My Friend Prospero Part 25

Maria Dolores tripped into Frau Brandt's sitting-room, merrily singing a s.n.a.t.c.h of song.

"_Gardez vous d'etre severe Quand on vous park d'amour_,"

she carolled. Then she stopped singing, and blithely laughed.

Frau Brandt raised her good brown face from her knitting, and her good brown eyes looked anxiously upwards, slantwise over her tortoisesh.e.l.l-rimmed spectacles.

"What is the matter now?" she asked. "What has happened to vex you now?"

"To vex me!" cried Maria Dolores, in apparent astonishment. "Wasn't I singing aloud from sheer exuberance of high spirits?"

"No," said Frau Brandt, with a very positive shake of her white-capped head. "You were singing to conceal your low spirits. What has happened?"

"Ah, well, then, if you know so much and must know all," said Maria Dolores, "I've just proposed to the man I'm in love with, and been sent about my business."

"What do you mean?" asked Frau Brandt, phlegmatic. "What nonsense is this?"

"I mean my cobbler's son," Maria Dolores answered. "I, a Princess of the Empire, humbly offered him, a cobbler's son, my hand, heart, and fortune,--and the graceless man rejected them with scorn."

"That is a likely story," said Frau Brandt, wagging her chin. Her blunt brown fingers returned to their occupation. "I see your Serene Highness offering her hand."

"At all events, will you kindly tell Josephine to pack our boxes.

To-morrow we'll be flitting," her Serene Highness in a casual way announced.

"What say you?" cried Frau Brandt, dropping her knitting into her lap.

"Yes--to Mischenau, to my brother," the Princess pursued. "Of course you'll have to come with us, poor dear. You can't let me travel alone with Josephine."

"No," said Frau Brandt. "I will go with you."

"And you can remain for my wedding," Maria Dolores added. "I am going home to meet my brother's wishes, and to marry my second cousin, the high and mighty Maximilian, Prince of Zelt-Zelt."

"Herr Gott!" said Frau Brandt, glancing with devotion at the ceiling.

VI

John, wild-eyed, was still where she had left him, in the avenue, savouring and resavouring his woe. "If only," he brooded, "she were of one's own rank in the world, then her wealth might perhaps not be such an absolutely hopeless impediment as it is. But to marry, as they say, beneath one, and to marry money into the bargain,--that would be a little too much like the fortune-hunter of tradition." He still sat where she had left him, on the marble bench, disconsolate, when the parroco approached hurriedly, from the direction of the house.

"Signore," the parroco began, out of breath, "I offer a thousand excuses for venturing to disturb you, but my niece has suddenly fallen ill. I am going to the village to telephone for a doctor. My cook is away, for her Sunday afternoon. Might I pray you to have the extreme kindness to stay with the child till I return? I don't know what is the matter, but she fainted, and now is delirious, and, I'm afraid, very ill indeed."

"Good Heavens!" gasped John, forgetting everything else. "Of course, of course."

And he set off hotfoot for the presbytery.

PART SIXTH

I

I would rather not dwell upon the details of Annunziata's illness. By the mercy of Providence, she got well in the end; but in the mean time those details were sufficiently painful. John, for example, found it more than painful to hear her cry out piteously, as she often would in her delirium, that she did not wish to be turned into a monkey; he hung his head and groaned, and cursed the malinspired moment which had given that chimaera birth. However, he had his compensations. Maria Dolores, whom he had thought never to see again, he saw every day. "Let us hope that you and she may never meet again." In his despairing heart the words became a refrain. But an hour later the news of trouble at the presbytery had travelled to the pavilion, and she flew straight to Annunziata's bedside. Ever since, (postponing those threatened nuptials at Mischenau), she had shared with John, and the parroco, and Marcella the cook, the labours of nurse. And though it was arranged that the men, turn and turn about, should watch by night, and the women by day, John, by coming early and leaving late, contrived to make a good part of his vigil and of hers coincident. And the strange result is that now, looking backwards upon that period of pain and dread, when from minute to minute no one knew what awful change the next minute might bring,--looking backwards, and seeing again the small bare room, cell-like, with its whitewashed walls, its iron cot, its Crucifix, its narrow window (through which wide miles of valley shone), and then the little white face and the brown curls tossing on the pillow, and the woman of his love sitting near to him, in the intimacy of a common care and common duties,--the strange result is that John feels a glow in his heart, as at the memory of a period of joy.

"Oh, do not let them turn me into a monkey. Oh, Holy Mother, I am so afraid. Oh, do not let them!" Annunziata cried, shuddering, and shrinking deeper into bed, towards the wall.

John hung his head and wrung his hands. "My G.o.d, my G.o.d!" he groaned.

"You should not blame yourself," Maria Dolores said in a low voice, while she bathed the child's forehead, and fanned her face. "Your intention was good, you could not foresee what has happened, and it may be for the best, after all,--it may strengthen her 'will to live,' which is the great thing, the doctor says."

She had spoken English, but Annunziata's next outcry was like a response.

"Oh, to live, to live--I want to live, to live Oh, let me live!"

But at other times her wandering thoughts took quite a different turn.

Gazing solemnly up into Maria Dolores' face, she said, "He does not even know her name, though he fears it may be Smitti. I thought it was Maria Dolores, but he fears it may be Smitti."

John looked out of the window, pretending not to hear, and praying, I expect, that Maria Dolores' eyes might be blinded and her counsel darkened. At the same time, (Heaven having sent me a laughing hero), I won't vouch that his shoulders didn't shake a little.

II

Apropos of their ignorance of each other's patronymics. ... One afternoon Maria Dolores was taking the air at the open door of the presbytery, when, to a mighty clattering of horses' hoofs, a big high-swung barouche came sweeping into the court-yard, described a bold half-circle, and abruptly drew up before her. In the barouche sat a big old lady, a big soft, humorous-eyed old lady, in cool crepe-de-chine, cream-coloured, with beautiful white hair, a very gay light straw bonnet, and a much befurbelowed lavender-hued sunshade. Coachman and footman, bolt upright, stared straight before them, as rigid as if their liveries were of papier-mache. The horses, with a full sense of what they owed to appearances, fierily champed their bits, tossed their manes, and pawed the paving-stones. The old lady smiled upon Maria Dolores with a look of great friendliness and interest, softly bowed, and wished her, in a fine, warm, old high-bred voice, "Good afternoon."

Maria Dolores (feeling an instant liking, as well as curiosity and admiration) smiled in her turn, and responded, "Good afternoon."

"You enjoy a fine view from here," the old lady remarked, ducking her sunshade in the direction of the valley.

"A beautiful view," agreed Maria Dolores, following the sunshade with her eyes.

Those of the stranger had a gleam. "But don't you think, if the unvarnished truth may be whispered, that it's becoming the merest trifle too hot?" she suggested.

Maria Dolores lightly laughed. "I think it is decidedly too hot," she said.

"I'm glad to find we're of the same opinion," declared the old lady, fanning herself. "You can positively _see_ the heat vibrating there in the distance. We children of the North should fly such weather. For my part, I'm off to-morrow for England, where I can s.h.i.+ver through the summer comfortably in my chimney-corner."

Maria Dolores laughed out again.