Read Ebook: The Turquoise Cup and the Desert by Smith Arthur Cosslett

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Ebook has 818 lines and 29775 words, and 17 pages

"I?" exclaimed the cardinal. "No; nor any living man."

"Her father." resumed the earl, "was a great brewer in Dublin. He made ripping stout. Perhaps you use it. It has a green label, with a bull's head. He kept straight all through the home-rule troubles, and he chipped in a lot for the Jubilee fund, and they made him Lord Vatsmore. He died two years ago and left one child. She is Lady Nora Daly. She is waiting for me now in the Piazza."

"Perhaps I am detaining you?" said the cardinal.

"I recognize the Irish variety," said the cardinal.

"She is here with her yacht," continued the earl. "Her aunt is with her. The aunt is a good sort. I am sure you would like her."

"Doubtless," said the cardinal, with a shrug; "but have you nothing more to say about the niece?"

"I followed her here," continued the earl, his hands still busy with his hat, "and I've done my best. Just now, in the Piazza, I asked her to marry me, and she laughed. We went into St. Mark's, and the lights and the music and the pictures and the perfume seemed to soften her. 'Did you mean it?' she said to me. I told her I did. 'Don't speak to me for a little while,' she said, 'I want to think.' That was strange, wasn't it?"

"No," said the cardinal, "I don't think that was strange. I think it was merely feminine."

"We came out of the church," continued the earl, "and I felt sure of her; but when we came into the Piazza and she saw the life of the place, the fountain playing, the banners flying, the pigeons wheeling, and heard the band, she began to laugh and chaff. 'Bobby,' she said, suddenly, 'did you mean it?'

"'Yes,' I said, 'I meant it.' She looked at me for a moment so fixedly that I began to think of the things I had done and which she had not done, of the gulf there was between us--you understand?"

"Yes," said the cardinal, "I understand--that is, I can imagine."

"And then," continued the earl, "I ventured to look into her eyes, and she was laughing at me.

"'Bobby,' she said, 'I believe I've landed you. I know you 're a fortune-hunter, but what blame? I dare say I should be one, but for the beer. I'm throwing myself away. With my fortune and my figure I think I could get a duke, an elderly duke, perhaps, and a little over on his knees, but still a duke. A well-brought-up young woman would take the duke, but I am nothing but a wild Irish girl. Bobby, you are jolly and wholesome, and auntie likes you, and I'll take you--hold hard,' she said, as I moved up--'I'll take you, if you'll give me the turquoise cup.' 'What's that?' I asked. 'The turquoise cup,' she said; 'the one in the treasury of St. Mark's. Give me that and Nora Daly is yours.' 'All right,' I said, 'I'll trot off and buy it.'

"Here I am, your grace, an impecunious but determined man. I have four thousand pounds at Coutts's, all I have in the world; will it lift the cup?"

The cardinal rubbed his white hands together, uncrossed and recrossed his legs, struck the arm of his chair, and burst into a laugh so merry and so prolonged that the earl, perforce, joined him.

"It's funny," said the latter, finally, "but, all the same, it's serious."

"Oh, Love!" exclaimed the cardinal; "you little naked boy with wings and a bow! You give us more trouble than all the rest of the heathen deities combined--you fly about so--you appear in such strange places--you compel mortals to do such remarkable things--you debauch my pigeons, and, when the ill is done, you send your victims to me, or another priest, and ask for absolution, so that they may begin all over again."

"Do I get the cup?" asked the earl, with some impatience.

"My lord," said the cardinal, "if the cup were mine, I have a fancy that I would give it to you, with my blessing and my best wishes; but when you ask me to sell it to you, it is as though you asked your queen to sell you the Kohinoor. She dare not, if she could. She could not, if she dare. Both the diamond and the cup were, doubtless, stolen. The diamond was taken in this century; the cup was looted so long ago that no one knows. A sad attribute of crime is that time softens it. There is a mental statute of limitations that converts possession into ownership. 'We stole the Kohinoor so long ago,' says the Englishman, 'that we own it now.' So it is with the cup. Where did it come from? It is doubtless Byzantine, but where did its maker live; in Byzantium or here, in Venice? We used to kidnap Oriental artists in the good old days when art was a religion. This cup was made by one whom God befriended; by a brain steeped in the love of the beautiful; by a hand so cunning that when it died art languished; by a power so compelling that the treasuries of the world were opened to it. Its bowl is a turquoise, the size and shape of an ostrich's egg, sawn through its longer diameter, and resting on its side. Four gold arms clasp the bowl and meet under it. These arms are set with rubies en cabochon, except one, which is cut in facets. The arms are welded beneath the bowl and form the stem. Midway of the stem, and pierced by it, is a diamond, as large"--the cardinal picked up his teaspoon and looked at it--"yes," he said, "as large as the bowl of this spoon. The foot of the cup is an emerald, flat on the bottom and joined to the stem by a ferrule of transparent enamel. If this treasure were offered for sale the wealth of the world would fight for it. No, no, my lord, you cannot have the cup. Take your four thousand pounds to Testolini, the jeweller, and buy a string of pearls. Very few good women can resist pearls."

"Your grace," said the earl, rising, "I appreciate fully the absurdity of my errand and the kindness of your forbearance. I fear, however, that you scarcely grasp the situation. I am going to marry Lady Nora. I cannot marry her without the cup. You perceive the conclusion--I shall have the cup. Good-by, your grace; I thank you for your patience."

"Good-by," said the cardinal, ringing for a servant. "I wish that I might serve you; but, when children cry for the moon, what is to be done? Come and see me again; I am nearly always at home about this hour."

"I repeat, your grace," said the earl, "that I shall have the cup. All is fair in love and war, is it not?"

There was a certain quality in the earl's voice--that quiet, even note of sincerity which quells riots, which quiets horses, which leads forlorn hopes, and the well-trained ear of the cardinal recognized it.

"Pietro," he said to the servant who answered the bell, "I am going out. My hat and stick. I will go a little way with you, my lord."

They went down the broad stairs together, and the earl noticed, for the first time, that his companion limped.

"Gout?" he asked.

"No," said the cardinal; "the indiscretion of youth. I was with Garibaldi and caught a bullet."

"Take my arm," said the earl.

"Willingly," said the cardinal, "since I know that you will bring me into the presence of a woman worth seeing; a woman who can compel a peer of England to meditate a theft."

"How do you know that?" exclaimed the earl; and he stopped so abruptly that the cardinal put his free hand against his companion's breast to right himself.

"Because," said the cardinal, "I saw your face when you said good-by to me. It was not a pleasant face."

They went on silently and soon they came to the Piazza.

"I don't see her," said the earl; "perhaps she has gone back to the church."

They crossed the Piazza and entered St. Mark's.

"Not here," said the earl.

They walked up the south aisle and came to the anteroom of the treasury. Its door was open. They entered what had once been a tower of the old palace. The door of the treasury was also open. They went in and found the sacristan and a woman. She held the turquoise cup in her hands.

"Did you buy it, Bobby?" she exclaimed.

She turned and saw that the earl was not alone.

"Your grace," he said, "I present you to Lady Nora Daly."

She bent with a motion half genuflexion, half courtesy, and then straightened herself, smiling.

The cardinal did not notice the obeisance, but he did notice the smile. It seemed to him, as he looked at her, that the treasures of St. Mark's, the jewelled chalices and patens, the agate and crystal vessels, the reliquaries of gold and precious stones, the candlesticks, the two textus covers of golden cloisonn?, and even the turquoise cup itself, turned dull and wan and common by comparison with her beauty.

"He has done a very gracious thing today," said the cardinal. "He has brought me to you."

Lady Nora looked up quickly, scenting a compliment, and ready to meet it, but the cardinal's face was so grave and so sincere that her readiness forsook her and she stood silent.

The earl seemed to be interested in a crucifix of the eleventh century.

"While my lord is occupied with the crucifix," said the cardinal, "will you not walk with me?"

"Willingly," said Lady Nora, and they went out into the church.

"My dear lady," said the cardinal, after an interval of silence, "you are entering upon life. You have a position, you have wealth, you have youth, you have health, and," with a bow, "you have beauty such as God gives to His creatures only for good purposes. Some women, like Helen of Troy and Cleopatra, have used their beauty for evil. Others, like my Queen, Margarita, and like Mary, Queen of the Scots, have held their beauty as a trust to be exploited for good, as a power to be exercised on the side of the powerless."

"Your eminence," said Lady Nora, "we are now taught in England that Queen Mary was not altogether proper."

"She had beauty, had she not?" asked the cardinal.

"Yes," replied Lady Nora.

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