The Cardinal's snuff-box
Whenever he thought of Cardinal Udeschini, the same strange feeling of
joy would spring up in his heart, which he had felt when he had left the
beautiful old man with Marietta, on the day of his first visit. In the
beginning he could only give this feeling a very general and indefinite
expression. “He is a man who renews one's faith in things, who renews
one's faith in human nature.” But gradually, I suppose, the feeling
crystallised; and at last, in due season, it found for itself an
expression that was not so indefinite.
It was in the afternoon, and he had just conducted the Cardinal and
Emilia to their carriage. He stood at his gate for a minute, and watched
the carriage as it rolled away.
“What a heavenly old man, what a heavenly old man,” he thought.
Then, still looking after the carriage, before turning back into his
garden, he heard himself repeat, half aloud
“Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbour's creed hath lent.”
The words had come to his lips, and were pronounced, were addressed to
his mental image of the Cardinal, without any conscious act of volition
on his part. He heard them with a sort of surprise, almost as if some
one else had spoken them. He could not in the least remember what poem
they were from, he could not even remember what poet they were by. Were
they by Emerson? It was years since he had read a line of Emerson's.
All that evening the couplet kept running in his head. And the feeling
of joy, of enthusiasm, in his heart, was not so strange now. But I think
it was intensified.
The next time the Cardinal arrived at Villa Floriano, and gave Peter his
hand, Peter did not merely shake it, English fashion, as he had hitherto
done.
The Cardinal looked startled.
Then his eyes searched Peter's face for a second, keenly interrogative.
Then they softened; and a wonderful clear light shone in them, a
wonderful pure, sweet light.
“Benedicat te Omnipotens Deus, Pater, et Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus,”
he said, making the Sign of the Cross.
XXVII
Up at the castle, Cardinal Udeschini was walking backwards and forwards
on the terrace, reading his Breviary.
Beatrice was seated under the white awning, at the terrace-end, doing
some kind of needlework.
Presently the Cardinal came to a standstill near her, and closed his
book, putting his finger in it, to keep the place.
“It will be, of course, a great loss to Casa Udeschini, when you marry,”
he remarked.
Beatrice looked up, astonishment on her brow.
“When I marry?” she exclaimed. “Well, if ever there was a thunderbolt
from a clear sky!”
And she laughed.
“Yes-when you marry,” the Cardinal repeated, with conviction. “You are a
young woman--you are twenty-eight years old. You will, marry. It is only
right that you should marry. You have not the vocation for a religious.
Therefore you must marry. But it will be a great loss to the house of
Udeschini.”
“Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof,” said Beatrice, laughing
again. “I haven't the remotest thought of marrying. I shall never
marry.”
“Il ne faut jamais dire a la fontaine, je ne boirai pas de ton eau,”
his Eminence cautioned her, whilst the lines of humour about his mouth
emphasised themselves, and his grey eyes twinkled. “Other things equal,
marriage is as much the proper state for the laity, as celibacy is the
proper state for the clergy. You will marry. It would be selfish of us
to oppose your marrying. You ought to marry. But it will be a great loss
to the family--it will be a great personal loss to me. You are as dear
to me as any of my blood. I am always forgetting that we are uncle and
niece by courtesy only.”
“I shall never marry. But nothing that can happen to me can ever make
the faintest difference in my feeling for you. I hope you know how much
I love you?” She looked into his eyes, smiling her love. “You are only
my uncle by courtesy? But you are more than an uncle--you have been like
a father to me, ever since I left my convent.”
The Cardinal returned her smile.
“Carissima,” he murmured. Then, “It will be a matter of the utmost
importance to me, however,” he went on, “that, when the time comes, you
should marry a good man, a suitable man--a man who will love you, whom
you will love--and, if possible, a man who will not altogether separate
you from me, who will perhaps love me a little too. It would send me
in sorrow to my grave, if you should marry a man who was not worthy of
you.”
“I will guard against that danger by not marrying at all,” laughed
Beatrice.
“No--you will marry, some day,” said the Cardinal. “And I wish you to
remember that I shall not oppose your marrying--provided the man is a
good man. Felipe will not like it--Guido will pull a long nose--but I,
at least, will take your part, if I can feel that the man is good. Good
men are rare, my dear; good husbands are rarer still. I can think, for
instance, of no man in our Roman nobility, whom I should be content to
see you marry. Therefore I hope you will not marry a Roman. You would be
more likely to marry one of your own countrymen. That, of course,
would double the loss to us, if it should take you away from Italy. But
remember, if he is a man whom I can think worthy of you, you may count
upon me as an ally.”
He resumed his walk, reopening his Breviary.
Beatrice resumed her needlework. But she found it difficult to fix her
attention on it. Every now and then, she would leave her needle stuck
across its seam, let the work drop to her lap, and, with eyes turned
vaguely up the valley, fall, apparently, into a muse.
“I wonder why he said all that to me?” was the question that kept posing
itself.
By and by the Cardinal closed his Breviary, and put it in his pocket.
I suppose he had finished his office for the day. Then he came and sat
down in one of the wicker chairs, under the awning. On the table, among
the books and things, stood a carafe of water, some tumblers, a silver
sugar-bowl, and a crystal dish full of fresh pomegranate seeds. It
looked like a dish full of unset rubies. The Cardinal poured some water
into a tumbler, added a lump of sugar and a spoonful of pomegranate
seeds, stirred the mixture till it became rose-coloured, and drank it
off in a series of little sips.
“What is the matter, Beatrice?” he asked, all at once.
Beatrice raised her eyes, perplexed.
“The matter--? Is anything the matter?”
“Yes,” said the Cardinal; “something is the matter. You are depressed,
you are nervous, you are not yourself. I have noticed it for many days.
Have you something on, your mind?”
“Nothing in the world,” Beatrice answered, with an appearance of great
candour. “I had not noticed that I was nervous or depressed.”
“We are entering October,” said the Cardinal. “I must return to Rome. I
have been absent too long already. I must return next week. But I should
not like to go away with the feeling that you are unhappy.”
“If a thing were needed to make me unhappy, it would be the announcement
of your intended departure,” Beatrice said, smiling. “But otherwise,
I am no more unhappy than it is natural to be. Life, after all, is n't
such a furiously gay business as to keep one perpetually singing and
dancing--is it? But I am not especially unhappy.”
“H'm,” said the Cardinal. Then, in a minute, “You will come to Rome in
November, I suppose?” he asked.
“Yes--towards the end of November, I think,” said Beatrice.
The Cardinal rose, and began to walk backwards and forwards again.
In a little while the sound of carriage-wheels could be heard, in the
sweep, round the corner of the house.
The Cardinal looked at his watch.
“Here is the carriage,” he said. “I must go down and see that poor old
woman.... Do you know,” he added, after a moment's hesitation, “I think
it would be well if you were to go with me.”
A shadow came into Beatrice's eyes.
“What good would that do?” she asked.
“It would give her pleasure, no doubt. And besides, she is one of your
parishioners, as it were. I think you ought to go. You have never been
to see her since she fell ill.”
“Oh--well,” said Beatrice.
She was plainly unwilling. But she went to put on her things.
In the carriage, when they had passed the village and crossed the
bridge, as they were bowling along the straight white road that led
to the villa, “What a long time it is since Mr. Marchdale has been at
Ventirose,” remarked the Cardinal.
“Oh--? Is it?” responded Beatrice, with indifference.
“It is more than three weeks, I think--it is nearly a month,” the
Cardinal said.
“Oh--?” said she.
“He has had his hands full, of course; he has had little leisure,” the
Cardinal pursued. “His devotion to his poor old servant has been quite
admirable. But now that she is practically recovered, he will be freer.”
“Yes,” said Beatrice.
“He is a young man whom I like very much,” said the Cardinal. “He is
intelligent; he has good manners; and he has a fine sense of the droll.
Yes, he has wit--a wit that you seldom find in an Anglo-Saxon, a wit
that is almost Latin. But you have lost your interest in him? That is
because you despair of his conversion?”
“I confess I am not greatly interested in him,” Beatrice answered. “And
I certainly have no hopes of his conversion.”
The Cardinal smiled at his ring. He opened his snuffbox, and inhaled a
long deliberate pinch of snuff.
“Ah, well--who can tell?” he said. “But--he will be free now, and it is
so long since he has been at the castle--had you not better ask him to
luncheon or dinner?”
“Why should I?” answered Beatrice. “If he does not come to Ventirose, it
is presumably because he does not care to come. If he does care to come,
he needs no invitation. He knows that he is at liberty to call whenever
he likes.”
“But it would be civil, it would be neighbourly, to ask him to a meal,”
the Cardinal submitted.
“And it would put him in the embarrassing predicament of having either
to accept against his will, or to decline and appear ungracious,”
submitted Beatrice. “No, it is evident that Ventirose does not amuse
him.”
“Bene,” said the Cardinal. “Be it as you wish.”
But when they reached Villa Floriano, Peter was not at home.
“He has gone to Spiaggia for the day,” Emilia informed them.
Beatrice, the Cardinal fancied, looked at once relieved and
disappointed.
Marietta was seated in the sun, in a sheltered corner of the garden.
While Beatrice talked with her, the Cardinal walked about.
Now it so happened that on Peter's rustic table a book lay open, face
downwards.
The Cardinal saw the book. He halted in his walk, and glanced round
the garden, as if to make sure that he was not observed. He tapped his
snuff--box, and took a pinch of snuff. Then he appeared to meditate for
an instant, the lines about his mouth becoming very marked indeed.
At last, swiftly, stealthily, almost with the air of a man committing
felony, he slipped his snuff-box under the open book, well under it, so
that it was completely covered up.
On the way back to Ventirose, the Cardinal put his hand in his pocket.
“Dear me!” he suddenly exclaimed. “I have lost my snuff box again.” He
shook his head, as one who recognises a fatality. “I am always losing
it.”
“Are you sure you had it with you?” Beatrice asked.
“Oh, yes, I think I had it with me. I should have missed it before this,
if I had left it at home. I must have dropped it in Mr. Marchdale's
garden.”
“In that case it will probably be found,” said Beatrice.
Peter had gone to Spiaggia, I imagine, in the hope of meeting Mrs.
O'Donovan Florence; but the printed visitors' list there told him that
she had left nearly a fortnight since. On his return to the villa, he
was greeted by Marietta with the proud tidings that her Excellency the