BROTHER DINO.
When Brian Luttrell left England he had no very clear idea of the places
that he meant to visit, or the things that he wished to do. He wished
only to leave old associations behind him--to forget, and, if possible
to be forgotten.
He was conscious of a curious lack of interest in life; it seemed to him
as though the very springs of his being were dried up at their source.
As a matter of fact, he was thoroughly out of health, as well as out of
spirits; he had been over-working himself in London, and was scarcely
out of the doctor's hands before he went to Scotland; then the shock of
his brother's death and the harshness of his mother toward him had
contributed their share to the utter disorganisation of his faculties.
In short, Brian was not himself at all; it might even be said that he
was out of his right mind. He had attacks of headache, generally
terminating in a kind of stupor rather than sleep, during which he could
scarcely be held responsible for the things he said or did. At other
times, a feverish restlessness came upon him; he could not sleep, and he
could not eat; he would then go out and walk for miles and miles, until
he was thoroughly exhausted. It was a wonder that his mind did not give
way altogether. His sanity hung upon a thread.
It was in this state that he found himself one day upon a Rhine boat,
bound for Mainz. He had a very vague notion of how he had managed to get
there; he had no notion at all of his reason for travelling in that
direction. It dawned upon him by degrees that he had chosen the very
same route, and made the same stoppages, as he had done when he was a
mere boy, travelling with his father upon the Continent. Richard and his
mother had not been there; Brian and Mr. Luttrell had spent a
particularly happy time together, and the remembrance of it soothed his
troubled brain, and caused his eye to rest with a sort of dreamy
pleasure upon the scene around him.
It was rather late for a Rhine expedition, and the boat was not at all
full. Brian rather thought that the journey with his father had been
taken at about the same time of the year--perhaps even a little later.
He had a special memory of the wealth of Virginian creeper which covered
the buildings near Coblentz. He looked out for it when the boat stopped
at the landing-stage, and thought of the time when he had wandered
hand-in-hand with his father in the pleasant Anlagen on the river banks,
and gathered a scarlet trail of leaves from the castle walls. The leaves
were in their full autumnal glory now; he must have been there at about
the same season when he was a boy.
After determining this fact to his satisfaction, Brian went back to the
seat that he had found for himself at the end of the boat, and began
once more to watch the gliding panorama of "castled crag" and vine-clad
slope, which was hardly as familiar to him as it is to most of us. But,
after all, Drachenfels and Ehrenbreitstein had no great interest for
him. He had no great interest in anything. Perhaps the little excitement
and bustle at the landing-places pleased him more than the scenery
itself--the peasants shouting to each other from the banks, the baskets
of grapes handed in one after another, the patient oxen waiting in the
roads between the shafts; these were sights which made no great claim
upon his attention and were curiously soothing to his jaded nerves. He
watched them languidly, but was not sorry from time to time to close his
eyes and shut out his surroundings altogether.
The worst of it was, that when he had closed his eyes for a little time,
the scene in the wood always came back to him with terrible
distinctness, or else there rose up before his eyes a picture of that
darkened room, with Richard's white face upon the pillow and his
mother's dark form and outstretched hand. These were the memories that
would not let him sleep at night or take his ease in the world by day.
He could not forget the past.
There was another passenger on the boat who passed and repassed Brian
several times, and looked at him with curious attention. Brian's face
was one which was always apt to excite interest. It had grown thin and
pallid during the past fortnight; the eyes were set in deep hollows, and
wore a painfully sad expression. He looked as if he had passed through
some period of illness or sorrow of which the traces could never be
wholly obliterated. There was a pathetic hopelessness in his face which
was somewhat remarkable in so young a man.
The passenger who regarded him with so much interest was also a young
man, not more than Brian's own age, but apparently not an Englishman. He
spoke English a little, though with a foreign accent, but his French was
remarkably good and pure. He stopped short at last in front of Brian and
eyed him attentively, evidently believing that the young man was asleep.
But Brian was not asleep; he knew that the regular footstep of his
travelling companion had ceased, and was hardly surprised, when he
opened his eyes, to find the Frenchman--if such he were--standing before
him.
Brian looked at him attentively for a moment, and recognised the fact
that the young foreigner wore an ecclesiastical habit, a black _soutane_
or cassock, such as is worn in Roman Catholic seminaries, not
necessarily denoting that the person who wears it has taken priest's
vows upon him. Brian was not sufficiently well versed in the subject to
know what grade was signified by the dress of the young ecclesiastic,
but he conjectured (chiefly from its plainness and extreme shabbiness)
that it was not a very high one. The young man's face pleased him. It
was intellectual and refined in contour, rather of the ascetic type;
with that faint redness about the heavy eyelids which suggests an
insufficiency of sleep or a too great amount of study; large,
penetrating, dark eyes, underneath a broad, white brow; a firm mouth and
chin. There was something about his face which seemed vaguely familiar
to Brian; and yet he could not in the least remember where he had seen
it before, or what associations it called up in his mind.
The young man courteously raised his broad, felt hat.
"Pardon me," he said, "you are ill--suffering--can I do nothing for
you?"
"I am not ill, thank you. You are very good, but I want nothing," said
Brian, with a feeling of annoyance which showed itself in the coldness
of his manner. And yet he was attracted rather than repelled by the
stranger's voice and manner. The voice was musical, the manner decidedly
prepossessing. He was not sorry that the young ecclesiastic did not seem
ready to accept the rebuff, but took a seat on the bench by his side,
and made a remark upon the scenery through which they were passing.
Brian responded slightly enough, but with less coldness; and in a few
minutes--he did not know how it happened--he was talking to the stranger
more freely than he had done to anyone since he left England. Their
conversation was certainly confined to trivial topics; but there was a
frankness and a delicacy of perception about the young foreigner which
made him a very attractive companion. He gave Brian in a few words an
outline of the chief events of his life, and seemed to expect no
confidence from Brian in return. He had been brought up in a Roman
Catholic seminary, and was destined to become a Benedictine monk. He was
on his way to join an elder priest in Mainz; thence he expected to
proceed to Italy, but was not sure of his destination.
"I shall perhaps meet you again, then?" said Brian. "I am perhaps going
to Italy myself."
The young man smiled and shook his head. "You are scarcely likely to
encounter me, monsieur," he answered. "I shall be busy amongst the poor
and sick, or at work within the monastery. I shall remember you--but I
do not think that we shall meet again."
"By what name should I ask for you if I came across any of your order?"
said Brian.
"I am generally known as Dino Vasari, or Brother Dino, at your service,
monsieur," replied the Italian, cheerfully. "If, in your goodness, you
wished to inquire after me, you should ask at the monastery of San
Stefano, where I spend a few weeks every year in retreat. The Prior,
Father Cristoforo, is an old friend of mine, and he will always welcome
you if you should pass that way. There is good sleeping accommodation
for visitors."
Brian took the trouble to make an entry in his note-book to this effect.
It turned out to be a singularly useful one. As they were reaching Mainz
something prompted Brian to ask a question. "Why did you speak to me
this afternoon?" he said, the morbid suspiciousness of a man who is sick
in mind as well as body returning full upon him. "You do not know me?"
"No, monsieur, I do not know you." The ecclesiastic's pale brow flushed;
he even looked embarrassed. "Monsieur," he said at last, "you had the
appearance--you will pardon my saying so--of one who was either ill or
bore about with him some unspoken trouble; it is the privilege of the
Order to which I hope one day to belong to offer help when help is
needed; and for a moment I hoped it might be my special privilege to
give some help to you."
"Why did you think so?" Brian asked, hastily. "You did not know my
name?"
The Italian cast down his eyes. "Yes, monsieur," he said in a low tone,
"I did know your name."
Brian started up. He did not stop to weigh probabilities; he forgot how
little likely a young foreign seminarist would be to hear news of an
accident in Scotland; he felt foolishly certain that his name--as that
of the man who had killed his brother--must be known to all the world!
It was the wildest possible delusion, such as could occur only to a man
whose mind was off its balance--and even he could not retain it for more
than a minute or two; but in that space of time he uttered a few wild
words, which caused the young monk to raise his dark eyes to his face
with a look of sorrowful compassion.
"Does everyone know my wretched story, then? Do I carry a mark about
with me--like Cain?" Brian cried aloud.
"I know nothing of your story, monsieur," said Brother Dino, as he
called himself, after a little pause, "When I said that I knew your
name, I should more properly have said the name of your family. A
gentleman of your name once visited the little town where I was brought
up." He paused again and added gently, "I have peculiar reasons for
remembering him. He was very good to a member of my family."
Brian had recovered his self-possession before the end of the young
priest's speech, and was heartily ashamed of his own weakness.
"I beg your pardon," he said, sinking back into his seat with an air of
weariness and discouragement that would have touched the heart of a
tender-natured man, such as was Brother Dino of San Stefano. "I must be
an utter fool to have spoken as I did. You knew my father, did you? That
must be long ago."
"Many years." Brother Dino looked at the Englishman with some expression
in his eyes which Brian did not remark at the moment, but which recurred
afterwards to his memory as being singular. There was sympathy in it,
pity, perhaps, and, above all, an intense curiosity. "Many years ago my
friends knew him; not I. The Signor Luttrell--he lives still in your
country?"
"No. He died eight years ago."
"And----"
A question evidently trembled on the Italian's lips, but he restrained
himself. He could not ask it when he saw the pain and the dread in
Brian's face. But Brian answered the question that he had meant to ask.
"My brother is dead, also. My mother is living and well."
Then he wheeled round and looked at the landing-stage, to which they
were now very close. The stranger respected his emotion; he glanced once
at the band of crape on Brian's arm, and then walked quietly away. When
he returned it was only to say good-bye.
"I should like to see you again," Brian said to him. "Perhaps I may find
you out and visit you some day. You find your life peaceful and happy,
no doubt?"
"Perfectly."
"I envy you," said Brian.
They parted. Brian went away to his hotel, leaving the young seminarist
still standing on the deck--a black figure with his pale hands crossed
upon his breast in the glow of the evening sunshine, awaiting the
arrival of his superior as a soldier waits for his commanding officer.
Brian looked back at him once and waved his hand: he had not been so
much interested in anyone for what seemed to him almost an eternity of
time.
Sitting sadly and alone in the hotel that night, he fell to pondering
over some of the words that the young Italian had spoken, and the
questions that he had asked. He wondered greatly what was the service
that his father had rendered to these Italians, and blamed himself a
little for not asking more about the young man's history. He knew well
enough that his parents had once spent two or three years
abroad--chiefly in Italy; he himself had been born in an Italian town,
and had spent almost the whole of the first year of his life in a little
village at the foot of the Apennines. Was it not near a place called San
Stefano, indeed, that he had been nursed by an Italian peasant woman?
Brian determined, in a vague and dreamy way, that at some future time he
would visit San Stefano, find out the history of his new acquaintance,
and see the place where he had been born at the same time. That is if
ever he felt inclined to do anything of the sort again. At present--and
especially as the temporary interest inspired by the young Italian died
away--he felt as if he cared too little for his future to resolve upon
doing anything. There was a letter waiting for him, addressed in Mr.
Colquhoun's handwriting. He had not even the heart to open it and see
what the lawyer had to say. Something drew him next morning towards that
wonderful old building of red stone, which looks as if it were hourly
crumbling away, and yet has lasted so many hundred years, the cathedral
of Mainz. The service was just over; the organ still murmured soft,
harmonious cadences. The incense was wafted to his nostrils as he walked
down the echoing nave. There had been a mass for the dead and a funeral
that morning; part of the cathedral was draped in black cloth and
ornamented by hundreds of wax candles, which flared in the sunlight and
dropped wax on the uneven pavement below. There was an oppressiveness in
the atmosphere to Brian; everything spoke to him of death and decay in
that strange, old city, which might veritably be called a city of the
dead. He turned aside into the cloisters, and listened mechanically
while an old man discoursed to him in crabbed German concerning
Fastrada's tomb and the carved face of the minstrel Frauenlob upon the
cloister wall. Presently, however, the guide showed him a little door,
and led him out into the pleasant grassy space round which the cloisters
had been built. He was conscious of a great feeling of relief. The blue
sky was above him again, and his feet were on the soft, green grass.
There were tombstones amongst the grass, but they were overgrown with
ivy and blossoming rose-trees. Brian sat down with a great sigh upon one
of the old blocks of marble that strewed the ground, and told the guide
to leave him there awhile. The man thought that he wanted to sketch the
place, as many English artists did, and retired peacefully enough. Brian
had no intention of sketching: he wanted only to feel himself alone, to
watch the gay, little sparrows as they leaped from spray to spray of the
monthly rose-trees, the waving of the long grass between the tombstones,
and the glimpse of blue sky beyond the mouldering reddish walls on
either hand.
As he sat there, almost as though he were waiting for some expected
visitor, the cloister doors opened once more, and two or three men in
black gowns came out. They were all priests except one, and this one was
the young Italian whose acquaintance Brian had made upon the steamer.
They were talking rapidly together; one of them seemed to be questioning
the young man, and he was replying with the serene yet earnest
expression of countenance which had impressed Brian so favourably. At
first they stood still; by-and-bye they crossed the quadrangle, and here
Brother Dino fell somewhat behind the others. Following a sudden
impulse, Brian suddenly rose as he came near, and addressed him.
"Can you speak to me? I want to ask you about my father----"
He spoke in English, but the young priest replied in Italian.
"I cannot speak to you now. Wait till we meet at San Stefano."
The words might be abrupt, but the smile which followed them was so
sweet, so benign, that Brian was only struck with a sudden sense of the
beauty of the expression upon that keen Italian face. "God be with you!"
said Brother Dino, as he passed on. He stretched out his hand; it held
one of the faintly-pink, sweet roses, which he had plucked near the
cloister door. He almost thrust it into Brian's passive fingers. "God be
with you," he said, in his native tongue once more. "Farewell, brother."
In another moment he was gone. Brian had the green enclosure, the birds
and the roses to himself once more.
He looked down at the little overblown flower in his hand and carried it
mechanically to his nostrils. It was very sweet.
"Why does he think that I shall go to San Stefano?" he asked himself.
"What is San Stefano to me? Why should I meet him there?"
He sat down again, holding the flower loosely in one hand, and resting
his head upon the other. The old langour and sickness of heart were
coming back upon him; the momentary excitement had passed away. He would
have given a great deal to be able to rouse himself from the depression
which had taken such firm hold of his mind; but he failed to discover
any means of doing so. He had a vague, morbid fancy that Brother Dino
could help him to master his own trouble--he knew not how; but this hope
had failed him. He did not even care to go to San Stefano.
After a little time he remembered the letter in his pocket, addressed to
him in Mr. Colquhoun's handwriting. He took it out and looked at it for
a few minutes. Why should Mr. Colquhoun write to him unless he had
something unpleasant to say? Perhaps he was only forwarding some
letters. This quiet, grassy quadrangle was a good place in which to read
letters, he thought. He would open the envelope and see what Colquhoun
had to say.
He opened it very slowly.
Then he started, and his hand began to tremble. The only letter enclosed
was one in his mother's handwriting. Upon a slip of blue paper were a
few words from the lawyer. "Forwarded to Mr. Brian Luttrell at Mrs.
Luttrell's request on the 25th of October, 1877, by James Colquhoun."
Brian opened the letter. It had no formal opening, but it was carefully
signed and dated, and ran as follows:--
"They tell me that I have done you an injury by doubting your word, and
that I am an unnatural mother in saying--even in my own chamber--what I
thought. I have an excuse, which no one knows but myself and James
Colquhoun. I think it is well under present circumstances to tell you
what it is.
"I am a strong believer in race. I think that the influence of blood is
far more powerful than those of training or education, how strong soever
they may be. Therefore, I was never astonished although I was grieved,
to see that your love for Richard was not so great as that of brothers
should have been----"
"It is false!" said Brian, with a groan, crushing the letter in his
hand, and letting it fall to his side. "No brother could have loved
Richard more than I."
Presently he took up the letter again and read.
"Because I knew," it went on, "though many a woman in my position would
not have guessed the truth, that you were not Richard's brother at all:
that you were not my son."
Again Brian paused, this time in utter bewilderment.
"Is my mother mad" he said to himself. "I--not her son? Who am I, then?"
"I repeat what I have said,"--so ran Mrs. Luttrell's letter--"with all
the emphasis which I can lay upon the words. The matter may not be
capable of proof, but the truth remains. You are not my son, not Edward
Luttrell's son, not Richard Luttrell's brother--no relation of ours at
all; not even of English or Scottish blood. Your parents were Italian
peasant-folk; and my son, Brian Luttrell, lies buried in the churchyard
of an Italian village at the foot of the Western Apennines. You are a
native of San Stefano, and your mother was my nurse."