The Cardinal's snuff-box
at dinner, “what does one barrier more or less matter, when people are
already divided by a gulf that never can be traversed? You see that
river?” He pointed through his open window to the Aco. “It is a symbol.
She stands on one side of it, I stand on the other, and we exchange
little jokes. But the river is always there, flowing between us,
separating us. She is the daughter of a lord, and the widow of a duke,
and the fairest of her sex, and a millionaire, and a Roman Catholic.
What am I? Oh, I don't deny I 'm clever. But for the rest? ... My
dear Marietta, I am simply, in one word, the victim of a misplaced
attachment.”
“Non capisco Francese,” said Marietta.
XIV
And after that, for I forget how many days, Peter and the Duchessa 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
spaces of feathery green; there were the flowers, the birds, the bees,
the butterflies, 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, twanging
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 assertion of one's egotism. Breaking stones in the street were
a nobler 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 passed--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 banality 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 grass: 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.”
“Fa niente,” he instructed her. “Cows and Englishmen, and all such
sentimental cattle, including Germans, are Germanic. Italians are
Latin--with a touch of the Goth and Vandal. Lions and tigers growl and
fight because they're Mohammedans. Dogs still bear without abuse the
grand old name of Sycophant. Cats are of the princely line of Persia,
and worship fire, fish, and flattery--as you may have noticed. Geese
belong indifferently to any race you like--they are cosmopolitans;
and I've known here and there a person who, without distinction of
nationality, was a duck. In fact, you're rather by way of being a duck
yourself: And now,” he perorated, “never deny again that I can talk
nonsense with an aching heart.”
“All the same,” insisted Marietta, “it is very comical to see a cow
weep.”
“At any rate,” retorted Peter, “it is not in the least comical to hear a
hyaena laugh.”
“I have never heard one,” said she.
“Pray that you never may. The sound would make an old woman of you. It's
quite blood-curdling.”
“Davvero?” said Marietta.
“Davvero,” he assured her.
And meanwhile the cow stood there, with her head on his shoulder,
silently weeping, weeping.
He gave her a farewell rub along the nose.
“Good-bye,” he said. “Your breath is like meadowsweet. So dry your
tears, and set your hopes upon the future. I 'll come and see you again
to-morrow, and I 'll bring you some nice coarse salt. Good-bye.”
But when he went to see her on the morrow, she was grazing peacefully;
and she ate the salt he brought her with heart-whole bovine
relish--putting out her soft white pad of a tongue, licking it
deliberately from his hand, savouring it tranquilly, and crunching
the bigger grains with ruminative enjoyment between her teeth. So soon
consoled! They were companions in misery no longer. “I 'm afraid you
are a Latin, after all,” he said, and left her with a sense of
disappointment.
That afternoon Marietta asked, “Would you care to visit the castle,
Signorino?”