“She says that to get me away,” Ambient remarked to me, laughing; after which he started for the doctor’s.
I remained there with Mrs. Ambient, though our conversation had more pauses than speeches. The boy’s little fixed white face seemed, as before, to plead with me to stay, and after a while it produced still another effect, a very curious one, which I shall find it difficult to express. Of course I expose myself to the charge of attempting to give fantastic reasons for an act which may have been simply the fruit of a native want of discretion; and indeed the traceable consequences of that perversity were too lamentable to leave me any desire to trifle with the question. All I can say is that I acted in perfect good faith, and that Dolcino’s friendly little gaze gradually kindled the spark of my inspiration. What helped it to glow were the other influences,—the silent, suggestive garden-nook, the perfect opportunity (if it was not an opportunity for that, it was an opportunity for nothing), and the plea that I speak of, which issued from the child’s eyes, and seemed to make him say, “The mother that bore me and that presses me here to her bosom—sympathetic little organism that I am—has really the kind of sensibility which she has been represented to you as lacking; if you only look for it patiently and respectfully. How is it possible that she should n’t have it? How is it possible that I should have so much of it (for I am quite full of it, dear, strange gentleman), if it were not also in some degree in her? I am my father’s child, but I am also my mother’s, and I am sorry for the difference between them!” So it shaped itself before me, the vision of reconciling Mrs. Ambient with her husband, of putting an end to their great disagreement The project was absurd, of course, for had I not had his word for it—spoken with all the bitterness of experience—that the gulf that divided them was wellnigh bottomless? Nevertheless, a quarter of an hour after Mark had left us, I said to his wife that I could n’t get over what she told me the night before about her thinking her husband’s writings “objectionable.” I had been so very sorry to hear it, had thought of it constantly, and wondered whether it were not possible to make her change her mind. Mrs. Ambient gave me rather a cold stare; she seemed to be recommending me to mind my own business. I wish I had taken this mute counsel, but I did not. I went on to remark that it seemed an immense pity so much that was beautiful should be lost upon her.
“Nothing is lost upon me,” said Mrs. Ambient “I know they are very beautiful.”
“Don’t you like papa’s books?” Dolcino asked, addressing his mother, but still looking at me. Then he added to me, “Won’t you read them to me, American gentleman?”
“I would rather tell you some stories of my own,” I said. “I know some that are very interesting.” “When will you tell them? To-morrow?” “To-morrow, with pleasure, if that suits you.” Mrs. Ambient was silent at this. Her husband, during our walk, had asked me to remain another day; my promise to her son was an implication that I had consented, and it is not probable that the prospect was agreeable to her. This ought, doubtless, to have made me more careful as to what I said next; but all I can say is that it did n’t. I presently observed that just after leaving her the evening before, and after hearing her apply to her husband’s writings the epithet I had already quoted, I had, on going up to my room, sat down to the perusal of those sheets of his new book which he had been so good as to lend me. I had sat entranced till nearly three in the morning. I had read them twice over. “You say you have n’t looked at them. I think it ‘s such a pity you should n’t Do let me beg you to take them up. They are so very remarkable. I ‘m sure they will convert you. They place him in—really—such a dazzling light. All that is best in him is there. I have no doubt it’s a great liberty, my saying all this; but excuse me, and do read them!”
“Do read them, mamma!” Dolcino repeated; “do read them!”
She bent her head and closed his lips with a kiss. “Of course I know he has worked immensely over them,” she said; and after this she made no remark, but sat there looking thoughtful, with her eyes on the ground. The tone of these last words was such as to leave me no spirit for further pressure, and after expressing a fear that her husband had not found the doctor at home, I got up and took a turn about the grounds. When I came back, ten minutes later, she was still in her place watching her boy, who had fallen asleep in her lap. As I drew near she put her finger to her lips, and a moment afterwards she rose, holding the child, and murmured something about its being better that he should go upstairs. I offered to carry him, and held out my hands to take him; but she thanked me and turned away with the child seated on her arm, his head on her shoulder. “I am very strong,” she said, as she passed into the house, and her slim, flexible figure bent backwards with the filial weight So I never touched Dolcino.
I betook myself to Ambient’s study, delighted to have a quiet hour to look over his books by myself. The windows were open into the garden; the sunny stillness, the mild light of the English summer, filled the room, without quite chasing away the rich dusky tone which was a part of its charm, and which abode in the serried shelves where old morocco exhaled the fragrance of curious learning, and in the brighter intervals, where medals and prints and miniatures were suspended upon a surface of faded stuff. The place had both color and quiet; I thought it a perfect room for work, and went so far as to say to myself that, if it were mine to sit and scribble in, there was no knowing but that I might learn to write as well as the author of Beltraffio. This distinguished man did not turn up, and I rummaged freely among his treasures. At last I took down a book that detained me awhile, and seated myself in a fine old leather chair by the window to turn it over. I had been occupied in this way for half-an-hour,—a good part of the afternoon had waned,—when I became conscious of another presence in the room, and, looking up from my quarto, saw that Mrs. Ambient, having pushed open the door in the same noiseless way that marked, or disguised, her entrance the night before, had advanced across the threshold. On seeing me she stopped; she had not, I think, expected to find me. But her hesitation was only of a moment; she came straight to her husband’s writing-table as if she were looking for something. I got up and asked her if I could help her. She glanced about an instant, and then put her hand upon a roll of papers which I recognized, as I had placed it in that spot in the morning on coming down from my room.
“Is this the new book?” she asked, holding it up. “The very sheets, with precious annotations.” “I mean to take your advice;” and she tucked the little bundle under her arm. I congratulated her cordially, and ventured to make of my triumph, as I presumed to call it, a subject of pleasantry. But she was perfectly grave, and turned away from me, as she had presented herself, without a smile; after which I settled down to my quarto again, with the reflection that Mrs. Ambient was a queer woman. My triumph, too, suddenly seemed to me rather vain. A woman who could n’t smile in the right place would never understand Mark Ambient. He came in at last in person, having brought the doctor back with him. “He was away from home,” Mark said, “and I went after him, to where he was supposed to be. He had left the place, and I followed him to two or three others, which accounts for my delay.” He was now with Mrs. Ambient looking at the child, and was to see Mark again before leaving the house. My host noticed, at the end of ten minutes, that the proof-sheets of his new book had been removed from the table; and when I told him, in reply to his question as to what I knew about them, that Mrs. Ambient had carried them off to read, he turned almost pale for an instant with surprise. “What has suddenly made her so curious?” he exclaimed; and I was obliged to tell him that I was at the bottom of the mystery. I had had it on my conscience to assure her that she really ought to know of what her husband was capable. “Of what I am capable? Elle ne s’en dottie que trop!” said Ambient, with a laugh; but he took my meddling very good-naturedly, and contented himself with adding that he was very much afraid she would burn up the sheets, with his emendations, of which he had no duplicate. The doctor paid a long visit in the nursery, and before he came down I retired to my own quarters, where I remained till dinner-time. On entering the drawing-room at this hour, I found Miss Ambient in possession, as she had been the evening before.
“I was right about Dolcino,” she said, as soon as she saw me, with a strange little air of triumph. “He is really very ill.”