第19章

"Everything's a big word, which I think we should use as little as possible.But how can we not want beauty?""Ah there you are!" she sighed, though I didn't quite know what she meant by it."Of course it's difficult for a woman to judge how far to go," she went on."I adore everything that gives a charm to life.

I'm intensely sensitive to form.But sometimes I draw back--don't you see what I mean?--I don't quite see where I shall be landed.Ionly want to be quiet, after all," Miss Ambient continued as if she had long been baffled of this modest desire."And one must be good, at any rate, must not one?" she pursued with a dubious quaver--an intimation apparently that what I might say one way or the other would settle it for her.It was difficult for me to be very original in reply, and I'm afraid I repaid her confidence with an unblushing platitude.I remember, moreover, attaching to it an inquiry, equally destitute of freshness and still more wanting perhaps in tact, as to whether she didn't mean to go to church, since that was an obvious way of being good.She made answer that she had performed this duty in the morning, and that for her, of Sunday afternoons, supreme virtue consisted in answering the week's letters.Then suddenly and without transition she brought out: "It's quite a mistake about Dolcino's being better.I've seen him and he's not at all right."I wondered, and somehow I think I scarcely believed."Surely his mother would know, wouldn't she?"She appeared for a moment to be counting the leaves on one of the great beeches."As regards most matters one can easily say what, in a given situation, my sister-in-law will, or would, do.But in the present case there are strange elements at work.""Strange elements? Do you mean in the constitution of the child?""No, I mean in my sister-in-law's feelings.""Elements of affection of course; elements of anxiety," I concurred.

"But why do you call them strange?"

She repeated my words."Elements of affection, elements of anxiety.

She's very anxious."

Miss Ambient put me indescribably ill at ease; she almost scared me, and I wished she would go and write her letters."His father will have seen him now," I said, "and if he's not satisfied he will send for the doctor.""The doctor ought to have been here this morning," she promptly returned."He lives only two miles away."I reflected that all this was very possibly but a part of the general tragedy of Miss Ambient's view of things; yet I asked her why she hadn't urged that view on her sister-in-law.She answered me with a smile of extraordinary significance and observed that I must have very little idea of her "peculiar" relations with Beatrice; but Imust do her the justice that she re-enforced this a little by the plea that any distinguishable alarm of Mark's was ground enough for a difference of his wife's.He was always nervous about the child, and as they were predestined by nature to take opposite views, the only thing for the mother was to cultivate a false optimism.In Mark's absence and that of his betrayed fear she would have been less easy.

I remembered what he had said to me about their dealings with their son--that between them they'd probably put an end to him; but Ididn't repeat this to Miss Ambient: the less so that just then her brother emerged from the house, carrying the boy in his arms.Close behind him moved his wife, grave and pale; the little sick face was turned over Ambient's shoulder and toward the mother.We rose to receive the group, and as they came near us Dolcino twisted himself about.His enchanting eyes showed me a smile of recognition, in which, for the moment, I should have taken a due degree of comfort.

Miss Ambient, however, received another impression, and I make haste to say that her quick sensibility, which visibly went out to the child, argues that in spite of her affectations she might have been of some human use."It won't do at all--it won't do at all," she said to me under her breath."I shall speak to Mark about the Doctor."Her small nephew was rather white, but the main difference I saw in him was that he was even more beautiful than the day before.He had been dressed in his festal garments--a velvet suit and a crimson sash--and he looked like a little invalid prince too young to know condescension and smiling familiarly on his subjects.

"Put him down, Mark, he's not a bit at his ease," Mrs.Ambient said.

"Should you like to stand on your feet, my boy?" his father asked.

He made a motion that quickly responded."Oh yes; I'm remarkably well."Mark placed him on the ground; he had shining pointed shoes with enormous bows."Are you happy now, Mr.Ambient?""Oh yes, I'm particularly happy," Dolcino replied.But the words were scarce out of his mouth when his mother caught him up and, in a moment, holding him on her knees, took her place on the bench where Miss Ambient and I had been sitting.This young lady said something to her brother, in consequence of which the two wandered away into the garden together.