The Cardinal's Snuff-Box

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 Duchessa di Santangiolo had been to see her.

“Oh—? Really?” he questioned lightly. (His heart, I think, dropped a beat, all the same.)

“Ang,” said Marietta. “She came with the most Eminent Prince Cardinal. They came in the carriage. She stayed half an hour. She was very gracious.”

“Ah?” said Peter. “I am glad to hear it.”

“She was beautifully dressed,” said Marietta.

“Of that I have not the shadow of a doubt,” said he.

“The Signorina Emilia drove away with them,” said she.

“Dear, dear! What a chapter of adventures,” was his comment.

He went to his rustic table, and picked up his book.

“How the deuce did that come there?” he wondered, discovering the snuff box.

It was, in truth, an odd place for it. A cardinal may inadvertently drop his snuff box, to be sure. But if the whole College of Cardinals together had dropped a snuff box, it would hardly have fallen, of its own weight, through the covers of an open book, to the under-side thereof, and have left withal no trace of its passage.

“Solid matter will not pass through solid matter, without fraction—I learned that at school,” said Peter.

The inference would be that someone had purposely put the snuff box there.

But who?

The Cardinal himself? In the name of reason, why?

Emilia? Nonsense.

Marietta? Absurd.

The Du—

A wild surmise darted through Peter's soul. Could it be? Could it conceivably be? Was it possible that—that—was it possible, in fine, that this was a kind of signal, a kind of summons?

Oh, no, no, no. And yet—and yet—

No, certainly not. The idea was preposterous. It deserved, and (I trust) obtained, summary deletion.

“Nevertheless,” said Peter, “it's a long while since I have darkened the doors of Ventirose. And a poor excuse is better than none. And anyhow, the Cardinal will be glad to have his snuff.”

The ladder-bridge was in its place.

He crossed the Aco.