III
I don't know how it is that certain people, without doing or saying anything that can be taken hold of, yet manage to convey to us a very definite and constant sense that they think themselves our betters. Oh, of course, there are people who ostentatiously carry their heads in the air, who openly swagger, patronise, condescend, but those are not the people I mean. I mean the people who are outwardly all pleasantness and respectful courtesy, and inwardly very likely all goodwill, and yet—and yet—we are somehow never allowed for an instant to forget that never do they for an instant become unconscious of their divinely appointed superiority.
“La Duchesse d'Oltramare, née Comtesse de Wohenhoffen,” to copy the legend from her visiting-card, was rather a fat, distinctly an amiable woman of fifty-something, very smartly turned out in the matter of costume by those who are surely the cleverest milliners and dressmakers in the world, the Viennese. She had a milk-white skin, with a little pink in the scarcely wrinkled cheeks, and plump, smooth, milk-white hands, with polished, rosy nails. For the rest, her smiling mouth, the gleam of her grey eyes, and something crisp in the quality of her voice, seemed to connote wit and a sense of humour. Her son had described her to himself as the best-natured and the most sociable being alive; certainly on the morrow, at luncheon, she was all pleasantness, all cordiality even, to her son's guests; yet never, for an instant, could one of them forget that she was perpetually conscious of herself as a great personage, and of them as relatively very small folk indeed. I wish I could tell, I wish I could understand, how the thing was done. Of patronage or condescension—of the sort, at any rate, that could be formulated and resented—there wasn't any trace either in her talk or in her manner; nor of stiffness, pomposity, selfimportance. All pleasantness, all cordiality, she seemed to take them at once into her friendship, almost into her affection—she seemed to conceive (as Bertram had promised himself she would) a particular liking for each of them. And her talk was easy, merry, vivacious, intimate. Yet—yet—yet——
“I'd give a thousand pounds,” said Pontycroft, as they drove home, “for that woman's secret. She knows how to appear the joiliest old soul unhung—and to make other people feel like her fiddlers three.”
“She's insufferable,” said Lucilla irritably. “I should think a Pontycroft and the wife of an English baronet is as good as six foreign duchesses. I should like to put her in her place.”
“A Pontycroft, as much as you will,” concurred her brother suavely, “but you're only the wife of an Irish baronet, dear girl. No, it's something subtle, unseizable. Every word, look, gesture, hailed you as her friend and equal, and all of them together delicately kept you reminded that she was deigning hugely to honour a nobody. It's sheer odylic force.”
“She ate like five,” Lucilla went spitefully on. “She was helped twice to everything. And she emptied at least a whole bottle of wine.”
“Ah, well, as for that,” Ponty said, “a healthy appetite is a sign that its owner is human at the red-ripe of the heart. You didn't, by the by, do so badly yourself.”
“And she consumed her food with an air,” Lucilla persisted, “with a kind of devotional absorption, as if feeding herself was a religious sacrifice.”
“And I suppose you noticed also that she called Ruth 'my dear'?” Ponty asked.
“Yes, as if she was a dairymaid,” sniffed Lucilla. “I wonder you didn't turn and rend her.”
“Oh, I liked her,” Ruth replied. “You see, we mere Americans are so inured to being treated with affability and put at our ease by our English cousins that we scarcely notice such things in foreigners.”
“Well, it's lucky you like her,” said Ponty, wagging his head, “for you're in a fair way to see a good bit of her, if events move as they're moving. The crucial question, of course, is whether she liked you. If she did, I should call the deal as good as done.”
The “deal” seemed, at any rate, to advance a measurable step when, on the following afternoon, the Duchess called at the villa, for the purpose, as Pontycroft afterwards put it to Ruth, of “taking up your character.”
“Dearest Lady Dor,” she said, beaming upon every one, and I wish I could render the almost cooing loving-kindness of her intonation, “you will forgive me if I come like this à l'improviste? Yes? I was so anxious to see you again, and when people are mutually sympathetic, it is a pity to let time or etiquette delay the progress of their friendship, don't you think? Oh, kind Mr. Pontycroft,” she purred, as Ponty handed her a cup of tea. “Dear little Miss Adgate,” as Ruth passed the bread and butter.
They drank their tea in the great hall, and afterwards, linking her arm familiarly in Lucilla's, “Dearest Lady Dor,” she pronounced, in the accents of one pleading for a grace, “I am so anxious to see your beautiful garden! You will show it to me? Yes? My son has told me so much about it.”
And when she and Lucilla, under their sunshades, were alone in the garden-paths, “The outlook is magnificent,” she vowed, with enthusiasm. “You have Florence at your feet. Superb. Oh, the lovely roses! I might pick one—a little one? Yes? Ah, so kind. I wanted to ask about your charming little friend, that nice Miss Adgate.”
“Oh?” said Lucilla, in a tone of some remoteness.
But the Duchess did not appear to notice it. “Yes,” she blithely pursued. “You don't mind? My son has told me so much about her. She is an American, I think?”
“Yes,” said Lucilla.
The Duchess's eyes glowed with admiration.
“Your ilex trees are wonderful—I have never seen grander ones. I am really envious. She has nice manners, and is distinguished-looking as well as pretty. I believe she is also—how do you say in English—très bien dotée?”
“She has about thirty thousand a year, I believe,” said Lucilla.
The Duchess stood still and all but gasped. “Thirty thousand pounds? Pounds sterling?” Then she resumed her walk. “But that is princely. That is nearly a million francs.”
“It is a decent income,” Lucilla admitted.
“And she is also, of course, what you call—well born?” the Duchess threw out, as if the question were superfluous and its answer foregone.
“She is what we call a gentlewoman,” answered Lucilla.
“To be sure—of course,” said the Duchess, “but—but without a title?”
“In England titles are not necessary to gentility—as I believe they are in Austria,” Lucilla mentioned.
“To be sure—of course,” said the Duchess. “Her parents, I think, are not living?”
“No—they are dead,” Lucilla redundantly responded.
“Ah, so sad,” murmured the Duchess, with a sympathetic movement of her bonnet. “But then she is quite absolute mistress of her fortune? What a responsibility for one so young. And to crown all, she is a good pious Catholic?”
“She is a Catholic,” said Lucilla.
“The house, from here, is really imposing—really signorile,” the Duchess declared, considering it through her silver-framed double eyeglass. “There are no houses like these old Florentine villas. Ah, they were a lovely race. You see, my son is very much interested in her. I have never known him to show so much interest in a girl before. It is natural I should wish to inform myself, is it not? If you will allow me, dear Lady Dor, to make you a confidence, I should be so glad to see him married.”
“Yes,” said Lucilla. “I suppose,” she hesitated, “I suppose it is quite possible for him, in spite of his belonging to a reigning house, to marry a commoner?”
The Duchess looked vague. “A reigning house?” she repeated, politely uncomprehending.
“The Bertrandoni-Altronde,” Lucilla disjointedly explained.
“Oh,” said the Duchess, with a little toss of the head. “The Bertrandoni do not count. They have not reigned for three generations, and they will never reign again. They have no more chance of reigning than they have of growing wings. The Altrondesi would not have them if they came bringing paradise in their hands. My husband's pretensions are absurd, puerile. He keeps them up merely that he may a little flatter himself that he is not too flagrantly the inferior of his wife. No, the Bertrandoni do not count. It is the Wohenhoffens who count. The Wohenhoffens were great lords and feudal chiefs in Styria centuries before the first Bertrandoni won his coat of arms. It was already a vast waiving of rank, it was just not a mésalliance, when a Wohenhoffen gave his daughter to a Bertrandoni in marriage. If my son were a Wohenhoffen in the male line, then indeed he could not possibly marry a commoner. But he is, after all, only a Bertrandoni. Even so, he could not marry a commoner of any of the Continental states—he could not marry outside the Almanach de Gotha. But in England, as you say, it is different. There all are commoners except the House of Peers, and a title is not necessary to good noblesse. In any case, it would be for the Wohenhoffens, not for the Bertrandoni, to raise objections.”
“I see,” said Lucilla.
The Duchess, by a gesture, proposed a return to the house.
“Thank you so much,” she said, “for receiving me so kindly, and for answering all my tiresome questions. You have set my mind quite at ease. Your garden is perfect—even more beautiful than my son had led me to expect. And the view of Florence! You have children of your own? Ah, daughters. No, boys? Ah, but you are young. The proper thing for him to do, of course, as she is without parents, would be to address himself to your good brother?”
“As it is not my brother whom he wishes to marry,” said Lucilla, “I should think the proper thing might be for him to address the young lady herself.”
The Duchess laughed. “Ah, you English are so unconventional,” she said.
But after the Duchess had left them, and Lucilla had reported her cross-examination, “You see,” said Ponty, with an odd effect of discontent in the circumstance, “it is as I told you—the deal is practically done. Now that mamma has taken up your character, and found it satisfactory, it only remains for—for Mr. Speaker to put the question. Well,” his voice sounded curiously joyless, “I wish you joy.”
“Thank you,” said Ruth, who did not look especially joyful.
There was a silence for a few minutes; then Ponty got up and strolled off into the garden; whither, in a few minutes more, Lucilla followed him.
“What's the matter, Harry?” she asked. “You seem a bit hipped.”
He gave her a rather forced smile. “I feel silly and grown old,” he said. “Suppose it's all a ghastly mistake?”
“A mistake——?” Lucilla faltered.
“Oh,” he broke out, with a kind of gloomy petulance, “it was all very well so long as it hung fire. One joked about it, chaffed her about it. Deep down in one's inside one didn't believe it would ever really come to anything. But now? Marriage, you see, when you examine the bare bones of it, is a damnably serious business. After all, it involves sanctities. Suppose she doesn't care for him?”
Lucilla looked bewildered. “Dear me,” she said. “The other day you assured me that she did.”
“Perhaps she does—but suppose she doesn't? I was talking in the air. Down deep one didn't believe. But this official visit from Mamma! We're suddenly at grip with an actuality. If she doesn't care for him—by Jove,” he nodded portentously, “you and I will have something to answer for. It's a threadbare observation, but all at once it glitters with pristine truth, that a woman who marries a man without loving him sells her soul to the devil.”
“If she doesn't love him, she won't accept him. Why should she?” said Lucilla.
“And the worst of selling your soul to the devil,” Pontycroft went morosely on, “is that the sly old beggar gives you nothing for it. Legends like Faust, where he gives beauty, youth, wealth, unlimited command of the pleasures of the world and the flesh, are based upon entire misinformation as to his real way of doing business. Look here; the devil has been acquiring souls continuously for the past five thousand years. Practice has made him a perfect dab at the process—and he was born a perfect Jew. You may be sure he doesn't go about paying the first price asked—not he. He bides his time. He waits till he catches you in a scrape, or desperately hard up, or drunk, or out of your proper cool wits with anger, pride, lust, whichever of the seven deadly impulses you will, and then he grinds you like a money-lender, or chouses you like a sharper at a fair. Silver or gold gives he none, at most a handful of gilded farthings. And I know one man to whom he gave—well, guess. Nothing better than a headache the next morning. Oh, trust the devil. He knows his trade.”
“Goodness gracious!” said Lucilla, and eyed her brother with perplexity. The wrinkles of his brow were black and deep. “You are in a state of mind. What has happened to you? Don't be a bird of evil omen. There's no question here of souls or devils—it's just a question of a very suitable match between young people who are fond of each other. Come! Don't be a croaker. I never knew you to croak like this before.”
“Hang it all,” answered Ponty, “I never had occasion. She's refused every one. Why does she suddenly make up her mind to accept this one? Well, I only hope it isn't because she thinks at last she has got her money's worth of titular dignity. Her Serene Highness the Princess!”
“Goodness gracious!” said Lucilla. “I don't understand you. Would you wish her to go on refusing people until she died an old maid?”
“I'll tell you one thing, anyhow—but under the rose,” said Ponty.
“Yes?” said Lucilla, with curiosity.
“I'll bet you nine and elevenpence three-farthings that I can beat you at a game of tennis.”
“Oh,” said Lucilla, dashed. But after a moment, cheerfully, “Done,” she assented. “I don't want to win your money—but anything to restore you to your normal self.” They set off for the tennis court.