Mrs. Rutherford and Vera drove to the hill behind the Medici Villa in
the golden light of a Roman November, when the gardens on the height
were glowing with foliage that seemed made of fire, and only cypress
and ilex showed dark against that splendour of red and amber; but to
those two women all that beauty of autumn colour, and purple distances,
of fairy-like gardens, and flashing fountains, was part of a world that
was dead. The metaphysician's idea of the universe as an emanation of
the individual mind is so far borne out by experience, that in a great
grief the universe ceases to exist.
The room to which one of the brotherhood led them faced the western sky
and was full of golden light when the two women entered.
It was a room that had once been splendid; but of all its splendour
nothing was left but vast space, and the blurred and faded outlines of
a fresco upon the ceiling.
The two women stood within the doorway looking to the other end of the
room, where a solitary figure was sitting, huddled in a large armchair,
in front of a fireplace that looked like an open tomb, where a little
heap of smouldering logs upon a spacious hearth seemed a hollow mockery
of a fire meant for warmth. That crouching form with contracted
shoulders, and wasted hands stretched above the feeble fire-glow--could
that be Claude Rutherford?
Vera shivered in the chillness of the dismal scene, where even the vast
window, and the golden west, could not relieve the sense of cold and
gloom.
Yes, it was Claude! He started to his feet as Mrs. Rutherford moved
slowly along the intervening space. He looked beyond her, surprised at
the second figure, and then, with one brief word to his mother, hurried
past her and came to Vera.
He clasped her hands, he drew her towards the window, drew her into
the golden light, where she stood transfigured, like the Madonna in a
picture by Fra Angelico, glorious and all gold.
He looked at her as a traveller who had been dying of thirst in a
desert might look at a fountain of clear water.
It was a long, long look, in which it seemed as if he were drinking
the beauty of the face he looked at, as if, in those moments, he tried
to satisfy the yearning of days and nights of severance. It seemed as
if he could never cease to look; as if he could never let her go. Then
suddenly he dropped her hand, and turned from her to his mother, who
was standing a little way off.
"Why have you done this?" he asked vehemently.
"Because you would not listen to me. No prayers, no tears of mine would
move you. I was breaking my heart, and I thought she might prevail when
I failed; I knew her influence over you, and that she might move you."
"It was a cruel thing to do. I knew she was in Rome, that we were
breathing the same air. The thought of her was with me by day and
night. Yet I was rock. I made myself iron, I clung to the cross, like
the saints of old time, who had all been sinners. Vera, why have you
come between me and my God?"
"I could not see your mother so unhappy and refuse to do what she
asked. Oh, Claude, forget that I came here. Forget that we have ever
clasped hands since--since you resolve to separate yourself from the
world. I will not come between you and the saving of your soul."
"Vera," Mrs. Rutherford cried passionately, "have you no compassion for
me? Is this how you help me?"
"You know that I refused, that I did not want to see him. I ought never
to have come. But it is over. We shall never meet again, Claude. This
is the last--the very last."
"Heartless girl. Have you no thought of my grief?" urged the mother.
"No, not when I think of him. If you can come between him and his hope
of heaven--I cannot." She turned and walked quickly to the door without
another word. Mrs. Rutherford cast one despairing look at her son,
before she followed the vanishing figure, muttering, "Cruel, cruel, a
heart of stone!"
No words were exchanged between the two women as they left the
monastery, conducted by the monk, who had waited for them in the stony
corridor at the top of the broad marble stairs. He let them out of
the heavy iron-lined door, into the neglected garden, where a long
row of cypresses showed dark against a saffron sky. The greater part
of the garden had been utilised for growing vegetables, upon which
the brotherhood for the most part subsisted. Huge orange-red pumpkins
sprawled among beds of kale, and patches of Indian corn were golden
amidst the rusty green of artichokes gone to seed.
It was a melancholy place, and the aspect of it sent an icy chill
through Mrs. Rutherford's heart as she thought of that light, airy
temperament which had been her son's most delightful gift, the
gay insouciance, the joyous outlook that had made him everybody's
favourite. He the jester, the trifler, for whom life was always
play-time, he to be shut within those frozen walls, immured in a living
grave! It was maddening even to think of it. She had talked to him of
his religious duties. Oh, God, was it her old woman's preaching that
had brought him to this living death?
Vera bade her good-bye at the gate, saying that she would rather walk
than drive, and left Mrs. Rutherford to return to her hotel alone.
"I wonder which of us two is the more unhappy?" she thought. "Why do I
wonder? What is her misery measured against mine?"
For Claude a night of fever followed that impassioned meeting, a night
of sleeplessness and semi-delirium. For the first time since he had
been a visitor in that house of gloom he got up at two o'clock and
went to the chapel, where the monks met for prayer and meditation at
that hour. As a probationer making his retreat he was not subject to
the severe rules of the order, and he need not leave his bed till
four o'clock unless he chose. This night he went to the dimly-lighted
chapel, and knelt on the chill stone, for respite from agonising
thoughts, from the insidious whispers of the tempter. This night he
went into the House of God to escape from the dominion of Satan.
Hitherto he had borne his time of probation with a stoical submission.
He had sought no relaxation of the rule for penitents on the threshold.
He had lain upon the narrow bed and shivered in the chilly room, and
risen in the winter dark, to lie down again sleepless, at an hour when
a little while ago his night of pleasure would have been still at full
tide. He had submitted to the repellent fare, the vegetables cooked
in half rancid oil, coarse bread and gritty coffee. He, who had been
always a creature of delicate habits, accustomed to the uttermost
refinement in every detail of daily life--his food, his toilet, his
surroundings.
He had shrunk from no burden that was laid upon him, earnestly intent
upon keeping his promise to Father Hammond. He was to spend six weeks
in this place of silence and prayer, and at the end of that time he
was to make his confession to the Superior, and to make his communion.
Then would follow the slow stages of preparation for the final act,
which would admit him to the brotherhood, and shut the door of the
world upon all the rest of his life. He had learnt to think of that
awful change with a stoic's resignation. He had brought himself to a
Roman temper. He thought with indifference of the world which he was to
renounce. He had done with it. This had been the state of his mind as
he shivered over the smouldering olive logs. This iron calm, and his
stony contempt for life, had been his till that moment of ecstasy when
the woman he loved stood before him, a vision of ethereal beauty in the
light of the setting sun.
Why had she come there? Why? The penitential days and nights, the
stoic's iron resolve, all were gone in one breath from those sweet
lips, faint and pale, but ineffably beautiful.