Part 28

To meet this little procession astonished Vanno, but the curé turned to smile at him without surprise. "Well met!" he said. "We are on our way to bless the villa. Last night after you went I received a letter from the Princess asking us to come this morning, as they are now quite settled. So here we are, these children and I. And I hoped that you would be lunching with your brother and sister-in-law, for it is a pretty ceremony, the blessing. You will tell them to-day--what has happened?"

The curé slackened his pace, for a talk with his Prince, and the acolytes walked ahead, two brilliant little figures, whose robes sent out faint whiffs of incense-perfume.

"Yes. I've come early on purpose to tell," said Vanno. "But the first business is the blessing of the house. That will put them in a good mood. I hope you are going to lunch with us afterward?"

"Yes. The Princess has been so kind as to ask me, and I will stay. If you like, I can say good things of Mademoiselle, your charming fiancée."

"That is what I was thinking!" Vanno admitted. "Do you know, Father, I've been incredibly stupid. You will hardly believe it when I tell you--but I have not yet found out her Christian name."

"_Tiens!_" exclaimed the curé. "You did not ask? But, my Principino, it is impossible. What did you call her?"

"If you must know, I called her 'Angel,' and 'Darling,' and perhaps a few other things like that. Any other name seemed quite unimportant at the time: but after I'd left her this morning at Mrs. Winter's (where she is going to visit, thank heaven!) it flashed into my mind that I'd never heard her name. It begins with 'M,' that's all I know. I couldn't very well rush back, ring the door bell, and inquire. I must find out somehow now without asking, as it's too absurd, when we've been engaged since yesterday afternoon."

Talking, they came near the edge of the olive wood, where a narrow lane divided the olives from a sea of pines. The white main road in the distance was empty, and silent with the digestive silence of Riviera thoroughfares at noon, when all the world, from millionaire to peasant, begins to think of the midday meal. Even motors were at rest, comfortably absorbing petrol and leaving the roads to sleep in peace. Far off among the trees Vanno caught a glimpse of two men picnicking, cabdrivers eating their bread and meat and drinking the rough red wine of the country, while their little _voitures_ stood a few yards away, the horses well in shade, their faces buried in nose-bags, and a miniature wolf-like dog asleep on the back of one. As Vanno and the priest drew nearer both men got up respectfully, wiping their smiling mouths. They seemed not at all astonished to see the figures in scarlet and white, with the swinging censer. And indeed it was a common enough sight in these woods, and elsewhere, the brilliant little procession for the blessing of houses, or for the last sacrament. The curé knew both men, for his parish extended from the old village of Roquebrune down to the outskirts of Mentone on one side and to St. Roman on the other. He asked one after a new wife, and of the other inquired for the health of his tiny dog, Pomponette. Nothing would do but the microscopic animal must be fetched from her ample bed on the horse's back, and displayed proudly. Her master, a very large dark man, stuck the dog into the breast of his coat, whence her miniature head protruded like a peculiar orchid.

"_C'est un bon garçon_," remarked the curé, when the bowings and politenesses were over, and they had got away. "A strange world this! He is the last of one of the greatest and oldest families of Southern France. For generations they have been in ruin, reduced to the life of peasants. Jacques cares not at all, and hardly remembers that he has in his veins blood nobler than some kings can boast. What would you? It is as well for him. We are not snobs, we southerners, Principino. And he is quite happy, with his little cab, his little white horse, and his little dog. He will marry a peasant--I think I know who, for she has embroidered a blanket for Pomponette. At one time he was conductor on the trams; but he was _triste_ because few of the passengers said good morning or good evening to him--and he is a friendly fellow. So he gave up his position on the trams. One would not find that in the north. They have their faults, these people, but I love them."

The woods of Cap Martin seemed to be populated by the curé's friends. As he and Vanno walked away from the picnickers, a woman, bareheaded, carrying a large basket, came toward them, followed by a very old man with his arms full of bundles. She too was of the peasant class, a noble creature past her youth, with the face of a middle-aged Madonna, and the bearing of a Roman matron of distinction. The old man, whose profile was clear as that of a king on a copper coin, was deeply lined and darkly sunburnt. His head, bald no doubt, was tied up in a crimson handkerchief that gave him the value of a rare picture by the hand of some old master. Seeing the curé, the pair stopped under an immense olive tree, a tree so twisted, so contorted that it seemed to have settled down to treehood only after the wild whirl of a mænad dance. Now in its old age, which had been youth in Cæsar's day, it was more like a gray, ruined tower than an olive tree. It had divided itself into a few crumbling, leaning walls with sad oriel windows and a broken ornamentation of queer gargoyles. Behind the woman with the basket and the old man with the red handkerchief was the distant background of the Prince's garden, like a drop curtain at a theatre: a wall overgrown with flowering creepers; the delicate tracery of wrought-iron gates between tall pillars; bare branches of peach and plum trees, pink as children's fingers held close before the fire, or the hands of Arab girls after the henna-staining; and two cypresses, close together, rising against the blue sky with pure architectural value. As they hurried along, the man and woman crushed under foot, without knowing what they did, the sheeny brown curves of wild orchids, "Jacks in the pulpit," that were like little hooded snakes rearing heads in rage, to guard the baby violets sprouting in the grass.

"This is Filomena, the cook I myself secured for your brother's house," said the curé; "the best cook and one of the best women on the coast. See, she is carrying our luncheon in her big basket. That shows how early you are, Principino. She is just back from the market at Mentone, where I'll warrant she was delayed by some nice bit of gossip. They love the marketing, these good creatures."

The woman, smiling charmingly, reached out a brown and shapely hand, rather workworn, which the curé shook, and proceeded to make her known to the Prince. Without hesitation or embarrassment she put out her hand to him also. In his, it felt hard and rough, yet glowing with health. It was quite a matter of course to Filomena to be introduced to the Prince, the brother of her new, exalted master, whom she had not until now had the pleasure of seeing, although she had cooked for him already many times. She remarked on this fact, with her bright, engaging smile. Her manner was perfectly respectful, yet free from servility. It would not have occurred to her that any one could have considered her little conversational outburst a liberty; and she proceeded to introduce the old man as her father.

"He has eighty-two years," she said, with a glance from the Prince to the curé, "yet he thinks little of walking down from our old home far, far away in the mountains in Italy, to pay me a visit. It was a surprise this time, his coming. I met him near the market, and profited by getting him to help with my parcels. Will Messieurs the Prince and Curé figure to themselves, he married my mother when their two ages together would not make thirty-five, and there in the mountains they brought up eight of us. But, after the marriage, they were still children. It was necessary for the priest to explain to my father why it is that the good God ordained marrying. And look at him now!"

She laughed gayly, and the old man, who could speak only a _patois_ from over the frontier, cackled without understanding what his daughter said. He guessed well that he was the subject of the conversation, and jokingly he reproved the middle-aged Madonna with a few toothless mutterings more like Latin than Italian, more Arabic than either.

"And now, Messieurs," Filomena finished, "we must be hurrying on, or the _déjeuner_ will be late. That would make me so angry, I should poison all the fishes if I were thrown into the sea! How Monsieur the Prince is handsome, and like my _patron_--yet different, too! Ah, it does seem to me, begging Monsieur the Curé's pardon, that now-a-days the good God is becoming more experienced and therefore fashioning finer men. When He first began, He was but young and had no practice, so it is not strange if He made mistakes."

"You people of this country are very free with the great name of your Creator," remarked the curé, but not too sternly. "Think, Principino, I have heard this very Filomena saying that after Christmas it is safe to sin a little, for the enfant Jesus is so very small He takes no notice; and between Good Friday and Easter He is dead, so then again there is a chance. It is well that I know you mean no sacrilege, Filomena, or I should have to scold--and to-day that would be a pity, for it is a day of good omen for us all."

"Ah, yes," agreed Filomena. "Monsieur the Curé is to bless the house."

"Not only that, but his Highness here has come with great news to tell. He is going to marry a beautiful young lady."

"Then is the blessing a double one. I am sure the young lady must indeed be beautiful if she is worthy; perhaps even as beautiful as the Princess, my mistress."

"Quite as beautiful, Filomena. But you are the first one to have the news. You must not go and tell. Leave that to the Prince."

"Indeed, Monsieur the Curé need have no fear. I've my _déjeuner_ to cook. And I shall make something extra in honour of the great occasion." So, with a flash of white teeth and a bow no duchess could have bettered, Filomena went off about her business, followed by that aged patriarch, her father.

Three minutes after the pair had disappeared through the _porte de service_, Vanno and the curé arrived at the great gate, which was a famous landmark at Cap Martin, the Villa Mirasole having been built years ago for a Russian grand duke. Since he had been killed by a bomb in his own country, the house he loved had passed into other hands. Now it belonged to an English earl who had lost a fortune at the Casino: and it was owing to his losses that the villa was let this season to Prince Della Robbia.

Much of the furniture, which was of great value, had been sold, and the house was so denuded that it had practically to be redecorated and refurnished, to suit Angelo's ideas of fitness for his wife; because he wished to keep it on year after year. Only to-day was everything finished to his satisfaction.

The villa, whose exterior copied the Petit Trianon, had a large entrance hall of marble which opened to the roof, and was surrounded by a gallery. This hall was coldly beautiful, with its few bronzes and gilded seventeenth-century chairs, its tall vases of orange blossoms and tea roses, its faded Persian rugs and mosaic tables. But it made an extraordinarily impressive background or frame for a lovely woman, and Marie Della Robbia was a lovely woman. Vanno had seen her many times now in many different dresses since New Year's eve, when he had met her with Angelo, at the Mentone railway station; but she had never struck him as being a beauty, until to-day. As she came forward to greet her two visitors, he said to himself for the first time that she was beautiful.

She and Angelo had evidently just entered from the garden. Her right hand was full of roses, which she hastily changed into her left, and she wore a softly folding white dress, with a great cart-wheel of a Leghorn hat, drooping in all the right places, and wreathed with pink roses. She was a tall woman with a long neck, therefore could well wear such a hat; and it framed her head like an immense halo of dull gold. Her hair was brown with red lights in it, and her eyes were of exactly the same shade, the colour of ripe chestnuts. She had a beautiful short, rather square face, of a creamy paleness; a square, low forehead, straight dark brows, drawn very low over the long eyes; a short, straight nose, and a short, curved upper lip, fitting so charmingly into the full squareness of the under lip that her mouth looked like two pieces of pink coral cleverly carved one upon another. Her short, square chin was deeply cleft, and her long yet solid-looking white throat was like one of those slender marble columns which divide the arch of a Moorish window. At first sight, before she spoke, she would be taken for a woman of sensuous temperament, lazy, luxury-loving, not talkative, and the gay smile which flashed over her face at sight of Vanno and the curé seemed somehow unsuited to it, giving almost the effect of electric light suddenly turned upon a still pool, covered with the waxen weight of white water-lilies. Her manner, too, was a contradiction of her type. It had a light, sleigh-bell gayety, bringing thoughts of sparkling snows and iced sunshine. There was charm in it, yet it was oddly remote and cold, as if she, the woman herself, had gone away on an errand, leaving some other woman's spirit in temporary charge of her body. She looked to be twenty-five or six, and was meant by nature to be more dignified than she chose to be. She had elected to be light and girlish; and whatever she was, it was evident that in her husband's eyes she was perfect. He watched her admiringly, adoringly, as she welcomed her brother-in-law and the curé. The love in his eyes was pathetic, and would have been tragic if it had not been a happy love, fully returned, and culminating in a perfect marriage.

Angelo was delighted to see his brother, and especially to see him come in with their old friend the curé. This meant, he hoped, that the good man had found a chance to talk to Vanno, and perhaps to persuade him to stay at the Villa Mirasole.

The two young men shook hands cordially, with an affectionate grip, as if they had not seen each other for some time, though it was really no more than twenty-four hours since they had parted.

They were very much alike, and yet, as Filomena had shrewdly noticed at first glance, utterly different. Angelo was five years older than Vanno and looked more, because he wore a short pointed beard, cut almost close to the long oval of his cheeks, like the beards of many Italian naval officers. He was dark, but not so dark as Vanno's face had been painted by the desert; and whereas Vanno was both man of action and dreamer, Angelo had the face of a poet whose greatest joy is in his dreams. He seemed less Roman, more Italian than Vanno, and his profile was less salient, more perfect, being so purely cut that people who had seen him seldom, would think of him in profile, as one thinks always of a sword. Vanno would dream, and strenuously work out his dream. Angelo would dream on, and let others work; consequently the elder was not so vital, not so magnetic as the younger. He showed no trace of those battles with himself which gave Vanno's face strength and his eyes fire; yet it was clear that Angelo was a man of high ideals, and would be lost in losing them; whereas Vanno would fight on without ideals, only becoming harder. All this the curé had known since Angelo was a big boy and Vanno a little one, and he had learned it after an acquaintance of but a few days, for it was a theory of his that character is like the scent of various plants. It must so distil itself that it cannot in any way be hidden for long; and those who cannot recognize character for what it is are like people who have lost their sense of smell, and can detect no difference in the odour of flowers.

Almost at once the Princess proposed that the curé should begin to bless the house. He had brought with him a small olive branch which he had gathered in the woods; and with this he sprinkled each room with holy water, while the acolytes accompanied him, one holding a bowl, the other swinging the censer which sent clouds of perfume through the house. All the servants had been called together, even the Princess' English maid, who had left England for the first time to come to the Riviera. They followed the family from room to room, grave and deeply interested, Filomena in a large white apron exhaling a faint odour of spices and good things of the kitchen. When the ceremony was finished and not a room unvisited, Filomena flew back to duty, and carefully, but not anxiously, lifted the lid of each _marmite_ on the huge stove. She had possessed her soul in perfect confidence that the patron saint of the household would look after her dishes during her absence, and she would have been not only surprised but indignant if anything had been burnt.

Now had come the moment for Vanno to speak.

The curé had sent away the acolytes. It still wanted half an hour of luncheon time, and the Princess led the way to a wide window-door on to the loggia. This was very broad, like an American veranda, with a roof of thick, dull greenish glass which softened the glare of sunlight, and did not darken the rooms inside. Roses garlanded the marble pillars, and Indian rugs were spread on the marble floor. There were basket chairs and tables, and a red hammock piled with cushions was suspended on bars arranged after a plan of Angelo's. Marie Della Robbia in her white dress made a picture among the crimson cushions, and it was scarcely possible for her not to know that the three men who grouped round her found the picture charming.

Vanno's heart was thumping. He had thought it would be easy and delightful to tell the news of his engagement, but it struck him suddenly that these two, Angelo and Marie, were utterly absorbed in each other. Perhaps they would not care as much as he had hoped. Or Angelo might disapprove. Not that any disapproval would matter now, not even their father's; but Vanno wanted sympathy and interest. As he searched for the right word to begin, groping for it, ashamed of his shyness, the butler appeared at the window, a Mentonnais-Italian who prided himself passionately upon his English. He too had been found for the house by the friendly offices of the curé--an eager, intelligent man with glittering eyes and a laughable tendency to blushing. He had learned his English in three months at a Bloomsbury boarding-house where, apparently, conversations had been carried on entirely in slang. If he were addressed by an English-speaking person in any other language, his feelings were so deeply wounded that he turned a rich purple.

"Highnesses please," he announced, "a French mister has come to appear. It is a Stereo-Mondaine and he have a strong want to prend some photographs of the garden and peoples which is done from colours already, very rippin'."

Angelo frowned slightly. And when he frowned his long oval face looked cold and proud, the face of an aristocrat who believed that the world was made for him and his kind. "Tell the man that we cannot allow him to take photographs here," he said.

The butler hesitated. "Highness, it is necessary that this man vivre. I think he has not too much oof. _C'est dure, la publicité!_"

"I can't help that, Americo," Angelo persisted. "You can offer him food if you think he is poor, but we do not want him to take photographs."

Vanno saw that Marie was looking at her husband intently, with a peculiar, almost frightened expression, as if she were studying him wistfully, and finding out something new which she had not wholly understood.

"Angelo," she ventured, in a small, beguiling voice, "perhaps this poor man has his pride of an artist. You see, I have a fellow feeling!" She smiled pleadingly, yet mischievously, and turned an explanatory glance on the curé. "I was an artist, and I should so love to know what is a Stereo-Mondaine."

Vanno had never before liked her so much.

Angelo's face changed and softened. "If you want him, it is different!" he returned. "But you've seemed always to have a horror of snapshotters."

"He might take the garden," she suggested.

"Bring the fellow, Americo," said Prince Della Robbia.

The butler flushed furiously with joy. "Rightho, my good Highnesses," he exclaimed; and the three who understood why he was funny stifled laughter till he was out of earshot. "His English is a constant delight to us," said Marie, instantly picking up again her sleigh-bell gayety of manner, like a dropped, forgotten garment. "It's as wonderful as my English maid's French, which she's earnestly studying, though she finds that a language where meat is feminine and milk masculine simply doesn't appeal to her reason. She's learned to call Wednesday 'Mur_cree_dy' and Saturday 'Samdy.' When she goes to Mentone to buy me something at Aux Dames de France, she says she's bought it at the 'Ox Daimes.' But she reached her grandest height this morning. I walked into my room, to hear her groaning at a window that looks toward Monte Carlo. 'Oh, those poor, poor men committing suicide! I can't get them out of my head,' she moaned when I asked if she were ill. 'That day when I went over there sightseeing. It was too awful, walking on the terrace, to hear those poor creatures blowing out their brains every two minutes down under the Casino. I couldn't stand it, so I had to come away, but nobody else seemed to mind, and some of 'em was hanging over the wall to see what was going on!' I couldn't imagine what she meant, for a minute. Then I knew it must be the pigeon-shooters."

Angelo laughed. "Of course. But what do _you_ know of the pigeon-shooters, Marie mia? You have sternly refused to let me take you to Monte Carlo."