Love Among the Ruins

by Warwick Deeping

  XIII

  Fra Balthasar rubbed his colours in the chapel of Castle Avalon, andstared complacently upon the frescoes his fingers had called into being.

  A migratory friar, Fra Balthasar had come from the rich skies, thepurple vineyards, the glimmering orange groves of the far south. Gossiphinted that a certain romantic indiscretion had driven him northwardsover the sea. A "bend sinister" ran athwart his reputation as a priest.Men muttered that he was an infidel, a blasphemous vagabond, versed inall the damnable heresies of antiquity. Be that as it may, FraBalthasar had come to Gilderoy on a white mule, with two servants at hisback, an apt tongue to serve him, and much craft as a painter andgoldsmith. He had set up a _bottega_ at Gilderoy, and had cozened thepatronage of the magnates and the merchants. Moreover, he had nettedthe favour of the Lord Flavian of Avalon, and was blazoning his chapelfor him with the lavish fancy of a Florentine.

  Fra Balthasar stood in a cataract of sunlight, that poured in through apainted window in the west. He wore the white habit of Dominic and thelong black mantle. A golden mist played about his figure as he rubbedhis palette, and scanned with the egotism of the artist the _Pieta_painted above the Lord Flavian's state stall. That gentleman, in theflesh, had established himself on a velvet hassock before the altarsteps, thus flattering the friar in the part of a sympathetic patron.The Lord of Avalon had dedicated his own person to art as an EasternKing in the splendour of Gothic arms, kneeling bare-headed before theinfant Christ.

  Fra Balthasar was a plump man and a comely, black of eye and full oflip. His shaven chin shone blue as sleek velvet. He had turned fromthe _Pieta_ towards the altar, where a triptych gleamed with massed andbrilliant colour. The Virgin, a palpitating divinity breathing starsand gems from her full bosom, gazed with a face of sensuous serenity atthe infant lying in her lap. She seemed to exhale an atmosphere ofgold. On either wing, angels, transcendant girls in green and silver,purple and azure, scarlet and white, made the soul swim with visions ofruddy lips and milk-white hands. Their wings gleamed like opals. Theylooked too frail for angels, too human for heaven.

  The Lord of Avalon sat on his scarlet hassock, and stared at the Madonnawith some measure of awe. She was no attenuated, angular, green-facedfragment of saintliness, but by every curve a woman, from plump fingerto coral lip.

  "You are no Byzantine," quoth the man on the hassock, with something ofa sigh.

  The priest glanced at him and smiled. There were curves in lip andnostril that were more than indicative of a sleek and sensuousworldliness. Fra Balthasar was much of an Antinous, and doted on theconviction.

  "I paint women, messire," he said.

  His lordship laughed.

  "Divinities?"

  Balthasar flourished his brush.

  "Divine creatures, golden flowers of the world. Give me the rose tocrush against my mouth, violets to burn upon my bosom. Truth, sire,consider the sparkling roundness of a woman's arm. Consider herwine-red lips, her sinful eyes, her lily fingers dropping spikenard intothe soul. I confess, sire, that I am a man."

  The friar's opulent extravagance of sentiment suited the litheness ofhis look. Balthasar had enthroned himself in his own imagination as aspecies of Apollo, a golden-tongued seer, whose soul soared into theglittering infinitudes of art. An immense egotist, he posed as afull-blooded divinity, palpitating to colour and to sound. He had asmany moods as a vain woman, and was a mere fire-fly in the matter ofhonour.

  "Reverend sire," quoth the man on the footstool with some tightening ofthe upper lip, "you bulk too big for your frock, methinks."

  Balthasar touched a panel with his brush; cast a glance over hisshoulder, with a cynical lifting of the nostril.

  "My frock serves me, sire, as well as a coat of mail."

  "And you believe the things you paint?"

  The man swept a vermilion streak from his brush.

  "An ingenuous question, messire."

  "I am ever ingenuous."

  "A perilous habit."

  "Yet you have not answered me."

  The friar tilted his chin like a woman eyeing herself in a mirror.

  "Religion is full of picturesque incidents," he said.

  "And is profitable."

  "Sire, you shame Solomon. There are ever many rich and devout fools inthe world. Give me a gleaming Venus, rising ruddy from the sea, ratherthan a lachrymose Magdalene. But what would you? I trim my Venus up infine apparel, put a puling infant in her lap. _Ecce--Sancta Maria_."

  The man on the footstool smiled despite the jester's theme, a smile thathad more scorn in it than sympathy.

  "You verge on blasphemy," he said.

  "There can be no blasphemy where there is no belief."

  "You are over subtle, my friend."

  "Nay, sire, I have come by that godliness of mind when man discovers hisown godhead. Let your soul soar, I say, let it beat its wings into theblue of life. Hence with superstition. Shall I subordinate my mind tothe prosings of a mad charlatan such as Saul of Tarsus? Shall I, likeeach rat in this mortal drain, believe that some god cares when I havegout in my toe, or when I am tempted to bow to Venus?"

  The man on the hassock grimaced, and eyed the friar much as though hehad stumbled on some being from the underworld. He was a mystic for allhis manhood.

  "God pity your creed," he said.

  "God, the inflated mortal----"

  "Enough."

  "This man god of yours who tosses the stars like so many lemons."

  "Enough, sir friar."

  "Defend me from your mass of metaphor, your relics of barbarism. We,the wise ones, have our own hierarchy, our own Olympus."

  "On my soul, you are welcome to it," quoth the man by the altar.

  Balthasar's hand worked viciously; he was strenuous towards his ownbeliefs, after the fashion of dreamers delirious with egotism. The verysplendour of his infidelity took its birth from the fact that it waslargely of his own creating. His pert iconoclasm pandered to his ownvast self-esteem.

  "Tell me for what you live," said the man by the altar.

  "For beauty."

  "And the senses?"

  "Colours, odours, sounds. To breathe, to burn, and to enjoy. To be aGreek and a god."

  "And life?"

  "Is a great fresco, a pageant of passions."

  The Lord of Avalon sprang up and began to pace the aisle with the air ofa man whose blood is fevered. For all his devoutness and his mysticalfidelity, he was in too human and passionate a mood to be invulnerableto Balthasar's sensuous shafts of fire. The Lord Flavian had come by atranscendental star-soaring spirit, an inspiration that had torched thewild beacon of romance. He was red for a riot of chivalry, a passage ofdesire.

  Turning back towards the altar, he faced the Madonna with her choir ofangel girls. Fra Balthasar was watching him with a feline sleekness ofvisage, and a smile that boasted something of contempt. The friarconsidered spirituality a species of magician's lanthorn for thecozening of fools.

  "What quip have you for love?" said the younger man, halting by thealtar rails.

  Balthasar stood with poised brush.

  "There is some sincerity in the emotion," he said.

  "You are experienced?"

  "Sire, consider my 'habit.'"

  The friar's mock horror was surprising, an excellent jest that fell likea blunted bolt from the steel of a vigorous manhood. The Lord Flavianran on.

  "Shall I fence with an infidel?" he asked.

  "Sire, a man may be a man without the creed of Athanasius."

  "How much of me do you understand?"

  Fra Balthasar cleared his throat.

  "The Lady Duessa, sire, is a rose of joy."

  "Monk!"

  "My lord, it was your dictum that you are ever ingenuous. I echo you."

  "Need I confess to you on such a subject?"

  "Nay, sire, you have the inconsistency of a poet."

  "How so?"

  "Well, w
ell, one can sniff rotten apples without opening the door of thecupboard."

  The younger man jerked away, and went striding betwixt the array offrescoes with something of the wild vigour of a blind Polyphemus.Balthasar, subtle sophist, watched him from the angle of his eye withthe sardonic superiority of one well versed in the contradictions of theworld. He had scribbled a shrewd sketch of the passions stirring in hispatron's heart. Had he not heard from the man's own lips of thewhite-faced elf of the pine woods and her vengeance? And the LadyDuessa! Fra Balthasar was as wise in the gossip of Gilderoy as anywoman.

  "Sire," he said, as the aristocrat turned in his stride, "I ask of you abold favour."

  "Speak out."

  "Suffer me to paint your mood in words."

  The man stared, shrugged his shoulders, smiled enigmatically.

  "Try your craft," he said.

  Balthasar began splashing in a foreground with irritable bravado.

  "My lord, you were a fool at twenty," were his words.

  "A thrice damned fool," came the echo.

  Balthasar chuckled.

  "And now, messire, a golden chain makes a Tantalus of you. Life crawlslike a sluggish river. You chafe, you strain, you rebel, feed on yourown heart, sin to assert your liberty. Youth slips from you; the skynarrows about your ears. Well, well, have I not read aright?"

  "Speak on," quoth the man by the altar.

  "Ah, sire, it is the old tale. They have cramped up your youth withbook and ring; shut you up in a moral sarcophagus with a woman they callyour wife. You burn for liberty, and the unknown that shines like apurple streak in a fading west. Ah, sire, you look for that onemarvellous being, who shall torch again the youth in your heart, makeyour blood burn, your soul to sing. That one woman in the world,mysterious as the moon, subtle as the night, ineffably strange as aflaming dawn. That woman who shall lift you to the stars; whose lipssuck the sap of the world; whose bosom breathes to the eternal swoon ofall sweet sounds. She shall light the lust of battle in your heart.For her your sword shall leap, your towers totter. Chivalry should leadyou like a pillar of fire out of the night, a heroic god striving for agoddess."

  The Lord of Avalon stood before the high altar as one transfigured.Youth leapt in him, red, glorious, and triumphant. Balthasar's tonguehad set the pyre aburning.

  "By God, it is the truth," he said.

  The friar gathered his brushes, and took breath.

  "Hast thou found thy Beatrice, O my son?"

  "Have I gazed into heaven?"

  Balthasar's voice filled the chapel.

  "Live, sire, live!" he said.

  "Ah!"

  "Be mad! Drink star wine, and snuff the odours of all the sunsets!Live, live! You can repent in comfort when you are sixty and measurefifty inches round the waist."