The Cardinal's Snuff-Box

XXIV

And, like the lady in the ballad, sure enough, she greeted his arrival with a glance of cold surprise.

At all events, eyebrows raised, face unsmiling, it was a glance that clearly supplemented her spoken “How do you do?” by a tacit (perhaps self-addressed?) “What can bring him here?”

You or I, indeed, or Mrs. O'Donovan Florence, in the fulness of our knowledge, might very likely have interpreted it rather as a glance of nervous apprehension. Anyhow, it was a glance that perfectly checked the impetus of his intent. Something snapped and gave way within him; and he needed no further signal that the occasion for passionate avowals was not the present.

And thereupon befell a scene that was really quite too absurd, that was really childish, a scene over the memory of which, I must believe, they themselves have sometimes laughed together; though, at the moment, its absurdity held, for him at least, elements of the tragic.

He met her in the broad gravelled carriage-sweep, before the great hall-door. She had on her hat and gloves, as if she were just going out. It seemed to him that she was a little pale; her eyes seemed darker than usual, and graver. Certainly—cold surprise, or nervous apprehension, as you will—her attitude was by no means cordial. It was not oncoming. It showed none of her accustomed easy, half-humorous, wholly good-humoured friendliness. It was decidedly the attitude of a person standing off, shut in, withheld.

“I have never seen her in the least like this before,” he thought, as he looked at her pale face, her dark, grave eyes; “I have never seen her more beautiful. And there is not one single atom of hope for me.”

“How do you do?” she said, unsmiling and waited, as who should invite him to state his errand. She did not offer him her hand but, for that matter, (she might have pleaded), she could not, very well: for one of her hands held her sunshade, and the other held an embroidered silk bag, woman's makeshift for a pocket.

And then, capping the first pang of his disappointment, a kind of anger seized him. After all, what right had she to receive him in this fashion?—as if he were an intrusive stranger. In common civility, in common justice, she owed it to him to suppose that he would not be there without abundant reason.

And now, with Peter angry, the absurd little scene began.

Assuming an attitude designed to be, in its own way, as reticent as hers, “I was passing your gate,” he explained, “when I happened to find this, lying by the roadside. I took the liberty of bringing it to you.”

He gave her the Cardinal's snuff box, which, in spite of her hands' preoccupation, she was able to accept.

“A liberty!” he thought, grinding his teeth. “Yes! No doubt she would have wished me to leave it with the porter at the lodge. No doubt she deems it an act of officiousness on my part to have found it at all.”

And his anger mounted.

“How very good of you,” she said. “My uncle could not think where he had mislaid it.”

“I am very fortunate to be the means of restoring it,” said he.

Then, after a second's suspension, as she said nothing (she kept her eyes on the snuffbox, examining it as if it were quite new to her), he lifted his hat, and bowed, preparatory to retiring down the avenue.

“Oh, but my uncle will wish to thank you,” she exclaimed, looking up, with a kind of start. “Will you not come in? I—I will see whether he is disengaged.”

She made a tentative movement towards the door. She had thawed perceptibly.

But even as she thawed, Peter, in his anger, froze and stiffened. “I will see whether he is disengaged.” The expression grated. And perhaps, in effect, it was not a particularly felicitous expression. But if the poor woman was suffering from nervous apprehension—?

“I beg you on no account to disturb Cardinal Udeschini,” he returned loftily. “It is not a matter of the slightest consequence.”

And even as he stiffened, she unbent.

“But it is a matter of consequence to him, to us,” she said, faintly smiling. “We have hunted high and low for it. We feared it was lost for good. It must have fallen from his pocket when he was walking. He will wish to thank you.”

“I am more than thanked already,” said Peter. Alas (as Monsieur de la Pallisse has sagely noted), when we aim to appear dignified, how often do we just succeed in appearing churlish.

And to put a seal upon this ridiculous encounter, to make it irrevocable, he lifted his hat again, and turned away.

“Oh, very well,” murmured the Duchessa, in a voice that did not reach him. If it had reached him, perhaps he would have come back, perhaps things might have happened. I think there was regret in her voice, as well as despite. She stood for a minute, as he tramped down the avenue, and looked after him, with those unusually dark, grave eyes. At last, making a little gesture—as of regret? despite? impatience?—she went into the house.

“Here is your snuff-box,” she said to the Cardinal.

The old man put down his Breviary (he was seated by an open window, getting through his office), and smiled at the snuff box fondly, caressing it with his finger. Afterwards, he shook it, opened it, and took a pinch of snuff.

“Where did you find it?” he enquired.

“It was found by that Mr. Marchdale,” she said, “in the road, outside the gate. You must have let it drop this morning, when you were walking with Emilia.”

“That Mr. Marchdale?” exclaimed the Cardinal. “What a coincidence.”

“A coincidence—?” questioned Beatrice.

“To be sure,” said he. “Was it not to Mr. Marchdale that I owed it in the first instance?”

“Oh—? Was it? I had fancied that you owed it to me.”

“Yes—but,” he reminded her, whilst the lines deepened about his humorous old mouth, “but as a reward of my virtue in conspiring with you to convert him. And, by the way, how is his conversion progressing?”

The Cardinal looked up, with interest.

“It is not progressing at all. I think there is no chance of it,” answered Beatrice, in a tone that seemed to imply a certain irritation.

“Oh—?” said the Cardinal.

“No,” said she.

“I thought he had shown 'dispositions'?” said the Cardinal.

“That was a mistake. He has shown none. He is a very tiresome and silly person. He is not worth converting,” she declared succinctly.

“Good gracious!” said the Cardinal.

He resumed his office. But every now and again he would pause, and look out of the window, with the frown of a man meditating something; then he would shake his head significantly, and take snuff.

Peter tramped down the avenue, angry and sick.

Her reception of him had not only administered an instant death-blow to his hopes as a lover, but in its ungenial aloofness it had cruelly wounded his pride as a man. He felt snubbed and humiliated. Oh, true enough, she had unbent a little, towards the end. But it was the look with which she had first greeted him—it was the air with which she had waited for him to state his errand—that stung, and rankled, and would not be forgotten.

He was angry with her, angry with circumstances, with life, angry with himself.

“I am a fool—and a double fool—and a triple fool,” he said. “I am a fool ever to have thought of her at all; a double fool ever to have allowed myself to think so much of her; a triple and quadruple and quintuple idiot ever to have imagined for a moment that anything could come of it. I have wasted time enough. The next best thing to winning is to know when you are beaten. I acknowledge myself beaten. I will go back to England as soon as I can get my boxes packed.”

He gazed darkly round the familiar valley, with eyes that abjured it.

Olympus, no doubt, laughed.