CASSIDY FINDS A LOST SCENT
On Gordon, in the shock of the fatal news Teresa had brought, the
menace of that fateful onslaught had fallen numbly. No issue at that
moment would have mattered greatly to himself. But in her piteous cry:
“You are aiming at my heart,” he had awakened. That parting glance,
shining with fluctuant love, relief and assurance, told him what that
tragedy might have meant to her. Absorbed in his grief he had scarcely
cared, had scarcely reckoned, of her.
As he stood alone the thought stung him like a sword. He remembered
with what tenderness she had tried to blunt the edge of her mournful
message.
His reverie passed with the entrance of Fletcher, still uncertain on
his feet, and with a look of vast relief at the placid appearance of
the apartment. A messenger brought a request from the Rev. Dr. Nott,
a name well-known to Gordon in London. The clergyman, just arrived in
Pisa, asked the use of the ground floor of the Lanfranchi Palace--he
understood it was unoccupied--in which to hold service on the following
Sunday.
Over the smart of his sorrow, the wraith of a satiric smile touched
Gordon’s lips. He, the unelect and unregenerate, to furnish a
tabernacle for Pisan orthodoxy? The last sermon he had read was one
preached by a London divine and printed in an English magazine; its
text was his drama of “Cain,” and it held him up to the world as a
denaturalized being, who, having drained the cup of sensual sin to its
bitterest dregs, was resolved, in that apocalypse of blasphemy, to show
himself a cool, unconcerned fiend.
And yet, after all, the request was natural enough. The palace that
housed him was the most magnificent in Pisa, in proportions almost
a castle. And, in fact, the lower floor was empty and unused. Was
he to mar this saner existence, in which he felt waking those old
inspirations and ideals, with the crude spirit of combativeness in
which his bruised pride took refuge when popular clamor thrust him from
his kind? If he refused, would not the very refusal be made a further
weapon against him?
Had Gordon seen the mottled clerical countenance that waited for
answer in the street below he might have read a partial answer to this
question.
Cassidy’s ship having anchored at Leghorn, he had embraced the
opportunity to distribute a few doctrinal tracts among the English
residents of this near cathedral town. Of Gordon’s life in Pisa he
heard before he left the ship. In the Rev. Dr. Nott he had found an
accidental travelling companion with an eye single to the glory of the
Established Church, who was even then bemoaning the lack of spiritual
advantages in the town to which he was bound. His zealous soul rejoiced
in the acquaintance and fostered it on arrival. The idea of Sabbath
service in English had been the clergyman’s; that of the Lanfranchi
Palace as a place wherein to gather the elect, had been Cassidy’s. The
suggestion was not without a certain genius. To the doctor’s uplifted
hands he had remarked with unction that to ask could do no harm; and
the request, even if refused, might be precious seed sown. Cassidy
mentally presaged refusal--which should make test and material for
future discourse of his own.
Waiting at the Lanfranchi entrance he remembered a sermon of which he
had delivered himself years before at Newstead Abbey--perched upon
a table. He had never forgotten it. He touched his lips with his
tongue at the pious thought that he who had then been master of the
Abbey--host of that harebrained crew who afterward made him a butt of
egregious ridicule in London--was now spurned of the righteous.
Gordon at that hour had no thought of Cassidy, whom he had not seen in
years. “Say to the messenger that Mr. Nott is very welcome to the use
of the floor,” was the answer he gave the valet.
A moment later Teresa and Count Pietro Gamba re-entered. Teresa’s eyes
were wet and shining. Her brother’s face was calm. He came frankly to
Gordon and held out his hand.
While the two men clasped hands, the naval surgeon was ruminating in
chagrin. Gordon’s courteous assent gave him anything but satisfaction.
He took it to Dr. Nott’s lodgings.
As Cassidy set foot in the street again he stopped suddenly and
unaccountably. At the Lanfranchi portal in the dusk he had had a view
of a swarthy face that roused a persistent, baffling memory. The
unanticipated reply to the message he had carried had jarred the
puzzle from his mind. It recurred again now, and with a sudden stab of
recollection. His teeth shut together with a snap.
He lay awake half that night. At sun-up he was on his way back to
Leghorn, with a piece of news for the commander of the _Pylades_.