"Poor man--was he? Let us trust that time will console him," said Peter, callously.

But, "I wonder," he asked himself, "I wonder whether perhaps I was the least bit hasty yesterday? If I had stopped, I should have saved the Cardinal a journey here to-day--I might have known that he would come, these Italians are so punctilious--and then, if I had stopped--if I had stopped--possibly--possibly--"

Possibly what? Oh, nothing. And yet, if he had stopped... well, at any rate, he would have gained time. The d.u.c.h.essa had already begun to thaw.

If he had stopped... He could formulate no precise conclusion to that if; but he felt dimly remorseful that he had not stopped, he felt that he had indeed been the least bit hasty. And his remorse was somehow medicine to his reviving hope.

"After all, I scarcely gave things a fair trial yesterday," he said.

And the corollary of that, of course, was that he might give things a further and fairer trial some other day.

But his hope was still hard hurt; he was still in a profound dejection.

"The Signorino is not eating his dinner," cried Marietta, fixing him with suspicious, upbraiding eyes.

"I never said I was," he retorted.

"The Signorino is not well?" she questioned, anxious.

"Oh, yes--cosi, cosi; the Signorino is well enough," he answered.

"The dinner"--you could perceive that she brought herself with difficulty to frame the dread hypothesis--"the dinner is not good?" Her voice sank. She waited, tense, for his reply.

"The dinner," said he, "if one may criticise without eating it, the dinner is excellent. I will have no aspersions cast upon my cook."

"Ah-h-h!" breathed Marietta, a tremulous sigh of relief.

"It is not the Signorino, it is not the dinner, it is the world that is awry," Peter went on, in reflective melancholy. "'T is the times that are out of joint. 'T is the s.e.x, the s.e.x, that is not well, that is not good, that needs a thorough overhauling and reforming."

"Which s.e.x?" asked Marietta.

"The s.e.x," said Peter. "By the unanimous consent of rhetoricians, there is but one s.e.x the s.e.x, the fair s.e.x, the unfair s.e.x, the gentle s.e.x, the barbaric s.e.x. We men do not form a s.e.x, we do not even form a sect.

We are your mere hangers-on, camp-followers, satellites--your things, your playthings--we are the mere shuttlec.o.c.ks which you toss. .h.i.ther and thither with your battledores, as the wanton mood impels you. We are born of woman, we are swaddled and nursed by woman, we are governessed by woman; subsequently, we are beguiled by woman, fooled by woman, led on, put off, tantalised by woman, fretted and bullied by her; finally, last scene of all, we are wrapped in our cerements by woman. Man's life, birth, death, turn upon woman, as upon a hinge. I have ever been a misanthrope, but now I am seriously thinking of becoming a misogynist as well. Would you advise me to-do so?"

"A misogynist? What is that, Signorino?" asked Marietta.

"A woman-hater," he explained; "one who abhors and forswears the s.e.x; one who has dashed his rose-coloured spectacles from his eyes, and sees woman as she really is, with no illusive glamour; one who has found her out. Yes, I think I shall become a misogynist. It is the only way of rendering yourself invulnerable, 't is the only safe course. During my walk this afternoon, I recollected, from the scattered pigeon-holes of memory, and arranged in consequent order, at least a score of good old apothegmatic shafts against the s.e.x. Was it not, for example, in the grey beginning of days, was it not woman whose mortal taste brought sin into the world and all our woe? Was not that Pandora a woman, who liberated, from the box wherein they were confined, the swarm of winged evils that still afflict us? I will not remind you of St.

John Chrysostom's golden parable about a temple and the thing it is constructed over. But I will come straight to the point, and ask whether this is truth the poet sings, when he informs us roundly that 'every woman is a scold at heart'?"

Marietta was gazing patiently at the sky. She did not answer.

"The tongue," Peter resumed, "is woman's weapon, even as the fist is man's. And it is a far deadlier weapon. Words break no bones--they break hearts, instead. Yet were men one-tenth part so ready with their fists, as women are with their barbed and envenomed tongues, what savage brutes you would think us--would n't you?--and what a rushing trade the police-courts would drive, to be sure. That is one of the good old cliches that came back to me during my walk. All women are alike--there's no choice amongst animated fashion-plates: that is another. A woman is the creature of her temper; her husband, her children, and her servants are its victims: that is a third. Woman is a bundle of pins; man is her pin-cushion. When woman loves, 't is not the man she loves, but the man's flattery; woman's love is reflex self-love.

The man who marries puts himself in irons. Marriage is a bird-cage in a garden. The birds without hanker to get in; but the birds within know that there is no condition so enviable as that of the birds without.

Well, speak up. What do you think? Do you advise me to become a misogynist?"

"I do not understand, Signorino," said Marietta.

"Of course, you don't," said Peter. "Who ever could understand such stuff and nonsense? That's the worst of it. If only one could understand, if only one could believe it, one might find peace, one might resign oneself. But alas and alas! I have never had any real faith in human wickedness; and now, try as I will, I cannot imbue my mind with any real faith in the undesirability of woman. That is why you see me dissolved in tears, and unable to eat my dinner. Oh, to think, to think," he cried with pa.s.sion, suddenly breaking into English, "to think that less than a fortnight ago, less than one little brief fortnight ago, she was seated in your kitchen, seated there familiarly, in her wet clothes, pouring tea, for all the world as if she was the mistress of the house!"

Days pa.s.sed. He could not go to Ventirose--or, anyhow, he thought he could not. He reverted to his old habit of living in his garden, haunting the riverside, keeping watchful, covetous eyes turned towards the castle. The river bubbled and babbled; the sun shone strong and clear; his fountain tinkled; his birds flew about their affairs; his flowers breathed forth their perfumes; the Gnisi frowned, the uplands westward laughed, the snows of Monte Sfiorito sailed under every colour of the calendar except their native white. All was as it had ever been--but oh, the difference to him. A week pa.s.sed. He caught no glimpse of the d.u.c.h.essa. Yet he took no steps to get his boxes packed.

XXVI

And then Marietta fell ill.

One morning, when she came into his room, to bring his tea, and to open the Venetian blinds that shaded his windows, she failed to salute him with her customary brisk "Buon giorno, Signorino."

Noticing which, and wondering, he, from his pillow, called out, "Buon'

giorno, Marietta."

"Buon' giorno, Signorino," she returned but in a whisper.

"What's the matter? Is there cause for secrecy?" Peter asked.

"I have a cold, Signorino," she whispered, pointing to her chest. "I cannot speak."

The Venetian blinds were up by this time; the room was full of sun. He looked at her. Something in her face alarmed him. It seemed drawn and set, it seemed flushed.

"Come here," he said, with a certain peremptoriness. "Give me your hand."

She wiped her brown old hand backwards and forwards across her ap.r.o.n; then gave it to him.

It was hot and dry.

"Your cold is feverish," he said. "You must go to bed, and stay there till the fever has pa.s.sed."

"I cannot go to bed, Signorino," she replied.

"Can't you? Have you tried?" asked he.

"No, Signorino," she admitted.

"Well, you never can tell whether you can do a thing or not, until you try," said he. "Try to go to bed; and if at first you don't succeed, try, try again."

"I cannot go to bed. Who would do the Signorino's work?" was her whispered objection.

"Hang the Signorino's work. The Signorino's work will do itself. Have you never observed that if you conscientiously neglect to do your work, it somehow manages to get done without you? You have a feverish cold; you must keep out of draughts; and the only place where you can be sure of keeping out of draughts, is bed. Go to bed at once."

She left the room.

But when Peter came downstairs, half an hour later, he heard her moving in her kitchen.

"Marietta!" he cried, entering that apartment with the mien of Nemesis.

"I thought I told you to go to bed."