My Friend Prospero | Page 2

faded from sight in the depths of the dark tunnel-like porte-coch��re.
Vexed, perplexed, Lady Blanchemain fidgeted a little. To have taken this long drive for nothing!--sweet though the weather was, fair though the valley: but she was not a person who could let the means excuse the end. She neither liked nor was accustomed to see her enterprises balked,--to see doors remain closed in her face. Doors indeed had a habit of flying open at her approach. Besides, the fellow's manner,--his initial stare and silence, his tone when he spoke, his shrug, his exhortation to patience, and something too in the conduct of his back as he departed,--hadn't it lacked I don't know what of becoming deference? to satisfy her amour-propre, at any rate, that the mistake, if there was a mistake, sprang from no malapprehension of her own, she looked up chapter and verse. Yes, there the assurance stood, circumstantial, in all the convincingness of the sturdy, small black type:--
"From Roccadoro a charming excursion may be made, up the beautiful Val Rampio, to the medi?val village of Sant' Alessina (7 miles), with its magnificent castle, in fine grounds, formerly a seat of the Sforzas, now belonging to the Prince of Zelt-Neuminster, and containing the celebrated Zelt-Neuminster collection of paintings. Incorporated in the castle buildings, a noticeable peculiarity, are the parish church and presbytery. Accessible daily, except Monday, from 10 to 4; attendant 1 fr."
So then! To-day was Wednesday, the hour between two and three. So--! Her amour-propre triumphed, but I fancy her vexation mounted....

IV
"I beg your pardon. It's disgraceful you should have been made to wait. The porter is an idiot. You wish, of course, to see the house--?"
The English words, on a key of spontaneous apology, with a very zealous inflection of concern--yet, at the same time, with a kind of entirely respectful and amiable abruptness, as of one hailing a familiar friend,--were pronounced in a breath by a brisk, cheerful, unmistakably English voice.
Lady Blanchemain, whose attention had still been on the incriminated page, looked quickly up, and (English voice and spontaneous apology notwithstanding) I won't vouch that the answer at the tip of her impulsive tongue mightn't have proved a hasty one--but the speaker's appearance gave her pause: the appearance of the tall, smiling, unmistakably English young man, by whom Shoulder-knots had returned accompanied, and who now, having pushed the grille ajar and issued forth, stood, placing himself with a tentative obeisance at her service, beside the carriage: he was so clearly, first of all--what, if it hadn't been for her preoccupation, his voice, tone, accent would have warned her to expect--so visibly a gentleman; and then, with the even pink of his complexion, his yellowish hair and beard, his alert, friendly, very blue blue eyes--with his very blue blue flannels too, and his brick-red knitted tie--he was so vivid and so unusual.
His appearance gave her a pause; and in the result she in her turn almost apologized.
"This wretched book," she explained, pathetically bringing forward her pi��ce justificative, "said that it was open to the public."
The vivid young man hastened to put her in the right.
"It is--it is," he eagerly affirmed. "Only," he added, with a vaguely rueful modulation, and always with that amiable abruptness, as a man very much at his ease, while his blue eyes whimsically brightened, "only the blessed public never comes--we're so off the beaten path. And I suppose one mustn't expect a Scioccone"--his voice swelled on the word, and he cast sidelong a scathing glance at his summoner--"to cope with unprecedented situations. Will you allow me to help you out?"
"Ah," thought Lady Blanchemain, "Eton," his tone and accent now nicely appraised by an experienced ear. "Eton--yes; and probably--h'm? Probably Balliol," her experience led her further to surmise. But what--with her insatiable curiosity about people, she had of course immediately begun to wonder--what was an Eton and Balliol man doing, apparently in a position of authority, at this remote Italian castle?

V
He helped her out, very gracefully, very gallantly; and under his guidance she made the tour of the vast building: its greater court and lesser court; its cloisters, with their faded frescoes, and their marvellous outlook, northwards, upon the Alps; its immense rotunda, springing to the open dome, where the sky was like an inset plaque of turquoise; its "staircase of honour," guarded, in an ascending file, by statues of men in armour; and then, on the piano nobile, its endless chain of big, empty, silent, splendid state apartments, with their pavements of gleaming marble, in many-coloured patterns, their painted and gilded ceilings, tapestried walls, carved wood and moulded stucco, their pictures, pictures, pictures, and their atmosphere of stately desolation, their memories of another age, their reminders of the power and pomp of people who had long been ghosts.
He was tall (with that insatiable