One afternoon he borrowed Father Xavier's hat and whisking himself to the end of the lane stood waiting patiently till the rumble of the departing carriages ceased. Some minutes later the pony cart with Angelo and Florence passed by slowly as had been arranged. Climbing into it hastily, Anthony wriggled under the rug in the back, and they were off.
It was a marvellous sensation bumping along by the efforts of someone else. Miss Florence was bubbling with suppressed excitement and laughter. Angelo put the pony through what paces it might be said to have had. He succeeded at least in making it wheeze. It is doubtful if Elijah enjoyed the triumph of his chariot journey to Heaven as keenly as did Anthony his trip in the pony cart to the modest villa of Mr. Udney. Both were a transit to paradise. But to be able to peep out from the blanket and to see the scenes which he had so often observed from the tree actually passing before his eyes, to catch a glimpse now and then of a laughing face, a real one, smiling down at him—what were the rewards of a mere prophet compared to all this? Besides, the speed, particularly downhill, was prodigious. He could scarcely believe he was not dreaming when he closed his eyes under the blanket. The very pain of the bumps gave him pleasure. They were so reassuring. Presently they turned into an avenue lined with poplars. Anthony was commanded to cover up and keep still. After some delay, strange voices, and the smell of a strange place, Angelo uncovered him and the boy found himself in the stable yard of the villa. He was being shown the horses, huge beasts he thought, when Florence came out and joined him. She had changed out of her school dress and was in a long, blue frock with ribbons. She was more beautiful than anything Anthony had ever seen. Miss Florence was a very small girl but she was not too young to enjoy being admired even by a ragged acolyte. After giving him more than sufficient time to recover his breath, they went to see her rabbit hutch.
Confronted by such an ideal beast as a rabbit for the first time; actually permitted to hold one in his hands, Anthony was reduced to tears. He could not help himself. It was too much.
"They are lovely," whispered Florence. "I like the white ones best."
He nodded sympathetically, wiping his eyes on Father Xavier's best hat. They both agreed that the tweaking nose of the largest rabbit was a miracle of rare device. From the rabbits they passed out into the rear courtyard which, it appeared, was the abode of the pups.
By this time Anthony had forgotten his entire past, and the future did not yet exist. Lost solely in each other, and in the animal riot about their feet, the sylvan voices of the two children laughing uncontrollably at the comical pranks of dogdom floated into the library window to the ears of Mrs. Udney. She crossed the room to look out, stood for a minute amazed, and then turned her head to say in a half whisper, "Come here, Henry." Mr. Udney—who was perusing a document the last line of which averred, "your petitioner will ever pray"—was glad to be recalled to life. He dropped the paper on the floor and joined his wife. It was a singular scene upon which they now looked down.
Standing in the middle of the yard was their daughter Florence with her frock in the most admired disorder. She was looking up with an expression of extreme happiness into the face of a figure whose grotesqueness passed belief.
Presented to the view of Mr. and Mrs. Udney was the back of a huge triangular priest's hat clapped upon the invisible head of a young body in a long, black, clerical gown that fell in one sheer line from neck to bare, brown calves. One point of the hat, which was worn at the angle of a shed roof, was exactly between a pair of shoulder blades that appeared through the gown as did two elbows from their ragged sleeves. The effect upon the spectator was that of having been suddenly presented with the eye of Don Quixote, or, that Lazarus had taken orders. While the Udneys gasped, the laughter in the court continued till the stable arches rang.
The laughter was the least bit hysterical now. Mrs. Udney giggled. "My dear," said she, "where do you suppose she found him?" "I'll be demned!" said Mr. Udney, changing the sound of one vowel out of deference to his spouse. "Let us have them up." He cleared his throat in a preparatory manner—"Florence!" Laughter in the court ceased. The children felt they were seen. Anthony felt an impulse to run, mastered it, and turned toward the direction of the voice. "Take off your hat," whispered the little girl, "it's mother." The boy removed his hat with an unavoidable flourish owing to its size and tucked it like a picture frame under his arm. He looked up.
The removal of the hat did not disclose an ecclesiastical gnome but the fair face of an English boy rather deeply tanned, yet still unmistakable, under delicate ringlets of yellow hair. His features were more than usually aquiline. There was a firm little jaw, a broad brow, and grey-blue eyes, li anything, the face was perhaps a little too thin. But this not unpleasant hint of keenness was tempered by far-looking eyes and half-parted lips into the expression of one not fully awakened yet from a remembered dream. The head sat upon a firm neck, while the narrow-waisted, black gown with its long row of buttons made the boy look taller than he actually was. In the afternoon's sunlight he seemed to radiate a certain indescribable lustre like the leaves of a fresh plant after rain. Mrs. Udney, who had no son as yet, felt her bodice move. Her husband laughed unconsciously. "Upon my word!" he said. "Florence," he called, "bring up your prince of the church for tea." He turned away from the window chuckling.
"How do you suppose a face like that got to Italy?" he asked his wife. "Leghorn is a peculiar place. King George seems to have lost a subject somehow." The consul in him felt a dim impulse to inquire —at which Mr. Udney smiled. His wife remained by the window. Their cogitations upon different lines were now interrupted by the arrival of one Signore Terrini, a dandified young painter, whose tailor aped English styles in an Italian way.
Florence took Anthony by the hand not engaged with the hat and led him up to the library. The boy could never forget that room; the long white curtains rippling in and out through the shaft of sunlight, the warm, brown rows of calf-bound volumes, Mr. Udney's desk heaped with papers, the ink, sand, and black seals. The smell of sealing wax forever after served to summon it to view. There was Mrs. Udney in a soft, white, low-bosomed dress, seated by the tea table, the silver, the sound of low, happy voices within, that of poplar trees without. That such places existed, he had no inkling. He had never seen a lady. He stood entranced and showed it.
They were talking Italian to the artist to whom Anthony was now introduced. Mrs. Udney took the boy by both hands, looked in his face, and declared he was an angel. He blushed, but liked it. Florence was enormously proud of her acquisition who was soon seated on a chaise longue eating a raspberry tart and drinking weak tea, neither of which delights he had ever tasted before. A mist came over his eyes. He experienced the sensation of being at home.
Terrini leaned forward. He would give anything to catch that expression for a copy of the young St. John he was doing. The face of the original he worked from was blurred. The slight plumpness of the lower part of the fingers and back of the hands—one should remember that in portraits of little boys. The children of merchants were the artist's chief subject and stock in trade. What a model! One could repeat it indefinitely. He began to ask Anthony about himself.
Miss Florence broke in and was permitted to help explain. She did so with giggles which were contagious. The atmosphere grew even easier. They were gay at no one's expense. Soon Anthony was talking about himself. His queer jargon of obsolete Tuscan interspersed with learned and stilted phrases from Latin and French amazed and secretly convulsed them. In this lingo the brief annals of his quiet existence were soon told. Mr. Udney became interested and led Anthony about the room talking to him. The avid mind and the starved curiosity of the boy were at once apparent to him. The audience looked on quietly, amazed at the lad's exclamations over the ordinary furniture of domestic life and his familiarity with classics. A lecture on the use of the library globes, which Mr. Udney's encouragement drew forth, was inimitable. The gentleman was "demned" again.