The Cardinals Snuff-Box | Page 8

one do?"
"One could keep a dragon," she answered promptly. "If I were you, I
should keep a sparrow-devouring, finch-respecting dragon."
"It would do no good," said he. "You'd get rid of one species of
snatcher, but some other species of snatcher would instantly pop UP."
She gazed at him with those amused eyes of hers, and still again,
slowly, sorrowfully, shook her head.
"Oh, your spectacles are black--black," she murmured.
"I hope not," said he; "but such as they are, they show me the inevitable
conditions of our planet. The snatcher, here below, is ubiquitous and
eternal--as ubiquitous, as eternal, as the force of gravitation. He is
likewise protean. Banish him--he takes half a minute to change his
visible form, and returns au galop. Sometimes he's an ugly little
cacophonous brown sparrow; sometimes he's a splendid florid
money-lender, or an aproned and obsequious greengrocer, or a trusted
friend, hearty and familiar. But he 's always there; and he's always--if
you don't mind the vernacular--'on the snatch.'"
The Duchessa arched her eyebrows.
"If things are really at such a sorry pass," she said, "I will commend my

former proposal to you with increased confidence. You should keep a
dragon. After all, you only wish to protect your garden; and that"--she
embraced it with her glance--"is not so very big. You could teach your
dragon, if you procured one of an intelligent breed, to devour
greengrocers, trusted friends, and even moneylenders too (tough though
no doubt they are), as well as sparrows."
"Your proposal is a surrender to my contention," said Peter. "You
would set a snatcher to catch the snatchers. Other heights in other lives,
perhaps. But in the dark backward and abysm of space to which our
lives are confined, the snatcher is indigenous and inexpugnable."
The Duchessa looked at the sunny landscape, the bright lawns, the high
bending trees, with the light caught in the network of their million
leaves; she looked at the laughing white villas westward, the pale-green
vineyards, the yellow cornfields; she looked at the rushing river, with
the diamonds sparkling on its surface, at the far-away gleaming snows
of Monte Sfiorito, at the scintillant blue shy overhead.
Then she looked at Peter, a fine admixture of mirth with something like
gravity in her smile.
"The dark backward and abysm of space?" she repeated. "And you do
not wear black spectacles? Then it must be that your eyes themselves
are just a pair of black-seeing pessimists."
"On the contrary," triumphed Peter, "it is because they are optimists,
that they suspect there must be forwarder and more luminous regions
than the Solar System."
The Duchessa laughed.
"I think you have the prettiest mouth, and the most exquisite little teeth,
and the eyes richest in promise, and the sweetest laughter, of any
woman out of Paradise," said Peter, in the silence of his soul.
"It is clear I shall never be your match in debate," said she.

Peter made a gesture of deprecating modesty.
"But I wonder," she went on, "whether you would put me down as
'another species of snatcher,' if I should ask you to spare me just the
merest end of a crust of bread?" And she lifted those eyes rich in
promise appealingly to his.
"Oh, I beg of you--take all I have," he responded, with effusion.
"But--but how--?"
"Toss," she commanded tersely.
So he tossed what was left of his bread into the air, above the river; and
the Duchessa, easily, deftly, threw up a hand, and caught it on the wing.
"Thank you very much," she laughed, with a little bow.
Then she crumbled the bread, and began to sprinkle the ground with it;
and in an instant she was the centre of a cloud of birds. Peter was at
liberty to watch her, to admire the swift grace of her motions, their
suggestion of delicate strength, of joy in things physical, and the lithe
elasticity of her figure, against the background of satiny lawn, and the
further vistas of lofty sunlit trees. She was dressed in white, as
always--a frock of I know not what supple fabric, that looked as if you
might have passed it through your ring, and fell in multitudes of small
soft creases. Two big red roses drooped from her bodice. She wore a
garden-hat, of white straw, with a big daring rose-red bow, under which
the dense meshes of her hair, warmly dark, dimly bright, shimmered in
a blur of brownish gold.
"What vigour, what verve, what health," thought Peter, watching her,
"what--lean, fresh, fragrant health!" And he had, no doubt, his
emotions.
She bestowed her bread crumbs on the birds; but she was able,
somehow, to discriminate mightily in favour of the goldfinches. She
would make a diversion, the semblance of a fling, with her empty