, looking towards the
window.
Peter, manning his soul for the inevitable, got up, went to the door,
opened it, stuck out his head.
“Yes,” he acknowledged, while his heart sank within him, “the rain has
stopped.”
And now the storm departed almost as rapidly as it had arrived. In