with her other neighbour; but take the case of Miss Turnbull, who
happened to have arrived that very day from Assisi, where she had spent
a fortnight alone with her feelings. These, she was clear, were
unutterable; but so were mine, and when we threw them together the
effect was instant. “Assisi!” we both exclaimed in an outburst. Miss
Julia Turnbull--she was a fair and flushed young woman of thirty; and
she had travelled up and down over Italy, quite by herself, and had
never had the smallest difficulty with the Italians. Wherever she went
it was the same story--nothing but perfect friendliness and delightful
manners. Treat an Italian as you would treat anybody else, and he will
behave accordingly--if this result of Miss Turnbull’s experience seems
ambiguously worded, nothing could be plainer or franker than her ringing
laugh and her broad blue gaze. With these she had made all sorts and
conditions of friends in her walks around Assisi; she had talked to
every one she met, they told her of their joys and troubles--dear
things, they seemed to feel that Miss Turnbull was akin to themselves;
and perhaps there _was_ something of the south, something of the soil in
her--she couldn’t otherwise account for it. Anyhow she had realized that
it was among the peasants and the simple folk of the country, not among
the professors and the theologians, that (to use her own image) one
“touched the heart of things Franciscan”; and she had not only touched
it, she had borne it away with her, and some day perhaps she would put
it in a little book--but it would evidently take her a long while to
think of the necessary words. And so meanwhile, “Assisi!”--the book, for
Miss Turnbull and me, was already in the cry of the name.
“A book? who’s going to write a book?”--Miss Gadge caught up the echo
with a pounce. Miss Gadge was small and lean and dry, with a pair of
nippers that clawed and lacerated her nose to maintain their hold
against her emphatic nods and jerks. If we were talking of books we
might be interested to know the name of the grey-haired lady on the
other side of the table--“but don’t seem to be noticing her; look
presently,” said Miss Gadge; and in a very unnecessary whisper she
breathed a literary _nom de guerre_ of thumping circulation, I believe,
in those days. That simple old lady, so unobtrusive in her plain white
shawl, was _she_; and Miss Gadge was her friend and had the privilege of
travelling with her on an Italian tour--a tour undertaken for a purpose
that Miss Gadge oughtn’t really to mention, but that she did confide to
us because we were interested in books. Emmeline (so Miss Gadge referred
to the authoress) had a new novel shaping in her mind, and this time she
was going to “bring in Italy”; and so she had come to Italy to _take_ it
in, as you might say, before bringing it in--she was one who felt that a
novel was only of value in so far as it was sincere. And if you have
ever had the chance of watching a novelist (a sincere one) while he or
she is simply waiting, imbibing and inhaling the atmosphere that is
presently to be brought in--you can believe that Miss Gadge was almost
afraid, at times, of interrupting the studies and meditations of her
friend, lest she should mar such an exceedingly delicate process. It
isn’t as though it were merely a matter of taking notes and accumulating
facts; Emmeline constantly remarked to Miss Gadge that it was something
far more intimate that she desired. She already had her “plot” quite
clear in her head--it had come to her at Bournemouth; the atmosphere
could only sink in gradually, taken on the spot.
The old lady in the shawl was placidly attending to her dinner, and we
could observe her without indiscretion. I had for my part a real
curiosity in doing so. In those far-away years it wasn’t every day that
I saw a novelist, and I looked upon the mild brow of Emmeline with
questioning wonder. From that smooth forehead they had sprung, those
generously passionate romances that had been considered too rich and
ripe--all the men in them were “clean-limbed,” all the women
“deep-breasted”--for Miss Turnbull to read as a school-girl. Oh she
_had_ read them, you may be sure, and she warmly agreed with Miss Gadge
that there was nothing in their frankness which could inflame a
wholesome mind. Indeed Miss Turnbull often thought that if, as a woman
grown, she possessed some power of appreciating the big things, the real
things, the human things, she largely owed it to her long immersion in
the romances of Emmeline. There comes a time, no doubt, when we turn to
life itself, to the book of the heart, rather than to an imaginary
picture of it, however sincere; a mere novel then loses its hold on us
and we reach out to our kind. Yes, yes--but what so painfully impressed
Miss Gadge, for one, was the vainness of our attempts in that direction;
our lives are isolated, barriers divide us--I am not sure that Miss
Gadge had ever been able to feel she had truly attained to the life of
another, for all her striving. Ah, to that Miss Turnbull had much to
say; there are currents, divinations, magnetic chords--but though there
is much to say about them, it appears to be difficult to say it clearly;
Miss Turnbull got entangled in the chords to such an extent that she
lost her bearing in the currents. But Miss Gadge was ready with the true
conclusion; in these perplexities, in these obstructions, it is the
genius of the artist that will point the way. Where the rest of us
fumble and hesitate the novelist marches straight; he knows, _she_
knows, how to throw down the barrier and to unlock the soul. There she
sits, bless her, just across the table; and if she seems to be thinking
of nothing but the lobster’s limb that she is tapping and cracking so
busily--type of how many a heart that she has smitten and laid gaping
with her pen--one needn’t doubt that she is taking in, at this very
moment, more of the meaning of life than the rest of us put together.
Perhaps we shall find that she has brought it in, with Italy, when we
read her next.
The conversation of these ladies had joined hands across me; they were
so much more familiar than I was with the hearts and chords and barriers
that I could have nothing to say. But they didn’t appear to get very far
with the subject of their discussion; they soon managed to lose it in
the difficulty of agreeing what it was. Miss Gadge thought that
essentially it was the spirit in which she and Emmeline were conducting
their tour; and if that were so it was obvious that Miss Gadge should
first describe, without interruption, the nature and the quality of the
spirit. This she was quite willing to do--taking as an illustration a
day they had lately spent among the “ghosts of the centuries” (I quote
Emmeline) in the Campagna; and she began the day in much detail,
dwelling on the tone in which Emmeline had said of the Appian Way, “It
speaks to me, it speaks to me!”--like that. But Miss Turnbull’s view of
the subject in hand was different; and she slanted off to _her_ view by
a rapid cut at a drooping youth who sat exactly opposite to me, nursing
his chin in a slender and very flexible hand. “Mr. Pole, say you agree
with me; say you think that on the plane of art--” Miss Turnbull was
great upon “planes”; but we all know the slipperiness of that one, and
she crashed heavily when the youth Pole, after listening unmoved for a
minute or two, sighed out some cruel and insidious comment. Such a
languorous slim-throated slender-handed youth--he was just what Deering
had planned to be, what Deering perceived that he daily more fatally
failed of being; I thought compassionately of Deering as I noticed the
waxen nose and the relaxed waistcoat of the youth Pole. He tripped up
Miss Turnbull on her plane, gave a limpid glance at the havoc of her
fall, and returned to the seclusion of his graceful attitude.
Miss Turnbull had met him at Assisi, and though she didn’t think much of
him as a man--he had none of the square-jawed virility of Emmeline’s
heroes--she was impressed by his authority as an artist. She had never
seen any one who appeared to live so exclusively upon the most
treacherous of all the planes; half protesting, half admiring, she
acknowledged the supremacy of the feat. Miss Gadge on the other hand was
so loud in her scorn that it might have flawed the Narcissus-dream in
which the youth was apparently sunk--he was bending his gaze as though
the loveliest of visions were reflected in the table-cloth. The
disregarded nymph at his side was Miss Agnes, and it wasn’t _her_ poor
dreary countenance, mooning over his shoulder, that would divide the
attention of Narcissus; and he was equally heedless, it seemed, of the
sharp word of Miss Gadge, though she flung it viciously into the mirror
of his contemplation. She had no patience with these affected young men;
to one who has lived in familiarity with a true artist the sight of the
sham is a disgust--the nippers quivered at the thought. Emmeline often
says that all great art is intensely human; she says too that every
great artist is essentially a man; and Miss Gadge puts in, fondly, what
Emmeline in her modesty leaves out--that a great artist is also “very
woman,” if that happens to be her sex. Well, it follows that a thing
like _that_, limp and boneless, soft where he ought to be rugged and
square, pale where he ought to be “flushing through his tan,” is a
creature of a kind that Miss Gadge has such a horror of that she seems
capable of actually forcing him to listen to her candid opinion. A very
little more and she would have him by the slim white throat; Miss Gadge
doesn’t profess to be artistic herself, only to reverence the gift in
others, and she is not such a very woman but that she could easily
collar the fair young Pole.
Luckily there was beside her a moderating influence; her neighbour on
her right was an English parson, as rugged and brown and broad-beamed a
man as Emmeline could picture in her most womanly moments; and his deep
rumbling laughter diverted Miss Gadge from her indignation. He was
laughing at Pole, he was laughing at her too, he was laughing at
everything that was too small to be taken seriously; there was drollery
and laziness and potency in his laugh. He leaned back in his chair and
derided Miss Gadge, and she bristled up at first with snaps and jerks;
but she was a puny little being, all splutter and shrillness, in the
grasp of his indolent humour, and she was very soon tittering happily at
his thrusts. Was he too one of our oddly mixed pilgrimage? Miss Turnbull
knew all about him, and she told me his story in an undertone of ardent
admiration. All that she knew, however, cast no light on the compelling
richness of his laughter--which was an attraction that held and
interested me more and more as I caught the rumour of his encounter with
Miss Gadge. My other neighbour’s tale was of no account; it was about
offices and dignities and benefices--nothing to the point; but I learned
at any rate that his name was Mr. Champerdown and that he was in Italy,
I think indeed he was abroad, for the first time in his life. Ah, that
gave me a sudden lift of mind, like a recollection of something
forgotten. The gushing Julia, the pouncing Gadge, the drooping Pole, not
to mention the neglected Agnes and the placid Emmeline, had driven
something out of my thought which returned refreshingly, all in a
moment, when I learned that Mr. Champerdown, with his power and his
laughter, was for the first time in Rome. With a sense of satisfaction
that was queer and sweet I repaired my loss.
But wait--for before I can attend to this matter our sumptuous meal is
at an end, Miss Gainsborough pushes back her chair, Emmeline pops a last
large chocolate into her mouth and clutches her shawl, and we stream
back in procession to the crimson and golden drawing-room. Old Martha
was bearing herself valiantly, and nobody could say that she denied the
barbarians the best of her splendour, though her disdain might gleam in
her eye. The entertainment proceeded, broke out afresh, developed and
extended; old Martha controlled a shifting circle at one end of the
room, Mr. Vickery displayed his roaring picturesqueness at the other,
Father Holt glided and sparkled with watchful courtesy in the midst.
Trays of cups appeared--and then more trays of jugs and glasses--and
then of little crystal plates and dishes; there was always a tray of
something delicate and charming at one’s elbow to fill the pause while
Mrs. Clarkson waited for one’s next remark. She had to wait often and
long, for she had the gift of exhausting a separate subject with each
remark of her own; there was nothing to add when she had mentioned that
she thought so too. She couldn’t be tempted with the jugs and glasses,
but she waited calmly--she waited so mildly that I lost myself in
watching a small drama, enacted in my view, and I only jumped back to
her when at last she repeated that she had always thought so, rightly or
wrongly. Mrs. Clarkson wasn’t easily remembered from one remark to
another, and it happened that the drama in question was unusual and
expressive. Not many people have ever seen Father Holt at a loss; it is
a rare chance, and indeed one has to be quick to seize it. He is
extremely sensitive to his surroundings, very adaptable, very deft; but
once in a while he is over-confident, and he makes a slip.
I need hardly say that if there was any run of mankind with whom Father
Holt felt sure of himself it was the run of the Anglican clergy on a
tourists’ holiday in Rome. It didn’t, of course, come a great deal in
his way, but he might reasonably feel that he had all its few varieties
by heart. He well knew the breezy tact, or the burly independence, or
the shining forbearance, or the envious--but enough, he knew them all,
all the tones of their response to the courteous charm of a Jesuit. He
thought he knew; and as he circulated in his distinction among Miss
Gainsborough’s rabble he approached the broad back of Mr. Champerdown
with all his ease. He rounded the back, he faced Mr. Champerdown (who
was seated); he addressed him in that fine finished manner which he wore
so lightly; and he didn’t even pause to verify its effect, it was just a
polite word in passing for the clumsy big cleric--of the breezy kind,
probably, prepared with a volley of manly tact and taste that Father
Holt had no wish to confront. So he turned to pass on, having made his
attentive sign, and in the next moment there happened the rare chance I
speak of. A large hand, reaching out to a surprising distance, fell
upon his shoulder--fell upon the whole of him, as it rather seemed, and
gathered him up and drew him back and placed him where Mr. Champerdown
could survey him conveniently; the thing was done so deliberately, so
gigantically, so gently, that it was as though you were to screw round
in your chair and to pick up a mouse or a small bird from the
ground--some little unsuspecting funny creature, taken unawares, whom
you had the fancy to examine more closely. With perfect gentleness Mr.
Champerdown held the bright-eyed bird and inspected it--and only for an
instant or two, before he set it down again uninjured. That was all he
wanted--just to take a singular opportunity, the first he had had, and
to see for himself what a Jesuit in a Roman drawing-room looked like in
the hand. It was delightfully done, and it was over in a moment; but in
that moment the expression of Father Holt was enough to make one forget
a more vivid pre-occupation than Mrs. Clarkson. “Yes, always,” she said,
“rightly or wrongly”--and her neighbour manifestly jumped to overtake
her mild rumination.
When at length old Martha felt entitled to put us to flight I was
careful to find myself descending the great staircase at the side of Mr.
Champerdown. We issued forth together into the silence of the
Corso--Miss Gainsborough’s portal was at the silent end of the long
straight highway--and he serenely accepted my company. He pointed the
way towards the Place of the People, hard by, and we walked out into the
middle of the broad empty square. A night of May, a night of Rome--and
moreover a night of full moonshine: the beauty of the night was too
great to be praised. Two speechless men, alone in the emptiness, stared
around them at a marvel of beauty that was close to them, all but
touching their eyes and cheeks--that was infinitely remote and
unattainable in the height of space. It was caressing and kind--and yet
it drew away and away, impalpably melting, re-appearing, receding; and
at last it had led our sight further and further, this way and that,
creating a void in which not only a pair of speechlessly wondering men,
but the great open square itself was absorbed and lost. And then again
it lay empty before us, the glimmering Place of the People, snowy in the
moonlight; and we passed over and stood before the triumphal archway of
the city-gate, where it rose up to breast the splendour of the May-night
and of Rome. We gazed for a while, still silent, and we turned again;
and now, as though we had just entered by the northern gate, the city
lay before us that was the goal of our patient pilgrimage. We had
reached Italy at last, and the end of the journey and the threshold of
the city. My companion stopped dead, his big forehead thrown back; and
he lifted his arms, he stood in an attitude of amazement, of salutation,
of adoration--all that and more was in the gesture with which he
acknowledged the presence of Rome. It reminded me--of what did it remind
me?--of something in the Bible, in the book of the law; it was the
“heave-offering,” and he raised it aloft and offered it here in the
night upon the threshold. “Ave Roma!”--his voice trolled out soft and
profound in the stillness.
I never again saw Mr. Champerdown, nor heard of him; but before we
parted that night I had welcomed and enjoyed the possession that he
restored to me. It was the thought of Rome--obliterated by the voices
and the faces of the evening, and indeed of the last many days; it was
the sight of the city, obscured unawares by the crowding heads of our
pilgrim band. The broad shoulders of Mr. Champerdown seemed to have
ploughed an opening in the throng, and there was Rome; even the mere
noise of his power and humour, and the notion of his power and humour
for the first time fronting Rome--this had been enough to bring out the
vision again in all its force. One inevitably forgets the look of it in
the jumble of our pious company; only a very few of them here and there
have the faculty of clearing the way. With one of these few I had stood
before the Gate of the People; and I gladly accepted, I gratefully
commemorate, the help of his remarkable gift. It came just in time; for
my Roman days were now running out, I should soon have to depart with
whatever I could save from them; two or three more fragments thrown upon
the medley of my impressions will complete the pile. But the vision of
Rome was safe, ensphered in that memory of the spring-night and the
moonshine--safe and secure for me to carry away when I must go.
XIII. THE FORUM
Julia of Assisi, fresh from the heart of things Franciscan, had been
painfully struck by the heartlessness of Rome. In all the grandeur and
the pride of the Seven Hills there is something which made her say to
herself, as soon as she arrived, that it wasn’t the same as Assisi--a
weak phrase, but she found the right expression before long. A want of
heart!--for a time she wandered disconsolate, feeling that it was no
place for her. What then was delight to discover in Rome her old friend
and ally Professor Minchin--a man, as I believe, of European reputation,
and a man for whom Julia has one of the frankest and most gurgling of
passions. See her, hear her, on a perfect morning in the Forum, as she
presents him with the party she has collected for the treat of a tour,
under his guidance, among the excavated ruins. He knows them intimately,
from the temple to the sewer; there _is_ a heart of things Roman after
all, and the Professor undertakes to reveal it. Not in the great bleak
galleries and the tawdry churches, but here among broken columns and
crumbling masonry, still half buried in historic dust--here is that
human and homely touch, or note, or message (for either word is used, if
we follow Julia), which at first one took to be lacking altogether in
Rome. The darling Professor had made all the difference to her enjoyment
of the place; no wonder that she whinnied and panted in her enthusiasm,
while she tried to keep us in a bunch and to marshal us properly for our
treat.
The Professor seemed conscious of Julia as of some disturbance in the
air, some unexplained flutter or flicker that confused him slightly; but
he brushed it aside, he vaguely greeted the rest of us, and he flung
himself immediately into the zeal of his task. Miss Turnbull, I know,
was a young woman easily stirred to ideal raptures, but I soon
acknowledged that the Professor was irresistible. He had the appearance
partly of a moth and partly of a scarecrow; and the mixture, as I recall
it, surprisingly gives him the likeness of a soft and ragged rain-cloud,
swept by a kindly gust. He veered at high speed across the broken floor
of the Forum, and Julia had much difficulty in holding the half-dozen of
us in her embrace while she trundled us after him. The Professor had his
view of the particular drain or paving-stone where the study of Rome
begins; and there was nothing for it, said Julia, but to accept his rule
and to squeeze as we might into the awkward pit or cleft in which the
fundamental object is to be found. “Mind the tail of your skirt, Mrs.
Rollesby,” cried Julia, growing heated; “there’s room for Kathleen at
this end, out of the puddle; wait, Professor, wait--I want Mr. Ram to
hear this; really, Mr. Ram, if you crouch you can easily get in.” We
were a handful, but Julia kept her head; the most trying member of the
party was the Professor, who heeded nothing but the book which he had
drawn from his pocket and from which he was gleefully reading
aloud--translating as he went, for it was an ancient text.
It wasn’t the best situation for a classical lecture, and Mr. Ram,
splashing in the puddle, sighed faintly in good Italian. “Per l’amor di
Dio!” he murmured; he was very helpless, and the girl called Kathleen
seized him with a manly arm and set him to rights on his perch.
Crouching, scuffling, apologizing, we wedged ourselves about the
lecturer--with sudden changes of pressure when Mrs. Rollesby leaned and
peered over her capacious bosom (she may have been one of Emmeline’s
heroines) to see what was happening to her skirt. Under the Professor’s
elbow sat a bewildered maiden with a pulled-out neck like a hen’s, and
she distracted the whole company by taking notes of the lecture on a
little pad--scrawling down words like “republican (said to be)” and “(?)
Etruscan,” which we all tried to read. Julia listened fervently, her
lips moving in the effort to get the message of the paving-stone by
heart; and the message ran on, ran on, now translated from the ancient
book, now poured forth at an amazing rate in the exposition of the
Professor. He was inspired; he stood upon the mouth of the sewer (if
sewer it was--“masonry doubtful (perhaps),” obscurely noted the
hen-necked girl)--he stood there and flourished his book and flaunted
his interpretation and ransacked the ages, casting up the history of
races, of immigrations, of the colour of men’s hair, of the obscenities
of their religion, of the shapes of their water-pots; and he whipped
open his book again and triumphantly quoted, he dashed it away to remind
us of Pelasgic sources and Punic infusions and Iberian influences; and
perhaps I rather recall the heads of his discourse as they reached the
bewildered pad than as they fell from the Professor, but they were
various and bristling and abundant; for it all came in, it all came
round, it all came finally back to the stone on which Mr. Ram was trying
to twist himself into a tolerable attitude without spoiling his
trousers. “Ah,” exclaimed Julia uncontrollably, “how one _feels_ it on
the very spot!” Mr. Ram seemed to think so too; he raised himself,
ruefully inspecting the damp green traces it had left on the very spot.
The Professor dived again into his book like a man possessed.