The Cardinal's snuff-box
“The Lord Prince Cardinal Udeschini was here,” said Marietta. There was
a swagger in her accent. There was also something in her accent that
seemed to rebuke Peter for his absence.
“I had inferred as much from this,” said he, tapping the card. “We
English, you know, are great at putting two and two together.”
“He came in a carriage,” said Marietta.
“Not really?” said her master.
“Ang--veramente,” she affirmed.
“Was--was he alone?” Peter asked, an obscure little twinge of hope
stirring in his heart.
“No. Signorino.” And then she generalised, with untranslatable
magniloquence: “Un amplissimo porporato non va mai solo.”
Peter ought to have hugged her for that amplissimo porporato. But he was
selfishly engrossed in his emotions.
“Who was with him?” He tried to throw the question out with a casual
effect, an effect of unconcern.
“The Signorina Emelia Manfredi was with him,” answered Marietta, little
recking how mere words can stab.
“Oh,” said Peter.
“The Lord Prince Cardinal Udeschini was very sorry not to see the
Signorino,” continued Marietta.
“Poor man--was he? Let us trust that time will console him,” said Peter,
callously.
But, “I wonder,” he asked himself, “I wonder whether perhaps I was the
least bit hasty yesterday? If I had stopped, I should have saved the
Cardinal a journey here to-day--I might have known that he would come,
these Italians are so punctilious--and then, if I had stopped--if I had
stopped--possibly--possibly--”
Possibly what? Oh, nothing. And yet, if he had stopped... well, at any
rate, he would have gained time. The Duchessa had already begun to thaw.
If he had stopped... He could formulate no precise conclusion to that
if; but he felt dimly remorseful that he had not stopped, he felt that
he had indeed been the least bit hasty. And his remorse was somehow
medicine to his reviving hope.
“After all, I scarcely gave things a fair trial yesterday,” he said.
And the corollary of that, of course, was that he might give things a
further and fairer trial some other day.
But his hope was still hard hurt; he was still in a profound dejection.
“The Signorino is not eating his dinner,” cried Marietta, fixing him
with suspicious, upbraiding eyes.
“I never said I was,” he retorted.
“The Signorino is not well?” she questioned, anxious.
“Oh, yes--cosi, cosi; the Signorino is well enough,” he answered.
“The dinner”--you could perceive that she brought herself with
difficulty to frame the dread hypothesis--“the dinner is not good?” Her
voice sank. She waited, tense, for his reply.
“The dinner,” said he, “if one may criticise without eating it, the
dinner is excellent. I will have no aspersions cast upon my cook.”
“Ah-h-h!” breathed Marietta, a tremulous sigh of relief.
“It is not the Signorino, it is not the dinner, it is the world that is
awry,” Peter went on, in reflective melancholy. “'T is the times that
are out of joint. 'T is the sex, the Sex, that is not well, that is not
good, that needs a thorough overhauling and reforming.”
“Which sex?” asked Marietta.
“The sex,” said Peter. “By the unanimous consent of rhetoricians, there
is but one sex the sex, the fair sex, the unfair sex, the gentle sex,
the barbaric sex. We men do not form a sex, we do not even form a sect.
We are your mere hangers-on, camp-followers, satellites--your things,
your playthings--we are the mere shuttlecocks which you toss hither and
thither with your battledores, as the wanton mood impels you. We are
born of woman, we are swaddled and nursed by woman, we are governessed
by woman; subsequently, we are beguiled by woman, fooled by woman, led
on, put off, tantalised by woman, fretted and bullied by her; finally,
last scene of all, we are wrapped in our cerements by woman. Man's
life, birth, death, turn upon woman, as upon a hinge. I have ever been a
misanthrope, but now I am seriously thinking of becoming a misogynist as
well. Would you advise me to-do so?”
“A misogynist? What is that, Signorino?” asked Marietta.
“A woman-hater,” he explained; “one who abhors and forswears the sex;
one who has dashed his rose-coloured spectacles from his eyes, and sees
woman as she really is, with no illusive glamour; one who has found her
out. Yes, I think I shall become a misogynist. It is the only way of
rendering yourself invulnerable, 't is the only safe course. During my
walk this afternoon, I recollected, from the scattered pigeon-holes of
memory, and arranged in consequent order, at least a score of good old
apothegmatic shafts against the sex. Was it not, for example, in the
grey beginning of days, was it not woman whose mortal taste brought
sin into the world and all our woe? Was not that Pandora a woman, who
liberated, from the box wherein they were confined, the swarm of
winged evils that still afflict us? I will not remind you of St.
John Chrysostom's golden parable about a temple and the thing it is
constructed over. But I will come straight to the point, and ask whether
this is truth the poet sings, when he informs us roundly that 'every
woman is a scold at heart'?”
Marietta was gazing patiently at the sky. She did not answer.
“The tongue,” Peter resumed, “is woman's weapon, even as the fist is
man's. And it is a far deadlier weapon. Words break no bones--they break
hearts, instead. Yet were men one-tenth part so ready with their fists,
as women are with their barbed and envenomed tongues, what savage
brutes you would think us--would n't you?--and what a rushing trade
the police-courts would drive, to be sure. That is one of the good
old cliches that came back to me during my walk. All women are
alike--there's no choice amongst animated fashion-plates: that is
another. A woman is the creature of her temper; her husband, her
children, and her servants are its victims: that is a third. Woman is a
bundle of pins; man is her pin-cushion. When woman loves, 't is not the
man she loves, but the man's flattery; woman's love is reflex self-love.
The man who marries puts himself in irons. Marriage is a bird-cage in
a garden. The birds without hanker to get in; but the birds within know
that there is no condition so enviable as that of the birds without.
Well, speak up. What do you think? Do you advise me to become a
misogynist?”
“I do not understand, Signorino,” said Marietta.
“Of course, you don't,” said Peter. “Who ever could understand
such stuff and nonsense? That's the worst of it. If only one could
understand, if only one could believe it, one might find peace, one
might resign oneself. But alas and alas! I have never had any real faith
in human wickedness; and now, try as I will, I cannot imbue my mind with
any real faith in the undesirability of woman. That is why you see
me dissolved in tears, and unable to eat my dinner. Oh, to think, to
think,” he cried with passion, suddenly breaking into English, “to think
that less than a fortnight ago, less than one little brief fortnight
ago, she was seated in your kitchen, seated there familiarly, in her wet
clothes, pouring tea, for all the world as if she was the mistress of
the house!”
Days passed. He could not go to Ventirose--or, anyhow, he thought
he could not. He reverted to his old habit of living in his garden,
haunting the riverside, keeping watchful, covetous eyes turned towards
the castle. The river bubbled and babbled; the sun shone strong and
clear; his fountain tinkled; his birds flew about their affairs; his
flowers breathed forth their perfumes; the Gnisi frowned, the uplands
westward laughed, the snows of Monte Sfiorito sailed under every colour
of the calendar except their native white. All was as it had ever
been--but oh, the difference to him. A week passed. He caught no glimpse
of the Duchessa. Yet he took no steps to get his boxes packed.
XXVI
And then Marietta fell ill.
One morning, when she came into his room, to bring his tea, and to open
the Venetian blinds that shaded his windows, she failed to salute him
with her customary brisk “Buon giorno, Signorino.”
Noticing which, and wondering, he, from his pillow, called out, “Buon'
giorno, Marietta.”
“Buon' giorno, Signorino,” she returned but in a whisper.
“What's the matter? Is there cause for secrecy?” Peter asked.
“I have a cold, Signorino,” she whispered, pointing to her chest. “I
cannot speak.”
The Venetian blinds were up by this time; the room was full of sun. He
looked at her. Something in her face alarmed him. It seemed drawn and
set, it seemed flushed.
“Come here,” he said, with a certain peremptoriness. “Give me your
hand.”
She wiped her brown old hand backwards and forwards across her apron;
then gave it to him.
It was hot and dry.
“Your cold is feverish,” he said. “You must go to bed, and stay there
till the fever has passed.”
“I cannot go to bed, Signorino,” she replied.
“Can't you? Have you tried?” asked he.
“No, Signorino,” she admitted.
“Well, you never can tell whether you can do a thing or not, until you
try,” said he. “Try to go to bed; and if at first you don't succeed,
try, try again.”
“I cannot go to bed. Who would do the Signorino's work?” was her
whispered objection.
“Hang the Signorino's work. The Signorino's work will do itself. Have
you never observed that if you conscientiously neglect to do your work,
it somehow manages to get done without you? You have a feverish cold;
you must keep out of draughts; and the only place where you can be sure
of keeping out of draughts, is bed. Go to bed at once.”
She left the room.
But when Peter came downstairs, half an hour later, he heard her moving
in her kitchen.
“Marietta!” he cried, entering that apartment with the mien of Nemesis.
“I thought I told you to go to bed.”
Marietta cowered a little, and looked sheepish, as one surprised in the
flagrant fact of misdemeanour.
“Yes, Signorino,” she whispered.
“Well--? Do you call this bed?” he demanded.
“No, Signorino,” she acknowledged.
“Do you wish to oblige me to put you to bed?” he asked.
“Oh, no, Signorino,” she protested, horror in her whisper.
“Then go to bed directly. If you delay any longer, I shall accuse you of
wilful insubordination.”
“Bene, Signorino,” reluctantly consented Marietta.
Peter strolled into his garden. Gigi, the gardener, was working there.
“The very man I most desired to meet,” said Peter, and beckoned to
him. “Is there a doctor in the village?” he enquired, when Gigi had
approached.
“Yes, Signorino. The Syndic is a doctor--Dr. Carretaji.”
“Good,” said Peter. “Will you go to the village, please, and ask Dr.
Carretaji if he can make it convenient to call here to-day? Marietta is
not well.”
“Yes, Signorino.”
“And stop a bit,” said Peter. “Are there such things as women in the
village?'
“Ah, mache, Signorino! But many, many,” answered Gigi, rolling his dark
eyes sympathetically, and waving his hands.
“I need but one,” said Peter. “A woman to come and do Marietta's work
for a day or two--cook, and clean up, and that sort of thing. Do you
think you could procure me such a woman?”
“There is my wife, Signorino,” suggested Gigi. “If she would content the
Signorino?”
“Oh? I was n't aware that you were married. A hundred felicitations.
Yes, your wife, by all means. Ask her to come and rule as Marietta's
vicereine.”
Gigi started for the village.
Peter went into the house, and knocked at Marietta's bed-room door. He
found her in bed, with her rosary in her hands. If she could not work,
she would not waste her time. In Marietta's simple scheme of life,
work and prayer, prayer and work, stood, no doubt, as alternative and
complementary duties.
“But you are not half warmly enough covered up,” said Peter.
He fetched his travelling-rug, and spread it over her. Then he went to