"Ecco, Signorina! il Convento!"
The driver reined up his horse, pointing with his whip.
Diana and Muriel Colwood stood up eagerly in the carriage, and there at
the end of the long white road, blazing on the mountain-side, terrace
upon terrace, arch upon arch, rose the majestic pile of buildings which
bears the name of St. Francis. Nothing else from this point was to be
seen of Assisi. The sun, descending over the mountain of Orvieto,
flooded the building itself with a level and blinding light, while upon
Monte Subasio, behind, a vast thunder-cloud, towering in the southern
sky, threw storm-shadows, darkly purple, across the mountain-side, and
from their bosom the monastery, the churches, and those huge
substructures which make the platform on which the convent stands, shone
out in startling splendor.
The travellers gazed their fill, and the carriage clattered on.
As they neared the town and began to climb the hill Diana looked round
her--at the plain through which they had come, at the mountains to the
east, at the dome of the Portiuncula. Under the rushing light and shade
of the storm-clouds, the blues of the hills, the young green of the
vines, the silver of the olives, rose and faded, as it were, in waves of
color, impetuous and magnificent. Only the great golden building,
crowned by its double church, most famous of all the shrines of Italy,
glowed steadily, amid the alternating gleam and gloom--fit guardian of
that still living and burning memory which is St. Francis.
"We shall be happy here, sha'n't we?" said Diana, stealing a hand into
her companion's. "And we needn't hurry away."
She drew a long breath. Muriel looked at her tenderly--enchanted
whenever the old enthusiasm, the old buoyancy reappeared. They had now
been in Italy for nearly two months. Muriel knew that for her companion
the time had passed in one long wrestle for a new moral and spiritual
standing-ground. All the glory of Italy had passed before the girl's
troubled eyes as something beautiful but incoherent, a dream landscape,
on which only now and then her full consciousness laid hold. For to the
intenser feeling of youth, full reality belongs only to the world
within; the world where the heart loves and suffers. Diana's true life
was there; and she did not even admit the loyal and gentle woman who had
taken a sister's place beside her to a knowledge of its ebb and flow.
She bore herself cheerfully and simply; went to picture-galleries and
churches; sketched and read--making no parade either of sorrow or of
endurance. But the impression on Mrs. Colwood all the time was of a
desperately struggling soul voyaging strange seas of grief alone. She
sometimes--though rarely--talked with Muriel of her mother's case; she
would sometimes bring her friend a letter of her father's, or a fragment
of journal from that full and tragic store which the solicitors had now
placed in her hands; generally escaping afterward from all comment; only
able to bear a look, a pressure of the hand. But, as a rule, she kept
her pain out of sight. In the long dumb debate with herself she had
grown thin and pale. There was nothing, however, to be done, nothing to
be said. The devoted friend could only watch and wait. Meanwhile, of
Oliver Marsham not a word was ever spoken between them.
* * * * *
The travellers climbed the hill as the sun sank behind the mountains,
made for the Subasio Hotel, found letters, and ordered rooms.
Among her letters, Diana opened one from Sir James Chide. "The House
will be up on Thursday for the recess, and at last I have persuaded
Ferrier to let me carry him off. He is looking worn out, and, as I tell
him, will break down before the election unless he takes a holiday now.
So he comes--protesting. We shall probably join you somewhere in
Umbria--at Perugia or Assisi. If I don't find you at one or the other, I
shall write to Siena, where you said you meant to be by the first week
in June. And, by-the-way, I shouldn't wonder if Bobbie Forbes were with
us. He amuses Ferrier, who is very fond of him. But, of course, you
needn't see anything of him unless you like."
The letter was passed on to Muriel, who thought she perceived that the
news it contained seemed to make Diana shrink into herself. She was much
attached to Sir James Chide, and had evidently felt pleasure in the
expectation of his coming out to join them. But Mr. Ferrier--and Bobbie
Forbes--both of them associated with the Marshams and Tallyn? Mrs.
Colwood noticed the look of effort in the girl's delicate face, and
wished that Sir James had been inspired to come alone.
After unpacking, there still remained half an hour before dark. They
hurried out for a first look at the double church.
The evening was cold and the wind chill. Spring comes tardily to the
high mountain town, and a light powdering of snow still lay on the
topmost slope of Monte Subasio. Before going into the church they turned
up the street that leads to the Duomo and the temple of Minerva. Assisi
seemed deserted--a city of ghosts. Not a soul in the street, not a light
in the windows. On either hand, houses built of a marvellous red stone
or marble, which seemed still to hold and radiate the tempestuous light
which had but just faded from them; the houses of a small provincial
aristocracy, immemorially old like the families which still possessed
them; close-paned, rough-hewn, and poor--yet showing here and there a
doorway, a balcony, a shrine, touched with divine beauty.
"Where _are_ all the people gone to?" cried Muriel, looking at the
secret rose-colored walls, now withdrawing into the dusk, and at the
empty street. "Not a soul anywhere!"
Presently they came to an open doorway--above it an
inscription--"Bibliotheca dei Studii Franciscani." Everything stood open
to the passer-by. They went in timidly, groped their way to the marble
stairs, and mounted. All void and tenantless! At the top of the stairs
was a library with dim bookcases and marble floors and busts; but no
custode--no reader--not a sound!
"We seem to be all alone here--with St. Francis!" said Diana, softly, as
they descended to the street--"or is everybody at church?"
They turned their steps back to the Lower Church. As they went in,
darkness--darkness sudden and profound engulfed them. They groped their
way along the outer vestibule or transept, finding themselves amid a
slowly moving crowd of peasants. The crowd turned; they with it; and a
blaze of light burst upon them.
Before them was the nave of the Lower Church, with its dark-storied
chapels on either hand, itself bathed in a golden twilight, with figures
of peasants and friars walking in it, vaguely transfigured. But the
sanctuary beyond, the altar, the walls, and low-groined roof flamed and
burned. An exposition of the Sacrament was going on. Hundreds of slender
candles arranged upon and about the altar in a blazing pyramid drew from
the habitual darkness in which they hide themselves Giotto's thrice
famous frescos; or quickened on the walls, like flowers gleaming in the
dawn, the loveliness of quiet faces, angel and saint and mother, the
beauty of draped folds at their simplest and broadest, a fairy magic of
wings and trumpets, of halos and crowns.
Now the two strangers understood why they had found Assisi itself
deserted; emptied of its folk this quiet eve. Assisi was here, in the
church which is at once the home and daily spectacle of her people. Why
stay away among the dull streets and small houses of the hill-side, when
there were these pleasures of eye and ear, this sensuous medley of light
and color, this fellowship and society, this dramatic symbolism and
movement, waiting for them below, in the church of their fathers?
So that all were here, old and young, children and youths, fathers just
home from their work, mothers with their babies, girls with their
sweethearts. Their happy yet reverent familiarity with the old church,
their gay and natural participation in the ceremony that was going on,
made on Diana's alien mind the effect of a great multitude crowding to
salute their King. There, in the midst, surrounded by kneeling acolytes
and bending priests, shone the Mystic Presence. Each man and woman and
child, as they passed out of the shadow into the light, bent the knee,
then parted to either side, each to his own place, like courtiers well
used to the ways of a beautiful and familiar pageantry.
An old peasant in a blouse noticed the English ladies, beckoned to them,
and with a kind of gracious authority led them through dark chapels,
till he had placed them in the open space that spread round the flaming
altar, and found them seats on the stone ledge that girdles the walls.
An old woman saying her beads looked up smiling and made room. A baby or
two ran out over the worn marble flags, gazed up at the gilt-and-silver
angels hovering among the candles of the altar, and was there softly
captured--wide-eyed, and laughing in a quiet ecstasy--by its
watchful mother.
Diana sat down, bewildered by the sheer beauty of a marvellous and
incomparable sight. Above her head shone the Giotto frescos, the
immortal four, in which the noblest legend of Catholicism finds its
loveliest expression, as it were the script, itself imperishable, of a
dying language, to which mankind will soon have lost the key.
Yet only dying, perhaps, as the tongue of Cicero died--to give birth to
the new languages of Europe.
For in Diana's heart this new language of the spirit which is the child
of the old was already strong, speaking through the vague feelings and
emotions which held her spellbound. What matter the garment of dogma and
story?--the raiment of pleaded fact, which for the modern is no fact? In
Diana, as in hundreds and thousands of her fellows, it had
become--unconsciously--without the torment and struggle of an older
generation--Poetry and Idea; and all the more invincible thereby.
Above her head, Poverty, gaunt and terrible in her white robe, her skirt
torn with brambles, and her poor cheek defaced by the great iron hook
which formerly upheld the Sanctuary lamp, married with St.
Francis--Christ himself joining their hands.
So Love and Sorrow pledged each other in the gleaming color of the roof.
Divine Love spoke from the altar, and in the crypt beneath their feet
which held the tomb of the Poverello the ashes of Love slept.
The girl's desolate heart melted within her. In these weeks of groping,
religion had not meant much to her. It had been like a bird-voice which
night silences. All the energy of her life had gone into endurance. But
now it was as though her soul plunged into the freshness of vast waters,
which upheld and sustained--without effort. Amid the shadows and
phantasms of the church--between the faces on the walls and the kneeling
peasants, both equally significant and alive--those ghosts of her own
heart that moved with her perpetually in the life of memory stood, or
knelt, or gazed, with the rest: the piteous figure of her mother; her
father's gray hair and faltering step; Oliver's tall youth. Never would
she escape them any more; they were to be the comrades of her life, for
Nature had given her no powers of forgetting. But here, in the shrine of
St. Francis, it was as though the worst smart of her anguish dropped
from her. From the dark splendor, the storied beauty of the church,
voices of compassion and of peace spoke to her pain; the waves of
feeling bore her on, unresisting; she closed her eyes against the
lights, holding back the tears. Life seemed suspended, and
suffering ceased.
* * * * *
"So we have tracked you!" whispered a voice in her ear. She looked up
startled. Three English travellers had quietly made their way to the
back of the altar. Sir James Chide stood beside her; and behind him the
substantial form of Mr. Ferrier, with the merry snub-nosed face of
Bobbie Forbes smiling over the great man's shoulder.
Diana--smiling back--put a finger to her lip; the service was at its
height, and close as they were to the altar decorum was necessary.
Presently, guided by her, they moved softly on to a remoter and
darker corner.
"Couldn't we escape to the Upper Church?" asked Chide of Diana.
She nodded, and led the way. They stole in and out of the kneeling
groups of the north transept, and were soon climbing the stairway that
links the two churches, out of sight and hearing of the multitude below.
Here there was again pale daylight. Greetings were interchanged, and
both Chide and Ferrier studied Diana's looks with a friendly anxiety
they did their best to conceal. Forbes also observed Juliet Sparling's
daughter--hotly curious--yet also hotly sympathetic. What a story,
by Jove!
Their footsteps echoed in the vast emptiness of the Upper Church.
Apparently they had it to themselves.
"No friars!" said Forbes, looking about him. "That's a blessing, anyway!
You can't deny, Miss Mallory, that _they_'re a blot on the landscape. Or
have you been flattering them up, as all the other ladies do who
come here?"
"We have only just arrived. What's wrong with the friars?" smiled Diana.
"Well, we arrived this morning, and I've about taken their
measure--though Ferrier won't allow it. But I saw four of them--great
lazy, loafing fellows, Miss Mallory--much stronger than you or me--being
dragged up these abominable hills--_four of 'em_--in one _legno_--with
one wretched toast-rack of a horse. And not one of them thought of
walking. Each of them with his brown petticoats, and an umbrella as big
as himself. Ugh! I offered to push behind, and they glared at me. What
do you think St. Francis would have said to them? Kicked them out of
that _legno_, pretty quick, I'll bet you!"
Diana surveyed the typical young Englishman indulging a typically
Protestant mood.
"I thought there were only a few old men left," she said, "and that it
was all very sad and poetic?"
"That used to be so," said Ferrier, glancing round the church, so as to
make sure that Chide was safely occupied in seeing as much of the Giotto
frescos on the walls as the fading light allowed. "Then the Pope won a
law-suit. The convent is now the property of the Holy See, the monastery
has been revived, and the place seems to swarm with young monks.
However, it is you ladies that ruin them. You make pretty speeches to
them, and look so charmingly devout."
"There was a fellow at San Damiano this morning," interrupted Bobbie,
indignantly; "awfully good-looking--and the most affected cad I ever
beheld. I'd like to have been his fag-master at Eton! I saw him making
eyes at some American girls as we came in; then he came posing and
sidling up to us, and gave us a little lecture on 'Ateismo.' Ferrier
said nothing--stood there as meek as a lamb, listening to him--looking
straight at him. I nearly died of laughing behind them."
"Come here, Bobbie, you reprobate!" cried Chide from a distance. "Hold
your tongue, and bring me the guide-book."
Bobbie strolled off, laughing.
"Is it all a sham, then," said Diana, looking round her with a smile and
a sigh: "St. Francis--and the 'Fioretti'--and the 'Hymn to the Sun'? Has
it all ended in lazy monks--and hypocrisy?"
"Dante asked himself the same question eighty years after St. Francis's
death. Yet here is this divine church!"--Ferrier pointed to the frescoed
walls, the marvellous roof--"here is immortal art!--and here, in your
mind and in mine, after six hundred years, is a memory--an
emotion--which, but for St. Francis, had never been; by which indeed we
judge his degenerate sons. Is that not achievement enough--for one
child of man?"
"Six hundred years hence what modern will be as much alive as St.
Francis is now?" Diana wondered, as they strolled on.
He turned a quiet gaze upon her.
"Darwin? At least I throw it out."
"Darwin!" Her voice showed doubt--the natural demur of her young
ignorance and idealism.
"Why not? What faith was to the thirteenth century knowledge is to us.
St. Francis rekindled the heart of Europe, Darwin has transformed the
main conception of the human mind."
In the dark she caught the cheerful patience of the small penetrating
eyes as they turned upon her. And at the same time--strangely--she
became aware of a sudden and painful impression; as though, through and
behind the patience, she perceived an immense fatigue and
discouragement--an ebbing power of life--in the man beside her.
"Hullo!" said Bobbie Forbes, turning back toward them, "I thought there
was no one else here."
For suddenly they had become aware of a tapping sound on the marble
floor, and from the shadows of the eastern end there emerged two
figures: a woman in front, lame and walking with a stick, and a man
behind. The cold reflected light which filled the western half of the
church shone full on both faces. Bobbie Forbes and Diana exclaimed,
simultaneously. Then Diana sped along the pavement.
"Who?" said Chide, rejoining the other two.
"Frobisher--and Miss Vincent," said Forbes, studying the new-comers.
"Miss Vincent!" Chide's voice showed his astonishment. "I thought she
had been very ill."
"So she has," said Ferrier--"very ill. It is amazing to see her here."
"And Frobisher?"
Ferrier made no reply. Chide's expression showed perplexity, perhaps a
shade of coldness. In him a warm Irish heart was joined with great
strictness, even prudishness of manners, the result of an Irish Catholic
education of the old type. Young women, in his opinion, could hardly be
too careful, in a calumnious world. The modern flouting of old
decorums--small or great--found no supporter in the man who had
passionately defended and absolved Juliet Sparling.
But he followed the rest to the greeting of the new-comers. Diana's hand
was in Miss Vincent's, and the girl's face was full of joy; Marion
Vincent, deathly white, her eyes, more amazing, more alive than ever,
amid the emaciation that surrounded them, greeted the party with smiling
composure--neither embarrassed, nor apologetic--appealing to Frobisher
now and then as to her travelling companion--speaking of "our week at
Orvieto"--making, in fact, no secret of an arrangement which presently
every member of the group about her--even Sir James Chide--accepted as
simply as it was offered to them.
As to Frobisher, he was rather silent, but no more embarrassed than she.
It was evident that he kept an anxious watch lest her stick should slip
upon the marble floor, and presently he insisted in a low voice that she
should go home and rest.
"Come back after dinner," she said to him, in the same tone as they
emerged on the piazza. He nodded, and hurried off by himself.
"You are at the Subasio?" The speaker turned to Diana. "So am I. I don't
dine--but shall we meet afterward?"
"And Mr. Frobisher?" said Diana, timidly.
"He is staying at the Leone. But I told him to come back."
After dinner the whole party met in Diana's little sitting-room, of
which one window looked to the convent, while the other commanded the
plain. And from the second, the tenant of the room had access to a small
terrace, public, indeed, to the rest of the hotel, but as there were no
other guests the English party took possession.
Bobbie stood beside the terrace window with Diana, gossiping, while
Chide and Ferrier paced the terrace with their cigars. Neither Miss
Vincent nor Frobisher had yet appeared, and Muriel Colwood was making
tea. Bobbie was playing his usual part of the chatterbox, while at the
same time he was inwardly applying much native shrewdness and a
boundless curiosity to Diana and her affairs.
Did she know--had she any idea--that in London at that moment she was
one of the main topics of conversation?--in fact, the best talked-about
young woman of the day?--that if she were to spend June in town--which
of course she would not do--she would find herself a _succès
fou_--people tumbling over one another to invite her, and make a show of
her? Everybody of his acquaintance was now engaged in retrying the Wing
murder, since that statement of Chide's in the _Times_. No one talked of
anything else, and the new story that was now tacked on to the old had
given yet another spin to the ball of gossip.
How had the story got out? Bobbie believed that it had been mainly the
doing of Lady Niton. At any rate, the world understood perfectly that
Juliet Sparling's innocent and unfortunate daughter had been harshly
treated by Lady Lucy--and deserted by Lady Lucy's son.
Queer fellow, Marsham!--rather a fool, too. Why the deuce didn't he
stick to it? Lady Lucy would have come round; he would have gained
enormous _kudos_, and lost nothing. Bobbie looked admiringly at his
companion, vowing to himself that she was worth fighting for. But his
own heart was proof. For three months he had been engaged, _sub rosa_,
to a penniless cousin. No one knew, least of all Lady Niton, who, in
spite of her championship of Diana, would probably be furious when she
did know. He found himself pining to tell Diana; he would tell her as
soon as ever he got an opportunity. Odd!--that the effect of having gone
through a lot yourself should be that other people were strongly drawn
to unload their troubles upon you. Bobbie felt himself a selfish beast;
but all the same his "Ettie" and his debts; the pros and cons of the
various schemes for his future, in which he had hitherto allowed Lady
Niton to play so queer and tyrannical a part--all these burned on his
tongue till he could confide them to Diana.
Meanwhile the talk strayed to Ferrier and politics--dangerous ground!
Yet some secret impulse in Diana drew her toward it, and Bobbie's
curiosity played up. Diana spoke with concern of the great man's pallor
and fatigue. "Not to be wondered at," said Forbes, "considering the
tight place he was in, or would soon be in." Diana asked for
explanations, acting a part a little; for since her acquaintance with
Oliver Marsham she had become a diligent reader of newspapers. Bobbie,
divining her, gave her the latest and most authentic gossip of the
clubs; as to the various incidents and gradations of the now open revolt
of the Left Wing; the current estimates of Ferrier's strength in the
country; and the prospects of the coming election.
Presently he even ventured on Marsham's name, feeling instinctively that
she waited for it. If there was any change in the face beside him the
May darkness concealed it, and Bobbie chattered on. There was no doubt
that Marsham was in a difficulty. All his sympathies at least were with
the rebels, and their victory would be his profit.
"Yet as every one knows that Marsham is under great obligations to
Ferrier, for him to join the conspiracy these fellows are hatching
doesn't look pretty."
"He won't join it!" said Diana, sharply.
"Well, a good many people think he's in it already. Oh, I dare say it's
all rot!" the speaker added, hastily; "and, besides, it's not at all
certain that Marsham himself will get in next time."
"Get in!" It was a cry of astonishment--passing on into constraint. "I
thought Mr. Marsham's seat was absolutely safe."
"Not it." Bobbie began to flounder. "The fact is it's not safe at all;
it's uncommonly shaky. He'll have a squeak for it. They're not so sweet
on him down there as they used to be."
Gracious!--if she were to ask why! The young man was about hastily to
change the subject when Sir James and his companion came toward them.
"Can't we tempt you out, Miss Mallory?" said Ferrier. "There is a
marvellous change!" He pointed to the plain over which the night was
falling. "When we met you in the church it was still winter, or wintry
spring. Now--in two hours--the summer's come!"
And on Diana's face, as she stepped out to join him, struck a buffet of
warm air; a heavy scent of narcissus rose from the flower-boxes on the
terrace; and from a garden far below came the sharp thin prelude of a
nightingale.
* * * * *
For about half an hour the young girl and the veteran of politics walked
up and down--sounding each other--heart reaching out to
heart--dumbly--behind the veil of words. There was a secret link between
them. The politician was bruised and weary--well aware that just as
Fortune seemed to have brought one of her topmost prizes within his
grasp, forces and events were gathering in silence to contest it with
him. Ferrier had been twenty-seven years in the House of Commons; his
chief life was there, had always been there; outside that maimed and
customary pleasure he found, besides, a woman now white-haired. To
rule--to lead that House had been the ambition of his life. He had
earned it; had scorned delights for it; and his powers were at
their ripest.
Yet the intrigue, as he knew, was already launched that might, at the
last moment, sweep him from his goal. Most of the men concerned in it he
either held for honest fanatics or despised as flatterers of the
mob--ignobly pliant. He could and would fight them all with good courage
and fair hope of victory.
But Lucy Marsham's son!--that defection, realized or threatened, was
beginning now to hit him hard. Amid all their disagreements of the past
year his pride had always refused to believe that Marsham could
ultimately make common cause with the party dissenters. Ferrier had
hardly been able to bring himself, indeed, to take the disagreements
seriously. There was a secret impatience, perhaps even a secret
arrogance, in his feeling. A young man whom he had watched from his
babyhood, had put into Parliament, and led and trained there!--that he
should take this hostile and harassing line, with threat of worse, was a
matter too sore and intimate to be talked about. He did not mean to talk
about it. To Lady Lucy he never spoke of Oliver's opinions, except in a
half-jesting way; to other people he did not speak of them at all.
Ferrier's affections were deep and silent. He had not found it possible
to love the mother without loving the son--had played, indeed, a
father's part to him since Henry Marsham's death. He knew the brilliant,
flawed, unstable, attractive fellow through and through. But his
knowledge left him still vulnerable. He thought little of Oliver's
political capacity; and, for all his affection, had no great admiration
for his character. Yet Oliver had power to cause him pain of a kind that
no other of his Parliamentary associates possessed.
The letters of that morning had brought him news of an important meeting
in Marsham's constituency, in which his leadership had been for the
first time openly and vehemently attacked. Marsham had not been present
at the meeting, and Lady Lucy had written, eagerly declaring that he
could not have prevented it and had no responsibility. But could the
thing have been done within his own borders without, at least, a tacit
connivance on his part?
The incident had awakened a peculiarly strong feeling in the elder man,
because during the early days of the recess he had written a series of
letters to Marsham on the disputed matters that were dividing the party;
letters intended not only to recall Marsham's own allegiance,
but--through him--to reach two of the leading dissidents--Lankester and
Barton--in particular, for whom he felt a strong personal respect
and regard.
These letters were now a cause of anxiety to him. His procedure in
writing them had been, of course, entirely correct. It is the business
of a party leader to persuade. But he had warned Oliver from the
beginning that only portions of them could or should be used in the
informal negotiations they were meant to help. Ferrier had always been
incorrigibly frank in his talk or correspondence with Marsham, ever
since the days when as an Oxford undergraduate, bent on shining at the
Union, Oliver had first shown an interest in politics, and had found in
Ferrier, already in the front rank, the most stimulating of teachers.
These remarkable letters accordingly contained a good deal of the
caustic or humorous discussion of Parliamentary personalities, in which
Ferrier--Ferrier at his ease--excelled; and many passages, besides, in
connection with the measures desired by the Left Wing of the party,
steeped in the political pessimism, whimsical or serious, in which
Ferrier showed perhaps his most characteristic side at moments of
leisure or intimacy; while the moods expressed in outbreaks of the kind
had little or no effect on his pugnacity as a debater or his skill as a
party strategist, in face of the enemy.
But, by George! if they were indiscreetly shown, or repeated, some of
those things might blow up the party! Ferrier uncomfortably remembered
one or two instances during the preceding year, in which it had occurred
to him--as the merest fleeting impression--that Oliver had repeated a
saying or had twisted an opinion of his unfairly--puzzling instances, in
which, had it been any one else, Ferrier would have seen the desire to
snatch a personal advantage at his, Ferrier's, expense. But how
entertain such a notion in the case of Oliver! Ridiculous!
He would write no more letters, however. With the news of the
Dunscombe meeting the relations between himself and Oliver
entered upon a new phase. Toward Lucy's son he must bear
himself--politically--henceforward, not as the intimate confiding friend
or foster-father, but as the statesman with greater interests than his
own to protect. This seemed to him clear; yet the effort to adjust his
mind to the new conditions gave him deep and positive pain.
But what, after all, were his grievances compared with those of this
soft-eyed girl? It pricked his conscience to remember how feebly he had
fought her battle. She must know that he had done little or nothing for
her; yet there was something peculiarly gentle, one might have thought
pitiful, in her manner toward him. His pride winced under it.
* * * * *
Sir James, too, must have his private talk with Diana--when he took her
to the farther extremity of the little terrace, and told her of the
results and echoes which had followed the publication, in the _Times_,
of Wing's dying statement.
Diana had given her sanction to the publication with trembling and a
torn mind. Justice to her mother required it. There she had no doubt;
and her will, therefore, hardened to the act, and to the publicity which
it involved. But Sir Francis Wing's son was still living, and what for
her was piety must be for him stain and dishonor. She did not shrink;
but the compunctions she could not show she felt; and, through Sir James
Chide, she had written a little letter which had done something to
soften the blow, as it affected a dull yet not inequitable mind.
"Does he forgive us?" she asked, in a low voice, turning her face toward
the Umbrian plain, with its twinkling lights below, its stars above.
"He knows he must have done the same in our place," said Sir James.
After a minute he looked at her closely under the electric light which
dominated the terrace.
"I am afraid you have been going through a great deal," he said, bending
over her. "Put it from you when you can. You don't know how people
feel for you"
She looked up with her quick smile.
"I don't always think of it--and oh! I am so thankful to _know_! I dream
of them often--my father and mother--but not unhappily. They are
_mine_--much, much more than they ever were."
She clasped her hands, and he felt rather than saw the exaltation, the
tender fire in her look.
All very well! But this stage would pass--must pass. She had her own
life to live. And if one man had behaved like a selfish coward, all the
more reason to invoke, to hurry on the worthy and the perfect lover.
* * * * *
Presently Marion Vincent appeared, and with her Frobisher, and an
unknown man with a magnificent brow, dark eyes of a remarkable vivacity,
and a Southern eloquence both of speech and gesture. He proved to be a
famous Italian, a poet well known to European fame, who, having married
an English wife, had settled himself at Assisi for the study of St.
Francis and the Franciscan literature. He became at once the centre of a
circle which grouped itself on the terrace, while he pointed to spot
after spot, dimly white on the shadows of the moon-lit plain, linking
each with the Franciscan legend and the passion of Franciscan poetry.
The slopes of San Damiano, the sites of Spello, Bevagna, Cannara; Rivo
Torto, the hovering dome of the Portiuncula, the desolate uplands that
lead to the Carceri; one after another, the scenes and images--grotesque
or lovely--simple or profound--of the vast Franciscan story rose into
life under his touch, till they generated in those listening the answer
of the soul of to-day to the soul of the Poverello. Poverty, misery,
and crime--still they haunt the Umbrian villages and the Assisan
streets; the shadows of them, as the north knows them, lay deep and
terrible in Marion Vincent's eyes. But as the poet spoke the eternal
protest and battle-cry of Humanity swelled up against them--overflowed,
engulfed them. The hearts of some of his listeners burned within them.
And finally he brought them back to the famous legend of the hidden
church: deep, deep in the rock--below the two churches that we see
to-day; where St. Francis waits--standing, with his arms raised to
heaven, on fire with an eternal hope, an eternal ecstasy.
"Waits for what?" said Ferrier, under his breath, forgetting his
audience a moment. "The death of Catholicism?"
Sir James Chide gave an uneasy cough. Ferrier, startled, looked round,
threw his old friend a gesture of apology which Sir James mutely
accepted. Then Sir James got up and strolled away, his hands in his
pockets, toward the farther end of the terrace.
The poet meanwhile, ignorant of this little incident, and assuming the
sympathy of his audience, raised his eyebrows, smiling, as he repeated
Ferrier's words:
"The death of Catholicism! No, Signor!--its second birth." And with a
Southern play of hand and feature--the nobility of brow and aspect
turned now on this listener, now on that--he began to describe the
revival of faith in Italy.
"Ten years ago there was not faith enough in this country to make a
heresy! On the one side, a moribund organization, poisoned by a dead
philosophy; on the other, negation, license, weariness--a dumb thirst
for men knew not what. And now!--if St. Francis were here--in every
olive garden--in each hill town--on the roads and the by-ways--on the
mountains--in the plains--his heart would greet the swelling of a new
tide drawing inward to this land--the breath of a new spring kindling
the buds of life. He would hear preached again, in the language of a new
day, his own religion of love, humility, and poverty. The new faith
springs from the very heart of Catholicism, banned and persecuted as new
faiths have always been; but every day it lives, it spreads! Knowledge
and science walk hand in hand with it; the future is before it. It
spreads in tales and poems, like the Franciscan message; it penetrates
the priesthood; it passes like the risen body of the Lord through the
walls of seminaries and episcopal palaces; through the bulwarks that
surround the Vatican itself. Tenderly, yet with an absolute courage, it
puts aside old abuses, old ignorances!--like St. Francis, it holds out
its hand to a spiritual bride--and the name of that bride is Truth! And
in his grave within the rock--on tiptoe--the Poverello listens--the
Poverello smiles!"
The poet raised his hand and pointed to the convent pile, towering under
the moonlight. Diana's eyes filled with tears. Sir James had come back
to the group, his face, with its dignified and strenuous lines,
bent--half perplexed, half frowning--on the speaker. And the magic of
the Umbrian night stole upon each quickened pulse.
But presently, when the group had broken up and Ferrier was once more
strolling beside Diana, he said to her:
"A fine prophecy! But I had a letter this morning from another Italian
writer. It contains the following passage: 'The soul of this nation is
dead. The old enthusiasms are gone. We have the most selfish, the most
cynical _bourgeoisie_ in Europe. Happy the men of 1860! They had some
illusions left--religion, monarchy, country. We too have men who _would
give themselves_--if they could. But to what? No one wants them any
more--_nessuno li vuole piu_!' Well, there are the two. Which will
you believe?"
"The poet!" said Diana, in a low faltering voice. But it was no cry of
triumphant faith. It was the typical cry of our generation before the
closed door that openeth not.
* * * * *
"That was good," said Marion Vincent, as the last of the party
disappeared through the terrace window, and she and Diana were left
alone--"but this is better."
She drew Diana toward her, kissed her, and smiled at her. But the smile
wrung Diana's heart.
"Why have you been so ill?--and I never knew!" She wrapped a shawl round
her friend, and, holding her hands, gazed into her face.
"It was all so hurried--there was so little time to think or remember.
But now there is time."
"Now you are going to rest?--and get well?"
Marion smiled again.
"I shall have holiday for a few months--then rest."
"You won't live any more in the East End? You'll come to me--in the
country?" said Diana, eagerly.
"Perhaps! But I want to see all I can in my holiday--before I rest! All
my life I have lived in London. There has been nothing to see--but
squalor. Do you know that I have lived next door to a fried-fish shop
for twelve years? But now--think!--I am in Italy--and we are going to
the Alps--and we shall stay on Lake Como--and--and there is no end to
our plans--if only my holiday is long enough."
What a ghost face!--and what shining eyes!
"Oh, but make it long enough!" pleaded Diana, laying one of the
emaciated hands against her cheek, and smitten by a vague terror.
"That does not depend on me," said Marion, slowly.
"Marion," cried Diana, "tell me what you mean!"
Marion hesitated a moment, then said, quietly:
"Promise, dear, to take it quite simply--just as I tell it. I am so
happy. There was an operation--six weeks ago. It was quite successful--I
have no pain. The doctors give me seven or eight months. Then my enemy
will come back--and my rest with him."
A cry escaped Diana as she buried her face in her friend's lap. Marion
kissed and comforted her.
"If you only knew how happy I am!" she said, in a low voice. "Ever since
I was a child I seem to have fought--fought hard for every step--every
breath. I fought for bread first--and self-respect--for myself--then for
others. One seemed to be hammering at shut gates or climbing precipices
with loads that dragged one down. Such trouble always!" she murmured,
with closed eyes--"such toil and anguish of body and brain! And now it
is all over!"--she raised herself joyously--"I am already on the farther
side. I am like St. Francis--waiting. And meanwhile I have a dear
friend--who loves me. I can't let him marry me. Pain and disease and
mutilation--of all those horrors, as far as I can, he shall know
nothing. He shall not nurse me; he shall only love and lead me. But I
have been thirsting for beautiful things all my life--and he is giving
them to me. I have dreamed of Italy since I was a baby, and here I am! I
have seen Rome and Florence. We go on to Venice. And next week there
will be mountains--and snow-peaks--rivers--forests--flowers--"
Her voice sank and died away. Diana clung to her, weeping, in a
speechless grief and reverence. At the same time her own murdered love
cried out within her, and in the hot despair of youth she told herself
that life was as much finished for her as for this tired saint--this
woman of forty--who had borne since her babyhood the burdens of
the poor.