I
PONTYCROFT was really, as men go, a tallish man,—above, at any rate, what they call the medium height,—say five feet ten or eleven. But seated, like a Turk or a tailor—as he was seated now on the lawn of Villa Santa Cecilia, and as it was very much his ridiculous custom to sit,—with his head sunk forward and his legs curled up beneath him, making a mere torso of himself, he left you rather with an impression of him as short. That same sunken head, by the by, was a somewhat noticeable head; noticeably big; covered by a thick growth, close-cropped, of fawn-coloured hair; broad, with heavy bumps over the thick fawn-coloured eyebrows; the forehead traversed by many wrinkles, vertical and horizontal, deep almost as if they had been scored with a knife. It was a white forehead, but the face below, abruptly from the hat-line, was as brown as sun and open air could burn it, red-brown and lean, showing its sub-structure of bone: not by any means a handsome face; nay, with its short nose, perilously near a snub, its forward-thrust chin, deeply-cleft in the middle, its big mouth and the short fawn-coloured moustache that bristled on the lip, decidedly a plain face; yet decidedly too, somehow, a distinguished, very decidedly a pleasing face—shrewd, humorous, friendly; capable, trustworthy—lighted by grey eyes that seemed always to be smiling.
They were certainly smiling at this moment, as he looked off towards Florence, (where it lay under a thin drift of pearl-dust in the sun-filled valley), and spoke in his smiling masculine voice.
“Up at the villa—down in the city,” he said. “I never could sympathise with that Italian person of quality. Surely, it's a thousand times jollier to be up at the villa. Then one can look down upon the city, and admire it as a feature of the landscape, and thank goodness one isn't there.”
Ruth's eyes (with the red glint in them) laughed at him. She sat leaning back on a rustic bench, a few yards away, under a mighty ilex. She wore a frock of pale green muslin, and her garden-hat had fallen on the ground beside her, so that what breeze there was could make free with her hair.
“You are not an Italian person of quality, you see,” she said. “You are a beef-eating Britisher, and retain a barbaric fondness for the greenwood tree. You are like Peter Bell, who never felt the witchery of the soft blue sky. You have never felt the witchery of brick and mortar.”
Pontycroft, puffing his cigarette, regarded her through the smoke with a feint of thoughtful curiosity.
“The worst thing about the young people of your generation,” he remarked, assuming the tone of one criticising from an altitude, “is that you have no conversation. Talk, among you, consists exclusively of personalities—gossip or chaff. Now, I was on the point of drawing a really rather neat little philosophical analogy; and you, instead of playing flint to steel, instead of encouraging me with a show of intelligent interest, check my inspiration with idle, personal chaff. Still, hatless young girls in greenery-whitery frocks, if they have plenty of reddish hair, add a very effective note to the foreground of a garden; and I suppose one should be content with them as they are.”
Ruth ostentatiously “composed a face,” bending her head at the angle of intentness, lifting her eyebrows, making her eyes big and rapt.
“There,” she said, taking a deep breath, “I hope that is a show of intelligent interest. Let me hear your really rather neat little philosophical analogy.”
“No,” said Pontycroft, with a melancholy shake of the head, “that is only a show of the irreverence of youth for age. What is the fun of my being a hundred years your elder, if you are not to treat me with proportionate respect? And as for my analogy (which, perhaps, on second thoughts, is not so neat as I fancied), if I give it utterance, I shall do so simply for the sake of clarifying it to myself. It has reference to the everlasting problem of evil. Human life is like a city; and a city seen from a distance”—he waved his cigarette towards Florence—“is like human life taken as a whole. Taken piecemeal, bit by bit, as it passes, life dismays us, and terribly tries our faith, by the Evil it presents: the pain, disease, foul play, inequalities, injustices, what you will: just as a city, when we are in its streets, revolts us with its dirt, decay, squalor, stagnant air, noise, confusion, and its sordid population. But just as the city seen from a distance, just as Florence seen from here, loses all its piecemeal ugliness, and melts into a beautiful and harmonious unity, so human life viewed as a whole.... Well, you have my analogy—which, perhaps, after all, is really rather banal. Ah me, I wish I could marry you off. Why do you so systematically refuse all the brilliant offers that I so tirelessly contrive for you?”
But Ruth seemed not to have heard his question, though he underlined it by looking up at her with a frown of grave anxiety.
“Unfortunately for us human beings,” she said, “no one has yet invented a process by which we can live our life as a whole. It's all very well to talk of viewing it, but we have to live it; and we have to live it piecemeal, bit by bit.”
“Well,” demanded Pontycroft, cheerfully inconsequent, “what can we ask better? Given health, wealth, and a little wisdom, it's extremely pleasant to live our life piecemeal. It's extremely pleasant to take it bit by bit, when the bits are sweet. And what, for instance, could be a sweeter bit than this?” His lean brown hand described a comprehensive circle. “A bright, crisp, cool, warm September morning; a big beautiful garden, full of fragrant airs; Italian sunshine, and the shade of ilexes; oleanders in blossom; cool turf to lie on, and a fountain tinkling cool music near at hand; then, beyond there, certainly the loveliest prospect in the world to feed our eyes—Val d'Arno, with its olive-covered hills, its cypresses, its white-walled villas, and Florence shining like a cut gem in the midst. Add good tobacco to smoke, and a simple child in white-green muslin, with plenty of reddish hair, to try one's analogies upon. What could man wish better? Why don't you get married? Why do you so perversely reject all the eligible suitors that I trot out for your inspection?”
Ruth's eyes laughed at him again. It was a laugh of frank amusement, but I think there was something dangerous in it too, a quick flash of mockery, even of menace and defiance.
“Among the train there is a swain I dearly lo' mysel',” she lightly sang, her head thrown back. “But you've never trotted him out. I don't get married'—detestable expression—because the only man I've ever seriously cared for has never asked me.” She sighed—regretfully, resignedly; and made him a comical little face.
Pontycroft studied her for a moment. Then, “Ho!” he scoffed. “A good job, too. I wasn't aware that you'd ever seriously cared for any one; but if you have—believe me, he's the last man living you should think of tying up with. The people we care for in our calf-period are always the wrong people.”
Ruth raised her eyebrows. “Calf-period? How pretty—but how sadly misapplied. I'm twenty-four years old. Besides, the person I care for is the right person, the rightest of all right persons, absolutely the one rightest person in the world.”
“Who is he?” Pontycroft asked carelessly, lighting a fresh cigarette.
Still again Ruth's eyes laughed at him. “What's his name and where's his hame I dinna care to tell,” again she sang.
“Pooh!” said Pontycroft, blowing the subject from him in a whiff of smoke. “He's a baseless fabrication. He's a herring you've just invented to draw across the trail of my inquiries. But even if he were authentic, he wouldn't matter, since he's well-advised enough not to sue for your hand. Have you ever heard of a man called Bertrando Bertrandoni?”
“Bertrando Bertrandoni—Phoebus! what a name!” laughed Ruth.
“Yes,” assented Pontycroft, “it's a trifle cumbrous, also perhaps a trifle flamboyant. So his English friends (he was educated in England, and you'd never know he wasn't English) have docked it to simple Bertram. Have you ever heard of him?”
“I don't think so,” said Ruth, shaking her head.
“And yet he's a pretty well-known man,” said Pontycroft. “He writes—every now and then you'll see an article of his in one of the reviews. He paints, too—you'll see his pictures at the Salon; and plays the fiddle, and sings. A jack-of-many-trades, but, by exception, really rather a dab at 'em all. A sportsman besides—goes in for yachtin', huntin', fencin'. But over and above all that, a thorough good sort and a most amusing companion—a fellow who can talk, a fellow who's curious about things. Finally, a Serene and Semi-Royal Highness.”
“Oh?” questioned Ruth, wondering.
“Ah,” said Pontycroft, “you prick up your pretty ears. Yes, a Serene and Semi-Royal Highness. Has it ever struck you how chuckle-headed—saving their respect—our ancestors were? I suppose they drank the wrong sort of tea. Anyhow, they were mistaken about nearly everything, and most of their mistakes they elevated to the dignity of maxims. Now, for example, they had a maxim about Silence being golden, and another about Curiosity being a vice. It's pitiful to think of the enormous number of more or less tedious anecdotes they laboriously imagined to illustrate and enforce those two profound untruths. Silence golden? My dear, silence is simply piggish. Your silent man is simply a monstrous Egotist, who, in what should be the reciprocal game of conversation, takes without giving—allows himself to be entertained, perhaps enriched, at his interlocuter's expense, and is too soddenly self-complacent to feel that he owes anything in return. Oh, I know, you'll plead shyness for him—you'll tell me he doesn't speak because he's shy. In a certain number of cases, I grant, that is the fact. But what then? Why, shyness is Egotism multiplied by itself. Your shy person is a person so sublimely (or infernally) conscious of his own existence and his own importance, so penetrated by the conviction that he is the centre of the Universe and that all eyes are fixed upon him, and therewith so concerned about the effect he may produce, the figure he may cut, that he dare not move lest he shouldn't produce an heroic effect or cut an Olympian figure. And then, curiosity! A vice? Look here. You are born, with eyes, ears, and a brain, into a world that God created. You have eyes, ears, and a brain, and all round you is a world that God created—and yet you are not curious about it. A world that God created, and that man, your duplicate man, lives in; a world in which everything counts, small things as well as big things—the farthest planet and the trifling-est affair of your next-door neighbour, the course of Empire and the price of figs. But no—God's world, man's life—they leave you cold, they fail to interest you; you glance indifferently at them, they hardly seem worth your serious attention, you shrug and turn away. 'Tis a world that God created, and you treat it as if it were a child's mud-pie! Good heavens! And the worst of it is that the people who do that are mightily proud of themselves in their smug fashion. Curiosity is a vice and a weakness; they are above it. My sweet child, no single good thing has ever happened to mankind, no single forward step has ever been taken in what they call human progress, but it has been primarily due to some one's 'curiosity.'” He brought the word out with a flourish, making it big. Then he lay back, and puffed hard at his cigarette.
“Go on,” urged Ruth demurely. “Please don't stop. I like half-truths, and as for quarter-truths, I perfectly adore them.”
“Bertram,” said Pontycroft, “is a fellow who can talk, and a fellow who's curious about things.”
“I see,” said Ruth. “And yet,” she reflected, as one trying to fit together incompatible ideas, “I think you let fall something about his being a Serene and Semi-Royal Highness.”
“My dear,” Pontycroft instructed her, “there are intelligent individuals in all walks of life. There are intelligent princes, there are even intelligent scientific persons. The Bertrandoni are the legitimate grand-dukes of Altronde, the old original dynasty. They were 'hurled from the throne,' I don't know how many years ago, in a revolution, and the actual reigning family, the Ceresini, have been in possession ever since. But Bertram's father is the Pretender. He calls himself the Duke of Oltramare, and lives in Paris—lives there, I grieve to state, in the full Parisian sense—is a professed viveur. I met him once, a handsome old boy, military-looking, red-faced, with a white moustache and imperial, and a genially wicked eye. Anyhow, there's one thing to his credit—he had Bertram educated at Harrow and Cambridge, instead of at one of these soul-destroying Continental universities. He and his Duchess never meet. She and Bertram are supposed to live in Venice, at the palace of the family, Cà Bertrandoni, though as a matter of fact you'll rarely find either of them at home. She spends most of her time in Austria, where she was born—a Wohenhoffen, if you please; there's no better blood. And Bertram is generally at the other end of the earth—familiarizing himself with the domestic manners of the Annamites, or the religious practices of the Patagonians. However, I believe lately he's dropped that sort of thing—given up travelling and settled down.”
“This is palpitatingly interesting,” said Ruth. “Is it all apropos of boots?”
Pontycroft put on his hat, and stood up.
“It's apropos,” he answered, “of your immortal welfare. I had a note from Bertram this morning to say he was in Florence, no farther away than that. I'm going down now to call on him, and I'll probably bring him back to luncheon. So tell Lucilla to have a plate laid for him. Also put on your best bib and tucker, and try to behave as nicely as you can. For if you should impress him favourably.... Ah me, I wish I could marry you off.”
“Ah me, I wish you could—to the man I care for,” responded Ruth, with dreamy eyes, and wistfulness real or feigned.