My Friend Prospero

by Henry Harland

  II

  Of course there are no such heretical inventions as pews in the parishchurch of Sant' Alessina. You sit upon orthodox rush-bottomed chairs,you kneel upon orthodox bare stones. But at the Epistle side of thealtar, at an elevation of perhaps a yard from the pavement, there is arecess in the wall, enclosed by a marble balustrade, and hung with fadedred curtains, which looks, I'm afraid, a good deal like a private box ata theatre, and is in fact the tribune reserved for the masters of theCastle. (In former days those masters were the Sforzas. So, from thistribune, the members of that race of iron and blood, of fierceness andof guile, have assisted at the mystical sacrifice of the Lamb of God!)Heretofore, during John's residence at the presbytery, the tribune hadstood vacant. To-day it was occupied by Maria Dolores and Frau Brandt.Maria Dolores, instead of wearing a hat, had adopted the ancient andbeautiful use of draping a long veil of black lace over her dark hair.

  John knelt in the middle of the church, in the thick of the ragged,dirty, unsavoury villagers. When Mass was over, he returned to thecloisters, and there, face to face, he met the lady of his dreams.

  She graciously inclined her head.

  "Good morning," she said, smiling, in a voice that seemed to him full ofmorning freshness.

  "Good morning," he responded, wondering whether she could hear thetremor of his heart. "Though, in honest truth, it's rather a badmorning, isn't it?" he submitted, posing his head at an angle, dubiousand reflective, that seemed to raise the question to a level ofphilosophic import.

  "Oh, with these cloisters, one shouldn't complain," said she, glancingindicatively round. "One can still be out of doors, and yet not get thewetting one deserves. And the view is so fine, and these faded oldfrescoes are so droll."

  "Yes," said he, his wits, for the instant, in a state of suspendedanimation. "The view is fine, the frescoes are droll."

  She looked as if she were thinking about something.

  "Don't you find it," she asked, after a moment, with the slightestbepuzzled drawing together of her eyebrows, "a trifle unpleasant,hearing Mass from where you do?"

  John looked blank.

  "Unpleasant? No. Why?" he asked.

  "I should think it might be disagreeable to be hemmed in and elbowed bythose extraordinarily ragged and dirty people," she explained. "It's apity they shouldn't clean themselves up a little before coming tochurch."

  "Ah, yes," he assented, "a little cleaning up wouldn't hurt them; that'svery certain. But," he set forth, in extenuation, "it's not the customof the country, and the fact that it isn't has its good significance, aswell as its bad. It's one of the many signs of how genuinely democraticand popular the Church is in Italy,--as it ought to be everywhere. It ishere essentially the Church of the people, the Church of the poor. It isthe one place where the poorest man, in all his rags, and with the soilof his work upon him, feels perfectly at ease, perfectly at home,perfectly equal to the richest. It is the one place where a reekingmarket-woman, with her basket on her arm, will feel at liberty to takeher place beside the great lady, in her furs and velvets, and even toask her, with a nudge, to move up and make room. That is as it shouldbe, isn't it?"

  "No doubt, no doubt," agreed Maria Dolores, beginning to pace backwardsand forwards over the lichen-stained marble pavement, (stained as by thehand of an artist, in wavy veins of yellow or pale-green, with here andthere little rosettes of scarlet), while John kept beside her. "All thesame, I should not like to kneel quite in the very heart of the crowd,as you do."

  "You are a delicate and sensitive woman," he reminded her. "I am a man,and a moderately tough one. However, I must admit that until ratherrecently I had exactly your feeling. But I got a lesson." He broke offand gave a vague little laugh, vaguely rueful, as at a not altogetherpleasant reminiscence.

  "What was the lesson?" she asked.

  "Well," said he, "if you care to know, it was this. The first time thatI attended Mass here, desiring to avoid the people, I sought out a farcorner of the church, behind a pillar, where there was no one. But assoon as I had got myself well established there, up hobbled a deformedand lame old man, and plumped himself down beside me, so close that ourcoat-sleeves touched. I think he was the most repulsive-looking old manI have ever seen; he was certainly the dirtiest, the grimiest, and hisrags were extravagantly foul. I will spare you a more circumstantialportrait. And all through Mass I was sick with disgust and sore withresentment. Why should he come and rub his coat-sleeve against mine,when there was room in plenty for him elsewhere? The next time I went tochurch, I chose a different corner, as remote as might be from my formerone; but again, no sooner was I well installed, than, lo and behold, thesame unspeakable old man limped up and knelt with me, cheek by jowl. Andso, if you can believe it, the next time, and so the next. It didn'tmatter where I placed myself, there he was sure to place himself too.You will suppose that, apart from my annoyance, I was vastly perplexed.Why should he pursue me so? Who was he? What was he after? And forenlightenment I addressed myself to Annunziata. 'Who is the hideous oldman who always kneels beside me?' I asked her. She had not noticed anyone kneeling beside me, she said; she had noticed, on the contrary, thatI always knelt alone, at a distance. 'Well,' said I, 'keep your eyesopen to-day, and you will see the man I mean.' So we went to Mass, andsure enough, no sooner had I found a secluded place, than my old friendappeared and joined me, dirtier and more hideous and if possible moredeformed than ever.

  "Yes?" said Maria Dolores, with interest, as he paused.

  "When we came out of church, I asked Annunziata who he was," continuedJohn. "And she said that though she had kept her eyes open, according tomy injunction, she had failed to see any one kneeling beside me--that,on the contrary, she had seen me," he concluded, with an insouciancethat was plainly assumed for its dramatic value, "kneeling alone, at adistance from every one."

  Maria Dolores' face was white. She frowned her mystification.

  "What!" she exclaimed, in a half-frightened voice.

  "That is precisely the ejaculation that fell from my own lips at thetime," said John. "Then I gave her a minute description of the old man,in all his ugliness. And then she administered my lesson to me."

  "Yes? What was it?" questioned Maria Dolores, her interest acute.

  "Speaking in that oracular vein of hers, her eyes very big, her facevery grave, she assured me that my horrible old man had no objectiveexistence. She informed me cheerfully and calmly that he was an image ofmy own soul, as it appeared, corrupted and aged and deformed by the sinsof a lifetime, to God and to the Saints. And she added that he was sentto punish me for my pride in thinking myself different to the commonpeople, and in seeking to hold myself aloof. Since then," John broughthis anecdote to a term, "I have always knelt in the body of the church,and I have never again seen my Doppelgaenger."

  Maria Dolores was silent for a little. They had come to the southern endof the cloisters, where the buttresses of the Castle walls, allshaggy-mantled in a green overgrowth of creepers, fall precipitouslyaway, down the steep face of a natural cliff. They stopped here, andstood looking off. The rain had held up, though the valley was stillmisty with its vapours. Whiffs of velvety air, warm and sweet, blew intheir faces, lightly stirred the dark hair about her brow, and, catchingthe flowery edge of her black lace mantilla, set it fluttering.

  "That is a very good story," she said, by-and-by, with a sober glance,behind which there was the glint of laughter. "In view of it, however, Isuppose there will be no use in my delivering a message I am chargedwith for you from my friend Frau Brandt."

  "Oh?" questioned John. "What message?"

  "Frau Brandt has received from the owner of the Castle the privilege ofhearing Mass from the tribune; and she wished me to invite you in hername hereafter to hear Mass from there with us. But I suppose, in viewof your 'lesson,' that is an invitation which you will decline?" Theglint of laughter shone brighter in her eyes, and her mouth had a tinypucker, amiably derisive.

  John looked at her, his blue eyes bold.

/>   "That is an invitation which I am terribly tempted to accept," he said,in a voice of unconcealed emotion, of patent meaning; and beneath hisbold gaze, her dark eyes dropped, while I think a blush faintly swepther cheeks. "And first of all," he added, "pray express to Frau Brandtmy grateful thanks for it--and let me thank you also for your kindnessin conveying it. If, in spite of my temptation, I _don't_ accept it,that will be for a very special reason, and one quite unconnected withmy 'lesson.'"

  Maria Dolores probably knew her danger. She turned, and began to walkbackwards, towards the point where you can pass from the cloisters,through the great porte-cochere, into the garden, and so on to thepavilion beyond the clock. She probably knew her danger; but she washuman, but she was a woman. Besides, she had reached the porte-cochere,and thus commanded a clear means of escape. So, coming to a standstillhere, "What is the very special reason?" she asked, in a low voice,keeping her eyes from his.

  His were bolder than ever. Infinite admiration of her burned in them,infinite delight in her, desire for her; at the same time a kind ofangry hopelessness darkened them, and a kind of bitter amusement, as ofone amused at his own sad plight.

  "I wish I were rich," he exclaimed, irritably, between his teeth.

  "Oh? Is _that_ the very special reason?" asked she, with two notes oflaughter.

  "No," said he, "but it has a connection with it. You see, I'm in love."

  "Yes," said she. "I remember your telling me so."

  "Well, I wish I were rich," said he. "Then I might pluck up courage toask the woman I love to be my wife."

  "Money isn't everything here below," said she. "I have your own word forthat."

  "What else counts," said he, "when you wish to ask a woman to marryyou?"

  "Oh, many things," said she. "Difference of rank, for example."

  "That wouldn't count with me," said the democratic fellow, handsomely."I shouldn't give two thoughts to differences of rank."

  Maria Dolores smiled--at her secret reflections, I suppose.

  "But poverty puts it out of all question," John moodily went on. "Icouldn't ask a woman to come and share with me an income of sixpence aweek. Especially as I have grounds for believing that she's in ratheraffluent circumstances herself. Oh, I wish I were rich!" He repeatedthis aspiration in a groan.

  "Poor, poor young man!" she commiserated him, while her eyes, which sheheld perseveringly averted, were soft with sympathy and gay with mirth."When do you begin your gardening?"

  "Oh, don't mock me!" he cried, with an imploring gesture. "You know,joking apart, that it's child's play for a man of my age, with noprofession and no special talent, to fancy he can turn to and earnmoney. I might, if I made supernatural exertions, and if Fortune wentout of her way to favour me, add a maximum of another sixpence to myweekly budget. No, there's never a hope for me on sea or land. I muste'en bear it, though I cannot grin withal."

  "Ah, well," said Maria Dolores, to comfort him, "these attacks, I haveread, are often as short as they are sharp. Let us trust you'll soonrally from this one. How long have they generally lasted in the past?"

  John's face grew dark with upbraiding; the sea-blue of his eyes, thegold of his hair and beard, the pink of his complexion visibly grewdark.

  "You are so needlessly unkind," he said, "that you don't deserve to hearthe true answer to your question."

  She studied the half-obliterated fresco on the wall beside her.

  "All the same," said he, "you _shall_ hear it. If falling in love weremy habit, no doubt I shouldn't take it so hard. But the simple truth,though I am thirty years old, is that I have never before felt so muchas a heart-flutter for any woman. And, since you cite your reading, _I_have read that a fire which may merely singe the surface of green wood,will entirely consume the dry."

  She continued to study the ancient painting. Her fingers were playingwith the ends of her lace veil.

  "Besides," he went on, "if I had been in love a dozen times, it wouldn'tsignify. For I should have been in love with ordinary usual humanwomen. They're the only sort I ever met--till I met her. She's of atotally different order--as distinct from them as ... What shallI say? Oh, as unlike them as starfire is unlike dull clay.Starfire--starfire--the wonderful, high, white-burning starfire of herspirit, that's the thing that strikes you most in her. It shines throughher. It shines in her eyes, it shines in her hair, her adorable, soft,dark, warm and fragrant hair; it shines in her very voice; it shines inevery word she utters, even in the unkindest."

  "Dear me! what an alarmingly refulgent person you depict!" laughed MariaDolores, her eyes still on the wall.

  "I have no gift for word-painting," said John; "though I doubt if thewords are yet invented that could fitly paint my lady. She grows inbeauty day by day. It's a literal fact--every fresh time I see her, sheis perceptibly more lovely than the last, more love-compelling in herloveliness. But 'tis a thing unpaintable, indescribable, asindescribable as the perfume of a rose. Oh, why haven't I five thousanda year?"

  "You harp so persistently upon your desire for money," suggested MariaDolores, "one might infer she was a commodity, to be bought and sold.You begin at the wrong end. What good would five or fifty thousand ayear do you, if you had not begun by winning her love?

  "No, I begin at the proper end, worse luck," John answered, glooming."For, without a decent income, I have no right even to try to win herlove.

  "And that being so," questioned Maria Dolores, "I hope youconscientiously avoid her society, or, when you meet, make yourselfconsistently disagreeable to her?

  "There's no need for such precautions," John replied. "There's no fearfor her. She regards me as a casual and passing acquaintance. So I makemyself no more disagreeable than I am by nature. And if I avoided hersociety, (which I am far from doing), it would be not for her sake, butfor my own. For, though her society is to me a kind of anticipation ofthe joys of Heaven, yet when I leave it and find myself alone, thereaction is dreary in the superlative degree; and the fear, whichperpetually haunts me (for I know nothing of her plans), lest I shallnever see her again, is agonizing as a foretaste of--Heaven's antipode.Oh, I love her!"

  He took, involuntarily I dare say, a step in her direction. Sheretreated under the vaulting of the _porte-cochere_.

  "You seem," she commented, "to be getting a good deal of emotionalexperience,--which doubtless some day you will find of value. Why not,instead of gardener, embark as novelist or poet? Here is material youcould then turn to account."

  "Ah, there you are," he complained, piteously, "mocking me again. Ah,well, if you must have your laugh, have it, and welcome. A man can learnto take the bitter with the sweet."

  "To spare you that discomfort," said she, moving deeper into thearchway, while John's face fell, "I will bid you good-bye. I am toreport, then, that you decline my friend's invitation with thanks?"

  "With my most grateful thanks," he was able intensively to rejoin, inspite of his dismay at the imminence of her departure.

  "And for a very special reason?" she harked back, now, suddenly, forthe first time since they had touched thin ice, giving him a glance.

  It was the fleetingest of fleeting glances, it was merry and ironic, butthere was something in it which brought a flame to his blue eyes.

  "For the very special reason," he answered, with vehemence, "that I fearthe presence near me of--" He held his breath for a second, the flame inhis eyes enveloping her; then, with an abrupt change of tone and mien,he ended, "--of Frau Brandt might distract my attention from thesermon."

  She laughed, and said, "Good-bye."

  "Good-bye," said John. And when she was halfway through the tunnel-likepassage, "I suppose you know you are leaving me to a day as barren asthe Desert of Sahara?" he called after her.

  "Oh, who can tell what a day may bring forth?" called she, but withoutlooking back.

  For a long while John's faculties were kept busy, trying to determinewhether that was a promise, a menace, or a mere word in the air.