The Cardinal's Snuff-Box

XVII

But he had n't to live till Thursday—he was destined to see her not later than the next afternoon.

You know with what abruptness, with how brief a warning, storms will spring from the blue, in that land of lakes and mountains.

It was three o'clock or thereabouts; and Peter was reading in his garden; and the whole world lay basking in unmitigated sunshine.

Then, all at once, somehow, you felt a change in things: the sunshine seemed less brilliant, the shadows less solid, less sharply outlined. Oh, it was very slight, very uncertain; you had to look twice to assure yourself that it was n't a mere fancy. It seemed as if never so thin a gauze had been drawn over the face of the sun, just faintly bedimming, without obscuring it. You could have ransacked the sky in vain to discover the smallest shred of cloud.

At the same time, the air, which had been hot all day—hot, but buoyant, but stimulant, but quick with oxygen—seemed to become thick, sluggish, suffocating, seemed to yield up its vital principle, and to fall a dead weight upon the earth. And this effect was accompanied by a sudden silence—the usual busy out-of-door country noises were suddenly suspended: the locusts stopped their singing; not a bird twittered; not a leaf rustled: the world held its breath. And if the river went on babbling, babbling, that was a very part of the silence—accented, underscored it.

Yet still you could not discern a rack of cloud anywhere in the sky—still, for a minute or two.... Then, before you knew how it had happened, the snow-summits of Monte Sfiorito were completely lapped in cloud.

And now the cloud spread with astonishing rapidity—spread and sank, cancelling the sun, shrouding the Gnisi to its waist, curling in smoky wreaths among the battlements of the Cornobastone, turning the lake from sapphire to sombre steel, filling the entire valley with a strange mixture of darkness and an uncanny pallid light. Overhead it hung like a vast canopy of leaden-hued cotton-wool; at the west it had a fringe of fiery crimson, beyond which a strip of clear sky on the horizon diffused a dull metallic yellow, like tarnished brass.

Presently, in the distance, there was a low growl of thunder; in a minute, a louder, angrier growl—as if the first were a menace which had not been heeded. Then there was a violent gush of wind—cold; smelling of the forests from which it came; scattering everything before it, dust, dead leaves, the fallen petals of flowers; making the trees writhe and labour, like giants wrestling with invisible giants; making the short grass shudder; corrugating the steel surface of the lake. Then two or three big raindrops fell—and then, the deluge.

Peter climbed up to his observatory—a square four-windowed turret, at the top of the house—thence to watch the storm and exult in it. Really it was splendid—to see, to hear; its immense wild force, its immense reckless fury. Rain had never rained so hard, he thought. Already, the lake, the mountain slopes, the villas and vineyards westward, were totally blotted out, hidden behind walls and walls of water; and even the neighbouring lawns of Ventirose, the confines of his own garden, were barely distinguishable, blurred as by a fog. The big drops pelted 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 the north the sky was already clear, blue and hard-looking—a wall of lapis-lazuli. The dark cloud-canopy was drifting to the south. Suddenly the sun came out, flashing first from the snows of Monte Sfiorito, then, in an instant, flooding the entire prospect with a marvellous yellow light, ethereal amber; whilst long streamers of tinted vapour—columns of pearl-dust, one might have fancied—rose to meet it; and all wet surfaces, leaves, lawns, tree-trunks, housetops, the bare crags of the Gnisi, gleamed in a wash of gold.

Puffs of fresh air blew into the kitchen, filling it with the keen sweet odour of wet earth. The priest and the Duchessa and Emilia joined Peter at the open door.

“Oh, your poor, poor garden!” the Duchessa cried.

His garden had suffered a good deal, to be sure. The flowers lay supine, their faces beaten into the mud; the greensward was littered with fallen leaves and twigs—and even in one or two places whole branches had been broken from the trees; on the ground about each rose-bush a snow of pink rose-petals lay scattered; in the paths there were hundreds of little pools, shining in the sun like pools of fire.

“There's nothing a gardener can't set right,” said Peter, feeling no doubt that here was a trifling tax upon the delights the storm had procured him.

“And oh, our poor, poor hats!” said the Duchessa, eyeing ruefully those damaged pieces of finery. “I fear no gardener can ever set them right.”

“It sounds inhospitable,” said Peter, “but I suppose I had better go and build your bridge.”

So he threw a ladder athwart the river, and laid the planks in place, as he had seen Gigi do the day before.

“How ingenious—and, like all great things, how simple,” laughed the Duchessa.

Peter waved his hand, as who should modestly deprecate applause. But, I 'm ashamed to own, he didn't disclaim the credit of the invention.

“It will require some nerve,” she reflected, looking at the narrow planks, the foaming green water. “However—”

And gathering in her skirts, she set bravely forward, and made the transit without mishap. The priest and Emilia, gathering in their skirts, made it after her.

She paused on the other side, and looked back, smiling.

“Since you have discovered so efficacious a means of cutting short the distance between our places of abode,” she said, “I hope you will not fail to profit by it whenever you may have occasion—on Thursday, for example.”

“Thank you very much,” said Peter.

“Of course,” she went on, “we may all die of our wetting yet. It would perhaps show a neighbourly interest if you were to come up to-morrow, and take our news. Come at four o'clock; and if we're alive... you shall have another pinch of snuff,” she promised, laughing.

“I adore you,” said Peter, under his breath. “I'll come with great pleasure,” he said aloud.

“Marietta,” he observed, that evening, as he dined, “I would have you to know that the Aco is bridged. Hence, there is one symbol the fewer in Lombardy. But why does—you mustn't mind the Ollendorfian form of my enquiry—why does the chaplain of the Duchessa wear red stockings?”

“The chaplain of the Duchessa—?” repeated Marietta, wrinkling up her brow.

“Ang—of the Duchessa di Santangiolo. He wore red stockings, and shoes with silver buckles. Do you think that's precisely decorous—don't you think it 's the least bit light-minded—in an ecclesiastic?”

“He—? Who—?” questioned Marietta.

“But the chaplain of the Duchessa—when he was here this afternoon.”

“The chaplain of the Duchessa!” exclaimed Marietta. “Here this afternoon? The chaplain of the Duchessa was not here this afternoon. His Eminence the Lord Prince Cardinal Udeschini was here this afternoon.”

“What!” gasped Peter.

“Ang,” said Marietta.

“That was Cardinal Udeschini—that little harmless-looking, sweet-faced old man!” Peter wondered.

“Sicuro—the uncle of the Duca,” said she.

“Good heavens!” sighed he. “And I allowed myself to hobnob with him like a boon-companion.”

“Gia,” said she.

“You need n't rub it in,” said he. “For the matter of that, you yourself entertained him in your kitchen.”

“Scusi?” said she.

“Ah, well—it was probably for the best,” he concluded. “I daresay I should n't have behaved much better if I had known.”

“It was his coming which saved this house from being struck by lightning,” announced Marietta.

“Oh—? Was it?” exclaimed Peter.

“Yes, Signorino. The lightning would never strike a house that the Lord Prince Cardinal was in.”

“I see—it would n't venture—it would n't presume. Did—did it strike all the houses that the Lord Prince Cardinal was n't in?”

“I do not think so, Signorino. Ma non fa niente. It was a terrible storm—terrible, terrible. The lightning was going to strike this house, when the Lord Prince Cardinal arrived.”

“Hum,” said Peter. “Then you, as well as I, have reason for regarding his arrival as providential.”