blundering into the fun of the talk; one draws back coolly if they begin
to take a liberty; and that too is a movement and a gesture enjoyable in
its quiet dignity. Cooksey, at the moment when he was delivering his
rebuke to me, was intensely dignified; I clearly remember the calm
decency with which he set me down. “On _that_ subject we must agree to
differ”; it was as though I had dealt him an ugly blow, but he could
make allowances for my want of the finer feelings. At the same time it
was more than a personal matter, and he couldn’t let me off my
punishment; so he gravely stared and allowed the lesson to sink home. It
was all the heavier for the contrast of his disapproval with the gay
rattle of his ordinary style. Cooksey, I had to admit, was much nearer
the heart of Rome than either Deering or I. He had arrived from as far
afield as we; but he had not only detached himself from Bath and Wells,
he had become a responsible member of the Roman state and had the right
of chastising us in its name. All the majesty of Rome was at his
back--majesty I say advisedly, for you don’t look for anything majestic
in modern Rome, you didn’t in those days at any rate, save in the
historical shadow of the Vatican. Cooksey was himself explicit upon this
point. He happened to make some allusion to the vulgar new gingerbread
(so he described it) of the upstart Italian monarchy, the coarse
intruder whom the Vatican was coldly staring down in its ancient pride.
Cooksey, needless to say, was whole-heartedly on the side of the noble
and patient old sufferer against the upstart and the bully; and indeed
as he put the matter the Vatican seemed the only fit place for a
gentleman of feeling. The moral support behind him was immense, and his
flippant style was accordingly the more suggestive. Where would be the
charm, where the consequence, of a jest about slop-pails and
butter-slides, if they belonged to the household of the upstart? But in
the midst of the immemorial state of the other place it is very amusing,
no doubt, to find them in their homely incongruity, or to say you have
found.
So Cooksey was really the first person I had ever come across who had a
foothold, as it struck me, square and firm upon the soil of Rome, in
spite of his loud orange boots and his globe-trotting check suit. If I
had a doubt at all upon the subject it was due to something else--to his
absurd little passage with Amerigo, wherein I felt sure that Amerigo had
been humouring and playing down to him, with the dexterity of much
practice. Cooksey, no, was not in a position to meet the chinless master
of the Goose on equal terms; he had much to learn, like the rest of us,
before he could presume to treat the guileful Roman as a plaything. But
in the shelter of the Vatican he was securely entrenched, at any rate
on the backstairs. I didn’t clearly understand his position there, I
judge it was a modest one; but at least he had a real job of work to be
done, which “kept him in Rome,” as he said, and which gave him a hold
upon the city of enchantment. “Yes, I know Rome well enough,” said
Cooksey, as we prepared to depart at the end of our meal; “I can say I
know something of Rome, and of the Romans too.” He bowed gallantly to
the lady at the desk, and she looked down on him with her brilliant eyes
like a good shrewd aunt upon a rather uproarious school-boy.
IV. ST. PETER’S
Cooksey was helpful, even more helpful than I desired; he carried me on
a round of church-visiting, the very next afternoon, and showed me a
number of delicious old nooks and corners which I had already discovered
for myself. In peregrinations of that kind he could teach me little; I
could moon and roam and quote my red handbook with the best. I was still
considerably annoyed with him and not much inclined to accept him as my
guide, so long as he only guided me back again to my familiar haunts. I
had some difficulty in allowing him to believe that he was befriending
me with his superior knowledge; but indeed he scarcely waited for my
consent--he instructed me, as we made our round, without noticing the
tact of my compliance. No matter for that afternoon, however, which
brought me no new picture of Roman life; it was on an early morning a
day or two later that Cooksey presented me with an impression for which
I was grateful, at least I hope so.
I ought to have been grateful; for without the help of Cooksey I
shouldn’t have had occasion to set forth from my lodging, very early in
the day, clad as though for a dinner-party at eight in the morning.
Rakish and raffish it seemed to be stepping across the Piazza di Spagna,
in that April freshness, wearing a swallowtail coat and a polished
shirt-front, like a belated reveller of last evening; I shrank from
observation, my clothes of state looked jaded and green in the sweet
air. But in Rome this morning appearance of a strayed roysterer is not
misunderstood; the cabman whom I hailed knew whither I was bound, and he
rattled me off through the empty streets in the direction of the Tiber
and the Bridge of St. Angelo. We crossed the river, and presently we
were cantering over the vast open space of the Square of St. Peter,
between the showering fountains. Hundreds and hundreds of people were
scattered over the square, converging upon the slope which ascends to
the steps of the church; and there I joined the throng and pushed
forward in its company beneath the leather curtain of the portal--a
pilgrim, one of I don’t know how many thousands, gathered from the ends
of the earth and now assembling in the morning to receive an august
benediction.
The great floor of the church was open to all the world; the crowd
spread over it and was gradually packed to density under the dome, a
mass that steadily grew as the stream of concourse poured and poured
through the doorways and along the nave. It was a crowd of many
languages and of all conditions, and an immense hum of excitement surged
from it, breaking readily into applause and acclamation--though there
were hours to wait before the climax should be reached and expectation
crowned. It was a grand event, I suppose, but not of the grandest; it
was a reception of some few thousands of votaries, for whom the basilica
was this morning the chamber of audience. How many thousands will the
chamber hold? It had filled to over-flowing before the morning had
passed, and the hum as it deepened grew fervid and passionate with the
loyalty of a strangely mingled army. These people had been drawn to Rome
from afar like the rest of us, like myself, like Deering and Cooksey;
but the voice of their enthusiasm had a profounder note than ours. I
picked my way among the assembling tribes, listening to snatches of
their talk and trying to identify the outlandish forms of their gabble.
My place, however, was not in their midst; for by the kindness of
Cooksey I had admission to some special enclosure or tribune, lifted
above the heads of the mob; and that is why I was dressed for a party at
this untimely hour--it is the rule.
I found my place of honour on a kind of scaffold, raised in the choir at
a point that commanded the splendid scene. The pilgrims thronged and
thickened just beneath us; but they seemed far away in their murmurous
confusion when I had taken my seat on the scaffold, among the
black-arrayed group already established there aloft. We were a dozen or
so, men and women; we looked not at all like pilgrims, and instead of
joining in the jubilant roar that soon began to sway to and fro in the
thousands of throats beneath us--instead of crying aloud in our homage
before the shrine of Rome--what could we do but look on as at a
spectacle, a display which we had luckily chanced upon and overtaken in
time? We had nothing to do with it, no share in that rising passion of
fidelity;--or perhaps indeed I should speak for myself alone, for my
neighbour on the scaffold had presently attracted my attention by a
sudden movement, springing to her feet (she was a middle-aged woman),
throwing up her hands and cheering--cheering with a strange uncertain
bird-like note that shockingly embarrassed the rest of us. She had been
carried away by a sympathetic enthusiasm and she wanted to join in the
full-throated roar; but she was detached from it, isolated in a little
ring of decorous silence; so that her queer _hoo-hoo-hoo_ fell upon her
own ears too with disconcerting effect, and she faltered rather
lamentably in the middle of her outcry. Discreet ladies, black-veiled as
they all were, sitting around her on the scaffold, looked rigidly in
front of them; and the poor enthusiast subsided as best she could,
blushing and effacing herself. That was our only demonstration; the
company of the scaffold sat otherwise unmoved to the end of the great
affair, talking unobtrusively under that vast dome-full of human sound.
There was a long while to wait before the august and magnificent entry
which we were expecting. Cooksey appeared very soon, and with him was a
neat and slender and priestly figure to which I instantly gave the name
of Father Holt. You remember the figure, of course, in Thackeray’s
gallery--the polished and enigmatic gentleman of the world, who wrought
so vividly upon the boyhood of Esmond. If Cooksey’s friend had chanced
to take me in hand when _I_ was a boy, he would indeed have found me
easy moulding. He was dark, he was very handsome in the clear-eyed and
hard-lipped manner; he had the ghost of a smile and a most musical
voice. Cooksey came bustling to the front of the platform, where I was,
and Father Holt dropped behind. One of the black-veiled ladies put out a
hand to him and he dealt with it urbanely; but he disengaged himself, he
held himself aloof in the background; and indeed we were not a party of
much distinction, and I didn’t wonder that Father Holt found us a little
plebeian. Cooksey breathed heavily in my ear to the effect that the
female just behind me was the old wretch of whom he had spoken the other
evening, the pet votaress of Father Jenkins--“and I know I shall put my
foot in it again,” he said, “because I always make a fool of myself on
these solemn occasions.” He chuckled wickedly, and he added that “these
old cats” took it all so seriously, one had to be desperately careful.
The elderly gentlewoman in question was taking it very seriously indeed,
though she didn’t commit herself to the point of standing up and
cheering. She had forgiven Cooksey his assault upon her in church, and
she now drew him into a conversation that I followed with interest. I
can’t reproduce it, for it was highly technical, full of odd phrases and
allusions that were strange to me; Cooksey and Lady Mullinger (that was
her name) conversed in the language of a secret society from which I was
excluded. It struck me as very picturesque, and it exhaled a cloud of
suggestion--“puff on puff,” not exactly of “grated orris-root,” but of a
pleasant and pungent effluence that reminded me of many things. This
vein of Roman talk never seems to me to have any of the associations of
an ancient history, of a long-seasoned tradition, of a bygone grace
denied to those who are not of the society. Oh no, it is intensely
modern and angular; it reminds me of raw new buildings, filled with
chalk-blue and shrimp-pink imagery; it reminds me of deal praying-chairs
and paper roses and inscriptions in ugly French lettering. When Cooksey
and Lady Mullinger talk together they appear to delight in emphasizing
their detachment, their disconnexion from all the sun-mellowed
time-hallowed sweetness of antiquity; but of course it is exactly this
odd modernity of their tone which makes their talk so picturesque in the
hearing of an outsider. I was a complete outsider; and the manner in
which these two spoke of the rites and forms and festivals of their
society was a manner quite fresh to me, and I enjoyed it.
Lady Mullinger was elderly and plain. Catching sight of Father Holt, she
made him signals so urgent that he had to come forward; she beset him
with smiles and gestures and enquiries under which he stood patient and
courteous, a picture of well-bred disdain. Lady Mullinger had no
misgiving, and she rallied him archly, she appealed to him, she bunched
her untidy amplitude together to make room for him at her side. He
looked at her sidelong with his bright eyes, and he took no notice of
her advances beyond answering her large sloppy questions with a neatly
worded phrase. She made the foolish mistake of coupling Father Holt and
Cooksey together in her broadly beaming patronage; Cooksey was well
aware that it was a mistake, and his assurance failed him. Father Holt
(I can’t call him anything else) glanced from one to the other with a
single flit of his cool observation, and it was enough. Cooksey was ill
at ease; he had been gossiping quite comfortably with her ladyship, but
with Father Holt’s quiet glance on him he tried to disown her. He saw
that she was stout and ordinary, and that he himself looked terribly
like her; he edged away and did his best to range himself on Father
Holt’s side of the colloquy. But Father Holt kept them serenely at a
distance, the pair of them; it was easy to see that it was not for
Cooksey to stand by his side uninvited.
“No, Lady Mullinger,” said Father Holt, “I can’t, I fear, make you a
definite promise in that matter.” He spoke with a charming vibrating
bell-tone; it was like the striking of a rod of polished silver in the
midst of the sawing of strings out of tune. Lady Mullinger, unsuspecting
and unabashed, flung herself the more vehemently into her demand; she
wanted him to do this and that, but mainly she wanted him to come to tea
with her on Thursday and to have a little talk with “poor Charlotte”;
she pressed it as an opportunity for poor Charlotte which he mustn’t
deny her. Poor Charlotte was in a sad way; nothing seemed to ease her,
nobody had proved able to open “the door of her spirit.” So Lady
Mullinger said, and she was positive that Father Holt would open the
door, he alone, and she would arrange that nobody should disturb them,
her _salottino_ would be free (they would have tea in the big room), and
he and poor Charlotte could then have a “nice little talk.” Lady
Mullinger had set her heart on it--“just a nice little talk, quite
informal”; she shouldn’t tell poor Charlotte that he was expected, and
he could just draw her aside, after tea, and help the poor thing to
“find her way.” The convenience of the _salottino_ was urged once more,
and the tact with which Lady Mullinger would keep her other guests out
of it; and the ghost of the smile was upon the lips of Father Holt as he
repeated, very distinctly, his refusal to make her a promise. Poor
Charlotte would evidently have to find the way for herself, and Lady
Mullinger abounded in despair.
Cooksey had introduced me to the beautiful priest, and I had one of his
sharp glances to myself. For half a second I thought he was going to be
interested in me, and I sat up with pleasure; but then I was turned
down, I was placed with the rest of the company, and I perceived that I
was no finer or rarer or more exquisite than Cooksey himself. It was
worse, however, for Cooksey than for me, and the contrast between his
natural exuberance and his shrivelled loose-jawed malease under the eye
of Father Holt was melancholy indeed. Father Holt was the real thing,
Cooksey could only pretend to be the real thing in his absence. You
can’t attain to the heart of Rome, after all, by the simple and obvious
methods of a Cooksey; you can’t set off from Bath and Wells, travelling
to Rome because Rome attracts you, and then expect to find yourself on
terms of equality with Father Holt, whose foot was on the stair of the
Vatican when Doctor Tusher (your spiritual forbear) was scraping to his
lordship and marrying the waiting-maid. Cooksey could impose upon _me_
with the airy flourish of his intimacy with a world from which I was
locked out; but he was reduced to the position of a very raw new boy in
the company of the born initiate. Poor old Cooksey--it was a shame that
I should be there to see it.
He couldn’t renew his pleasant gossip with Lady Mullinger, and he rather
stupidly persisted in trying to range himself with Father Holt. He
received his measured stint of Father Holt’s admirable manners, and his
uneasy gratitude was pathetic. Where was now my Cooksey of the liberal
jest, of the gay scuffle with Monsignor Mair? The conversation drooped,
and presently Father Holt had slipped off again into the background,
where there now arose a small stir of a new arrival. He was at the head
of the staircase which ascended to the scaffold, he was welcoming
somebody who emerged from below; and this was a little old lady, at whom
the eyes of the company were turned with cautious curiosity. Cooksey
nudged me, whispering her name and her title, both very splendid; as
discreetly as I might, I stared at her with all my attention. None of us
ventured to join Father Holt in the graceful and natural ceremony that
he made of handing her to her place in the front of the platform. He
dropped into the chair by her side, he engaged in a talk with her that
we couldn’t overhear, and he was subtly transfigured as he did so.
There was no change in his composure and his bland dignity; but he
seemed to sink with relief into a society where he felt at home. The
rest of us were silent, we couldn’t set up a rival society in the face
of _that_ exhibition; and besides we wished, I think, to miss nothing of
its effect.
She was small and shabby and very neat; her hair, under her black veil,
was scraped together in a little grey knob; she had a strange old mantle
upon her, short to her waist, of much-worn black, and her tiny arms
appeared beneath it, with hard white cuffs, ending in gloves that were
like the Russia-binding of a prayer-book. She was not pretty, but she
was perfect; her eyes were very sweet and soft, and her face had no
colour in it at all, and the light that shone out of her eyes seemed to
shine equally through the diaphanous pallor of her cheek. I never saw
any one so transparent; she looked infinitely fragile--because it was as
though you could see through her and could see that she hadn’t a drop of
common life to give her substance. I could hear the gentle purity of her
voice, with its quiet and even intonation. She was English, though the
name and the title that Cooksey had spluttered in my ear were not; she
was intensely English--she couldn’t otherwise have talked with that
smooth silk-thread of a monotone which was so well in keeping with the
pearl-glimmer of her face. She was perfect indeed; and if she dressed in
her rusty black and wrung her hair into its knob with the purpose of
making the utmost of her wondrous distinction--why then she did rightly
and her style was consummately chosen, for her distinction was enhanced
beyond measure by her queer little white-cuffed dowdiness. All the rest
of us were things of such tawdry attractions, such twopenny
pretensions; she must have walked in a moving circle of perpetual
vulgarity, for I can scarcely imagine a face or a word or a movement
that wouldn’t strike you, at the moment when you looked away from her,
as the commonest trash.
Didn’t I even perceive that Father Holt’s distinction was not what it
had appeared a minute ago? It was now just a thought too sleek, too
glossy, too well-appointed; and I wondered wildly if I was never to come
to the end in my discovery of finer shades and finer. So the best has
still a better--but indeed I _had_ come to the end at this point, for I
have never reached a better in her kind than the great little old lady
of that morning in St. Peter’s. Lady Mullinger positively creaked with
reverential contemplation; she didn’t aspire to attracting any sign of
notice from the great lady--who seemed, however, to ignore our company
in modest and delicate shyness, not in pride--but she pored, she gloated
upon the vision with all her being. Poor Charlotte was forgotten,
Cooksey had dropped out of the world; Lady Mullinger was intently
committing to memory the details of so historic an impression. Much
would be heard of it, no doubt, at tea in the big room on Thursday.
Meanwhile I was not far behind her, I confess, in using the opportunity
of the moment; I was fascinated by this sudden exaltation of my standard
in the grace of the highest style.
But the brilliance and the rumour of the great church, filled more and
more with crowding movement, made it soon impossible to attend to any
other than its own distinction. This was a staring and thumping affair
by comparison with the small voice of perfection; but mere size, when it
is miles high, and mere gold, when it is inches thick, and mere noise,
when it is in the throats of all the tribes, will use their overbearing
power and assert their dignity. There was nothing perfect in the seethe
and clamour of the pilgrims, nothing in the sprawl of ostentation over
the whole adornment of the scene; but it was a vast and riotous and
haphazard work of genius, all of it together--the overflow of an
imagination no better than my own, or not so good, but as large as an
ocean against my own poor painful tap-trickle. The passion that rolled
along the nave and swept round the hollow of the dome, toppling,
breaking in uncontrollable excitement--I hung over it, clinging to my
perch on the tribune, and I flung into it my own small cup-full; but how
could I think to swell it with these few drops, claiming to ally myself
with genius of _that_ enormity? It was vain, I was the flimsiest of
onlookers; and the pilgrims could bring a tribute to Rome that was
profuse enough, indiscriminate and coarse enough, to fill the chamber
prepared to receive it, to brim the church of St. Peter in an hour or
two. Their capacity was well-matched; Rome and the pilgrims, they
wrought upon the same scale, they understood each other.
Rome, yes--but what about the Romans? Father Holt surveyed the struggle
of the pilgrims with something like the high indifference of the
philosopher at a show of gladiators; he inclined his ear to the little
transparent old princess beside him, he received her remarks with
courteous care; and as for her, she was as far aloof from the common
scramble as a flower that unfolds upon the cliff-edge above the booming
ravine. Cooksey indeed was intent on the display with all the eager
bulge of his eyes; but he had frankly relapsed into sight-seeing, he was
just a Briton in foreign parts. Lady Mullinger, though she murmured to
her neighbour that the zeal of the crowd had “filled her heart,”
couldn’t really attend to anything but the princess; she glanced
perfunctorily at the crowd, but she was trying all the while to catch
the silvery murmur that was holding the privileged ear of Father Holt.
It was altogether evident that our party on the scaffold was neither of
Rome nor of the pilgrimage, and the great affair proceeded beneath us
with a roar and a rush that sounded more and more remote in my hearing,
even while now it mounted to its culmination. That “real Rome,” of which
I thought I had been learning so much, was magnificently bestirring
itself to accept the homage of its swarming subjects, and I tried to
look through their eyes and to see what they saw in their jubilation.