The Cardinal's Snuff-Box

IX

Peter happened to be engaged in the amiable pastime of tossing bread-crumbs to his goldfinches.

But a score or so of sparrows, vulture-like, lurked under cover of the neighbouring foliage, to dash in viciously, at the critical moment, and snatch the food from the finches' very mouths.

The Duchessa watched this little drama for a minute, smiling, in silent meditation: while Peter—who, for a wonder, had his back turned to the park of Ventirose, and, for a greater wonder still perhaps, felt no pricking in his thumbs—remained unconscious of her presence.

At last, sorrowfully, (but there was always a smile at the back of her eyes), she shook her head.

“Oh, the pirates, the daredevils,” she sighed.

Peter started; faced about; saluted.

“The brigands,” said she, with a glance towards the sparrows' outposts.

“Yes, poor things,” said he.

“Poor things?” cried she, indignant. “The unprincipled little monsters!”

“They can't help it,” he pleaded for them. “'It is their nature to.' They were born so. They had no choice.”

“You actually defend them!” she marvelled, rebukefully.

“Oh, dear, no,” he disclaimed. “I don't defend them. I defend nothing. I merely recognise and accept. Sparrows—finches. It's the way of the world—the established division of the world.”

She frowned incomprehension.

“The established division of the world—?”

“Exactly,” said he. “Sparrows—finches the snatchers and the snatched-from. Everything that breathes is either a sparrow or a finch. 'T is the universal war—the struggle for existence—the survival of the most unscrupulous. 'T is a miniature presentment of what's going on everywhere in earth and sky.”

She shook her head again.

“YOU see the earth and sky through black spectacles, I 'm afraid,” she remarked, with a long face. But there was still an underglow of amusement in her eyes.

“No,” he answered, “because there's a compensation. As you rise in the scale of moral development, it is true, you pass from the category of the snatchers to the category of the snatched-from, and your ultimate extinction is assured. But, on the other hand, you gain talents and sensibilities. You do not live by bread alone. These goldfinches, for a case in point, can sing—and they have your sympathy. The sparrows can only make a horrid noise—and you contemn them. That is the compensation. The snatchers can never know the joy of singing—or of being pitied by ladies.”

“N... o, perhaps not,” she consented doubtfully. The underglow of amusement in her eyes shone nearer to the surface. “But—but they can never know, either, the despair of the singer when his songs won't come.”

“Or when the ladies are pitiless. That is true,” consented Peter.

“And meanwhile they get the bread, crumbs,” she said.

“They certainly get the bread-crumbs,” he admitted.

“I 'm afraid “—she smiled, as one who has conducted a syllogism safely to its conclusion—“I 'm afraid I do not think your compensation compensates.”

“To be quite honest, I daresay it does n't,” he confessed.

“And anyhow”—she followed her victory up—“I should not wish my garden to represent the universal war. I should not wish my garden to be a battle-field. I should wish it to be a retreat from the battle—an abode of peace—a happy valley—a sanctuary for the snatched-from.”

“But why distress one's soul with wishes that are vain?” asked he. “What could one do?”

“One could keep a dragon,” she answered promptly. “If I were you, I should keep a sparrow-devouring, finch-respecting dragon.”

“It would do no good,” said he. “You'd get rid of one species of snatcher, but some other species of snatcher would instantly pop UP.”

She gazed at him with those amused eyes of hers, and still again, slowly, sorrowfully, shook her head.

“Oh, your spectacles are black—black,” she murmured.

“I hope not,” said he; “but such as they are, they show me the inevitable conditions of our planet. The snatcher, here below, is ubiquitous and eternal—as ubiquitous, as eternal, as the force of gravitation. He is likewise protean. Banish him—he takes half a minute to change his visible form, and returns au galop. Sometimes he's an ugly little cacophonous brown sparrow; sometimes he's a splendid florid money-lender, or an aproned and obsequious greengrocer, or a trusted friend, hearty and familiar. But he 's always there; and he's always—if you don't mind the vernacular—'on the snatch.'”

The Duchessa arched her eyebrows.

“If things are really at such a sorry pass,” she said, “I will commend my former proposal to you with increased confidence. You should keep a dragon. After all, you only wish to protect your garden; and that”—she embraced it with her glance—“is not so very big. You could teach your dragon, if you procured one of an intelligent breed, to devour greengrocers, trusted friends, and even moneylenders too (tough though no doubt they are), as well as sparrows.”

“Your proposal is a surrender to my contention,” said Peter. “You would set a snatcher to catch the snatchers. Other heights in other lives, perhaps. But in the dark backward and abysm of space to which our lives are confined, the snatcher is indigenous and inexpugnable.”

The Duchessa looked at the sunny landscape, the bright lawns, the high bending trees, with the light caught in the network of their million leaves; she looked at the laughing white villas westward, the pale-green vineyards, the yellow cornfields; she looked at the rushing river, with the diamonds sparkling on its surface, at the far-away gleaming snows of Monte Sfiorito, at the scintillant blue shy overhead.

Then she looked at Peter, a fine admixture of mirth with something like gravity in her smile.

“The dark backward and abysm of space?” she repeated. “And you do not wear black spectacles? Then it must be that your eyes themselves are just a pair of black-seeing pessimists.”

“On the contrary,” triumphed Peter, “it is because they are optimists, that they suspect there must be forwarder and more luminous regions than the Solar System.”

The Duchessa laughed.

“I think you have the prettiest mouth, and the most exquisite little teeth, and the eyes richest in promise, and the sweetest laughter, of any woman out of Paradise,” said Peter, in the silence of his soul.

“It is clear I shall never be your match in debate,” said she.

Peter made a gesture of deprecating modesty.

“But I wonder,” she went on, “whether you would put me down as 'another species of snatcher,' if I should ask you to spare me just the merest end of a crust of bread?” And she lifted those eyes rich in promise appealingly to his.

“Oh, I beg of you—take all I have,” he responded, with effusion. “But—but how—?”

“Toss,” she commanded tersely.

So he tossed what was left of his bread into the air, above the river; and the Duchessa, easily, deftly, threw up a hand, and caught it on the wing.

“Thank you very much,” she laughed, with a little bow.

Then she crumbled the bread, and began to sprinkle the ground with it; and in an instant she was the centre of a cloud of birds. Peter was at liberty to watch her, to admire the swift grace of her motions, their suggestion of delicate strength, of joy in things physical, and the lithe elasticity of her figure, against the background of satiny lawn, and the further vistas of lofty sunlit trees. She was dressed in white, as always—a frock of I know not what supple fabric, that looked as if you might have passed it through your ring, and fell in multitudes of small soft creases. Two big red roses drooped from her bodice. She wore a garden-hat, of white straw, with a big daring rose-red bow, under which the dense meshes of her hair, warmly dark, dimly bright, shimmered in a blur of brownish gold.

“What vigour, what verve, what health,” thought Peter, watching her, “what—lean, fresh, fragrant health!” And he had, no doubt, his emotions.

She bestowed her bread crumbs on the birds; but she was able, somehow, to discriminate mightily in favour of the goldfinches. She would make a diversion, the semblance of a fling, with her empty right hand; and the too-greedy sparrows would dart off, avid, on that false lead. Whereupon, quickly, stealthily, she would rain a little shower of crumbs, from her left hand, on the grass beside her, to a confiding group of finches assembled there. And if ever a sparrow ventured to intrude his ruffianly black beak into this sacred quarter, she would manage, with a kind of restrained ferocity, to “shoo” him away, without thereby frightening the finches.

And all the while her eyes laughed; and there was colour in her cheeks; and there was the forceful, graceful action of her body.

When the bread was finished, she clapped her hands together gently, to dust the last mites from them, and looked over at Peter, and smiled significantly.

“Yes,” he acknowledged, “you outwitted them very skilfully. You, at any rate, have no need of a dragon.”

“Oh, in default of a dragon, one can do dragon's work oneself,” she answered lightly. “Or, rather, one can make oneself an instrument of justice.”

“All the same, I should call it uncommonly hard luck to be born a sparrow—within your jurisdiction,” he said.

“It is not an affair of luck,” said she. “One is born a sparrow—within my jurisdiction—for one's sins in a former state.—No, you little dovelings”—she turned to a pair of finches on the greensward near her, who were lingering, and gazing up into her face with hungry, expectant eyes—“I have no more. I have given you my all.” And she stretched out her open hands, palms downwards, to convince them.

“The sparrows got nothing; and the goldfinches, who got 'your all,' grumble because you gave so little,” said Peter, sadly. “That is what comes of interfering with the laws of Nature.” And then, as the two birds flew away, “See the dark, doubtful, reproachful glances with which they cover you.”

“You think they are ungrateful?” she said. “No—listen.”

She held up a finger.

For, at that moment, on the branch of an acacia, just over her head, a goldfinch began to sing—his thin, sweet, crystalline trill of song.

“Do you call that grumbling?” she asked.

“It implies a grumble,” said Peter, “like the 'thank you' of a servant dissatisfied with his tip. It's the very least he can do. It's perfunctory—I 'm not sure it is n't even ironical.”

“Perfunctory! Ironical!” cried the Duchessa. “Look at him! He's warbling his delicious little soul out.”

They both paused to look and listen.

The bird's gold-red bosom palpitated. He marked his modulations by sudden emphatic movements of the head. His eyes were fixed intently before him, as if he could actually see and follow the shining thread of his song, as it wound away through the air. His performance had all the effect of a spontaneous rhapsody. When it was terminated, he looked down at his auditors, eager, inquisitive, as who should say, “I hope you liked it?”—and then, with a nod clearly meant as a farewell, flew out of sight.

The Duchessa smiled again at Peter, with intention.

“You must really try to take a cheerier view of things,” she said.

And next instant she too was off, walking slowly, lightly, up the green lawns, between the trees, towards the castle, her gown fluttering in the breeze, now dazzling white as she came into the sun, now pearly grey as she passed into the shade.

“What a woman it is,” said Peter to himself, looking after her. “What vigour, what verve, what sex! What a woman!”

And, indeed, there was nothing of the too-prevalent epicene in the Duchessa's aspect; she was very certainly a woman. “Heavens, how she walks!” he cried in a deep whisper.

But then a sudden wave of dejection swept over him. At first he could not account for it. By and by, however, a malicious little voice began to repeat and repeat within him, “Oh, the futile impression you must have made upon her! Oh, the ineptitudes you uttered! Oh, the precious opportunity you have misemployed!”

“You are a witch,” he said to Marietta. “You've proved it to the hilt. I 've seen the person, and the object is more desperately lost than ever.”