The Cardinal's snuff-box
rate, it expressed her in an aspect which Peter had instinctively made
it his habit to forget, which he by no means found it inspiriting
to remember. It expressed, it emphasised, her wealth, her rank; it
emphasised the distance, in a worldly sense, between her and himself,
the conventional barriers.
And she...
She was very lovely, she was entirely cordial, friendly, she was all
that she had ever been--and yet--and yet--Well, somehow, she seemed
indefinably different. Somehow, again, the distance, the barriers, were
emphasised. She was very lovely, she was entirely cordial, friendly, she
was all that she had ever been; but, somehow, to-night, she seemed very
much the great lady, very much the duchess....
“My dear man,” he said to himself, “you were mad to dream for a single
instant that there was the remotest possibility of anything ever
happening.”
The only other guests, besides the Cardinal and Monsignor Langshawe,
were an old Frenchwoman, with beautiful white hair, from one of the
neighbouring villas, Madame de Lafere, and a young, pretty, witty, and
voluble Irishwoman, Mrs. O'Donovan Florence, from an hotel at Spiaggia.
In deference, perhaps, to the cloth of the two ecclesiastics, none of
the women were in full evening-dress, and there was no arm-taking when
they went in to dinner. The dinner itself was of a simplicity which
Peter thought admirable, and which, of course, he attributed to his
Duchessa's own good taste. He was not yet familiar enough with the Black
aristocracy of Italy, to be aware that in the matter of food and drink
simplicity is as much the criterion of good form amongst them, as lavish
complexity is the criterion of good form amongst the English-imitating
Whites.
The conversation, I believe, took its direction chiefly from the
initiative of Mrs. O'Donovan Florence. With great sprightliness and
humour, and with an astonishing light-hearted courage, she rallied the
Cardinal upon the neglect in which her native island was allowed to
languish by the powers at Rome. “The most Catholic country in three
hemispheres, to be sure,” she said; “every inch of its soil soaked
with the blood of martyrs. Yet you've not added an Irish saint to the
Calendar for I see you're blushing to think how many ages; and you've
taken sides with the heretic Saxon against us in our struggle for Home
Rule--which I blame you for, though, being a landowner and a bit of an
absentee, I 'm a traitorous Unionist myself.”
The Cardinal laughingly retorted that the Irish were far too fine, too
imaginative and poetical a race, to be bothered with material questions
of government and administration. They should leave such cares to the
stolid, practical English, and devote the leisure they would thus obtain
to the further exercise and development of what someone had called “the
starfire of the Celtic nature.” Ireland should look upon England as
her working-housekeeper. And as for the addition of Irish saints to
the Calendar, the stumbling-block was their excessive number. “'T is an
embarrassment of riches. If we were once to begin, we could never leave
off till we had canonised nine-tenths of the dead population.”
Monsignor Langshawe, at this (making jest the cue for earnest), spoke
up for Scotland, and deplored the delay in the beatification of Blessed
Mary. “The official beatification,” he discriminated, “for she was
beatified in the heart of every true Catholic Scot on the day when
Bloody Elizabeth murdered her.”
And Madame de Lafere put in a plea for Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, and
the little Dauphin.
“Blessed Mary--Bloody Elizabeth,” laughed the Duchessa, in an aside
to Peter; “here is language to use in the presence of a Protestant
Englishman.”
“Oh, I'm accustomed to 'Bloody Elizabeth,'” said he. “Was n't it a word
of Cardinal Newman's?”
“Yes, I think so,” said she. “And since every one is naming his
candidate; for the Calendar, you have named mine. I think there never
was a saintlier saint than Cardinal Newman.”
“What is your Eminence's attitude towards the question of mixed
marriages?” Mrs. O'Donovan Florence asked.
Peter pricked up his ears.
“It is not the question of actuality in Italy that it is in England,”
his Eminence replied; “but in the abstract, and other things equal, my
attitude would of course be one of disapproval.”
“And yet surely,” contended she, “if a pious Catholic girl marries a
Protestant man, she has a hundred chances of converting him?”
“I don't know,” said the Cardinal. “Would n't it be safer to let the
conversion precede the marriage? Afterwards, I 'm afraid, he would
have a hundred chances of inducing her to apostatise, or, at least, of
rendering her lukewarm.”
“Not if she had a spark of the true zeal,” said Mrs. O'Donovan Florence.
“Any wife can make her husband's life a burden to him, if she will
conscientiously lay herself out to do so. The man would be glad to
submit, for the sake of peace in his household. I often sigh for the
good old days of the Inquisition; but it's still possible, in the
blessed seclusion of the family circle, to apply the rack and the
thumbscrew in a modified form. I know a dozen fine young Protestant men
in London whom I'm labouring to convert, and I feel I 'm defeated only
by the circumstance that I'm not in a position to lead them to the altar
in the full meaning of the expression.”
“A dozen?” the Cardinal laughed. “Aren't you complicating the question
of mixed marriages with that of plural marriage?”
“'T was merely a little Hibernicism, for which I beg your Eminence's
indulgence,” laughed she. “But what puts the most spokes in a
proselytiser's wheel is the Faith itself. If we only deserved the
reputation for sharp practice and double dealing which the Protestants
have foisted upon us, it would be roses, roses, all the way. Why are
we forbidden to let the end justify the means? And where are those
accommodements avec le ciel of which we've heard? We're not even
permitted a few poor accommodements avec le monde.”
“Look at my uncle's face,” whispered the Duchessa to Peter. The
Cardinal's fine old face was all alight with amusement. “In his fondness
for taking things by their humorous end, he has met an affinity.”
“It will be a grand day for the Church and the nations, when we have
an Irish Pope,” Mrs. O'Donovan Florence continued. “A good, stalwart,
militant Irishman is what's needed to set everything right. With a sweet
Irish tongue, he'd win home the wandering sheep; and with a strong Irish
arm, he'd drive the wolves from the fold. It's he that would soon sweep
the Italians out of Rome.”
“The Italians will soon be swept out of Rome by the natural current
of events,” said the Cardinal. “But an Irish bishop of my acquaintance
insists that we have already had many Irish Popes, without knowing it.
Of all the greatest Popes he cries, 'Surely, they must have had Irish
blood.' He's perfectly convinced that Pius the Ninth was Irish. His very
name, his family-name, Ferretti, was merely the Irish name, Farrity,
Italianised, the good bishop says. No one but an Irishman, he insists,
could have been so witty.”
Mrs. O'Donovan Florence looked intensely thoughtful for a moment....
Then, “I 'm trying to think of the original Irish form of Udeschini,”
she declared.
At which there was a general laugh.
“When you say 'soon,' Eminence, do you mean that we may hope to see the
Italians driven from Rome in our time?” enquired Madame de Lafere.
“They are on the verge of bankruptcy--for their sins,” the Cardinal
answered. “When the crash comes--and it can't fail to come before many
years--there will necessarily be a readjustment. I do not believe that
the conscience of Christendom will again allow Peter to be deprived of
his inheritance.”
“God hasten the good day,” said Monsignor Langshawe.
“If I can live to see Rome restored to the Pope, I shall die content,
even though I cannot live to see France restored to the King,” said the
old Frenchwoman.
“And I--even though I cannot live to see Britain restored to the Faith,”
said the Monsignore.
The Duchessa smiled at Peter.
“What a hotbed of Ultramontanes and reactionaries you have fallen into,”
she murmured.
“It is exhilarating,” said he, “to meet people who have convictions.”
“Even when you regard their convictions as erroneous?” she asked.
“Yes, even then,” he answered. “But I'm not sure I regard as erroneous
the convictions I have heard expressed to-night.”
“Oh--?” she wondered. “Would you like to see Rome restored to the Pope?”
“Yes,” said he, “decidedly--for aesthetic reasons, if for no others.”
“I suppose there are aesthetic reasons,” she assented. “But we, of
course, think there are conclusive reasons in mere justice.”
“I don't doubt there are conclusive reasons in mere justice, too,” said
he.
After dinner, at the Cardinal's invitation, the Duchessa went to the
piano, and played Bach and Scarlatti. Her face, in the soft candlelight,
as she discoursed that “luminous, lucid” music, Peter thought... But
what do lovers always think of their ladies' faces, when they look up
from their pianos, in soft candlelight?
Mrs. O'Donovan Florence, taking her departure, said to the Cardinal, “I
owe your Eminence the two proudest days of my life. The first was when I
read in the paper that you had received the hat, and I was able to boast
to all my acquaintances that I had been in the convent with your
niece by marriage. And the second is now, when I can boast forevermore
hereafter that I've enjoyed the honour of making my courtesy to you.”
“So,” said Peter, as he walked home through the dew and the starlight of
the park, amid the phantom perfumes of the night, “so the Cardinal
does n't approve of mixed marriages and, of course, his niece does n't,
either. But what can it matter to me? For alas and alas--as he truly
said--it's hardly a question of actuality.”
And he lit a cigarette.
XX
“So he did meet her, after all?” the Duchessa said.
“Yes, he met her in the end,” Peter answered.
They were seated under the gay white awning, against the bright
perspective of lawn, lake, and mountains, on the terrace at Ventirose,
where Peter was paying his dinner-call. The August day was hot and
still and beautiful--a day made of gold and velvet and sweet odours. The
Duchessa lay back languidly, among the crisp silk cushions, in her low,
lounging chair; and Peter, as he looked at her, told himself that he
must be cautious, cautious.
“Yes, he met her in the end,” he said.
“Well--? And then--?” she questioned, with a show of eagerness, smiling
into his eyes. “What happened? Did she come up to his expectations?
Or was she just the usual disappointment? I have been pining--oh, but
pining--to hear the continuation of the story.”
She smiled into his eyes, and his heart fluttered. “I must be cautious,”
he told himself. “In more ways than one, this is a crucial moment.” At
the same time, as a very part of his caution, he must appear entirely
nonchalant and candid.
“Oh, no--tutt' altro,” he said, with an assumption of nonchalant
airiness and candid promptness. “She 'better bettered' his
expectations--she surpassed his fondest. She was a thousand times more
delightful than he had dreamed--though, as you know, he had dreamed a
good deal. Pauline de Fleuvieres turned out to be the feeblest, faintest
echo of her.”
The Duchessa meditated for an instant.
“It seems impossible. It's one of those situations in which a
disenchantment seems the foregone conclusion,” she said, at last.
“It seems so, indeed,” assented Peter; “but disenchantment, there was
none. She was all that he had imagined, and infinitely more. She was the
substance--he had imagined the shadow. He had divined her, as it were,