"Could n"t we converse without riddles, Count Pracontal?"
"I protest, I should like to do so."
"And as I make no objection--"
"Then to begin. You asked me what I should do if I were to gain my suit; and my answer is, if I were not morally certain to gain it, I "d never exhibit myself in the absurd position of planning a life I was never to arrive at."
"You are too much a Frenchman for that."
"Precisely, madame. I am too much a Frenchman for that. The exquisite sensibility to ridicule puts a very fine edge on national character, though your countrymen will not admit it."
"It makes very tetchy acquaintances," said she, with a malicious laugh.
"And develops charming generosity in those who forgive us!"
"I cry off. I can"t keep up this game of give and take flatteries. Let us come back to what we were talking of,--that is, if either of us can remember it. Oh, yes, I know it now. You were going to tell me the splendid establishment you "d keep at Castello. I "m sure the cook will leave nothing to desire,--but how about the stable? That "steppere" will not exactly be in his place in an Irish county."
"Madame, you forget I was a lieutenant of hussars."
"My dear Count, that does not mean riding."
"Madame!"
"I should now rise and say "Monsieur!" and it would be very good comedy after the French pattern; but I prefer the sofa and my ease, and will simply beg you to remember the contract we made the other day,--that each was to be at liberty to say any impertinence to the other, without offence being taken."
Pracontal laid his hand on his heart, and bowed low and deep.
"There are some half a dozen people in that garden yonder, who have pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed--I can"t tell how many times--just to observe us.
You "ll see them again in a few minutes, and we shall be town-talk to-morrow, I "m certain. There are no _tete-a-tetes_ ever permitted in Rome if a cardinal or a monsignore be not one of the performers."
"Are those they?" cried he, suddenly.
"Yes, and there "s not the least occasion for that flash of the eye and that hot glow of indignation on the cheek: I a.s.sure you, monsieur, there is n.o.body there to _couper la gorge_ with you, or share in any of those social pleasantries which make the "Bois" famous. The curiously minded individual is a lady,--a Mrs. Trumpler,--and her attendants are a few freshly arrived curates. There, now, sit down again, and look less like a wounded tiger; for all this sort of thing fusses and fevers me. Yes, you may fan me; though if the detectives return it will make the report more highly colored."
Pracontal was now seated on a low stool beside her sofa, and fanning her a.s.siduously.
"Not but these people are all right," continued she. "It is quite wrong in me to admit you to my intimacy--wrong to admit you at all. My sister is so angry about it she won"t come here--fact, I a.s.sure you. Now don"t look so delighted and so triumphant, and the rest of it. As your nice little phrase has it, you "are for nothing" in the matter at all. It is all myself, my own whim, my fancy, my caprice. _I_ saw that the step was just as unadvisable as they said it was. I saw that any commonly discreet person would not have even made your acquaintance, standing as I did; but unfortunately for me, like poor Eve, the only tree whose fruit I covet is the one I "m told is n"t good for me. There go our friends once more. I wish I could tell her who you are, and not keep her in this state of torturing anxiety."
"Might I ask, my Lady," said he, gravely, "if you have heard anything to my discredit or disparagement, as a reason for the severe sentence you have just spoken?"
"No, unfortunately not; for in that case my relatives would have forgiven me. They know the wonderful infatuation that attracts me to damaged reputations, and as they have not yet found out any considerable flaw in yours, they are puzzled, out of all measure, to know what it is I see in you."
"I am overwhelmed by your flattery, madam," said he, trying to seem amused; but, in spite of himself, showing some irritation.
"Not that," resumed she, in that quiet manner which showed that her mind had gone off suddenly in another direction,--"not that I owe much deference to the Bram-leighs, who, one and all, have treated me with little courtesy. Marion behaved shamefully; that, of course, was to be expected. To marry that odious old creature for a position implied how she would abuse the position when she got it. As I said to Gusty, when a young Oxford man gives five guineas for a mount, he does n"t think he has the worth of his money if he does n"t smash his collar-bone. There, put down that fan; you are making me feverish. Then the absurdity of playing _peeress to me!_ How ashamed the poor old man was; he reddened through all his rouge. Do you know," added she, in an excited manner, "that she had the impertinence to compare her marriage with mine, and say that at least rank and t.i.tle were somewhat n.o.bler ambitions than a mere subsistence and a settlement. But I answered her. I told her, "You have forgotten one material circ.u.mstance. I did not live with your father!" Oh, yes! we exchanged a number of little courtesies of this kind, and I was so sorry when I heard she had gone to Naples. I was only getting into stride when the race was over. As to my settlement, I have not the very vaguest notion who "ll pay it; perhaps it may be _you_.
Oh, of course I know the unutterable bliss; but you must really ask your lawyer, how is my lien to be disposed of. Some one said to me the other day that, besides the estate, you would have a claim for about eighty thousand pounds."
"It was Longworth said so."
"I don"t like your friend Longworth. Is he a gentleman?"
"Most unquestionably."
"Well, but I mean a born gentleman? I detest, and I distrust your nature-made gentlemen, who, having money enough to "get up" the part, deem that quite sufficient I want the people whose families have given guarantees for character during some generations. Six o"clock! only think, you are here three mortal hours! I declare, sir, this must not occur again; and I have to dress now. I dine at the Prince Cornarini"s.
Do you go there?"
"I go nowhere, my Lady. I know no one."
"Well, I can"t present you. It would be too compromising. And yet they want men like you, very much, here. The Romans are so dull and stately, and the English who frequent the best houses are so dreary. There, go away now. You want leave to come to-morrow, but I "ll not grant it. I must hear what Mrs. Trumpler says before I admit you again."
"When, then, may I--"
"I don"t know; I have not thought of it Let it be--let it be when you have gained your lawsuit," cried she, in a burst of laughter, and hurried out of the room.
CHAPTER L. CATTARO.
If Cattaro was more picturesque and strange-looking than the Bramleighs had expected, it was also far more poverty-stricken and desolate. The little town, escarped out of a lofty mountain, with the sea in front, consisted of little more than one straggling street, which followed every bend and indentation of the sh.o.r.e. It is true, wherever a little plateau offered on the mountain, a house was built; and to these small winding paths led up, through rocks bristling with the cactus, or shaded by oleanders large as olive-trees. Beautiful little bits of old Venetian architecture, in balconies or porticos, peeped out here and there through the dark foliage of oranges and figs; and richly ornamented gates, whose arabesques yet glistened with tarnished gilding, were festooned with many a flowery creeper, and that small banksia-rose, so tasteful in its luxuriance. From the sea it would be impossible to imagine anything more beautiful or more romantic. As you landed, however, the illusion faded, and dirt, misery, and want stared at you at every step. Decay and ruin were on all sides. Palaces, whose marble mouldings and architraves were in the richest style of Byzantine art, were propped up by rude beams of timber that obstructed the footway, while from their windows and balconies hung rags and tattered draperies, the signs of a poverty within great as the ruin without. The streets were lined with a famished, half-clothed population, sitting idly or sleeping. A few here and there affected to be vendors of fruit and vegetables; but the ma.s.s were simply loungers reduced to the miserable condition of an apathy which saw nothing better to be done with life than dream it away. While Bramleigh and L"Estrange were full of horror at the wretchedness of the place, their sisters were almost wild with delight at its barbaric beauty, its grand savagery, and its brilliantly picturesque character. The little inn, which probably for years had dispensed no other hospitalities than those of the _cafe_, that extended from the darkly columned portico to half across the piazza, certainly contributed slightly to allay the grumblings of the travellers. The poorly furnished rooms were ill kept and dirty, the servants lazy, and the fare itself the very humblest imaginable.
Nothing short of the unfailing good temper and good spirits of Julia and Nelly could have rallied the men out of their sulky discontent; that spirit to make the best of everything, to catch at every pa.s.sing gleam of sunlight on the landscape, and even in moments of discouragement to rally at the first chance of what may cheer and gladden,--this is womanly, essentially womanly. It belongs not to the man"s nature; and even if he should have it, he has it in a less discriminative shape and in a coa.r.s.er fashion.
While Augustus and L"Estrange then sat sulkily smoking their cigars on the sea-wall, contemptuously turning their backs on the mountain variegated with every hue of foliage, and broken in every picturesque form, the girls had found out a beautiful old villa, almost buried in orange-trees in a small cleft of the mountain, through which a small cascade descended and fed a fountain that played in the hall; the perfect stillness, only broken by the splash of the falling water, and the sense of delicious freshness imparted by the crystal circles eddying across the marble fount, so delighted them that they were in ecstasies when they found that the place was to be let, and might be their own for a sum less than a very modest "entresol" would cost in a cognate city.
"Just imagine, Gusty, he will let it to us for three hundred florins a year; and for eighteen hundred we may buy it out and out, forever." This was Nelly"s salutation as she came back, full of all she had seen, and glowing with enthusiasm over the splendid luxuriance of the vegetation and the beauty of the view.
"It is really princely inside, although in terrible dilapidation and ruin. There are over two of the fireplaces the Doge"s arms, which shows that a Venetian magnate once lived there."
"What do you say, George?" cried Bramleigh. "Don"t you think you "d rather invest some hundred florins in a boat to escape from this dreary hole than purchase a prison to live in?"
"You must come and see the "Fontanella"--so they call it--before you decide," said Julia. "Meanwhile here is a rough sketch I made from the garden side."
"Come, that looks very pretty, indeed," cried George. "Do you mean to say it is like that?"
"That"s downright beautiful!" said Bramleigh. "Surely these are not marble,--these columns!"
"It is all marble,--the terrace, the balconies, the stairs, the door-frames; and as to the floors, they are laid down in variegated slabs, with a marvellous instinct as to color and effect. I declare I think it handsomer than Castello," cried Nelly.
"Have n"t I often said," exclaimed Bramleigh, "there was nothing like being ruined to impart a fresh zest to existence? You seem to start anew in the race, and unweighted, too."
"As George and I have always been in the condition you speak of," said Julia, "this charm of novelty is lost to us."
"Let us put it to the vote," said Nelly, eagerly. "Shall we buy it?"
"First of all, let us see it," interposed Bramleigh. "Today I have to make my visit to the authorities. I have to present myself before the great officials, and announce that I have come to be the representative of the last joint of the British lion"s tail; but that he, being a great beast of wonderful strength and terrific courage, to touch a hair of him is temerity itself."
"And they will believe you?" asked Julia.