Dorothy, and Other Italian Stories

"That is it," said her nephew.

Lunch was spread upon the grass. Mrs. Winthrop's coachman had made an impromptu carpet of carriage rugs and shawls. Percival threw himself down beside the ladies; Cousin Walpole, after trying various attitudes, took the one denominated "cross-legged." Ford surveyed their group for a moment, then went off and came back with a garden bench; upon this he seated himself comfortably, with his back against a tree.

"You are not sufficiently humble, Mr. Ford," said Katharine.

"It is not a question of humility, but of grace. I have not the gifts of Mr. Percival."

Percival said nothing. He was graceful; why disclaim it?

"But you are very strong, John," said Sylvia, with an intention of consolation. "And if not exactly graceful, I am sure you are very well shaped."

Her hearers, including Ford himself, tried not to laugh, but failed. There was a burst of merriment.

"You think John does not need my encouragement?" said the little lady, looking at the laughers. "You think I forget how old he is? It is quite true, no doubt. But I remember him so well, you know, in his little white frock, with his dear little dimpled shoulders! He always would have bread and sugar, whether it was good for him or not, and he was so pretty and plump!"

These reminiscences provoked another peal.

"You may laugh," said Miss Pitcher, nodding her head sagely, "but he did eat a great deal of sugar. Nothing else would content him but that bowl on the high shelf."

"Do you still retain the same tastes, Mr. Ford?" said Katharine. "Do you still prefer what is out of reach —on a high shelf?"

"When one is grown," said Ford, "there is very little that is absolutely out of reach. It is, generally speaking, a question merely of determination, and – a long arm."

The sun sank; his rays came slanting under their tree, gilding the grass in bars. The conversation had taken a turn towards the society of the eighteenth century. Percival said the most. But a poet may well talk in a memorial garden, hushed and sunny, on a cushioned carpet under the trees, with a long-stemmed wineglass near his hand, and fair ladies listening in rapt attention. Ford, leaning back against his tree, was smoking a cigarette; it is to be supposed that he was listening also.

"Here is something I read the other day, at least as nearly as I can recall it," said the speaker. He was gazing at the tops of the trees on the other side of the pond. He had a habit of fixing his eyes upon something high above his hearers' heads when speaking. Men considered this an impertinence; but women had been known to allude to it as "dreamy."

"'Fair vanished ladies of the past,'" quoted the poet in his delightful voice, "'so charming even in your errors, do you merit the judgment which the more rigid customs of our modern age would pronounce upon you? Was that enthusiasm for virtue and for lofty sentiments with which your delicious old letters and memoirs, written in faded ink and flowing language, with so much wit and so much bad spelling, are adorned – was it all declamation merely, because, weighed in our severer balances, your lives were not always in accordance with it? Are there not other balances? And were you not, even in your errors, seeking at least an ideal that was fair? Striving to replace by a sensibility most devoted and tender a morality which, in the artificial society that surrounded you, had become well-nigh impossible? Let us not forget how many of you, when the dread hour came, faced with unfaltering courage the horrors of the Revolution, sustained by your example the hearts of strong men which had failed them, and atoned on the red guillotine for the errors and follies of your whole generation with your delicate lives.'"

He paused. Then, in a lighter tone, added: "Charming vanished dames, in your powder and brocade, I salute you! I, for one, enroll myself among your faithful and tender admirers."

Mr. Percival remained two weeks at Miolans. He was much with Mrs. Winthrop. They seemed to have subjects of their own for conversation, for on several occasions when Ford came over in the morning they were said to be "in the library," and Miss Pitcher was obliged to confess that she did not feel at liberty to disturb them. She remarked, with a sigh, that it must be "very intellectual," and once she asked her nephew if he had not noticed the poet's "brow."

"Oh yes; he is one of those tall, slim, long-faced, talking fellows whom you women are very apt to admire," said Ford.

Miss Pitcher felt as much wrath as her gentle nature allowed. But again her sentiments were divided, and she sacrificed her personal feelings. That evening she confided to Katharine, under a pledge of deepest secrecy, her belief that "John" was "jealous."

Mrs. Winthrop greeted this confidence with laughter. Not discouraged, the aunt the next day confided to her nephew her conviction that, as regarded the poet, Katharine had not yet "at all made up her mind."

"That is rather cruel to Percival, isn't it?" said Ford.

"Oh, he too has many, many friends," said Sylvia, veering again.

"Fortunate fellow!"

At last Percival went. Ford was again the only visitor. And if he did not have long mornings in the library, he had portions not a few of afternoons in the garden. For if he came up the water-steps and found the mistress of the house sitting under the trees, with no other companion than a book, it was but natural that he should join her, and possibly make some effort to rival the printed page.

"You do not like driving?" she said, one day. They were in the parlor, and the carriage was coming round; she had invited him to accompany them, and he had declined.

"Not with a coachman, I confess."

"There is always the phaeton," she said, carelessly.

He glanced at her, but she was examining the border of her lace scarf. "On the whole, I prefer riding," he answered, as though it were a question of general preferences.

"And Katharine rides so well!" said Sylvia, looking up from her wax flowers. Sylvia made charming wax flowers, generally water-lilies, because they were "so regular."

"There are no good horses about here," observed Ford. "I have tried them all. I presume at home in America you keep a fine one?"

"Oh, in America! That is too far off. I do not remember what I did in America," answered Mrs. Winthrop.

A day or two later. "You were mistaken about there being no good saddle-horses here," she remarked. "My coachman has found two; they are in the stable now."

"If you are going to be kind enough to offer one of them to me," he said, rather formally, after a moment's silence, "I shall then have the pleasure of some rides with you, after all."

"Yes," answered Mrs. Winthrop. "As you say – after all!" She was smiling. He smiled too, but shook his head. Sylvia did not see this little by-play. Whatever it meant, however, it did not prevent Ford's riding with Mrs. Winthrop several times, her groom following. Miss Pitcher watched these little excursions with much interest.

Meanwhile letters from Lorimer Percival came to Miolans almost daily. "That is the Percival crest," said Sylvia to her nephew, one of these epistles, which had just arrived, being on the hall table, seal upward, as they passed. "So appropriate for a poet, I think – a flame."

"Ah! I took it for steam," said Ford.

Now the elder Percival had been a successful builder of locomotives. "John," said Miss Pitcher, solemnly, "do you mean that for derision?"

"Derision, my dear aunt! There is nothing in the world so powerful as steam. If I only had more, I too might be a poet. Or if my father had had more, I too might have enjoyed a fortune."

"Mr. Percival enjoys no fortune," said Sylvia, still solemnly.

"What has he done with it, then? Enjoyed it all out?"

"He tells me that it dissolved, like a mist, in his grasp."

"Yes; they call it by various names," said Ford.

Mrs. Winthrop, dressed in her habit, now came down the stairway; she took the letter and put it in her pocket. That day the groom could not accompany them: the horse he rode was lame. "We are sufficiently brave to do without him for one afternoon, are we not?" said the lady.

"I confess I am timid; but I will do my best," answered Ford, assisting her to mount. Sylvia, standing in the doorway, thought this a most unfortunate reply.

They rode southward. "Shall we stop for a few moments?" said Katharine, as they came towards Coppet.

"Yes; for ten," he answered.

The old custodian let them in, and threw open the windows as before. The visitors went out on the little shelf-like balcony which opened from the drawing-room.

"You notice there is no view, or next to none," said Ford, "although we are on the shore of Lake Leman, and under the shadow of Mont Blanc. They did not care for views in the eighteenth century – that is, views of the earth; they were all for views of the 'soul.' Madame de Staël detested the country; to the last, Coppet remained to her a dreary exile. She was the woman who frankly said that she would not cross the room to look at the Bay of Naples, but would walk twenty miles to talk with an agreeable man."

"They were as rare then, it seems, as they are now," said Mrs. Winthrop. "But to-day we go more than twenty miles; we go to Europe."

"She did the same – that is, what was the same in her day; she went to Germany. There she found two rather agreeable men – Goethe and Schiller. Having found them, she proceeded to talk to them. They confessed to each other, long afterwards, the deep relief they felt when that gifted woman departed."