The Cardinal's Snuff-Box Part 9

"Ah, well," she mused, "we must a.s.sume that he has happy moments--or, perhaps, two soul-sides, one to face the world with, one to show his ma.n.u.scripts when he's writing. You hint a fault, and hesitate dislike.

That, indeed, is only natural, on the part of an old friend. But you pique my interest. What is the trouble with him? Is--is he conceited, for example?"

"The trouble with him?" Peter pondered. "Oh, it would be too long and too sad a story. Should I anatomise him to you as he is, I must blush and weep, and you must look pale and wonder. He has pretty nearly every weakness, not to mention vices, that flesh is heir to. But as for conceit... let me see. He concurs in my own high opinion of his work, I believe; but I don't know whether, as literary men go, it would be fair to call him conceited. He belongs, at any rate, to the comparatively modest minority who do not secretly fancy that Shakespeare has come back to life."

"That Shakespeare has come back to life!" marvelled the d.u.c.h.essa. "Do you mean to say that most literary men fancy that?"

"I think perhaps I am acquainted with three who don't," Peter replied; "but one of them merely wears his rue with a difference. He fancies that it's Goethe."

"How extravagantly--how exquisitely droll!" she laughed.

"I confess, it struck me so, until I got accustomed to it," said he, "until I learned that it was one of the commonplaces, one of the normal attributes of the literary temperament. It's as much to be taken for granted, when you meet an author, as the tail is to be taken for granted, when you meet a cat."

"I'm vastly your debtor for the information--it will stand me in stead with the next author who comes my way. But, in that case, your friend Mr. Felix Wildmay will be, as it were, a sort of Manx cat?" was her smiling deduction.

"Yes, if you like, in that particular, a sort of Manx cat," acquiesced Peter, with a laugh.

The d.u.c.h.essa laughed too; and then there was a little pause.

Overhead, never so light a breeze lisped never so faintly in the tree-tops; here and there bird-notes fell, liquid, desultory, like drops of rain after a shower; and constantly one heard the cool music of the river. The sun, filtering through worlds and worlds of leaves, shed upon everything a green-gold penumbra. The air, warm and still, was sweet with garden-scents. The lake, according to its habit at this hour of the afternoon, had drawn a grey veil over its face, a thin grey veil, through which its sapphire-blue shone furtively. Far away, in the summer haze, Monte Sfiorito seemed a mere dim spectre of itself--a stranger might easily have mistaken it for a vague ma.s.s of cloud floating above the horizon.

"Are you aware that it 's a singularly lovely afternoon?" the d.u.c.h.essa asked, by and by.

"I have a hundred reasons for thinking it so," Peter hazarded, with the least perceptible approach to a meaning bow.

In the d.u.c.h.essa's face, perhaps, there flickered, for half-a-second, the least perceptible light, as of a comprehending and unresentful smile.

But she went on, with fine aloofness.

"I rather envy you your river, you know. We are too far from it at the castle. Is n't the sound, the murmur, of it delicious? And its colour--how does it come by such a subtle colour? Is it green? Is it blue? And the diamonds on its surface--see how they glitter. You know, of course," she questioned, "who the owner is of those unequalled gems?"

"Surely," Peter answered, "the lady paramount of this demesne?"

"No, no." She shook her head, smiling. "Undine. They are Undine's--her necklaces and tiaras. No mortal woman's jewel-case contains anything half so brilliant. But look at them--look at the long chains of them--how they float for a minute--and are then drawn down. They are Undine's--Undine and her companions are sporting with them just below the surface. A moment ago I caught a glimpse of a white arm."

"Ah," said Peter, nodding thoughtfully, "that's what it is to have 'the seeing eye.' But I'm grieved to hear of Undine in such a wanton mood. I had hoped she would still be weeping her unhappy love-affair."

"What! with that horrid, stolid German--Hildebrandt, was his name?"

cried the d.u.c.h.essa. "Not she! Long ago, I'm glad to say, she learned to laugh at that, as a mere caprice of her immaturity. However, this is a digression. I want to return to our 'Man of Words.' Tell me--what is the quality you especially like in it?"

"I like its every quality," Peter affirmed, unblus.h.i.+ng. "Its style, its finish, its concentration; its wit, humour, sentiment; its texture, tone, atmosphere; its scenes, its subject; the paper it's printed on, the type, the binding. But above all, I like its heroine. I think Pauline de Fleuvieres the pearl of human women--the cleverest, the loveliest, the most desirable, the most exasperating. And also the most feminine. I can't think of her at all as a mere fiction, a mere shadow on paper. I think of her as a living, breathing, flesh-and-blood woman, whom I have actually known. I can see her before me now--I can see her eyes, full of mystery and mischief--I can see her exquisite little teeth, as she smiles--I can see her hair, her hands--I can almost catch the perfume of her garments. I 'm utterly infatuated with her--I could commit a hundred follies for her."

"Mercy!" exclaimed the d.u.c.h.essa. "You are enthusiastic."

"The book's admirers are so few, they must endeavour to make up in enthusiasm what they lack in numbers," he submitted.

"But--at that rate--why are they so few?" she puzzled. "If the book is all you think it, how do you account for its unpopularity?"

"It could never conceivably be anything but unpopular," said he. "It has the fatal gift of beauty."

The d.u.c.h.essa laughed surprise.

"Is beauty a fatal gift--in works of art?"

"Yes--in England," he declared.

"In England? Why especially in England?"

"In English-speaking--in Anglo-Saxon lands, if you prefer. The Anglo-Saxon public is beauty-blind. They have fifty religions--only one sauce--and no sense of beauty whatsoever. They can see the nose on one's face--the mote in their neighbour's eye; they can see when a bargain is good, when a war will be expedient. But the one thing they can never see is beauty. And when, by some rare chance, you catch them in the act of admiring a beautiful object, it will never be for its beauty--it will be in spite of its beauty for some other, some extra-aesthetic interest it possesses--some topical or historical interest. Beauty is necessarily detached from all that is topical or historical, or doc.u.mentary or actual. It is also necessarily an effect of fine shades, delicate values, vanis.h.i.+ng distinctions, of evasiveness, inconsequence, suggestion. It is also absolute, unrelated--it is positive or negative or superlative--it is never comparative. Well, the Anglo-Saxon public is totally insensible to such things. They can no more feel them, than a blind worm can feel the colours of the rainbow."

She laughed again, and regarded him with an air of humorous meditation.

"And that accounts for the unsuccess of 'A Man of Words'?"

"You might as well offer Francois Villon a banquet of Orient pearls."

"You are bitterly hard on the Anglo-Saxon public."

"Oh, no," he disclaimed, "not hard--but just. I wish them all sorts of prosperity, with a little more taste."

"Oh, but surely," she caught him up, "if their taste were greater, their prosperity would be less?"

"I don't know," said he. "The Greeks were fairly prosperous, were n't they? And the Venetians? And the French are not yet quite bankrupt."

Still again she laughed--always with that little air of humorous meditation.

"You--you don't exactly overwhelm one with compliments," she observed.

He looked alarm, anxiety.

"Don't I? What have I neglected?" he cried.

"You 've never once evinced the slightest curiosity to learn what I think of the book in question."

"Oh, I'm sure you like it," he rejoined hardily. "You have 'the seeing eye.'"

"And yet I'm just a humble member of the Anglo-Saxon public."

"No--you're a distinguished member of the Anglo-Saxon 'remnant.' Thank heaven, there's a remnant, a little scattered remnant. I'm perfectly sure you like 'A Man of Words.'"

"'Like it' is a proposition so general. Perhaps I am burning to tell someone what I think of it in detail."

She smiled into his eyes, a trifle oddly.

"If you are, then I know someone who is burning to hear you," he avowed.

"Well, then, I think--I think..." she began, on a note of deliberation.

"But I 'm afraid, just now, it would take too long to formulate my thought. Perhaps I'll try another day."

She gave him a derisory little nod--and in a minute was well up the lawn, towards the castle.