II

Of course there are no such heretical inventions as pews in the parish

church of Sant' Alessina. You sit upon orthodox rush-bottomed chairs,

you kneel upon orthodox bare stones. But at the Epistle side of the

altar, at an elevation of perhaps a yard from the pavement, there is a

recess in the wall, enclosed by a marble balustrade, and hung with faded

red curtains, which looks, I'm afraid, a good deal like a private box at

a theatre, and is in fact the tribune reserved for the masters of the

Castle. (In former days those masters were the Sforzas. So, from this

tribune, the members of that race of iron and blood, of fierceness and

of guile, have assisted at the mystical sacrifice of the Lamb of God!)

Heretofore, during John's residence at the presbytery, the tribune had

stood vacant. To-day it was occupied by Maria Dolores and Frau Brandt.

Maria Dolores, instead of wearing a hat, had adopted the ancient and

beautiful use of draping a long veil of black lace over her dark hair.

John knelt in the middle of the church, in the thick of the ragged,

dirty, unsavoury villagers. When Mass was over, he returned to the

cloisters, and there, face to face, he met the lady of his dreams.

She graciously inclined her head.

"Good morning," she said, smiling, in a voice that seemed to him full of

morning freshness.

"Good morning," he responded, wondering whether she could hear the

tremor of his heart. "Though, in honest truth, it's rather a bad

morning, isn't it?" he submitted, posing his head at an angle, dubious

and reflective, that seemed to raise the question to a level of

philosophic import.

"Oh, with these cloisters, one shouldn't complain," said she, glancing

indicatively round. "One can still be out of doors, and yet not get the

wetting one deserves. And the view is so fine, and these faded old

frescoes are so droll."

"Yes," said he, his wits, for the instant, in a state of suspended

animation. "The view is fine, the frescoes are droll."

She looked as if she were thinking about something.

"Don't you find it," she asked, after a moment, with the slightest

bepuzzled drawing together of her eyebrows, "a trifle unpleasant,

hearing Mass from where you do?"

John looked blank.

"Unpleasant? No. Why?" he asked.

"I should think it might be disagreeable to be hemmed in and elbowed by

those extraordinarily ragged and dirty people," she explained. "It's a

pity they shouldn't clean themselves up a little before coming to

church."

"Ah, yes," he assented, "a little cleaning up wouldn't hurt them; that's

very certain. But," he set forth, in extenuation, "it's not the custom

of the country, and the fact that it isn't has its good significance, as

well as its bad. It's one of the many signs of how genuinely democratic

and popular the Church is in Italy,--as it ought to be everywhere. It is

here essentially the Church of the people, the Church of the poor. It is

the one place where the poorest man, in all his rags, and with the soil

of his work upon him, feels perfectly at ease, perfectly at home,

perfectly equal to the richest. It is the one place where a reeking

market-woman, with her basket on her arm, will feel at liberty to take

her place beside the great lady, in her furs and velvets, and even to

ask her, with a nudge, to move up and make room. That is as it should

be, isn't it?"

"No doubt, no doubt," agreed Maria Dolores, beginning to pace backwards

and forwards over the lichen-stained marble pavement, (stained as by the

hand of an artist, in wavy veins of yellow or pale-green, with here and

there little rosettes of scarlet), while John kept beside her. "All the

same, I should not like to kneel quite in the very heart of the crowd,

as you do."

"You are a delicate and sensitive woman," he reminded her. "I am a man,

and a moderately tough one. However, I must admit that until rather

recently I had exactly your feeling. But I got a lesson." He broke off

and gave a vague little laugh, vaguely rueful, as at a not altogether

pleasant reminiscence.

"What was the lesson?" she asked.

"Well," said he, "if you care to know, it was this. The first time that

I attended Mass here, desiring to avoid the people, I sought out a far

corner of the church, behind a pillar, where there was no one. But as

soon as I had got myself well established there, up hobbled a deformed

and lame old man, and plumped himself down beside me, so close that our

coat-sleeves touched. I think he was the most repulsive-looking old man

I have ever seen; he was certainly the dirtiest, the grimiest, and his

rags were extravagantly foul. I will spare you a more circumstantial

portrait. And all through Mass I was sick with disgust and sore with

resentment. Why should he come and rub his coat-sleeve against mine,

when there was room in plenty for him elsewhere? The next time I went to

church, I chose a different corner, as remote as might be from my former

one; but again, no sooner was I well installed, than, lo and behold, the

same unspeakable old man limped up and knelt with me, cheek by jowl. And

so, if you can believe it, the next time, and so the next. It didn't

matter where I placed myself, there he was sure to place himself too.

You will suppose that, apart from my annoyance, I was vastly perplexed.

Why should he pursue me so? Who was he? What was he after? And for

enlightenment I addressed myself to Annunziata. 'Who is the hideous old

man who always kneels beside me?' I asked her. She had not noticed any

one kneeling beside me, she said; she had noticed, on the contrary, that

I always knelt alone, at a distance. 'Well,' said I, 'keep your eyes

open to-day, and you will see the man I mean.' So we went to Mass, and

sure enough, no sooner had I found a secluded place, than my old friend

appeared and joined me, dirtier and more hideous and if possible more

deformed than ever.

"Yes?" said Maria Dolores, with interest, as he paused.

"When we came out of church, I asked Annunziata who he was," continued

John. "And she said that though she had kept her eyes open, according to

my injunction, she had failed to see any one kneeling beside me--that,

on the contrary, she had seen me," he concluded, with an insouciance

that was plainly assumed for its dramatic value, "kneeling alone, at a

distance from every one."

Maria Dolores' face was white. She frowned her mystification.

"What!" she exclaimed, in a half-frightened voice.

"That is precisely the ejaculation that fell from my own lips at the

time," said John. "Then I gave her a minute description of the old man,

in all his ugliness. And then she administered my lesson to me."

"Yes? What was it?" questioned Maria Dolores, her interest acute.

"Speaking in that oracular vein of hers, her eyes very big, her face

very grave, she assured me that my horrible old man had no objective

existence. She informed me cheerfully and calmly that he was an image of

my own soul, as it appeared, corrupted and aged and deformed by the sins

of a lifetime, to God and to the Saints. And she added that he was sent

to punish me for my pride in thinking myself different to the common

people, and in seeking to hold myself aloof. Since then," John brought

his anecdote to a term, "I have always knelt in the body of the church,

and I have never again seen my Doppelgänger."

Maria Dolores was silent for a little. They had come to the southern end

of the cloisters, where the buttresses of the Castle walls, all

shaggy-mantled in a green overgrowth of creepers, fall precipitously

away, down the steep face of a natural cliff. They stopped here, and

stood looking off. The rain had held up, though the valley was still

misty with its vapours. Whiffs of velvety air, warm and sweet, blew in

their faces, lightly stirred the dark hair about her brow, and, catching

the flowery edge of her black lace mantilla, set it fluttering.

"That is a very good story," she said, by-and-by, with a sober glance,

behind which there was the glint of laughter. "In view of it, however, I

suppose there will be no use in my delivering a message I am charged

with for you from my friend Frau Brandt."

"Oh?" questioned John. "What message?"

"Frau Brandt has received from the owner of the Castle the privilege of

hearing Mass from the tribune; and she wished me to invite you in her

name hereafter to hear Mass from there with us. But I suppose, in view

of your 'lesson,' that is an invitation which you will decline?" The

glint of laughter shone brighter in her eyes, and her mouth had a tiny

pucker, amiably derisive.

John looked at her, his blue eyes bold.

"That is an invitation which I am terribly tempted to accept," he said,

in a voice of unconcealed emotion, of patent meaning; and beneath his

bold gaze, her dark eyes dropped, while I think a blush faintly swept

her cheeks. "And first of all," he added, "pray express to Frau Brandt

my grateful thanks for it--and let me thank you also for your kindness

in conveying it. If, in spite of my temptation, I _don't_ accept it,

that will be for a very special reason, and one quite unconnected with

my 'lesson.'"

Maria Dolores probably knew her danger. She turned, and began to walk

backwards, towards the point where you can pass from the cloisters,

through the great porte-cochère, into the garden, and so on to the

pavilion beyond the clock. She probably knew her danger; but she was

human, but she was a woman. Besides, she had reached the porte-cochère,

and thus commanded a clear means of escape. So, coming to a standstill

here, "What is the very special reason?" she asked, in a low voice,

keeping her eyes from his.

His were bolder than ever. Infinite admiration of her burned in them,

infinite delight in her, desire for her; at the same time a kind of

angry hopelessness darkened them, and a kind of bitter amusement, as of

one amused at his own sad plight.

"I wish I were rich," he exclaimed, irritably, between his teeth.

"Oh? Is _that_ the very special reason?" asked she, with two notes of

laughter.

"No," said he, "but it has a connection with it. You see, I'm in love."

"Yes," said she. "I remember your telling me so."

"Well, I wish I were rich," said he. "Then I might pluck up courage to

ask the woman I love to be my wife."

"Money isn't everything here below," said she. "I have your own word for

that."

"What else counts," said he, "when you wish to ask a woman to marry

you?"

"Oh, many things," said she. "Difference of rank, for example."

"That wouldn't count with me," said the democratic fellow, handsomely.

"I shouldn't give two thoughts to differences of rank."

Maria Dolores smiled--at her secret reflections, I suppose.

"But poverty puts it out of all question," John moodily went on. "I

couldn't ask a woman to come and share with me an income of sixpence a

week. Especially as I have grounds for believing that she's in rather

affluent circumstances herself. Oh, I wish I were rich!" He repeated

this aspiration in a groan.

"Poor, poor young man!" she commiserated him, while her eyes, which she

held perseveringly averted, were soft with sympathy and gay with mirth.

"When do you begin your gardening?"

"Oh, don't mock me!" he cried, with an imploring gesture. "You know,

joking apart, that it's child's play for a man of my age, with no

profession and no special talent, to fancy he can turn to and earn

money. I might, if I made supernatural exertions, and if Fortune went

out of her way to favour me, add a maximum of another sixpence to my

weekly budget. No, there's never a hope for me on sea or land. I must

e'en bear it, though I cannot grin withal."

"Ah, well," said Maria Dolores, to comfort him, "these attacks, I have

read, are often as short as they are sharp. Let us trust you'll soon

rally from this one. How long have they generally lasted in the past?"

John's face grew dark with upbraiding; the sea-blue of his eyes, the

gold of his hair and beard, the pink of his complexion visibly grew

dark.

"You are so needlessly unkind," he said, "that you don't deserve to hear

the true answer to your question."

She studied the half-obliterated fresco on the wall beside her.

"All the same," said he, "you _shall_ hear it. If falling in love were

my habit, no doubt I shouldn't take it so hard. But the simple truth,

though I am thirty years old, is that I have never before felt so much

as a heart-flutter for any woman. And, since you cite your reading, _I_

have read that a fire which may merely singe the surface of green wood,

will entirely consume the dry."

She continued to study the ancient painting. Her fingers were playing

with the ends of her lace veil.

"Besides," he went on, "if I had been in love a dozen times, it wouldn't

signify. For I should have been in love with ordinary usual human

women. They're the only sort I ever met--till I met her. She's of a

totally different order--as distinct from them as ... What shall

I say? Oh, as unlike them as starfire is unlike dull clay.

Starfire--starfire--the wonderful, high, white-burning starfire of her

spirit, that's the thing that strikes you most in her. It shines through

her. It shines in her eyes, it shines in her hair, her adorable, soft,

dark, warm and fragrant hair; it shines in her very voice; it shines in

every word she utters, even in the unkindest."

"Dear me! what an alarmingly refulgent person you depict!" laughed Maria

Dolores, her eyes still on the wall.

"I have no gift for word-painting," said John; "though I doubt if the

words are yet invented that could fitly paint my lady. She grows in

beauty day by day. It's a literal fact--every fresh time I see her, she

is perceptibly more lovely than the last, more love-compelling in her

loveliness. But 'tis a thing unpaintable, indescribable, as

indescribable as the perfume of a rose. Oh, why haven't I five thousand

a year?"

"You harp so persistently upon your desire for money," suggested Maria

Dolores, "one might infer she was a commodity, to be bought and sold.

You begin at the wrong end. What good would five or fifty thousand a

year do you, if you had not begun by winning her love?

"No, I begin at the proper end, worse luck," John answered, glooming.

"For, without a decent income, I have no right even to try to win her

love.

"And that being so," questioned Maria Dolores, "I hope you

conscientiously avoid her society, or, when you meet, make yourself

consistently disagreeable to her?

"There's no need for such precautions," John replied. "There's no fear

for her. She regards me as a casual and passing acquaintance. So I make

myself no more disagreeable than I am by nature. And if I avoided her

society, (which I am far from doing), it would be not for her sake, but

for my own. For, though her society is to me a kind of anticipation of

the joys of Heaven, yet when I leave it and find myself alone, the

reaction is dreary in the superlative degree; and the fear, which

perpetually haunts me (for I know nothing of her plans), lest I shall

never see her again, is agonizing as a foretaste of--Heaven's antipode.

Oh, I love her!"

He took, involuntarily I dare say, a step in her direction. She

retreated under the vaulting of the _porte-cochère_.

"You seem," she commented, "to be getting a good deal of emotional

experience,--which doubtless some day you will find of value. Why not,

instead of gardener, embark as novelist or poet? Here is material you

could then turn to account."

"Ah, there you are," he complained, piteously, "mocking me again. Ah,

well, if you must have your laugh, have it, and welcome. A man can learn

to take the bitter with the sweet."

"To spare you that discomfort," said she, moving deeper into the

archway, while John's face fell, "I will bid you good-bye. I am to

report, then, that you decline my friend's invitation with thanks?"

"With my most grateful thanks," he was able intensively to rejoin, in

spite of his dismay at the imminence of her departure.

"And for a very special reason?" she harked back, now, suddenly, for

the first time since they had touched thin ice, giving him a glance.

It was the fleetingest of fleeting glances, it was merry and ironic, but

there was something in it which brought a flame to his blue eyes.

"For the very special reason," he answered, with vehemence, "that I fear

the presence near me of--" He held his breath for a second, the flame in

his eyes enveloping her; then, with an abrupt change of tone and mien,

he ended, "--of Frau Brandt might distract my attention from the

sermon."