My Friend Prospero

My Friend Prospero, by Henry
Harland

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Title: My Friend Prospero
Author: Henry Harland
Release Date: January 13, 2005 [EBook #14682]
Language: English
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MY FRIEND PROSPERO
By HENRY HARLAND

Author of
THE CARDINAL'S SNUFF-BOX. Illustrated by G.C. Wilmshurst.
One Hundred and Fifth Thousand.
THE LADY PARAMOUNT. Fifty-fifth Thousand.
COMEDIES AND ERRORS. Third Edition.
GREY ROSES. Third Edition.
MADEMOISELLE MISS. Second Edition.

JOHN LANE: THE BODLEY HEAD
LONDON & NEW YORK. MDCCCCIV
1903

PART FIRST

My Friend Prospero

I
The coachman drew up his horses before the castle gateway, where
their hoofs beat a sort of fanfare on the stone pavement; and the
footman, letting himself smartly down, pulled, with a peremptory
gesture that was just not quite a swagger, the bronze hand at the end of
the dangling bell-cord.
Seated alone in her great high-swung barouche, in the sweet April
weather, Lady Blanchemain gave the interval that followed to a

consideration of the landscape: first, sleeping in shadowy stillness, the
formal Italian garden, its terraced lawns and metrical parterres, its
straight dark avenues of ilex, its cypresses, fountains, statues,
balustrades; and then, laughing in the breeze and the sun, the wild
Italian valley, a forest of blossoming fruit-trees, with the river winding
and glinting in its midst, with olive-clad hills blue-grey at either side,
and beyond the hills, peering over their shoulders, the snow-peaks of
mountains, crisp against the sky, and in the level distance the hazy
shimmer of the lake.
"It is lovely," she exclaimed, fervently, in a whisper, "lovely.--And
only a generation of blind-worms," was her after-thought, "could
discern in it the slightest resemblance to the drop-scene of a theatre."

II
Big, humorous, emotional, imperious, but, above all, interested and
sociable Lady Blanchemain: do you know her, I wonder? Her billowy
white hair? Her handsome soft old face, with its smooth skin, and the
good strong bony structure underneath? Her beautiful old grey eyes,
full of tenderness and shrewdness, of curiosity, irony, indulgence,
overarched and emphasized by regular black eyebrows? Her pretty little
plump pink-white hands, (like two little elderly Cupids), with their
shining panoply of rings? And her luxurious, courageous, high-hearted
manner of dressing? The light colours and jaunty fashion of her gowns?
Her laces, ruffles, embroideries? Her gay little bonnets? Her gems?
Linda Baroness Blanchemain, of Fring Place, Sussex; Belmore Gardens,
Kensington; and Villa Antonina, San Remo: big, merry, sociable,
sentimental, worldly-wise, impetuous Linda Blanchemain: do you
know her? If you do, I am sure you love her and rejoice in her; and
enough is said. If you don't, I beg leave to present and to commend her.
I spoke, by the bye, of her "old" face, her "old" eyes. She is, to be sure,
in so far as mere numbers of years tell, an old woman. But I once heard
her throw out, in the heat of conversation, the phrase, "a young old
thing like me;" and I thought she touched a truth.

III
Well, then, the footman, in his masterful way, pulled the bell-cord;
Lady Blanchemain contemplated the landscape, and had her opinion of
a generation that could liken it to the drop-scene of a theatre; and in due
process of things the bell was answered.
It was answered by a man in a costume that struck my humorous old
friend as pleasing: a sallow little man whose otherwise quite featureless
suit of tweeds was embellished by scarlet worsted shoulder-knots. With
lack-lustre eyes, from behind the plexus of the grille, he rather stolidly
regarded the imposing British equipage, and waited to be addressed.
Lady Blanchemain addressed him in the language of Pistoja. Might one,
she inquired, with her air of high affability, in her distinguished old
voice, might one visit the castle?--a question purely of convention, for
she had not come hither without an assurance from her guide-book.
Shoulder-knots, however,--either to flaunt his attainments, or because
indeed Pistoiese (what though the polyglot races of Italy have agreed
upon it as a lingua franca) offered the greater difficulties to his
Lombardian tongue,--replied in French.
"I do not think so, Madame," was his reply, in a French sufficiently
heavy and stiff-jointed, enforced by a dubious oscillation of the head.
Lady Blanchemain's black eyebrows shot upwards, marking her
surprise; then drew together, marking her determination.
"But of course one can--it's