She asked with the definite intention of disconcerting him, not because she was unkind, but because she wished to discover what qualities, if any, lurked beneath that civil, efficient exterior. And the spirit of her inquiry was sentimental rather than scientific.
With an educated man she would have succeeded. In attempting to reply to her question, he would have revealed something. But the concierge had no reason to pay even lip service to logic. He replied: “Yes, madam! this is perfect weather, both for our visitors and for the hay,” and hurried to help a bishop, who was selecting a picture postcard.
Miss Raby, instead of moralizing on the inferior resources of the lower classes, acknowledged a defeat. She watched the man spreading out the postcards, helpful yet not obtrusive, alert yet deferential. She watched him make the bishop buy more than he wanted. This was the man who had talked of love to her upon the mountain. But hitherto he had only revealed his identity by chance gestures bequeathed to him at birth. Intercourse with the gentle classes had required new qualities—civility, omniscience, imperturbability. It was the old answer: the gentle classes were responsible for him. It is inevitable, as well as desirable, that we should bear each other’s burdens.
It was absurd to blame Feo for his worldliness—for his essential vulgarity. He had not made himself. It was even absurd to regret his transformation from an athlete: his greasy stoutness, his big black kiss-curl, his waxed moustache, his chin which was dividing and propagating itself like some primitive form of life. In England, nearly twenty years before, she had altered his figure as well as his character. He was one of the products of The Eternal Moment.
A great tenderness overcame her—the sadness of an unskilful demiurge, who makes a world and beholds that it is bad. She desired to ask pardon of her creatures, even though they were too poorly formed to grant it. The longing to confess, which she had suppressed that morning beside the bed of Signora Cantù, broke out again with the violence of a physical desire. When the bishop had gone she renewed the conversation, though on different lines, saying: “Yes, it is beautiful weather. I have just been enjoying a walk up from the Biscione. I am stopping there!”
He saw that she was willing to talk, and replied pleasantly: “The Biscione must be a very nice hotel: many people speak well of it. The fresco is very beautiful.” He was too shrewd to object to a little charity.
“What lots of new hotels there are!” She lowered her voice in order not to rouse the Prince, whose presence weighed on her curiously.
“Oh, madam! I should indeed think so. When I was a lad—Excuse me one moment.”
An American girl, who was new to the country, came up with her hand full of coins, and asked him hopelessly “whatever they were worth.” He explained, and gave her change: Miss Raby was not sure that he gave her right change.
“When I was a lad—” He was again interrupted, to speed two parting guests. One of them tipped him; he said, “Thank you.” The other did not tip him; he said, “Thank you,” all the same but not in the same way. Obviously he had as yet no recollections of Miss Raby.
“When I was a lad, Vorta was a poor little place.”
“But a pleasant place?”
“Very pleasant, madam.”
“Kouf!” said the Russian Prince, suddenly waking up and startling them both. He clapped on a felt hat, and departed at full speed for a constitutional. Miss Raby and Feo were left together.
It was then that she ceased to hesitate, and determined to remind him that they had met before. All day she had sought for a spark of life, and it might be summoned by pointing to that other fire which she discerned, far back in the travelled distance, high up in the mountains of youth. What he would do, if he also discerned it, she did not know; but she hoped that he would become alive, that he at all events would escape the general doom which she had prepared for the place and the people. And what she would do, during their joint contemplation, she did not even consider.
She would hardly have ventured if the sufferings of the day had not hardened her. After much pain, respectability becomes ludicrous. And she had only to overcome the difficulty of Feo’s being a man, not the difficulty of his being a concierge. She had never observed that spiritual reticence towards social inferiors which is usual at the present day.
“This is my second visit,” she said boldly. “I stayed at the Biscione twenty years ago.”
He showed the first sign of emotion: that reference to the Biscione annoyed him.
“I was told I should find you up here,” continued Miss Raby. “I remember you very well. You used to take us over the passes.”
She watched his face intently. She did not expect it to relax into an expansive smile. “Ah!” he said, taking off his peaked cap, “I remember you perfectly, madam. What a pleasure, if I may say so, to meet you again!”
“I am pleased, too,” said the lady, looking at him doubtfully.
“You and another lady, madam, was it not? Miss—”
“Mrs. Harbottle.”
“To be sure; I carried your luggage. I often remember your kindness.”
She looked up. He was standing near an open window, and the whole of fairyland stretched behind him. Her sanity forsook her, and she said gently: “Will you misunderstand me, if I say that I have never forgotten your kindness either?”
He replied: “The kindness was yours, madam; I only did my duty.”
“Duty?” she cried; “what about duty?”
“You and Miss Harbottle were such
