Part 64

The sun was setting. The irregular mass of buildings stood out in varying shades of blue, against varying, dying shades of red.

Half way there, Peter stopped, and looked back.

The level sunshine turned the black forests of the Gnisi to shining forests of bronze, and the foaming cascade that leapt down its side to a cascade of liquid gold. The lake, for the greater part, lay in shadow, violet-grey through a pearl-grey veil of mist; but along the opposite shore it caught the light, and gleamed a crescent of quicksilver, with roseate reflections. The three snow-summits of Monte Sfiorito, at the valley's end, seemed almost insubstantial--floating forms of luminous pink vapour, above the hazy horizon, in a pure sky intensely blue.

A familiar verse came into Peter's mind.

“Really,”' he said to himself, “down to the very 'cataract leaping in glory,' I believe they must have pre-arranged the scene, feature for feature, to illustrate it.” And he began to repeat the vivid, musical lines, under his breath...

But about midway of them he was interrupted.

“It's not altogether a bad sort of view--is it?” a voice asked, behind him.

Peter faced about.

On a marble bench, under a feathery acacia; a few yards away, a lady was seated, looking at him, smiling.

Peter's eyes met hers--and suddenly his heart gave a jump. Then it stood dead still for a second. Then it flew off, racing perilously. Oh, for the best reasons in the world. There was something in her eyes, there was a glow, a softness, that seemed--that seemed... But thereby hangs my tale.

She was dressed in white. She had some big bright-yellow chrysanthemums stuck in her belt. She wore no hat. Her hair, brown and warm in shadow, sparkled, where the sun touched it, transparent and iridescent, like crinkly threads of glass.

“You do not think it altogether bad--I hope?” she questioned, arching her eyebrows slightly, with a droll little assumption of concern.

Peter's heart was racing--but he must answer her.

“I was just wondering,” he answered, with a tolerably successful feint of composure, “whether one might not safely call it altogether good.”

“Oh--?” she exclaimed.

She threw back her head, and examined the prospect critically. Afterwards, she returned her gaze to Peter, with an air of polite readiness to defer to his opinion.

“It is not too sensational? Not too much like a landscape on the stage?”

“We must judge it leniently,” said he; “we must remember that it is only unaided Nature. Besides,” he added, “to be meticulously truthful, there is a spaciousness, there is a vivacity in the light and colour, there is a sense of depth and atmosphere, that we should hardly find in a landscape on the stage.”

“Yes--perhaps there is,” she admitted thoughtfully.

And with that, they looked into each other's eyes, and laughed.

“Are you aware,” the lady asked, after a brief silence, “that it is a singularly lovely evening.”

“I have a hundred reasons for thinking it so,” Peter answered, with the least approach to a meaning bow.

In the lady's face there flickered, perhaps, for half a second, the faintest light, as of a comprehending and unresentful smile. But she went on, with fine detachment

“How calm and still it is. The wonderful peace of the day's compline. It seems as if the earth had stopped breathing--does n't it? The birds have already gone to bed, though the sun is only just setting. It is the hour when they are generally noisiest; but they have gone to bed--the sparrows and the finches, the snatchers and the snatched-from, are equal in the article of sleep. That is because they feel the touch of autumn. How beautiful it is, in spite of its sadness, this first touch of autumn--it is like sad distant music. Can you analyse it, can you explain it? There is no chill, it is quite warm, and yet one knows somehow that autumn is here. The birds know it, and have gone to bed. In another month they will be flying away, to Africa and the Hesperides--all of them except the sparrows, who stay all winter. I wonder how they get on during the winter, with no goldfinches to snatch from?”

She turned to Peter with a look of respectful enquiry, as one appealing to an authority for information.

“Oh, they snatch from each other, during the winter,” he explained. “It is thief rob thief, when honest victims are not forthcoming. And--what is more to the point--they must keep their beaks in, against the return of the goldfinches with the spring.”

The Duchessa--for I scorn to deceive the trustful reader longer; and (as certain fines mouches, despite my efforts at concealment, may ere this have suspected) the mysterious lady was no one else--the Duchessa gaily laughed.

“Yes,” she said, “the goldfinches will return with the spring. But isn't that rather foolish of them? If I were a goldfinch, I think I should make my abode permanent in the sparrowless south.”