My Friend Prospero | Page 8

Peace be to their souls! See," he suddenly declaimed,
laughing, "how the sun, the very sun in heaven, is contending with me,
as to which of us shall do them the greater homage, the sun that once
looked on their living forms, and remembers--see how he lights
memorial lamps about them," for the sun, reflected from the polished
floor, threw a sheen upon the ancient canvases, and burned bright in the
bosses of the frames. "Give me these," he wound up, "a book or two,
and a jug of the parroco's 'included wine'--my wilderness is paradise
enow."
Lady Blanchemain's eyes, as she listened, had become deep wells of
disappointment, then gushing fountains of reproach.
"Oh, you villain!" she groaned, when he had ended, shaking her pretty
fist. "So to have raised my expectations, and so to dash them!--Do you

really mean," still clinging to a shred of hope, she pleaded, "really,
really mean that there's no--no actual woman?"
"I'm sorry," said John, "but I'm afraid I really, really do."
"And you're not--not really in love with any one?"
"No--not really," he said, with a mien that feigned contrition.
"But at your age--how old are you?" she broke off to demand.
"Somewhere between twenty-nine and thirty, I believe," he laughed.
"And in such a romantic environment, and not on account of a woman!
It's downright unnatural," she declared. "It's flat treason against the
kingly state of youth."
"I'm awfully sorry," said John. "Yet, after all, what's the good of
repining? Nothing could happen even if there were a woman."
Lady Blanchemain looked alarmed.
"Nothing could happen? What do you mean? You're not married? If
you are, it must be secretly, for you're put down as single in Burke."
"To the best of my knowledge," John reassured her, laughing, "Burke is
right. And I prayerfully trust he may never have occasion to revise his
statement."
"For mercy's sake," cried she, "don't tell me you're a woman-hater!"
"That's just the point," said he. "I'm an adorer of the sex."
"Well, then?" questioned she, at a loss. "How can you 'prayerfully' wish
to remain a bachelor? Besides, aren't you heir to a peerage? What of the
succession?"
"That's just the point," he perversely argued. "And you know there are
plenty of cousins."

"Just the point! just the point!" fretted Lady Blanchemain. "What's just
the point? Just the point that you aren't a woman-hater?--just the point
that you're heir to a peerage? You talk like Tom o' Bedlam."
"Well, you see," expounded John, unruffled, "as an adorer of the sex,
and heir to a peerage, I shouldn't want to marry a woman unless I could
support her in what they call a manner becoming her rank--and I
couldn't."
"Couldn't?" the lady scoffed. "I should like to know why not?"
"I'm too--if you will allow me to clothe my thought in somewhat
homely language--too beastly poor."
"You--poor?" ejaculated Lady Blanchemain, falling back.
"Ay--but honest," asseverated John, to calm her fears.
She couldn't help smiling, though she resolutely frowned.
"Be serious," she enjoined him. "Doesn't your uncle make you a
suitable allowance?"
"I should deceive you," answered John, "if I said he made me an
unsuitable one. He makes me, to put it in round numbers, exactly no
allowance whatsoever."
"The--old--curmudgeon!" cried Lady Blanchemain, astounded, and
fiercely scanning her words.
"No," returned John, soothingly, "he isn't a curmudgeon. But he's a
very peculiar man. He's a Spartan, and he lacks imagination. It has
simply never entered his head that I could need an allowance. And, if
you come to that, I can't say that I positively do. I have a tiny
patrimony--threepence a week, or so--enough for my humble
necessities, though scarcely perhaps enough to support the state of a
future peeress. No, my uncle isn't a curmudgeon; he's a very fine old
boy, of whom I'm immensely proud, and though I've yet to see the

colour of his money, we're quite the best of friends. At any rate, you'll
agree that it would be the deuce to pay if I were to fall in love.
"Ffff," breathed Lady Blanchemain, fanning. "What did I say of an age
of prose and prudence? Yet you don't look cold-blooded. What does
money matter? Dominus providebit. Go read Browning. What's 'the
true end, sole and single' that we're here for? Besides, have you never
heard that there are such things as marriageable heiresses in the
world?"
"Oh, yes, I've heard that," John cheerfully assented. "But don't they
almost always squint or something? I've heard, too, that there are such
things as tufted fortune-hunters, but theirs is a career that requires a
special vocation, and I'm afraid I haven't got it."
"Then you're no true Marquis of Carabas," the lady took him smartly
up.
"You've found me out--I'm only a faux-marquis," he laughed.
"Thrrr!"