My Friend Prospero Part 29

"Well, at least, you know whether it would be possible for a man and wife to live luxuriously on sixpence a week. Would it?" pursued her tease.

"You are well aware that it would not," said Frau Brandt.

"How about six hundred pounds a year?"

"Six hundred pounds--?" Frau Brandt computed. "That would be six thousand florins, no? It would depend upon their station in the world."

"Well, suppose their station were about my station--and my lord's?"

"You," said Frau Brandt, with a chuckle of contentment, swaying her white-bonneted head. "You would need twice that for your dress alone."

"One could dress more simply," said Maria Dolores.

"No," said Frau Brandt, her good eyes beaming, "you must always dress in the very finest that can be had."

"But then," Maria Dolores asked with wistfulness, "what am I to do? For six hundred pounds is the total of his income."

"You have, unless I am mistaken, an income of your own," Frau Brandt remarked.

"Yes--but he won't let me use it," said Maria Dolores.

"He? Who?" demanded Frau Brandt, bridling. "Who is there that dares to say let or not let to you?

"My future husband," said Maria Dolores. "He has peculiar ideas of honour. He does not like the notion of marrying a woman who is richer than himself. So he will marry me only on the condition that I send my own fortune to be dropped in the middle of the sea."

"What nonsense is this?" said Frau Brandt, composed.

"No, it is the truth," said Maria Dolores, "the true truth. He is too proud to live in luxury at his wife's expense."

"I like a man making conditions, when it is a question of marrying you,"

said Frau Brandt, with scorn.

"So do I," said Maria Dolores, with heartiness.

"Well, at any rate, I am glad to see that he is not after you for your money," Frau Brandt reflected.

"I suppose we shall have to dress in sackcloth and dine on lentils,"

said Maria Dolores.

"Of course you will tell him to take his conditions to the Old One,"

said Frau Brandt. "It is out of the question for you to change the manner of your life."

"I feel indeed as if it were," admitted Maria Dolores. "But if he insists?"

"Then tell him to go to the Old One himself," was Frau Brandt's blunt advice.

Maria Dolores laughed. "It seems like an _impa.s.se_," she said. "Who is to break the news to my brother?"

"We will wait until there is some news to break," the old woman amiably grumbled.

Again at the sunset hour Maria Dolores met him in the garden. He was seated on one of their marble benches, amongst marble columns, (rose-tinted by the western light, and casting long purple shadows), in a vine-embowered pergola. He was leaning forward, legs crossed, brow wrinkled, as one deep in thought. But of course at the sound of her footstep he jumped up.

"What mighty problem were you revolving?" she asked. "You looked like Rembrandt's _philosophe en meditation_."

"I was revolving the problem of human love," he answered. "I was mutilating Browning.

'_Was it something said, Something done, Was it touch of hand, Turn of head?_'

I was also thinking about you. I was wondering whether it would be my cruel destiny not to see you this evening, and thinking of the first time I ever saw you."

"Oh," said she, lightly, "that morning among the olives,--when you gathered the windflowers for me?"

"No," said he. "That was the second time."

"Indeed?" said she, surprised. She sat down on the marble bench. John stood before her.

"Yes," said he. "The first time was the day before. You were crossing the garden--you were bending over the sun-dial--and I spied upon you from a window of the _piano n.o.bile_. Lady Blanchemain was there with me, and she made a prediction."

"What did she predict?" asked Maria Dolores, unsuspicious.

"She predicted that I would fall--" But he dropped his sentence in the middle. "She predicted what has happened."

"Oh," murmured Maria Dolores, and looked at the horizon. By-and-by, "That morning among the olives was the first time that I saw you--when you dashed like a paladin to my a.s.sistance. I feel that I have never sufficiently thanked you."

"A paladin oddly panoplied," said John. "Tell me honestly, weren't you in two minds whether or not to reward me with largesse? You had silver in your hand."

Maria Dolores laughed. I think she coloured a little.

"Perhaps I was, for half a second," she confessed. "But your grand manner soon put me in one mind."

John also laughed. He took a turn backwards and forwards. "I have waked in the dead of night, and grown hot and cold to remember the figure of fun I was."

"No," said Maria Dolores, to console him. "You weren't a figure of fun.

Your costume had the air of being an impromptu, but," she laughed, "your native dignity shone through."

"Thank you," said John, bowing. "The next time I saw you was that same afternoon. You were with Annunziata in the avenue. I carried my vision of you, like a melody, all the way to Roccadoro-and all the way home again."

"I had just made Annunziata's acquaintance," said Maria Dolores.

"You had a white sunshade and a lilac frock," said John. "The next time was that night in the moonlight. You were all in white, with a scarf of white lace over your hair. You threw me a white rose from your balcony--and I have carried that rose with me ever since."

"I threw you a white rose?" doubted Maria Dolores, looking up, at fault.

"Yes," said John. "Have you forgotten it?"

"I certainly have," said she, with emphasis.

"You threw me a smile that was like a white rose," said he.