24 Nothing Comes Amiss, So Money Comes Withal

THERE is a picnic, three days after, and they go to the Villa Ludovisi. It is lovely picnic weather, and the gay little contessa is never happy but when in the midst of something of the sort. To-day they are a parti cane—Sir Vane, madame, la Contessa, and Dolores. And to-day Sir Vane determines to put his fate to the touch—to speak to Dolores definitely. Not that there is any real need of such a proceeding, but Sir Vane is not a Frenchman, and believes in doing this sort of thing properly and in order, and in English fashion. They drive through the sunny streets, where hooded capuchins, and picturesque artists, and flower-girls, and fruit-sellers, and friars of orders gray, and cavalcades with jingling bells, and brown beggars, lie in the sun, and the sharp chirp of the cicala cracks through the green gloom, and flowers, and orange trees, and roses, and Roman violets, and Victor Emanuel’s soldiers are everywhere. Overhead, there is a hot, hot sun, but with it there is a breeze, an air like velvet, the streets are a blaze of light, and life, and color. It is not the old picturesque, papal picture, of cardinal’s carriages—il Papa-Re, benign and white-robed, in their midst—but a glowing vista of moving life and color still. They ascend to the heights among ruins, and the red petticoats of condatina into the dense green gloom of olive and ilex woods, where luncheon has been ordered, and waits them. There is hard brown bread, and crisp, silvery lettuce, and figs that are like globes of gold, and ice-cold wine. And after dinner, as they stand under the shade of the ilex for a moment alone, Sir Vane finds his opportunity, and speaks.

She is looking very fair, and very young—too young the man of forty beside her thinks—impatient of those forty years. She is dressed in white, crisp, gauzy, silky, as spotless as her own maiden heart. The amber hair falls long and loose over her shoulders in girlish fashion, tied back with a knot of pale pink ribbon. Her cheeks are flushed with the heat, to the same rose pink glow. That glow deepens to scarlet as she stands, with white drooping lids, and listens. S

he wishes he would not—she shrinks from what he says. His words of love and passion sound forced, cold; they repel her. No answering sympathy awakes within her—she shrinks as she hears. Was it necessary to say this? Grandmamma has told him. Love? no, she feels none of it—she does not believe he does either. She is relieved when he is silent, and looks about her, half inclined to run away. But he has caught one of her hands, and so holds her. “Dear little hand,” he says, clasping it between both his own,” when is it to be mine, Dolores?”

“Grandmamma will arrange all that,” answered mademoiselle, and hastily withdraws it; “it is a matter in which I desire to have no choice. I should like it to be as far off as possible——”

“Ah! that is cruel-the first unkind word you have spoken to-day.”

“Otherwise,” quite calmly, ignoring the interruption, “I am prepared to obey. And, meantime, I should be glad, Sir Vane, if you will not speak of this again. It is not needed, and—I find it embarrassing.” There is no necessity to say so; her deeply flushed cheeks speak for her.

Sir Vane promises with alacrity. He is not at all sorry to be rid of the bore of wooing. Her wish renders it easy to make a merit of his own desire. He lights a philosophic cigar, and strolls off to enjoy it, as la contessa comes up with madame.

Later that afternoon, strolling down the hillside, Dolores finds herself alone; the others have paused to admire a ruin farther up. Where she stands is just beneath a shrine—a shrine set in a tall, precipitous, flower crowned cliff—a Madonna, in a little blue grotto, with clasped hands and upraised eyes, and a tiny lamp burning like a star at her feet. Some devout client has wreathed the feet with flowers, but they are withered now and drooping, after the noontide glare. It occurs to Dolores to say a little prayer and remend the floral offering. Wild roses are in abundance; she breaks off some long, spiky branches, wounding her fingers in the effort, and mounts some loose large rocks to reach Our Lady’s feet. Standing so, two white arms uplifted, the gauzy sleeves falling back, both hands filled with rose branches, she is a picture. So the young man lying quietly on the tall grass a few feet off, watching her at his ease, himself unseen, thinks. She stands on the stones, and essays to twine the roses round the base of the statue. But her footing is precarious, the topmost stone—loose always—slips, fails her. She tries to grasp something, fails in this too, and is toppling ingloriously backward, when the unseen watcher springs from the grass, and with one leap catches her in his arms. She drops into them with a gasp, a horrified “Oh!” then draws precipitately back.

“Scuse!” begins the rescuer, trying to uncover, but at the sound of his voice, with a second look in his face, there is a quick little scream of ecstasy; two milk-white arms are flung round his neck, and hold him tight, tight, and a voice brimful and running over with transport, cries out .

“RENE!”

“Rene! Rene! Rene!” cries this ecstatic voice, “don’t you know me? Oh! Rene, how glad—how glad I am!”

“Snowball!” he says, blankly. Intense surprise is his first feeling—his only feeling for a moment—mingled with doubt. “Is it Snowball?”

“Snowball, of course. Oh! my dearest, dearest Rene! how good it seems to see you after all these years once more!” She loosens her arms by this time and looks at him again. He stands, half laughing, half embarrassed, wholly glad, but not glad in the same effusive way. And with that second look, it dawns upon this impulsive young person that she has been embracing a Rene very different in appearance from the Rene of old. This is a tall young gentleman, and, in a dark way, an exceedingly good-looking one. And he wears a mustache. And he is a MAN! And all the blood of all the Valentines rises up, in deepest contrition and confusion, in the fair, pearl-like face.

It is Rene, and not Rene. And he is laughing at her—that is to say, there is a smile in his dark eyes, and just lurking at the corners of that new mustache, though he is evidently making a decorous effort to efface it. What would grandmamma, and oh! what would Sir Vane say if he had seen! Red as a rose is she—the sweetest, the prettiest, the most charming picture of confusion—and Rene longs to take her in his arms this time and return the hug with compound interest. Only he does not, you understand. On the contrary, he stands, hat in hand, and looks as though he could never grow weary of looking.

“It is Snowball!” he says; “and to think that for ten full minutes I have been watching your efforts to decorate that statue, and never knew you. How you have changed!”

“Not half so much as you, I think. I haven’t grown a mustache. But you always were rather stupid about recognizing your old friends, Rene.”

He laughs outright—her tone is so exactly the disputatious tone of wild Snowball Trillon. “Have you never given up your habit of vituperation?” he asks; “or is it only me you favor with it? I am glad if you keep anything exclusively for me—even your trick of finding fault. But my dear little Snowball, how glad I am to see you.”

“O-h-h! it has taken you some time to find it out. You are like the man who had so much mind, it took him a week sometimes to make it up. I knew I was glad to see you at first sight.”

“You don’t quite sound so,” still laughing; “ma foi! how tall you are, and how——”

“Well,” imperiously, “what?”

“Pretty. Pardon me my outspokenness. We never stood on ceremony with each other you may remember.”

“I remember. I am sorry I cannot return the compliment,” gravely. “You have not grown up at all pretty, Rene.”

“No?” laughing once more. “Ah! how sorry I am to hear that. I never regretted being ugly before. But handsome is as handsome does, you know, Snowball, and I am doing most handsomely, I assure you.”

“Are you? At sculpture, I suppose. Do you know, I don’t think much of sculptors and artists. One sees so many of them. And they are all alike-smoke grimy pipes, wear blouses, and never comb their hair.”

“Mine is cropped within half a quarter of an inch of my head. I have none to comb, my dear Snowball.”

“And Johnny,” says Miss Valentine, “where is Johnny? Ah! how homesick I have been many a time for Johnny. I never can sleep stormy nights thinking of him. Does he still go to sea?”

“Still goes to sea—happy Johnny! Gone for a three years’ cruise to China. I don’t see how you can reconcile it to your conscience—if you have any—to like Johnny so much better than me. He never liked you best?”

“Oh! but he did,” cries Miss Valentine, warmly, and flushing up, “a great deal the best. You never cared for anybody in your life—well, perhaps, except Ma’am Weesy, when she was cooking something particularly nice!”

“How unjust,” says Rene, “how extremely unjust. I may have concealed my feelings, but I always had—I have at this moment,” lifting two dark, laughing, yet earnest eyes, “the very friendliest regard for you.”

“Your power of concealment then, past and present, do you infinite credit, monsieur. I rejoice to be able to congratulate you on anything. What are you doing in Rome?”

“What do all who aspire to carve their names among the immortals in sculpture do in Rome?”

“Among the immortals! Let me congratulate you once more; this time on your modesty. Since when are you here ?”

“Since four months ago.”

“Did you know I was here?”

“My dear Snowball, there are some fortune-favored people, who can no more hide themselves than the sun up yonder. You are of these elect. Even to my obscure workshop the fame of the fair, the peerless, the priceless Signorina Inglese has been wafted.”

“How priceless, please?”

“Need you ask? Need the heiress of the great Begum——”

She stops him with a motion, and a rising flush. “And, knowing I was here, you never came, never cared to see me all this time! Was I not right when I said you were made of the same stuff as your own statues? You never cared for anybody, my friend Rene, in your life.”

“But, Snowball, think. You are—what you are; I am Rene Macdonald, obscure and unknown to fame, with the poverty of the proverbial church mouse, and——”

“And the pride of Lucifer! Yes, I understand. Ah! they have missed me; here is grandmamma.”

Grandmamma ascends the slope, and exclaims somewhat at the sight of her missing granddaughter, standing quietly here, in deep converse with a “rank” stranger.

Dolores springs forward, and offers her strong young arm. “See, graudmamma! an old friend—the oldest of old friends. You have heard me speak of Rene Macdonald? This is he.”

“I know M. Rene Macdonald very well,” says madame, smiling, and holding out her hand. “I have heard his name on an average ten times a day for the last three years. I think I may claim him as an acquaintance of my own, however. I am almost certain I have met him before.”

“Very likely, madame. I have been in Rome several months.”

“Not in Rome—at a certain school fete, at a certain quaint little Canadian town. A young person we both knew played the role of Marie Stuart, and two young gentlemen, sitting near a certain elderly lady, very fully and freely discussed the actress.”

“Pardon,” Rene says, laughing; “I recollect. Madame has excellent ears and eyes, to remember so long and so well.”

“Grandmamma never forgets a face or a name,” says Miss Valentine, quite proudly; “she is gifted with second sight, I think. Dear me! how very, very long ago that day seems now.”

“Life has dragged so wearily, you see, monsieur,” says madame, pinching one rosy ear, “with this young lady since she has been torn from her island friends. Three years appear like a little forever, do you hear? But I know to my cost, that, ‘though lost to sight to memory dear,’ Johnny, Rene, lnno, Weesy, notre mère—the changes have been rung on those beloved names every day, and many times a day, since.”

“And madame has been bored to extinction by us all,” says M. Rene. “I fear so much of us in the past will naturally prejudice you against us in the present.”

“It will not be difficult to make you an exception, young sir,” grandmamma says, graciously. She is in high good-humor with herself, her heiress, and all the world to-day. “Here come Sir Vane and la contessa.”

They come up, surprised in their turn, but in a moment la contessa has recognized an acquaintance. “Il Signore Scultore!” she exclaims. “My dear Dolo, I told you I was having a bust of myself done, did I not? No! Then I am. I go to the signore’s studio every day. You must come with me to-morrow and see it. The signore does the most exquisite things, I assure you.”

Sir Vane, standing a little apart, comes forward at this moment, and there is a presentation. Rene bows rather stiffly, and in a moment recognizes the dark, nameless stranger whom he, and Snowball, and Johnny rowed over from St. Gildas that evening years ago.

“So you are the man,” thinks Rene, eying him with but half-hidden disdain; “and you came as a spy.”

They meet there, on the mountain side, and the Valentines go home, through the lovely starlit dusk. Rene Macdonald stands and watches them out of sight, pleasure, pain, he hardly knows which, the stronger feeling within him. It is the half-forgotten emotion, awakened for the first time on that night madame has recalled, stirring its nearly extinct embers into a glow once more. How lovely she has grown—but was she not always lovely? He used not to see it in those old days, blind mole that he was. And she has not changed—it is the old Snowball, with the life and sparkle, as of yore, in those starry blue eyes, with sweetness, and truth, and repartee still on her lips. Her words are not very sweet—never have been—but too much sweetness cloys, a little acidity flavors the flatness of life’s nectar. Who would not prefer lemonade to eau sucree? Underneath it all, sparkle, and malice, and retort, he has seen joy—deepest, fullest joy at meeting him. Her arms have clasped and held him, her first words have been words of gladdest greeting. Dear, dear, dearest little Snowball! unspoiled by flattery, by wealth, by adulations, by the world. What a prize she will be for the man who wins her! And that reminds him—he dislikes and distrusts Sir Vane Valentine. To come to the island, to accept its hospitality, as a spy! A chill feeling of repulsion fills him. Will they—dare they think of giving Snowball, fresh, bright, pure, a child in heart, to him? Faugh! the thought sickens him. He has heard of this Milordo Valentine, that he is a screw in money matters, a man not liked by men, a toad hunter, a tame tabby. He is old, too, fully twenty years her senior. Oh! it would be monstrous. Surely Snowball would never consent. In a very meditative mood, indeed, il Signore Scultore betakes himself to his lodgings and his atelier. It is an appartamento not far from the grand Palazzo Paladino, a studio on the ground floor, and two or three private rooms al secondo. He can see the long rows of windows of the Palazzetto, sparkling like great diamonds, hear its sonorously sweet music swelling in the soft night air. La contessa gives one of her balls to-night. He descends to his studio, deserted now by the workmen, lowers a swinging brass lamp, uncovers a marble figure, and looks at it.

It is a girl, standing on a windy headland, her hair blown back, her face bent eagerly forward, one hand shading her eyes, gazing over the sea. The face is full of impatient expectation, every curve instinct with grace—the grace of youthful strength and symmetry in repose. An Italian girl has been his model for the figure, the arms, the pose of the head—the face has been wrought from the model of a face in his mind. How often he has seen Snowball stand on Point Lookout, with the sunset lights in her face, her flaxen hair streaming like a yellow banner in the gale, waiting for Johnny and the Boule-de-neige to come in. He stands, half smiling, and gazes long, then, with an impatient sigh, recovers it, and goes over to one of the windows. He leans with folded arms on the gray stone, and gazes thoughtfully and a little troubled, at the flashing lights of the Palazetto. How wildly sweet those Strauss waltzes peal! Many carriages flash by and draw up in line. Is the Valentine equipage among them, he wonders; is she entering those “marble halls” at this moment, on the arm of the odious milordo.

Next day, what he has hoped for, but hardly dared expect, comes to pass. When la contessa arrives to sit for the bust, Miss Valentine is with her. But—his workmen around him, the double doors of his studio open to the world, the sculptor at his work is a dreamer of dreams no more. On the contrary, he is rather a despotic young autocrat. He places la contessa, gives her her directions, requests Miss Valentine rather peremptorily to, amuse herself with a volume of designs in the recess of a window, and not talk. That young lady opens her blue eyes at the tone—it is one she has not been used to of late—then smiles a little to herself, and proceeds to examine every article in the studio. In due course she reaches the statue called “Waiting,” and twitches off the covering unceremoniously. There is a faint feminine exclamation. Rene, chipping and cutting in silence, is thrilled by it. Then she stands, as he did last night, a very long time looking at it. She glances at him once, rather shyly, but his eyes—dark and stern they look to-day—are fixed on the marble features of the Contessa Paladino. At last she obeys his first command—goes to the window recess, takes up the big book and tries to interest herself in the pictures. But she cannot—her thoughts interest her more. She lies back dreamily, and looks out of the window instead. A flood of quivering sunbeams, the sound of bird voices, the flutter of multitudinous leaves, an odor of roses and jasmine, the plash of a fountain down in the stone court—that is what she sees and hears. She is in a dream. Rene is yonder—the brother she loves; she wishes she could sit here and go on dreaming forever!

The sitting ends. A shower of silvery chatter from the vivacious young countess proclaims it as she rises, and flutters her silky skirts. She admires il Signore Scultore very much—la contessa. He is handsomer, she thinks, than any work of art in his studio—she admires those lustrous, beautiful, dark, grave eyes of his, that reticent, stately manner. If only one could have all this and that, too, she sometimes has thought. All this means the glory of the world, and the splendor thereof—a big palazzo, family diamonds, weekly balls, all that comes when one accepts a noble husband with sixty years and much gout. That stands for a tall, slender artist sposo, with handsome eyes and grave glances, a dark Saint Sebastian sort of face, and a perfect manner. Only these things never go together, and one must take which one likes best—no mortal is so favored by the gods as to have all.

Madam Valentine, going home from her afternoon outing on the Corso, drives up in state, presently, for her granddaughter, Sir Vane in attendance as a matter of course, and offers him a commission. Will he make her a bust of Dolores? She has wished for one a very long time, but never could induce the restless child to sit. She exclaims at the beauty of la contessa’s, and some others, for though Rene dislikes portraits, he accepts commissions as yet, being much too poor in fact to decline. One or two rather great people have sat to him; he is beginning to be known and talked of, and to swim away to the golden shore of success. Will he execute a bust of Miss Valentine, and will he be so very good——? It is a blank check madame offers in her most empress like manner, “and M. Rene will fill it up to suit himself.”

An angry glow suffuses the olive pallor of his face for a moment; then his eyes lift, fall on the young lady in question, and the reply on his lips—a rather haughty reply, too, dies. What business have impecunious young marble carvers with pride? it is a sin for their betters. Let him take his blank check, fill it in handsomely, and put it in his pocket. If madame deals with him as a queen, is she not the Great Begum he called her? Does she not so deal with all tradesmen whose wares she purchases? Let him pocket his pride and his price, do his work, take his wage, and be thankful. Snowball will be here daily, and for many hours each day; she looks as if she would like the sittings to begin this moment.

And so M. Rene Macdonald bows in that grande seigneur manner of his la Contessa so much admires, and which would be much more in keeping with the eternal fitness of things, madame thinks, if he wrote his name Don Rene; and it is settled that Miss Valentine is to be immortalized in marble, and that the sittings are to commence at once.