My Friend Prospero Part 19

"But his family name?" persisted Frau Brandt.

"It is probably Brown, Jones, or Robinson," said Maria Dolores. "Or it may even be Black, Smith, or Johnson. Most Englishmen are named one or the other."

"So?" said Frau Brandt. "But is it prudent or seemly for you to talk familiarly with a young man whose name is unknown to you?"

"Why not?" asked Maria Dolores, raising her eyebrows, as if surprised.

"He seems a very harmless young man. I don't think he will eat me. And he is English,--and I like English people. And he is intelligent,--his conversation amuses me. And he has nice easy, impetuous manners,--so different from the formality and restraint of Austrian young men. What can his name matter?"

"But"--Frau Brandt looked up impressively over her spectacles, and her voice was charged with gravity, for she was about to ask a question to the Teutonic mind of quite supreme importance--"but is he n.o.ble?" It was to her what--nay, more than what--the question, "Is he respectable?"

would have been to an Englishwoman.

Maria Dolores laughed.

"Oh, no," she said. "At least I have every reason to believe not, and I devoutly hope not. He belongs I expect to what they call in England the middle cla.s.s. He has an uncle who is a farmer."

Frau Brandt's good old brown eyes showed her profoundly shocked, and expressed profound reprehension.

"But you were speaking with him familiarly--you were speaking with him almost as an equal," she p.r.o.nounced in bated accents, in accents of consternation.

Again Maria Dolores laughed.

"True," she a.s.sented gaily, "and that is exactly what I couldn't do if he _were_ n.o.ble. Then I should have to remember our respective positions. But where the difference of rank is so great, one can talk familiarly without fear. _ca n'engage a rien_."

Frau Brandt nodded her head, for full half a minute, with many meanings; she nodded it now up and down, and now shook it sidewise.

"I do not like it," she said, at last. "Your brother would not like it.

It is not becoming. Well, thanks be to Heaven, he is only English."

"Oh, of course," agreed Maria Dolores, "if he were Austrian, it would be entirely different."

"But is it fair to the young man himself?" pursued Frau Brandt. "Is he aware that he is hoban.o.bbing with a Serene Highness? You treat him as an equal. What if he should fall in love with you?"

"What indeed! But he won't," laughed Maria Dolores, possibly with a mental reservation.

"Who can tell?" said Frau Brandt. "His eyes, when he looked at you, had an expression. But there is a greater danger still. You are both at the dangerous age. He is good-looking. What if your heart should become interested in him?"

"Oh, in that case," answered Maria Dolores, lightly, her chin a little in the air, "I should marry him--if he asked me."

"What!" cried Frau Brandt, half rising from her chair.

"Yes," said Maria Dolores, cheerfully unexcited. "He is a man of breeding and education, even if he isn't n.o.ble. If I loved a man, I shouldn't give one thought to his birth. I'm tired of all our Austrian insistence upon birth, upon birth and quarterings and precedencies. If ever I love, I shall love some one just for what he is, for what G.o.d has made him, and for nothing else. It wouldn't matter if his father were a cobbler--if I loved him, I'd marry him." Her chin higher in the air, she had every appearance of meaning what she said.

Frau Brandt had sunk back in her chair, and was nodding her white-capped old head again.

"Oh, my child, my child," she grieved. "Will you never rid your fancy of these high-flown, unpractical, romantic whimsies? It all comes of reading poetry." She herself, good woman, read little but her prayers.

"Oh, my dear true Heart," responded Maria Dolores, laughing. She crossed the room, and placed her hand affectionately upon Frau Brandt's shoulder. "My dearest old Nurse! Do not distress yourself. This is not yet a question of actuality. Let us not cry before we are hurt." And she stooped, and kissed her nurse's brown old brow.

But afterwards she stood looking with great pensiveness out of the window, stood so for a long while; and I fancy there was a softer glow than ever in her soft-glowing eyes, and perhaps a livelier rose in her pale-rose cheeks.

"What are you thinking so deeply about?" Frau Brandt asked by-and-by.

Maria Dolores woke with a little start, and turned from the window, and laughed again.

"Oh, thinking about my cobbler's son, of course," she said.

VI

Annunziata, seeking him to announce that supper was ready, found John, seated in his chamber of dead ladies, his arms folded, his legs crossed, his eyes fixed, a frown upon his p.r.o.ne brow; his spirit apparently rapt in a brown study.

"Eh! Prospero!" she called.

Whereat he came to himself glanced up, glanced round, changed his posture, and finally, rising, blew his preoccupations from him in a deep, deep sigh.

"Oh, what a sigh!" marvelled Annunziata, making big eyes. "What are you sighing so hard for?"

John looked at her, and smiled.

"Sighing for my miller's daughter, my dear," he said.

And, as he followed her to the presbytery, he sang softly to himself--

_"It is the miller's daughter, And she is grown so dear, so dear, That I would be the jewel That trembles in her ear."_

PART FIFTH

I

It was Sunday. It was early morning. It was raining,--a fine quiet, determined rain, that blurred the lower reaches of the valley, and entirely hid the mountain-tops, so that one found it hard not to doubt a little whether they were still there. Near at hand the garden was as if a thin web of silver had been cast over it, pale and dim, where wet surfaces reflected the diffused daylight. And just across the Rampio, on the olive-clad hillside that rose abruptly from its brink, rather an interesting process was taking place,--the fabrication of clouds, no less. The hillside, with its rondure of blue-grey foliage, would lie for a moment quite bare and clear; then, at some high point, a mist would begin to form, would appear indeed to issue from the earth, as smoke from a subterranean fire, white smoke with pearly shadows; would thicken and spread out; would draw together and rise in an irregular spiral column, curling, swaying, poising, as if uncertain what to do next; and at last, all at once making up its mind, (how like a younker or a prodigal!), would go sailing away, straggling away, amorphous, on a puff of wind, leaving the hillside clear again;--till, presently, the process would recommence _da capo_.

John and Annunziata, seated together on a marble bench in the shelter of the great cloister, with its faded frescoes, at the north-eastern extremity of the castle buildings, had been watching this element-play for some minutes in silence. But by-and-by Annunziata spoke.

"What makes the cloud come out of the hill like that?" she asked, her eyes anxiously questioning his. "I have seen it happen many times, but I could never understand it. There cannot be a fire underneath?"

"If _you_ can't understand it, Mistress Wisdom," responded John, smiling on her, "you surely mustn't expect a featherpate like me to. Between ourselves, I don't believe any one can really understand it, though there's a variety of the human species called scientists who might pretend they could. It's all a part of that great scheme of miracles by which G.o.d's world goes on, Nature, which n.o.body can really understand in the very least. All that the chaps called scientists can really do is to observe and more or less give names to the miracles. They can't explain 'em."

"It is great pleasure to watch such things," said Annunziata. "It is a great blessing to be allowed to see a miracle performed with your own eyes."