My Friend Prospero Part 28

"I'll stop pretty soon," said Annunziata. "I think you are very rich. I think, in spite of his saying her name is not Maria Dolores, that you are the dark woman whom Prospero is to marry. He is to marry a dark woman who will be very rich. But then he will also he very rich himself.

Is Austria a sunny land? England must be a dark land, for Prospero is light. Let me see your left hand, please, and I will tell you whether you are to marry a light man.

"Hus.h.!.+" said Maria Dolores, trying not to laugh. "That shall be some other time."

"Wouldn't you like to marry Prospero? I would," said Annunziata.

"I think I hear the wheels of the doctor's gig," said Maria Dolores.

"Now we shall both be scolded."

"But of course, if you do marry him, I can't," Annunziata pursued, undaunted by this menace. "A man isn't allowed to have two wives,--unless he is a king. He may have two sisters or two daughters, but not two wives or two mothers. There was once a king named Salomone who had a thousand wives, but even he had only one mother, I think. I hope you will live at Sant' Alessina after your marriage. Will you?"

Maria Dolores bit her lip and vouchsafed no answer; and again for a minute or two Annunziata lay silent. But presently, "Have you ever waked up in the middle of the night, and felt terribly frightened?" she asked.

"Yes, dear, sometimes. I suppose every one has," said Maria Dolores.

"Well, do you know why people feel so frightened when they wake like that?" pursued the child.

"No," said Maria Dolores.

"I do," said Annunziata. "The middle of the night is the Devil's Noon.

n.o.body is awake in the middle of the night except wicked people, like thieves or roysterers, or people who are suffering. All people who are good, and who are well and happy, are sound asleep. So it is the time the Devil likes best, and he and all his evil spirits come to the earth to enjoy the great pleasure of seeing people wicked or suffering. And that is why we feel so frightened when we wake. The air all round us is full of evil spirits, though we can't see them, and they are watching us, to run and tell the Devil if we do anything wicked or suffer any pain. But it is foolish of us to feel frightened, because our Guardian Angels are always there too, and they are a hundred times stronger than the evil spirits. Angels, you know, are very big, very much bigger than men. Some of them are as tall as mountains, but even the quite small ones are as tall as trees."

"This time I really do hear wheels," said Maria Dolores, with an accent of thanksgiving.

And she rose to meet the doctor.

V

John sat in his room, absorbed in contemplation of a tiny lace-edged pocket-handkerchief. He spread it out upon his knee, and laughed. He crumpled it up in his palm, and pressed it to his face, and drank deep of its faint perfume,--faint, but powerfully provocative of visions and emotions. He had found it during the night on the floor of the sick-room, and had captured and borne it away like a treasure. He spread it out on his knee again, and was again about to laugh at its small size and gauzy texture, when his eye was caught by something in its corner.

He held it nearer to the window. The thing that had caught his eye was a cypher surmounted by a crown, embroidered so minutely as almost to call for a magnifying gla.s.s. But without a gla.s.s he could see that the cypher was composed of the initials M and D, and that the crown was not a coronet, but a closed crown, of the pattern worn by mediatised princes.

"What on earth can be the meaning of this?" he wondered, frowning, and breathing quick.

But he was stopped from further speculation for the moment by a knock at the door. The postman entered with two letters, for one of which, as it was registered, John had to sign. When he had tipped the postman and was alone again, he put his registered letter on the dressing-table (with a view to disciplining curiosity and exercising patience, possibly) and turned his attention to the other. In a handsome, high old hand, that somehow reminded him of the writer's voice, it ran as follows:--

"DEAR JOHN,

"I was heart-broken not to see you when I drove over to say good-bye this afternoon, but chance favoured me at least to the extent of letting me see your miller's daughter, and you may believe that I was glad of an opportunity to inspect her at close quarters. My dear boy, she is no more a miller's daughter than you are. Her beauty--there's _race_ in it. Her manner and carriage, her voice, accent, her way of dressing, (I'd give a sovereign for the name of her dressmaker), the fineness of her skin, her hair, everything--there's race in 'em all, race and consciousness of race, pride, dignity, distinction. These things don't come to pa.s.s in a generation. I'm surprised at your lack of perspicacity. And those blue eyes of yours look so sharp, too. But perhaps your wish was father to your thought. You felt (well, and so to some extent did I) that it would be more _romantic_. She's probably a very great swell indeed, and I expect the Frau What's-her-name she's staying with will turn out to be her old governess or nurse or something. When those Austrians _can_ show quarterings, (of course you must bar recent creations--they're generally named Cohen), they can show them to some effect. They think nothing of thirty-two. All of which, _au fond_, rather rejoices me, for if she really had been a miller's daughter, it would have seemed a good deal like throwing yourself away, and who knows what your rusty, crusty old uncle B.

might have said? I've long had a rod in pickle for _him_, and t'other day I applied it. _Attendez_.

"Don't forget the pig you purchased--so gallantly and confidingly.

I would not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments--your pig will gobble 'em up. You should by this have received a communication from my solicitors. Remember, you have pledged your sacred promise. There must be no question of trying to s.h.i.+rk or burke it. Remember that I am quite outrageously rich. I have no children of my own, and no very near relatives, (and my distant ones are intensely disagreeable), and I can't help looking upon the heir of the Blanchemains as a kind of spiritual son. In your position there's no such thing as having too much money. Take all that comes, and never mind the quarter whence. They're Plymouth Brethren, and send me tracts.

"Good-bye now till August, if not before. For of course in August you must come to me at Fring. Will you bring your bride? When and where the wedding? I suppose they'll want it in Austria. Beware of long engagements--or of too short ones. The autumn's the time,--the only pretty ring-time. You see, you'll need some months for the preparation of your trousseau. I love a man to be smart. Well, good-bye. I was so sorry about that child's illness, but thankful to hear she was mending.

"Yours affectionately,

"LINDA BLANCHEMAIN."

And his registered letter, when at last he opened it, ran thus:--

"DEAR SIR:--Pursuant to instructions received from our client Lady Blanchemain, we beg to hand you herewith our cheque for Seven hundred and fifty pounds (750 stg.), and to request the favour of your receipt for the same, together with the address of your bankers, that we may pay in quarterly a like sum to your account, it being her ladys.h.i.+p's intention, immediately upon her return to England, to effect a settlement upon yourself and heirs of 100,000 funded in Bk. of Eng. stock.

"We are further to have the pleasure to inform you that by the terms of a will just prepared by us, and to be executed by Lady Blanchemain at the earliest possible date, you are const.i.tuted her residuary legatee.

"With compliments and respectful congratulations,

"We have the honour, dear Sir, to be,

"Your obedient servants,

"FARROW, BERNSCOT, AND TISDALE."

And then there came another tap at the door, and it was the postman who had returned, with a third letter which, like the true Italian postman that he was, he had forgotten,--and I fancy, if it hadn't been for that tip still warm in his pocket, the easy-going fellow would have allowed it to stand over till to-morrow. He made, at any rate, a great virtue of having discovered it and of having retraced his steps.

The letter was written in black, angular, uncompromising characters, that looked rather like sabre-thrusts and bayonets. It read:--

"DEAR JACK:--I have received the enclosure from Linda Lady Blanchemain. She is an exceedingly impertinent and meddlesome old woman. But she is right about the allowance. I don't know why I never thought of it myself. I don't know why you never suggested it. I extremely regret it. As next in succession, you are certainly ent.i.tled to an annuity from the estate. I have to-day remitted 500 to your bankers, and am instructing my agents to pay in a like amount quarterly.

"I hope I shall soon be seeing you at Ventmere. We are having a grand lambing season, but there's a nasty spread of swine-fever, and the whole country's papered with handbills. I got a goodish bit of hunting down at Wilsborough during the winter. Now there's nothing to do but play golf. I never could find any fun in shooting rooks.

"Your affectionate uncle,

"B of V."

And the enclosure:--

"Linda Lady Blanchemain presents her compliments to Lord Blanchemain of Ventmere, and begs to apprise him that she has lately had the pleasure of meeting his lords.h.i.+p's nephew John, and has discovered to her amazement that his lords.h.i.+p makes him no allowance. This situation, for the heir to the barony of Blanchemain, is of course absurd, and must, Lady Blanchemain is sure, be due entirely to an oversight on his lords.h.i.+p's part. She ventures, therefore, with all respect, to bring it to his notice."

So! Here sat a young man with plenty to think about; a young man, whose income, yesterday a bare six hundred, had sprung up over night to something near six thousand. Six thousand a year isn't opulence, if you like, but a young man possessing it can hardly look upon himself as quite empty-handed, either. This young man, however, had other things as well to think of. What of that embroidered handkerchief? What of those shrewd suspicions of Lady Blanchemain's? What of his miller's daughter?

And there was another thing still. What of his proud old honest Spartan of an unimaginative uncle? He thought of him, and "Oh, the poor old boy," he cried. "Not for ten times the money would I have had the dear old woman write to him like that. How hard it must have hit him!"

"M, D, and a princely crown," he reflected. "I wish I had an Almanach de Gotha."

VI

"Who was it said of some one that he dearly loved a lord?" Maria Dolores, her chin in the air, asked of Frau Brandt.

"I do not know," Frau Brandt replied, knitting.