"It's mostly luck. I well recall his Eminence when he was nothing but a trumpery curate," Doña Consolacion declared, turning to admire the jewelled studs in the ears of the President of the College of Noble Damosels.
"Faugh!" Mother Garcia spat.
"It's all luck."
"There's luck and luck," the beadle put in. Once he had confined by accident a lady in the souterrains of the cathedral, and only many days later had her bones and a diary, a diary documenting the most delicate phases of solitude and loneliness, a woman's contribution to Science, come to light; a piece of carelessness that had gone against the old man in his preferment.
"Some careers are less fortunate than others," Mother Garcia exclaimed, appraising the sleek silhouette of Monsignor Silex, then precipitantly issuing from the Muniment-Room.
It was known he was not averse to a little stimulant in the bright middle of the morning.
"He has the evil Eye, dear, he has the evil Eye," Doña Consolacion murmured, averting her head. Above her hung a sombre Ribera, in a frame of elaborate, blackened gilding.
"Ah, well, I do not fear it," the Companion of Jesus answered, making way for a dark, heavy belle in a handkerchief and shawl.
"Has anyone seen Jositto, my little José?"
Mother Garcia waved with her bouquet towards an adjacent portal, surmounted, with cool sobriety, by a long, lavender marble cross. "I expect he's through there."
"In the cathedral?"
"How pretty you look, dear, and what a very gay shawl!"
"Pure silk."
"I don't doubt it!"
Few women, however, are indifferent to the seduction of a Maiden Mass, and all in a second there was scarcely one to be found in the whole sacristia.
The secretary at his bureau looked about him: without the presence of las mujares the atmosphere seemed to weigh a little; still, being a Holiday of Obligation, a fair sprinkling of boys, youthful chapter hands whom he would sometimes designate as the "lesser delights," relieved the place of its austerity.
Through the heraldic windows, swathed in straw-mats to shut out the heat, the sun-rays entered, tattooing with piquant freckles the pampered faces of the choir.
A request for a permit to view the fabled Orangery in the cloisters interrupted his siestose fancies.
Like luxurious cygnets in their cloudy lawn, a score of young singing-boys were awaiting their cue: Low-masses, cheapness, and economy, how they despised them, and how they would laugh at "Old Ends" who snuffed out the candles.
"Why should the Church charge higher for a short Magnificat than for a long Miserere?"
The question had just been put by the owner of a dawning moustache and a snub, though expressive, nose.
"Because happiness makes people generous, stupid, and often as not they'll squander, boom, but unhappiness makes them calculate. People grudge spending much on a snivel—even if it lasts an hour."
"It's the choir that suffers."
"This profiteering... The Chapter..." there was a confusion of voices.
"Order!" A slim lad, of an ambered paleness, raised a protesting hand. Indulged, and made-much-of by the hierarchy, he was Felix Ganay, known as Chief-dancing-choir-boy to the cathedral of Clemenza.
"Aren't they awful?" he addressed a child with a very finished small head. Fingering a score of music he had been taking lead in a mass of Palestrina, and had the vaguely distraught air of a kitten that had seen visions.
"After that, I've not a dry stitch on me," he murmured, with a glance towards the secretary, who was making lost grimaces at the Magdalen's portrait.
A lively controversy (becoming increasingly more shrill) was dividing the acolytes and choir.
"Tiny and Tibi! Enough." The intervention came from the full-voiced Christobal, a youngster of fifteen, with soft, peach-textured cheeks, and a tongue never far away. Considered an opportunist, he was one of the privileged six dancing-boys of the cathedral.
"Order!" Felix enjoined anew. Finely sensitive as to his prerogatives, the interference of his colleague was apt to vex him. He would be trying to clip an altar pose next. Indeed, it was a matter of scandal already, how he was attempting to attract attention, in influential places, by the unnecessary undulation of his loins, and by affecting strong scents and attars, such as Egyptian Tahetant, or Long flirt through the violet Hours. Himself, Felix, he was faithful to Royal Florida, or even to plain eau-de-Cologne, and to those slow Mozarabic movements which alone are seemly to the Church.
"You may mind your business, young Christobal," Felix murmured, turning towards a big, serious, melancholy boy, who was describing a cigarette-case he had received as fee for singing "Say it with Edelweiss" at a society wedding.
"Say it with what?" the cry came from an oncoming-looking child, with caressing liquid eyes, and a little tongue the colour of raspberry-cream—so bright. Friend of all sweets and dainties, he held San Antolin's day chiefly notable for the Saint's sweet biscuits, made of sugar and white-of-egg.
"And you, too, Chicklet. Mind your business, can't you?" Felix exclaimed, appraising in some dismay a big, bland woman, then descending upon the secretary at his desk, with a slow, but determined, waddle.
Amalia Bermudez, the fashionable Actress-manageress of the Teatro Victoria Eugenia, was becoming a source of terror to the chapter of Clemenza. Every morning, with fatal persistence, she would aboard the half-hypnotised secretary with the request that the Church should make "a little christian" of her blue chow, for unless it could be done it seemed the poor thing wasn't chic. To be chic and among the foremost vanward; this, apart from the Theatre, meant all to her in life, and since the unorthodox affair of "the DunEdens," she had been quite upset by the chapter's evasive refusals.
"If a police-dog, then why not a chow?" she would ask. "Why not my little Whisky? Little devil. Ah, believe me, Father, she has need of it; for she's supposed to have had a snake by my old dog Conqueror! ... And yet you won't receive her? Oh, it's heartless. Men are cruel...."
"There she is! Amalia—the Bermudez": the whisper spread, arresting the story of the black Bishop of Bechuanaland, just begun by the roguish Ramon.
And in the passing silence the treble voice of Tiny was left talking all alone.
"...frightened me like Father did, when he kissed me in the dark like a lion":—a remark that was greeted by an explosion of coughs.
But this morning the clear, light laugh of the comedienne rang out merrily. "No, no, hombre," she exclaimed (tapping the secretary upon the cheek archly with her fan), "now don't, don't stare at me, and intimidate me like that! I desire only to offer 'a Mass of Intention,' fully choral, that the Church may change her mind."
And when the cannon that told of Noon was fired from the white fortress by the river far away she was still considering programmes of music by Rossini and Cimarosa, and the colour of the chasubles which the clergy should wear.
IV
At the season when the oleanders are in their full perfection, their choicest bloom, it was the Pontiff's innovation to install his American type-writing apparatus in the long Loggie of the Apostolic Palace that had been in disuse since the demise of Innocent XVI. Out-of-doorish, as Neapolitans usually are, Pope Tertius II was no exception to the rule, preferring blue skies to golden ceilings—a taste for which indeed many were inclined to blame him. A compromise between the state-saloons and the modest suite occupied by his Holiness from choice, these open Loggie, adorned with the radiant frescoes of Luca Signorelli, would be frequently the scene of some particular Audience, granted after the exacting press of official routine.
Late one afternoon the Pontiff after an eventful and arduous day was walking thoughtfully here alone. Participating no longer in the joys of the world, it was, however, charming to catch, from time to time, the distant sound of Rome—the fitful clamour of trams and cabs, and the plash of the great twin-fountains in the court of Saint Damascus.
Wrapped in grave absorption, with level gaze, the lips slightly pinched, Pope Terti
us II paced to and fro, occasionally raising a well-formed (though hairy) hand, as though to dismiss his thoughts with a benediction. The nomination of two Vacant Hats, the marriage annulment of an ex-hereditary Grand Duchess, and the "scandals of Clemenza," were equally claiming his attention and ruffling his serenity.
He had the head of an elderly lady's-maid, and an expression concealed by layers of tactful caution.
"Why can't they all behave?" he asked himself plaintively, descrying Lucrezia, his prized white squirrel, sidling shyly towards him.
She was the gift of the Archbishop of Trebizond, who had found her in the region of the Coelian hill.
"Slyboots, slyboots," Pope Tertius exclaimed, as she skipped from reach. It was incredible with what playful zest she would spring from statue to statue; and it would have amused the Vicar of Christ to watch her slip and slide, had it not suggested many a profound moral metaphor applicable to the Church. "Gently, gently," he enjoined; for once, in her struggles, she had robbed a fig-leaf off a "Moses."
"Yes, why can't they all behave?" he murmured, gazing up into the far pale-blueness.
He stood a brief moment transfixed, as if in prayer, oblivious of two whispering chamberlains.
It was the turn-in-waiting of Baron Oschatz, a man of engaging exquisite manners, and of Count Cuenca, an individual who seemed to be in perpetual consternation.
Depositing a few of the most recent camera portraits of the Pontiff requiring autograph in a spot where he could not fail but see them, they formally withdrew.
It had been a day distinguished by innumerable Audiences, several not uninteresting to recall....
Certainly the increasing numbers of English were decidedly promising, and bore out the sibylline predictions of their late great and sagacious ruler—Queen Victoria.
"The dear santissima woman," the Pontiff sighed, for he entertained a sincere, if brackish, enthusiasm for the lady who for so many years had corresponded with the Holy See under the signature of the Countess of Lostwaters.
"Anglicans...? Heliolatries and sun-worshippers," she had written in her most masterful hand, "and your Holiness may believe us," she had added, "when we say especially our beloved Scotch."
"I shouldn't wonder enormously if it were true," the Pope exclaimed, catching through a half-shut door a glimpse of violet stockings.
Such a display of old, out-at-heel hose could but belong to Cardinal Robin.
There had been a meeting of the Board for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, and when, shortly afterwards, the Cardinal was admitted he bore still about him some remote trace of faction.
He had the air of a cuttle-fish, and an inquiring voice. Inclined to gesture, how many miles must his hands have moved in the course of the sermons that he had preached!
Saluting the sovereign Pontiff with a deep obeisance, the Cardinal came directly to the point.
"These schisms in Spain..."
"They are ever before me," His Holiness confessed.
"With priests like Pirelli, the Church is in peril!" the Cardinal declared, with a short, abysmal laugh.
"Does he suppose we are in the times of Baal and Moloch?" the Pope asked, pressing a harassed hand to his head. A Neapolitan of Naples (O Bay of Napoli. See Vesuvius, and die), he had curly hair that seemed to grow visibly; every few hours his tonsure would threaten to disappear.
The Cardinal sent up his brows a little.
"If I may tender the advice of the secret Consistory," he said, "your Holiness should Listen-in."
"To what end?"
"A snarl, a growl, a bark, a yelp, coming from the font, would be quite enough to condemn..."
"Per Bacco. I should take it for a baby."
"...condemn," the Cardinal pursued, "this Pirelli for a maleficus pastor. In which case, the earlier, the better, the unfrocking...."
The Pontiff sighed.
The excellent Cardinal was as fatiguing as a mission from Salt Lake City.
"Evidently," he murmured, detecting traces of rats among the papyrus plants in the long walk below.
"They come up from the Tiber!" he exclaimed, piloting the Cardinal dexterously towards a flight of footworn steps leading to the Court of Bramante.
"It's a bore there being no lift!" he commented (the remark was a Vatican cliché), dismissing the Cardinal with a benediction.
"A painful interview," the Holy Father reflected, regarding the Western sky. An evening rose and radiant altogether....
Turning sadly, he perceived Count Cuenca.
A nephew of the Dean of the Sacred College, it was rumoured that he was addicted, in his "home" above Frascati, to the last excesses of the pre-Adamite Sultans.
"A dozen blessings, for a dozen Hymens—but only eleven were sent," he was babbling distractedly to himself. He had been unstrung all day, "just a mass of foolish nerves," owing to a woman, an American, it seemed, coming for her Audience in a hat edged with white and yellow water-lilies. She had been repulsed successfully by the Papal Guard, but it had left an unpleasant impression.
"How's that?" the Vicar of Christ exclaimed: he enjoyed to tease his Chamberlains—especially Count Cuenca.
The Count turned pale.
"——," he replied inaudibly, rolling eyes at Lucrezia.
Baron Oschatz had "deserted" him; and what is one Chamberlain, alas, without another?
"The photographs of your Holiness are beside the bust of Bernini!" he stammered out, beating a diplomatic retreat.
Pope Tertius II addressed his squirrel.
"Little slyboots," he said, "I often laugh when I'm alone."
V
Before the white façade of the DunEden Palace, commanding the long, palm-shaded Paseo del Violôn, an array of carriages and limousines was waiting; while, passing in brisk succession beneath the portico, like a swarm of brilliant butterflies, each instant was bringing more. Dating from the period of Don Pedro el cruel, the palace had been once the residence of the famous Princesse des Ursins, who had left behind something of her conviviality and glamour. But it is unlikely that the soirées of the exuberant and fanciful Princesse eclipsed those of the no less exuberant Duquesa DunEden. It was to be an evening (flavoured with rich heroics) in honour of the convalescence of several great ladies, from an attack of "Boheara," the new and fashionable epidemic, diagnosed by the medical faculty as "hyperæsthesia with complications"; a welcoming back to the world in fact of several despotic dowagers, not one perhaps of whom, had she departed this life, would have been really much missed or mourned! And thus, in deference to the intimate nature of the occasion, it was felt by the solicitous hostess that a Tertulia (that mutual exchange of familiar or intellectual ideas) would make less demand on arms and legs than would a ball: just the mind and lips ... a skilful rounding-off here, developing there, chiselling, and putting-out feelers; an evening dedicated to the furtherance of intrigue, scandal, love, beneath the eager eyes of a few young girls, still at school, to whom a quiet party was permitted now and then.
Fingering a knotted scapular beneath a windy arch, Mother Saint-Mary-of-the-Angels was asking God His will. Should she wait for Gloria and Clyte (they might be some time) or return to the convent and come back again at twelve? "The dear girls are with their mother," she informed her Maker, inclining respectfully before the Princess Aurora of the Asturias who had just arrived attended by two bearded gentlemen with tummies.
Hopeful of glimpsing perhaps a colleague, Mother Saint-Mary moved a few steps impulsively in their wake. It was known that Monseigneur the Cardinal-Archbishop himself was expected, and not infrequently one ecclesiastic will beget another.
The crimson saloon, with its scattered group of chairs, was waxing cheery.
Being the day it was, and the social round never but slightly varying, most of the guests had flocked earlier in the evening to the self-same place, i.e. the Circus, or Arena Amanda, where it was subscription night, and where, at present, there was an irresistibly comic clown.
"One has only to think of h
im to——!" the wife of the Minister of Public Instruction exclaimed, going off into a fit of wheezy laughter.
"What power, what genius, what——!" The young wife of the Inspector of Rivers and Forests was at a loss. Wedded to one of the handsomest though dullest of men, Marvilla de Las Espinafre's perfervid and exalted nature kept her little circle in constant awe, and she would be often jealous of the Forests (chiefly scrub) which her husband, in his official capacity, was called upon to survey. "Don't lie to me. I know it! You've been to the woods." And after his inspection of the aromatic groves of Lograno, Phædra in full fury tearing her pillow with her teeth was nothing to Marvilla. "Why, dear? Because you've been among the Myrtles," was the explanation she chose to give for severing conjugal relations.
"Vittorio forbids the circus on account of germs," the wife of the President of the National Society of Public Morals murmured momentously.
"Really, with this ghastly Boheara, I shall not be grieved when the time comes to set out for dear Santander!" a woman with dog-rose cheeks, and puffed, wrinkled eyes, exclaimed, focusing languishingly the Cardinal.
"He is delicious in handsomeness to-night!"
"A shade battered. But a lover's none the worse in my opinion for acquiring technique," the Duchess of Sarmento declared.
"A lover; what? His Eminence...??"
The duchess tittered.
"Why not? I expect he has a little woman to whom he takes off his clothes," she murmured, turning to admire the wondrous Madonna of the Mule-mill attributed to Murillo.
On a wall-sofa just beneath, crowned with flowers and aigrettes, sat Conca, Marchioness of Macarnudo.
"Que tal?"
"My joie de vivre is finished; still, it's amazing how I go on!" the Marchioness answered, making a corner for the duchess. She had known her "dearest Luiza" since the summer the sun melted the church bells and their rakish, pleasure-loving, affectionate hearts had dissolved together. But this had not been yesterday; no; for the Marchioness was a grandmother now.
"Conca, Conca: one sees you're in love."
"He's from Avila, dear—the footman."
Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli Page 2