My Friend Prospero | Page 7

and so I could almost feel I am," laughed John. "I'm alone
here--there's none my sway to dispute. And as for the creature in
shoulder-knots, what becomes of the rights of man or the bases of civil
society, if you can't snub a creature whom you regularly tip? For five
francs a week the creature in shoulder-knots cleans my boots
(indifferent well), brushes my clothes, runs my errands (indifferent
slow),--and swallows my snubs as if they were polenta."
"And tries to shoo intrusive trippers from your threshold--and gets an
extra plateful for his pains," laughed the lady. "Where," she asked,
"does the Prince of Zelt-Neuminster keep himself?"
"In Vienna, I believe. Anyhow, at a respectful distance. The parroco,
who is also his sort of intendant, tells me he practically never comes to
Sant' Alessina."
"Good easy man," quoth she. "Yes, I certainly supposed you were his
tenant-in-fee, at the least. You have an air." And her bob of the head

complimented him upon it.
"Oh, we Marquises of Carabas!" cried John, with a flourish.
She regarded him doubtfully.
"Wouldn't you find yourself in a slightly difficult position, if the Prince
or his family should suddenly turn up?" she suggested.
"I? Why?" asked John, his blue eyes blank.
"A young man boarding with the parroco for six francs a day--" she
began.
"Six francs fifty, please," he gently interposed.
"Make it seven if you like," her ladyship largely conceded. "Wouldn't
your position be slightly false? Would they quite realize who you
were?"
"What could that possibly matter? wondered John, eyes blanker still.
"I could conceive occasions in which it might matter furiously," said
she. "Foreigners can't with half an eye distinguish amongst us, as we
ourselves can; and Austrians have such oddly exalted notions. You
wouldn't like to be mistaken for Mr. Snooks?"
"I don't know," John reflected, vistas opening before him. "It might be
rather a lark."
"Whrrr!" said Lady Blanchemain, fanning herself with her
pocket-handkerchief. Then she eyed him suspiciously. "You're hiding
the nine million other causes up your sleeve. It isn't merely the 'whole
blessed thing' that's keeping an eaglet of your feather alone in an
improbable nest like this--it's some one particular thing. In my time,"
she sighed, "it would have been a woman."
"And no wonder," riposted John, with a flowery bow.

"You're very good--but you confuse the issue," said she. "In my time
the world was young and romantic. In this age of prose and
prudence--is it a woman?"
"The world is still, is always, young and romantic," said John,
sententious. "I can't admit that an age of prose and prudence is possible.
The poetry of earth is never dead, and no more is its folly. The world is
always romantic, if you have the three gifts needful to make it so."
"Is it a woman?" repeated Lady Blanchemain.
"And the three gifts are," said he, "Faith, and the sense of Beauty, and
the sense of Humour."
"And I should have thought, an attractive member of the opposite sex,"
said she. "Is it a woman?"
"Well," he at last replied, appearing to take counsel with himself, "I
don't know why I should forbid myself the relief of owning up to you
that in a sense it is."
"Hurray!" cried she, moving in her seat, agog, as one who scented her
pet diversion. "A love affair! I'll be your confidante. Tell me all about
it."
"Yes, in a sense, a love affair," he confessed.
"Good--excellent," she approved. "But--but what do you mean by 'in a
sense'?"
"Ah," said he, darkly nodding, "I mean whole worlds by that."
"I don't understand," said she, her face prepared to fall.
"It isn't one woman--it's a score, a century, of the dear things," he
announced.
Her face fell. "Oh--?" she faltered.

"It's a love affair with a type," he explained.
She frowned upon him. "A love affair with a type--?"
"Yes," said he.
She shook her head. "I give you up. In one breath you speak like a
Mohammedan, in the next like--I don't know what."
"With these," said John, his band stretched towards the wall. "With the
type of the Quattrocento."
He got upon his feet, and moved from picture to picture; and a fire, half
indeed of mischief; but half it may be of real enthusiasm, glimmered in
his eyes.
"With these lost ladies of old years; these soft-coloured shadows, that
were once rosy flesh; these proud, humble, innocent, subtle, brave, shy,
pious, pleasure-loving women of the long ago. With them; with their
hair and eyes and jewels, their tip-tilted, scornful, witty little noses,
their 'throats so round and lips so red,' their splendid raiment; with their
mirth, pathos, passion, kindness and cruelty, their infinite variety, their
undying youth. Ah, the pity of it! Their undying youth--and they so
irrevocably dead.