FOR quite a week—wasn't it?—obscure little Altronde held the centre of the stage. The newspapers of France and England, as well as those of Italy, had daily paragraphs. Belated details, coming in like stragglers after a battle, gave vividness to the story. Massimiliano, at Paris, plaintively indignant, overflowed in interviews. In interviews also, in speeches, in proclamations, Civillo adumbrated, magniloquently, vaguely, his future policy. There were “Character Sketches,” reminiscent, anecdotal, of Civillo, “By a lifelong Friend,” of Massimiliano, “By a Former Member of his Household,” etc. etc. There were even character sketches of poor Bertram, “By an Old Harrovian,” “By One who knew him at Cambridge,” which I hope he enjoyed reading. In the illustrated papers, of course, there were portraits. And in some of the weightier periodicals the past history of Altronde was recalled, a bleak, monotonous history, little more than a catalogue of murders....

With dagger thrusts and cups of poison, for something like three long sad hundred years, the rival houses of Bertrandoni and Ceresini had played the game of give and take. Finally, there were leading articles condemning the revolution as an act of brigandage, hailing it as a forward step towards liberty and light. And then, at the week's end, the theme was dropped.

We may believe that the newspapers were read with interest at Villa Santa Cecilia, and that to the mistress of that household, on the subject of Altronde, they never seemed to contain enough.

“It's almost as if we'd had a hand in the affair,” she reflected; “but these scrappy newspaper accounts leave us with no more knowledge than as if we were complete outsiders. Why don't they give more particulars? Why aren't they more intime?”

“I'll tell you what,” said Ponty, “let's go there. It's only half a day's journey. There we can study the question on the spot.”

“Yes, and look as if we were running after him. No, thank you,” sniffed Lucilla.

“I dare say we should look a little like accusing spirits, if he saw us,” Ponty admitted.

“But let's go in disguise. We can shave our heads, stain our skins, wear elastic-sided boots and pass ourselves off as an Albanian currant merchant and his family travelling to improve our minds in foreign politics.”

“I see Ruth and myself,” Lucilla yawned, “swathed in embroideries and wearing elasticsided boots, and presently we should be arrested as spies, and when our innocent curiosity had been well aired by the press, we should look to Bertram Bertrandoni more like accusing spirits than ever.”

“You women,” growled Pontycroft, extracting a cigarette from his cigarette case, “are so relentlessly cautious! You have no faith in the unexpected! That's why you'll never know the supreme content of throwing your bonnets over the mills, regardless of consequences.”

“The Consequences!” Lucilla retorted, “they're too obvious. We should be left bareheaded, et voilÀ tout!”

“Ah, well—there you are,” replied Ponty, and touched a match to his cigarette.

Yes, we may believe that the newspapers were read with interest at the Villa Santa Cecilia and that they gave the man there occasion for what his sister called “a prodigious deal of jawing.”

“Well, my poor Ariadne,” he commiserated, “ginger is still hot in the mouth, and Naxos is still a comfortable place of sojourn. Our star has been snatched from us and borne aloft to its high orbit in the heavens; we from our lowly coigne of earth can watch and unselfishly rejoice at its high destiny. Of course, the one thing to regret is that you didn't nail him when you had him. Nail the wild star to its track in the half climbed Zodiac,” he advised, sententious.

And in spirit ripe for mischief, Ponty bethought him of a long-forgotten poem, and he went all the way down to Vieusseux to procure a volume of the works of Wordsworth. Henceforth, dreamily, from time to time, he would fall to repeating favourite lines. For nearly a day Ruth bore, with equanimity tempered by repartee, a volley of verse:

“He was a lovely youth, I guess”

said Ponty,

“The panther in the wilderness

Was not so fair as he.”

“I cannot dispute it. He was good-looking,” Ruth suavely returned.

“But,”—this he let fall from the terrace an hour later, to Ruth engaged below in snipping dead leaves from Lucilla's clambering rose bushes,—

“But, when his father called, the youth

Deserted his poor bride, and Ruth

Could never find him more.”

“Fathers make, like mothers, I imagine, a poor substitute for brides,” said Ruth. She glanced at him with amusement. “Never, my nurse used to tell me, is a good while. Did that foolish youth find his bride?” she added, absorbed apparently in her occupation, “when he came back to claim her? As he did at last, you may rest assured.”

Pontycroft made no reply to this question, but he placed his book on the table and prepared to descend the steps:

“God help thee, Ruth,”

he exclaimed.

“Such pains she had

That she in half a year went mad.”

“I'm sure she would have gone mad in twenty-four hours if you had been by to persecute the poor thing,” answered Ruth. She beat a hasty retreat towards the Pergola, whither, she knew, Ponty's laziness would check pursuit of her.

“When Ruth was left half desolate,” Ponty, casually, after luncheon, observed—

“Her lover took another state.

And Ruth not thirty years old.”

“Ruth, it seems to me, was old enough to have known better,” retorted his victim with asperity. “You haven't scanned that last line properly either. 'And Ruth not thirty years old' gives the correct lilt.” Ruth sat down to write her letters. She turned her back with deliberation upon her tormentor, who answered: “Oh, yes, thanks,” and went off murmuring and tattooing on his fingers,—

“And Ruth not thirty years old....”

II

Towards five o'clock of that day, Lucilla and Ruth, spurred and booted—hatted and gloved from their afternoon's drive, appeared for tea upon the terrace. Ponty without loss of time opened fire:

“A slighted child, at her own will,

Went wandering over dale and hill

In thoughtless freedom bold.”

“Only that I can't wander, in thoughtless freedom bold, over dale and hill in this fair false land of Italy,” cried Ruth, exasperated, “I should start at once for a fortnight's walking tour. I feel an excessive desire to remove myself from a deluge of poetic allusions which threatens to get on my nerves. Moreover,” she added severely, “I quite fail to see their application.”

She sat down, drew her gloves off with a little militant air, and prepared to pour the tea which the servant had placed upon a table at her elbow. In the fine October weather the terrace, provided with abundance of tables, chairs and rugs, made, with its superb view over Florence, the pleasantest of al fresco extensions to the drawing-room.

“There, there, there, Ruthie!” soothed Pontycroft, “don't resent a little natural avuncular chaff. I must play the fool or play the devil. You wouldn't wish to suppress my devouring curiosity, would you? Here's a situation brimful of captivating possibilities. You wouldn't have me sit in unremunerative silence, in sterile torpor before this case of a little American girl, who, on any day of the week, may be called to assume the exalted rÔle of Crown Princess of Altronde?”

“Yes,” frowned Ruth, “I should very much like to suppress your devouring curiosity; I should like extremely to reduce you to a state of unremunerative silence, torpor, on that verily sterile topic. And, moreover, so far as I can see, the Royal Incident may now be billeted closed, for weal or for woe.”

“One can never be quite sure about these Royal Incidents,” her tormentor persisted, “that's the lark about 'em—they're never closed. For sheer pig-headed obstinacy give me a Crown Prince. Our friend Bertram is capable of letting his Queen Mamma in for a deal of trouble in view of present circumstances, if she should, as she's likely to do—want now to marry him off to some Semi-Royalty or German Grand Duchess or another.”

“Si puo,” riposted Ruth with hauteur, “I withdraw myself in advance from the competition. And I should like, please, to be spared any more allusions to the subject.”

But here Lucilla, who had been sipping her tea and worshipping the view, interrupted them:

“Do please cease from wrangling,” she implored. “Hold your breaths both of you—and behold!”

A haze all golden,—an impalpable dust of gold,—filled the entire watch-tower of the Heavens. Florence, twice glorified, lay bathed in yellow light that filtered benignantly upon roofs and gardens, played, glanced, upon Duomo, Campanile, and Baptistry. The Arno had become a way of gold. Webs of yellow gauze, spun across the streets and reflected by a thousand windows, made, among the many gardens, a burnished background for the twigs and branches of dark aspiring cypresses, glossy leaved ilexes.

Ruth and Pontycroft held their breaths, and, for a moment, there was a silence.

“I wonder,” Lucilla said at length,—she gave a little soft sigh of satisfaction,—“I wonder what Prince Bertrandoni has done with Balzatore.... Taken him, do you suppose, to reign over the dogs of Altronde? I miss that dog sadly.”

“Balzatore?—Oh,” said Ponty, “Balzatore is throning it at the Palazzo Reale.... He has a special attendant who waits on him, sees to his bodily comforts; prepares his food, takes him for his walks,—for of course Bertram is far too involved in Court functions, too tied by etiquette and the fear of Anarchists to go for long solitary rambles; and Balzatore bullies the servants, one and all, you may be sure. Dogs, even the best of 'em, are shocking snobs. In a measure Balzatore is enjoying himself. It hardly requires a pen'orth of imagination to be positive of it. And,” Pontycroft continued, “I hear that the Palazzo Bertrandoni has been leased for a number of years to an American painter. By the way, it seems that Bertram's bookcases, which, saving your presences, I grieve to state, were filled with very light literature—the writings of decadent poets, people who begin with a cynicism”—Pontycroft paused, hesitated for the just word.

“A cynicism with which nobody ends!” Ruth interjected.

“Invaluable young thing! Thanks awfully. Who begin, as you say, with a cynicism with which nobody ends, as you quite aptly infer. Filled, too, I regret to state, with rare editions, a trifle, well—perhaps a bit eighteenth century—and with yellow paper-covered French novels. These bookcases are expiating a life of frivolity within the four walls of a Convent. They were offered by Bertram's mother to some Sisters of Charity whose temporal welfare she looks after. The good nuns were glad to have the shelves for their poor schools and have packed them with edifying books.... So it happens that to-day they ornament both sides of the Convent-Parloir, and thus it is that Bertram's bookshelves are atoning for the gay, wild, extravagant, old days within convent walls.”

Lucilla tittered. “Shall our end be as exemplary?” Ruth asked, pensive, “or will it fade away into chill and nothingness—like the glory of this,” she smiled at Pontycroft, “April afternoon? B-r-r-r——-” She gave a little shiver.

Pontycroft pulled himself to his feet.

“Tut, tut!” said he. He proffered two white garments which lay over the back of a chair to Ruth and to his sister. “What are these melancholy sentiments? Aren't you contented? Aren't you satisfied, aren't you pleased here?” he asked, and he eyed Ruth inquisitorially.

“Oh yes,—oh yes, I am,” Ruth quickly assured him. “But I do get, now and then, tiresome conscientious scruples. In these halcyon hours I wonder if it isn't my duty to go and have a look at my dear old uncle, all alone there, in America.”

“Ruth—my dear Ruth!” cried Lucilla.

“Why doesn't your 'dear old uncle' come and have a look at you? I think it's his duty to do so; I've thought so for many a day.”

“Oh, he's bound to his fireside, I suppose,” Ruth answered, a touch of melancholy in her voice. “He's wedded to his chimney corner, his books. At seventy-two it's a bore, perhaps, to go wandering into foreign parts.”

“Foreign parts!” Lucilla cried with some scorn. “Are we Ogres? Barbarians? Do we live in the Wilds of America?”

“My dear infant, beware,” cautioned Pontycroft, “beware of the rudiments in your nature of that terrible New England instrument of torture, the Nonconformist Conscience. Despite your Catholic upbringing it will, if you indulge it, I fear, lead you to your ruin. The Nonconformist conscience, I beg you to believe, makes cowards of us all. Now I should suggest a much better plan, and one I have always approved of. Let's pack up our duds, as the saying goes, in your country; let's return to sane and merry England; let us for the future and since the pinch of Winter is at our heels, Summer in the South and Winter in the North.”

“England?” gasped Lucilla and Ruth in one breath.

“Why not?” enquired the man of the family. “You are, after all, never so comfortable anywhere, in Winter, as in an English Country House. Roaring fires, invisible hot-water pipes; cozy dark days, libraries full of books, Mudie by post two hours away. Wassailing and Christmas waits; holly and mistletoe, hey for an English winter, sing I! Plum pudding, mince pies, tenants to tip, neighbours, hospitalities.”

“Ugh,” Lucilla wailed, “Perish the awful thought! Neighbours 'calling in sensible, slightly muddy boots' (as your favourite author too truthfully has it), in tweeds and short skirts;—and for conversation—Heaven defend us! The turnip crops, the Pytchley, penny readings, and the latest gossip anent a next-door neighbour. Night all the day—night again at night—and whisky-and-soda at eleven, day or night,—eternally variegated by that boring, semper-eternal Bridge. You'll have to go without me,” declared Lucilla flatly.

“Have you generally Wintered in the North, Summered in the South?” Ruth queried with a gleam.

“No—No,—” replied Pontycroft reflectively, “no,—but if one hasn't really tried it since one's callow days the idea does speak to one. It isn't all beautiful prattle,” he assured her, “but the idea does appeal to one. As one grows old one prefers to be comfortable. A pabulum of beauty is all very well for young things like yourself here and Lucilla who still hug the precious foolish delusion that Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.”

Pontycroft's indolent glance encompassed Florence,—that fair spectacle she presents, in the aura of twilight,—the exquisite hour, l'heure exquise. Her amphitheatre of hills,—her white villas, even now charged with rose by the evening glow,—aglow her churches, her gardens and black cypresses. “Yet this is all too like,” he commented, “the enchanter's dream,—at a puff!... No! Fact, Fact, solid Fact is the desideratum! Fact's your miracle in a nutshell. What you and Lucilla call Truth alters with every fresh discovery of man, his climate, education, point of view. Man carries your Beauty in his eye, ears, senses. But Fact, humanly speaking, Fact doesn't give you the least trouble. There it is. Did it never occur to you how splendidly reposeful a fact it is that a turnip field's a turnip field, until you sow beans to rejuvenate it? And here's another, equally comforting: The spider spins its web from its own vitals. Ah, Facts spare one such a deal of thinking, such a lot of enthusiasm!... In your country, my dear young thing,” Pontycroft turned to Ruth, “in your strange, weird, singular, incomprehensible country they sow buckwheat cakes when the turf on the lawn's been killed by frosts; and when the buckwheat cakes have grown, and blossomed—they plough them back into the earth, and sow their grass—and in a month you have your velvet robe again. In similar manner the fact that a cozy English Winter's a cozy English Winter is one agreeably worthy your attention.”

“This flummery of rose bushes,” went on Pontycroft, while his arm described a semicircle,—“this romance of nodding trees laden with oranges ornamental to the landscape; this volubility of heliotrope, mimosa, violets in January, all, all—in a conspiracy to lure one to sit out o' doors and catch an internal, infernal chill,” he sneezed; “all this taken together is not worth that one fine solid indisputable British Fact, a comfortable English Winter! Uncompromising cold without, cheer within.”

“But it's not Winter yet,” Lucilla argued plaintively, “it's only October. Hadn't you better apply the fact of an overcoat to what you've been telling us? You've plunged me into anything but a state of cheer with your sophistries—this absurd juggling with the doleful joys of an English Winter!”

“Apropos of the joys of an English Winter, I wonder whether the post has come?” said Ruth, jumping up. “Pietro's delicacy about disturbing us at tea Lucilla won't call mere laziness. I'll send him for your overcoat,” she added, with a laughing nod, and vanished through the French windows.

III

“Ah,—you see!”

Pontycroft after Ruth's departure ponderated thus on the tone of significance, to his sister. “Ah, ha! You see.... She's eager for news. She's expecting something.... She's on the watch for every post.”

“You're quite off the scent, Harry,” returned his sister languidly. Lucilla, it was plain, was still disturbed by her brother's chaff.

“It's her uncle's semi-annual missive she's so eagerly on the lookout for. The child nourishes a perfect hero-worship for the old man; she writes to him six times to his one. His letters come with military precision, once in a six month. They're invariably brief, and they invariably wind up with this hospitable apophthegm, 'Remember the string's on the latchet of the door whenever you choose to pull it. Whenever you care to look upon your home in Oldbridge you will find a hearty welcome from your affectionate uncle,' then a sabre thrust, his name,—presumably.”

Lucilla rose, with that languid grace she was so famous for. She went to the edge of the terrace and leaned upon the balustrade, where she remained, silently taking in her fill of the peaceful landscape.

IV

Ten minutes elapsed.

Pontycroft, in silence, smoked and wafted the rings of his cigarette towards Florence. And then Ruth reappeared.

She looked pale in the dusk, agitated. In her hands were a couple of letters, she held out one to Lucilla.

“Read it,”—her voice trembled,—“Tell me what I have done to be so insulted,” she commanded; and then she turned away her face, and suddenly she began to weep. Pontycroft watched her in consternation. He had never, in all the years he had known her, he had never seen Ruth in tears.

Lucilla took the letter, blazoned with a gold crown. She read down the page, she turned over to the next, she read on to the end.

“May I see it?—May I see it, Ruth?” Pontycroft asked gently.

Ruth bowed her head. As Pontycroft read she looked at him, her hands lying idly in her lap; and she saw his face cloud as he read. But he, having finished the communication, fell silent for a moment.

“Poor Bertram!” he let fall at last, dropping the letter upon the table.

“Poor Bertram!” cried Ruth. She dabbed her eyes, she made an immense, unsuccessful effort to control herself, quell the ire in her heart.

“Poor Bertram!” she broke forth scornfully. “What have I done, what can I have done, to be subjected to such an indignity? Did I lead him on? If I had encouraged him! Lucilla, speak, speak the truth. You both know I did nothing of the sort!” And Ruth stamped her foot. “Has the Heir Apparent to that obscure little Principality called Altronde had any encouragement from me of any kind?... Notwithstanding his visits here, notwithstanding the amusement you've had at my expense!” Ruth looked wrathfully at Pontycroft. “And this, this deliberate, this detestable, this cold-blooded proposition. And you can say 'Poor Bertram'!” But then she fell to sobbing violently.

Lucilla flew to her, folded protecting arms about her.

“Ruth, dear, don't feel so.... Darling! I don't wonder, I do not wonder!... But after all, for him, it is an impossible predicament. He is to be pitied. You can do nothing better than to feel sorry for him. He's madly in love with you,—that's too evident. Presently you'll be able to laugh at it,—at him.”

“Laugh at it?” Ruth cried. “Ah, how lightly it hits you! Laugh at it?... I shall never laugh at it, I shall never laugh at it. I can shudder and wonder at the monstrous pride it reveals, the arrogance of a little Princeling called to reign over his obscure little Principality.” She drew herself up.

“Here is that dear old uncle of mine,” said she, tightening her clasp upon the letter she still held in her hand,—“My uncle, who writes to me for the ninetieth time: 'The string is on the latchet of the door, why not come and pay a visit to your old home, have a look at your ancestral acres'?”

“Oh,” exclaimed Ruth rather hysterically, “I will go and have a look at my ancestral acres! And these Wohenhoffens, these Bertrandoni, who are they to fancy themselves privileged to offer me a morganatic marriage with their son? But I execrate them! I execrate everything they represent! I, Ruth Adgate, to have been exposed to it!” And now, again, she began to sob.

Pontycroft looked exceedingly distressed.

“Child, child,” he said, “you may believe that Lucilla and I never remotely dreamed of this dÉnouement. I'm not in the least surprised at your indignation,—your horror,—but I am not in the least surprised, either, that poor Bertram, in the tangle of his environment, with his tradition, and impelled by a hopeless passion (oh, my prophetic eye), did what he could, has written offering you the only honourable thing he could offer you, a morganatic marriage. Absurd, outrageous though this sounds to you, it is a legal marriage, and remember that the poor chap's in a hole, a dreadful box. Shed rather a pitying tear upon his blighted young affections.... He can't hope to have you, knew probably how you'd take his offer, but he gritted his teeth and made it like the wholly decent chap he is.

“And I would even wax pathetic,” continued Pontycroft, “when I think of him. Could any fate be more depressing than his? You'll never speak to him again! While he, poor fellow, is doomed to marry some sallow Grand Duchess for the sake of the Dynasty. Farewell love, farewell comradry, farewell all the nice, easy-going businesses of life. Buck up and be a Crown Prince! Become a puppet, a puppet on exhibition to your subjects. Whatever you like to do that's gay, that's human, debonair,—you'll have to do it on the sly as though it were a sin, or overcome mountains of public censure. In fact, whether you please yourself or whether you don't—the majority will always find fault with you. Poor Bertram, I say, poor old Bertram.... His proud Wohenhoffen of a mother is the only member of that Royal trio, I fancy, who is thoroughly pleased with the new order of affairs, for Civillo will soon be making matters hot for himself if he doesn't turn over a new leaf.”

V

Ruth dried her eyes.

“You were quite right when you talked of wintering in the North, Harry,” she said at length, still somewhat tremulous. “It doesn't seem as though in the North this could possibly have happened. I think you know,” she took Lucilla's hand, “I think I shall try wintering in the North—I'll accept my uncle's invitation; I'll pull the string on the latchet, I'll go and have a look at the old man and at my bleak New England acres. After all,” added Ruth, with rather a wan smile, “I suppose it's something to have acres, though one has never realised the fact or thought of it before. I haven't an idea what mine are like, but it will be good to walk on them, to feel I've got them. Here I'm always made to feel such a plebeian.—Yes, I'm made to feel such a plebeian. Oh no, not by you,” Ruth clasped Lucilla's hand and looked affectionately, a trifle, too, defiantly towards Pontycroft, “but they all seem to think, even the rather ordinary ones, like Mrs. Wilberton and Stuart Seton, an American exists to be patronised. No pedigree. An American! Well, who knows, perhaps I have a pedigree. I'll go at least where I can't be patronised, where they know about me.”

Pontycroft gave a laugh, which rang not altogether gaily.

“In other words, Miss Adgate must have her experience,” he said.

“Miss Adgate's had all she wants of the old world.—She must be on with the new. Besides, her pride's been wounded.... A prince has offered her matrimony, morganatic but honourable marriage. That won't do for her. She's wounded in her feelings, outraged by the suggestion, and she includes the whole of Europe in her resentment. Oh, my dear young lady” said Pontycroft after another moment's silence, “don't talk to me of pride! You Americans are the devil for pride. Ruth, you've been toadied to and you fancy you've been patronised.... Well, well, have your experience. What great results from little causes flow! Prove to us that you're not only as good but a great deal better than any of us. We poor humble folk, we'll submit to anything, if when you've had your experience and are satisfied, you'll come back to us. But you don't mean it, you don't mean it! Or, if you go you'll return, you'll not forsake your adopted country, your father's friends, your's.”

Ruth's eyes darkened.

“Haven't you always, both of you, been too good to me?” she cried, reproachfully. “Ever since I was a little child, you and Lucilla, you know that you two have been, ever shall be, in my heart of hearts. But I must get away from all this; I must do something!... I must find myself!” she cried. “Say what you will, think what you like, this proposition is too loathsome. It has opened my eyes to so many things I had only felt, before! It may be all a question of wounded pride, as you say, but I know it's the proper sort of pride. I've seen it now, the whole, whole, unfriendly situation, in a flash. Lucilla,” she pleaded, “you'll sympathise with me; you won't condemn me if I go, you'll never think I love you an ounce the less?”

Lucilla stroked Ruth's hand.

“My dear,” said she, “the thing's a sheer incredible bolt out of the blue, incredible! I believe,” she said, rounding upon her brother, “I believe it's the outcome of Pontycroft's foolish talk,—the result of his passion for being paradoxical or perish. Here we were—having our teas quite innocently in the garden, like the dear nice people we are,—perfectly happy, absolutely content,—as why shouldn't we be in this paradise?” Lucilla opened her blue eyes wide upon the landscape and glanced accusingly at Pontycroft. “But you've precipitated us into a mess,” she said to him, “with your ribald talk about wintering in our water-soaked British Islands. Then comes this ridiculous letter,—and, of course, Ruth can't sit still under it. Yes, it is perhaps after all, a wholesome notion of yours, Ruth, a visit to your own country. It's the best bath you can take to wash out the taste left by Bertram's well-meant but preposterous letter. Besides,” she laughed, “you'll come back to us! America can't gobble you up for ever. But what shall we do without you!—And as for Harry, I feel sorry for him. He'll find no one to give him the change when he's in the mood for teasing, no one to keep him in his proper place. He'll become unbearable.”

“Oh,” fleered Pontycroft, “if Ruth forsakes us I will go back to my native land! I'll go where I can toast my shins before my fireside and experience the solid comforts of a British Winter.... I'll go home to my duties, go where I can worry my tenants, read Mudie the livelong day; feel that I, too, am somebody!”

Ruth smiled, rather forlornly.

“I want you to observe,” Pontycroft with mock contrition enlarged, “how one evil deed begets a quantity of others—a congeries of miseries out of which, at last, good springeth like the flowering beanstalk. In idle hour (mark the magic potency of words), I speak of wintering in the North. Now as you've been told more than once,—idleness is the parent of wickedness. Lucilla assures me that in my paradoxical idleness I am a parent to a quite unexpected degree. Now observe,—the offer of a morganatic marriage follows speedily on the heels of my sin, the sin of an idle paradox. Then Ruth becomes guilty of the sin of anger—tossing her pretty head and stamping her pretty foot, she declares she won't play in our yard any longer. She stamps her pretty foot and announces she's going back to her own New England apple orchard. The rudiments of her Nonconformist, New England conscience, thoroughly roused,—her thoughts fly towards home and her aged uncle. In my remorse, I, in virtue not to be outdone, decide to go back to my duties. Lucilla, conventionalised British matron that au fond she is, spite of her protests, already, because she must, assembles to her soul her list of social obligations at Dublin, the frocks to plan, and the dinner parties to give prior to the coming out and Presentation at Court of her eldest child. Home, home, home,” murmured Pontycroft, “sweet home is the tune we'll all be whistling within a month. Lucilla will carol it from her bog because it isn't considered polite to whistle in Ireland; but I, from my Saxon heath and Ruth from God's country will imitate the blackbirds. Could any tune be more acceptable to the Nonconformist conscience? Ruth, you perceive, already begins to dominate! Columbia, Ruler of the sea and wave—see how she sends us about our neglected and obvious affairs. High-ho for Winter in the North,” said Ponty. “But meantime I'm going to array myself for dinner and here comes Pietro.”

“Thank Heaven for the trivialities of life,” Lucilla put in with fervour. “Ruth, shall we don our best gowns in honour of the unexpected? Harry may dub this the call to duty; I know it's never anything so dull. I know that the spirit of adventure he's hailed has seized upon both of you, is lifting us all, will-he nill-he, out of our beautiful dolce far niente into something restless, violent, and tiresome. As for me—there's nothing, naught left for me, poor me! to do but to follow your lead.”

“Yes, by all means,” Ruth lightly acquiesced.

“We'll put our best frocks on; and let us hope the call to duty decked in purple and fine linen, masquerading as the spirit of adventure, may lead us up to consummations....” She broke off. “Devoutly to be wished for,” she whispered to herself under her breath.

VI

“If I'm to be made the arbiter of other destinies when my own are more than I can manage” (they were dallying over figs and apricots at breakfast)—“pray, you two good people tell me, kindly, when shall we begin to throw our bonnets over the mill? In other words, on what day and in what month do we start in search of Winter in the North?” Ruth enquired, to a feint of cheerfulness and little dreaming.

“Oh, to-morrow—To-morrow, if you like,” jerked Pontycroft. “Wait not upon the order of your going, but start at once.”

“Start to-morrow!” Lucilla cried, “start to-morrow? Impossible.”

“Why impossible? Nothing is impossible. Ruth wants to go. She said so last night, she more than hints it, to-day. What woman wants, God wants.” Oblivious to the truth that a woman, his sister, panted to remain, Pontycroft glanced at the newspaper at his elbow. “A steamer sails from Genoa tomorrow afternoon, the Princess Irene. I'll go down to Humbert's this moment as ever is,” he added, “and have them wire for a deck cabin.”

“No, no,” protested Lucilla. “Why leave all this loveliness at once? Impossible! Besides, we have people coming to dinner tomorrow,” she remembered hopefully. “Thursday. The Newburys and young Worthington. We can't put them off.”

“We can, and we shall,” asseverated Ponty. “There's nothing so dreadful, Lucilla, as these long superfluous drawn-out farewells, these impending good-byes. Send Pietro, if you like, to say we've all responded to a call of duty. Tell your friends in all charity, that when duty calls the wise youth replies: 'I won't.' Why?... Because he knows that nine times out of ten duty is only what somebody else thinks he ought to be doing. But tell them duty's only skin deep, by way of advice. Tell them one's response to duty is generally the mere weak living up to somebody else's good opinion of one. Say to them: 'Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.' But say that in this case it's otherwise—we're not wise, and we've answered with one accord: 'I will.' Say to them that therein lies our folly.—We're exceedingly sorry—sorry, but we must be off. It shall be a seven days' wonder, Florence shall have something to talk about. She needs brisking up. Ruth, I'm off to engage your passage. The sooner you go, the sooner you'll come back to tell us all about it,—tell us whether the play was worth the candle.”

Ponty rang for his stick and his hat, lighted the inevitable cigarette.

“Paolina will pack you up, Ruth, if she has to keep busy until midnight,” he directed, between two puffs. “Lucilla, Pietro can help Maria with your paraphernalia; when I'm back here with our tickets he'll be half through the packing. Lazy duffer though he be, once he begins, he's rapid as radium.” Ponty was gone before either Lucilla or Ruth could protest.

They looked at one another.... What ludicrous extravagance of sudden breaking up! This high-handed method of bringing matters summarily to a climax struck them both. Lucilla and Ruth broke into peals of laughter.

The irresponsible sun glared—into their eyes—played, flamboyant among the glass and silverware of the breakfast table; it winked in prismatic rays from crystal angles of honey pots and threw its splashes of blinding light over the damask table cloth, borrowing rosy tints from a mass of pink geranium in a bowl of Nagasaki ware. It glanced at all the polished surfaces of the old carved oak furniture; the room was one flagrant and joyous outburst of morning sunlight, the garden an invitation to come out, come out and play, and enjoy life from its inception! Elusive, dewy, odorous lovelinesses rested upon it, mounted from it, entreated you to step under the trees, wander among growing tender things, bathed all in a dew and glister. And called to you to come and loiter,—and mark the passage of Aurora and her maidens, hours ago.

“It's just a trifle odd to be swept off one's feet in this whoop-and-begone-with-you manner,” Ruth, with half a laugh, half a sob, commented. “Maugre the thing's to be sooner rather than later, Lucilla, I can't see though why my going should mean yours, too!”

“Dear infant,” Lucilla answered, tenderly, “don't worry.... Whatever should Ponty and myself do here alone? We'd get on one another's nerves in a week and part in a temper. Since things have happened as they have, things are better as they are; leave them to hammer out their own salvation. Things, I find, are very like the little sheep in Mother Goose. You let them alone and they come home, wagging their tails behind them.... But oh, oh, oh,” sighed Lucilla, “how I adore this! How I would stay here forever! It is a blow,” her voice was vibrant of regret.... “But, of course, Harry's right, he's always right. Shall we obey orders?”

“Y—es,” said Ruth. She felt a tightening at her heart, a sudden lump in her throat. The glory of the October morning had all at once departed.... A decided glamour enveloped the project of a visit to her uncle. Moreover, her heart drew her to him. The fine sense of an affront she must fly from had, too, gathered strength in the night; the indignity put upon her by Bertram's letter she must resent. Her pride protested fiercely, she must retaliate even though Ponty should express to Bertram her thanks with refusal of the honour conferred upon her. But now these emotions were quelled by an unspeakable depression, a loneliness, a sense of isolation, of dread, a dread of the Unknown.... The dread swept her off her feet. Dread of something more, too.... How was she,—how was she, Ruth Adgate,—to live away from these two people? To-morrow would mark the beginning of an ocean rolled up between her old life and the new one she would be journeying towards. To-morrow! to-morrow! To-morrow would see the end, for how many, many dreary months, of this beauty laden, gracious existence; the camaraderie of these two people whom she had reason to love best in the world, at whose side she had grown up,—Lucilla and Henry Pontycroft, whom she understood, who understood her! Instinctively, she felt she was electing for herself a grimmer fate, a sterner life and land, than any she had known, could dimly divine....

Yes, the glory of the April morning had departed into chill and nothingness. It might have already been December though it was only October, and Pontycroft had gone to buy her ticket. The first, the irremediable step was taken. She must put the best face she could upon this adventure of her choice.

Lucilla, to whom Ruth and her thoughts were transparent as flies in amber, put her arms about her neck.

“Ruth,” she whispered, “it's because he can't bear the parting, the thought of it. It's going to be a horrible break for him. What we'll either of us do when you're no longer within reach, when you are no longer part of our daily life, I can't imagine. I can't imagine any of it without you, and neither of us will want this, without you.”

Ruth's eyes glowed. Bending forward she kissed Lucilla, and they marched away, arm-inarm, to do their packing.

VII

“Parting is such sweet sorrow,” sighed Juliet.

But the girl of fourteen saw in the act an excuse for endless impassioned kisses. The world-worn poet Haraucourt better understood the disastrous effect of saying good-bye.

“Partir” he cries, “c'est mourir un feu!”

“To leave, to part, is to die a little.” Unless, indeed, death be a more desirable state than life,—as who in this world can possibly affirm, or deny,—except our Holy Mother Church?—It were safer then, never to leave, never to part. This is perhaps the true course of wisdom, to live in the same spot, content with the same people. They, after all, are sure to be exceedingly like the people one will find elsewhere; and, ten to one, prove to be verily rather nicer, as experience is apt to show. Yet Juliet and Haraucourt are agreed upon one point; parting, whether to the accompaniment of kisses or of death, a little,—parting is a sorrow.

The parting of their ways, to the three occupants of Villa Santa Cecilia, was poignant. To each, after his kind the next twenty-four hours were inexpressibly distressing. Ponty got through them stoically and worked off some of his feelings in an unconscionable and conscienceless number of cigarettes. Lucilla wept and prayed. Ruth said very little and directed her packing in a suffocation of heartache.

As the train passed out from the station at Florence, bearing her with Pontycroft towards Genoa, Ruth's tears gushed like fountains of water. Nor did she in the least try to conceal her distress from Ponty who sat quietly regarding the landscape from the other side of the compartment. It had been arranged that he should return for Lucilla, thus giving to that lady a welcome day's grace, when Ruth had been safely handed over to the Bolingbrokes, friends of Lucilla, a young Secretary from the British Embassy in Rome and his bride, on their way out, to Washington. Their names Ponty had, with relief, discovered among the list, at Humbert's of the ship's passengers.

The varied, finished, complex Tuscan landscape passed all leisurely before their eyes; the olive groves, the orange-pink willows; the white streams romping under grey arches; the villages, the mediaeval cytties, scattered by the way, the rose-coloured or white monasteries and villas on the sun-decked hillsides. From the little old churches and campaniles of the plain, from the convents perched far above them, innumerable silvery peals of chimes came floating, in tune, out of tune, it mattered not. As a matter of fact, they were shockingly out of tune; the quality of the Tuscan air is, however, so extraordinary an embellisher of sound as well as of scene, that all sounds become harmonious, even as every scene arranges itself into a primitive picture, thanks to this most beautifying of mediums.

“How can I leave it, how can I leave it?” Ruth was saying to herself.

“You know, I think I'm a goose,” she let fall at last, smiling at Pontycroft through her tears.

“My sweet child,” said Pontycroft, “we must aye live and learn! And you're so young that living and learning may still be supposed to hold elements of interest. There's a lot ahead of you that's new and strange, so dry your pretty eyes, and Sursum Corda.”

“My soul misgives me that the new and strange will contain nothing approaching to this,” Ruth said, nodding her head towards the window. “And I don't think I shall like doing without it,” she added plaintively.

“God's country,” said Pontycroft, “won't look like this, to be sure, nor give you a single blessed one of these fine emotions, these raptures. But after all, it's the first wrench that costs, says the prophet, and since we're not here entirely, he assures us, to amuse ourselves, a visit to God's country may prove a salutary if bitter pill to a young lady surfeited with the sweets of Europe.”

“Dio mio,” Ruth cried, “since when has Pontycroft turned moralist?”

“From the hour he was made to realise the fatal effects of reckless paradox,” Ponty answered, with mock solemnity.

They fell to chaffing one another as naturally as possible and the time flew.

“Genoa la Suferba, Genoa la Suferba! How perfectly, how radiantly the word describes her fits her,” murmured Ruth when, after a succession of tunnels, in the early afternoon, the sumptuous town burst upon them. The dazzling town, her flashing panoply of palaces, villas, gardens, churches, mounting up, and up—her hill, leaning firmly against the background of blue skies, blue as the Virgin Mary's robe.

“The imagination, the purpose, in those lines of architecture, those formal gardens!” cried Ruth. “How daring, uncompromising, beauty is in this land of Italy. And see, the Mediterranean, all sparkle and laughter there at her feet!” She leaned forward; then fell back against the cushions, savouring with heart as well as eyes the brilliant vision.

The train hammered heavily into the station.

“Ge—no—a! Ge—no—a!” The nasal cry reverberated through the glass-covered dome. There was noisy confusion of opening carriage doors, of passengers descending, calling, embracing, greeting; of porters running hither and yon; of trucks of luggage blocking the way amid a commotion of officialdom.

Ruth stood quietly in the uproar, and gazed upon it, and at Ponty's lank figure, while he dealt with the business of the occasion. Her heart was beating tumultuously. She felt a violent impulse to run away and hide herself.

“The beginning of the end,” she cried. “It is the beginning of the end. Why have I done this?”

A moment later she had shaken hands with the Bolingbrokes; she was saying good-bye to Pontycroft from the window of the carriage which was to take her, with her new acquaintances, to the ship.

Ruth's sympathetic Italian maid, waiting and watching in the background, in a hack laden with luggage, murmured to herself: “Pover a, Poverella!”

VIII

Ruth, in a misery of wild light-headedness, responded as well as she could to the civilities of her two travelling companions, while they drove through narrow, animated streets. They reached the docks. There lay the massive ship, its relentless black hulk resting abroadside, in ominous expectation of some mysterious coming change. Ruth walked up the white gangway. The turmoil, the excited crowd, the stolid stewards,—lolling,—indifferent yet curious sentinels,—the ragged throng of emigrants passing endlessly into the forecastle, the noise of clanking wains and girders hoisting trunks and freight into mid air, all, gave to her a sense of doom, of the finality of things in chaos.... Half an hour passed before she was able to go to her room. Telegrams were handed to her, even flowers, fruit; thus rapidly does news spread; she had to talk with friends of the Bolingbrokes come to bid them God-speed, to look pleasant and pleased as everybody else did.

But when at last Ruth closed the door of her cabin behind her, she took a little step forward and with a cry threw herself upon the couch. Regardless of Paolina, who was already opening bags and unfolding dresses, she permitted herself the luxury of a passionate outburst of grief. A tornado of pent misery racked her; she pressed her face into the linen pillow to deaden the sound of her sobbing, her hands against her breast.

“Signorina, Signorina, do not feel so badly,” cried the good Italian maid, dropping Ruth's lace and beribboned morning gown and running towards her. “Oh, do not weep. It is very sad to have to leave our lovely Italian land, so beautiful, so carina. But do not weep so! What will the Signora Dor say if I allow you to make yourself ill? Think! It is I who should be weeping. It is I who am leaving all behind me, my country, my sister, my mother, and yet I do not weep.” But the tears belied her words and welled from her eyes.

Ruth clasped the girl's hand affectionately. She felt grateful for the warm Italian heart. Paolina at least was there, to keep her recollected in the exquisite life she was forsaking. Why she was forsaking it, now seemed to her an absolutely incomprehensible riddle. For the nonce she could remember not one of her substantial reasons for doing so.

Paolina withdrew the pins from Ruth's hat, removed it from her hair and put it away.

“You have crushed your pretty hat, Signorina,” she said, reproachfully. Then, very much in the tone a mother would use to distract a child:

“You did not see how pale the Signor Pontycroft looked when he said good-bye,” she added, “and Maria told me the Signora had not slept the whole night, but kept going constantly to your door and listening to know whether you were asleep. They love you very much. It must be good to be loved so much,” the girl continued wistfully. “That must comfort you. And you will soon come back to them, to Italy, when you have seen your Signor uncle and your American home—for I am very sure they cannot live without you.”

“Oh, Paolina, I am so unhappy,” Ruth said, simply. “But leave me,” she smiled to the girl through her tears, “I will call you when I feel better.”

Paolina turned to go, then came back, lifted Ruth's hand, kissed it. “I hope you will pardon me, Signorina,” she added shyly, “Scusi, if I say, we must always smile, it pleases God better.”

And Paolina left the room.

For a long while, Ruth, quite still, battled with her feelings. A fresh passion of grief overtook her.... When at last it had spent itself, she drew her Rosary, which she carried in the gold bag in her hand, from its sheath. Slowly, the sweetness of the five decades passed into her spirit, she felt comforted. Peace filled her heart. There was only, now and then, the ache, where before there had been uncontrollable despair. She stood up, bathed her face, rang for Paolina, and began removing the tortoise-shell pins from her hair.

“Paolina,” she cried, as the maid entered the room. “Paolina,” she twisted her hair again into its thick coil, “we are going to enjoy ourselves now! No more tears, no more regrets. You are quite right. We must smile to the good God if we wish Him to smile on us! Make haste and give me a short skirt and a warm coat, and my cap and veil. I long to get out and breathe the air and fill my eyes with a sight of the shores of Italy.”

At dinner and during the rest of the evening, as they steamed down the coast towards Naples, Ruth was an irresistible precis of smiles and vivacity. The Bolingbrokes were captivated.

“Richard,” the young Mrs. Bolingbroke told her lord when they were alone together, “that Miss Adgate is a most charmin' girl. What was that nonsense Mrs. Wilberton retailed about her runnin' away from Henry Pontycroft whom she's hopelessly in love with? She is in love with no man! You can't deceive me!” Mrs. Bolingbroke cried gaily. “It's easy to see from the fun she's positively bubblin' over with that her heart isn't weighted by any hopeless passion. She's never been in America before she says, and it's the great adventure of her life.... She's goin' to visit an old uncle, whom she's never seen but adores. Her childlike enjoyment of doin' it quite alone (she has her maid with her) and her eagerness about it, is quite fascinatin'. Although she is so rich, she's evidently seen very little of the world,” said Mrs. Bolingbroke, who happened to be a year Ruth's junior, but had the feeling of knowing the world thoroughly from within and from without.

“Yes,” her husband answered guardedly; he remembered that a First Secretary must show diplomatic reticence in his judgments, even to his wife. “Yes, Miss Adgate does seem rather a decent sort. I dare say the story is all a fabrication. She does seem a nice sort of unsophisticated young creature and I dare say the story's all a fabrication. Just the pretty charitable way people have of talking. I can see no objection to your enjoying as much of her society as you like, Isabel.”

Thus it happened that safe in her husband's blessing upon the friendship, Mrs. Bolingbroke, all unsuspected by Ruth, became her champion.