A House-Party Part 31

Then, with no other word, he strode from the church, the golden afternoon suns.h.i.+ne streaming through the stained windows above and falling on his fair hair, his flushed face, his flaming eyes, till his common humanity seemed as if transfigured. He looked like the avenging angel of Tintoretto's Paradise.

Gesualdo stood immovable in the deserted church, his arms crossed on his breast, his head bent. A great resolve, a mighty inspiration, had descended on him with the furious words of his foe. Light had come to him as from heaven itself. He could not give up the secret which had been confided to him in the confessional, but he could give up himself.

His brain was filled with legends of sacrifice and martyrdom. Why might he not become one of that holy band of martyrs?

Nay, he was too humble to place himself beside them even in thought. The utmost he could do, he knew, would be only expiation for what seemed to him his ineffaceable sin in letting any human affection, however harmless, unselfish, and distant, stain the singleness and purity of his devotion to his vows. He had been but a peasant-boy until he had taken his tender heart and his ignorant mind to the seminary, and he had been born with the soul of a St. Francis, of a San Rocco, of a St. John, out of place, out of time, in the world he lived in, and in which the pa.s.sions of faith and of sacrifice were as strong as are the pa.s.sions of l.u.s.t and of selfishness in other natures. The spiritual world was to him a reality, and the earth, with its merciless and greedy peoples, its plague of l.u.s.ts, its suffering hearts, its endless injustice, an unreal and hideous dream.

To his temper, the sacrifice which suddenly rose before him as his duty appeared one which would reconcile him at once to the Deity he had offended and the humanity he was tempted to betray. To his mind, enfeebled and exhausted by long fasting of the body and denial of every natural indulgence, such sacrifice of self seemed an imperious command from heaven. He would drag out his own life in misery and obloquy, indeed; but what of that? Had not the great martyrs and founders of his Church endured as much or more? Was it not by such torture voluntarily accepted and endured on earth that the grace of G.o.d was won?

He would tell a lie, indeed; he would draw down ignominy on the name of the Church; he would make men believe that an anointed priest was a common murderer, swayed by low and jealous hatreds; but of this he did not think. In the tension and perplexity of his tortured soul, the vision of a sacrifice in which he would be the only sufferer, in which the woman would be saved and the secret told to him be preserved, appeared as a heaven-sent solution of the doubts and difficulties in his path. Stretched in agonized prayer before one of the side altars of the church, he imagined the afternoon sunbeams streaming through the high window on his face to be the light of a celestial world, and in the hush and heat of the incense-scented air he believed that he heard a voice which cried to him, "By suffering all things are made pure."

He was not a wise, or strong, or educated man. He had the heart of a poet and the mind of a child. There was a courage in him to which sacrifice was welcome, and there was a credulity in him which made all exaggeration of simple faith possible. He was young and ignorant and weak; yet at the core of his heart there was a dim heroism: he could suffer and be mute: and in the depths of his heart he loved this woman better than himself,--with a love which in his belief made him accursed for all time.

When he at last arose and went out of the church doors his mind was made up to the course that he would take: an immense calm had descended upon the unrest of his soul.

The day was done, the sun had set, the scarlet flame of its after-glow bathed all the rusty walls and dusty ground with colors of glory. The crowd had dispersed; there was no sound in the deserted square except the ripple of the water as it fell from the dolphins' mouths into the marble basin. As he heard that sweet familiar murmur of the falling stream, the tears rose in his eyes and blotted out the flame-like pomp and beauty of the skies. Never again would he hear the water of the Marca river rus.h.i.+ng in cool autumn days past the poplar-stems and the primrose-roots upon its mossy banks; never again would he hear in the place of his birth the gray-green waves of Arno sweeping through the canebrakes to the sea.

At three of the clock on the following day the judgment was given in the court.

Generosa Fe was decreed guilty of the murder of her husband, and sentenced to twenty years of solitary confinement. She dropped like a stone when she heard the sentence, and was carried out from the court insensible. Her lover, when he heard it, gave a roar of anguish like that of some great beast in torment and dashed his head against the wall, and struggled like a mad bull in the hands of the men who tried to hold him. Gesualdo, waiting without on the head of the great staircase, did not even change countenance: to him this bitterness, as of the bitterness of death, had been long past; he had been long certain what the verdict would be; and he had many hours before resolved on his own part.

A great calm had come upon his soul, and his face had that tranquillity which comes alone from a soul which is at peace within itself.

The sultry afternoon shed its yellow light on the brown and gray and dusty town; the crowd poured out of the court-house, excited, contrite, voluble, pus.h.i.+ng and bawling at one another, ready to take the side of the condemned creature now that she was the victim of the law. The priest alone of them all did not move: he remained sitting on the upright chair under a sculptured allegory of Justice and Equity which was on the arch above his head, and with the golden light of sunset falling down on him through the high cas.e.m.e.nt above. He paid no heed to the hurrying of the crowd, to the tramp of guards, to the haste of clerks and officials eager to finish their day's work and get away to their wine and dominoes at the taverns. His hands mechanically held his breviary; his lips mechanically repeated a Latin formula of prayer. When all the people were gone, one of the custodians of the place touched his arm, telling him that they were about to close the doors. He raised his eyes like one who is wakened from a trance, and to the man said, quietly,--

"I would see the president of the court for a moment quite alone. Is it possible?"

After many demurs and much delay, they brought him into the presence of the judge in a small chamber of the great palace.

"What do you want with me?" asked the judge, looking nervously at the white face and the wild eyes of his unbidden visitant.

Gesualdo answered, "I am come to tell you that you have condemned an innocent woman."

The judge looked at him with sardonic derision and contempt.

"What more?" he asked. "If she be innocent, will you tell me who is guilty?"

"I am," replied the priest.

At his trial he never spoke.

With his head bowed and his hands clasped, he stood in the cage where she had stood, and never replied by any single word to the repeated interrogations of his judges. Many witnesses were called, and all they said testified to the apparent truth of his self-accusation. Those who had always vaguely suspected him, all those who had seen him close the door of the sacristy on the crowd when he had borne the murdered man within, the mule-drivers who had seen him digging at night under the great poplars, the sacristan who had been awakened by him that same night so early, even his old housekeeper, though she swore that he was a lamb, a saint, an angel, a creature too good for earth, a holy man whose mind was distraught by fasting, by visions,--these all, either wilfully or ignorantly, bore witness which confirmed his own confession. The men of law had the mould and gra.s.s dug up under the Grand Duke's poplar, and when the blood-stained knife was found therein, the very earth, it seemed, yielded up testimony against him.

In the end, after many weeks of investigation, Generosa was released, and he was sentenced in her place.

Her lover married her, and they went to live in his own country in the Lombard plains, and were happy and prosperous, and the village of Marca and the waters of its cane-shadowed stream knew them no more.

Sometimes she would say to her husband, "I cannot think that he was guilty: there was some mystery in it." And her husband always laughed, and said in answer, "He was guilty, be sure: it was I that frightened him into confession. Those black rats of the Church have livers as white as their coats are black."

Generosa did not wholly believe, but she thrust the grain of doubt away from her and played with her handsome children. And, after all, she mused, what doubt could there be? Did not Don Gesualdo himself reveal his guilt? and had he not always cared for her? and was not the whole population of Marca willing to bear witness that they had always suspected him and had only held their peace out of respect for the Church?

He himself lived two long years among the galley-slaves of the western coast: all that time he never spoke; and he was considered by the authorities to be insane. Then, in the damp and cold of the third winter, his lungs decayed, his frail strength gave way; he died of what they called consumption in the spring of the year. In his last moments there was seen a light of unspeakable ecstasy upon his face, a smile of unspeakable rapture on his mouth.

"Laus Deus libera me!" he murmured, as he died.

A bird came and sang at the narrow cas.e.m.e.nt of his prison-cell as his spirit pa.s.sed away. It was a nightingale,--perchance one of those who had once sung to him in the summer nights from the wild-rose hedge at Marca.

A RAINY JUNE.

_From the Prince di San Zenone, Claridge's, London, to the d.u.c.h.essa dell'Aquila Fulva, Monterone, near Milano, Italy._

_Carissima Teresa_,--

I received your letter, which is delightful to me because it is yours, and terrible to me because it scolds me, abuses me, flies at me, makes me feel like a schoolboy who has had a _saponata_. Yes, it is quite true. I cannot help it She has bewitched me. She is a lily made into a woman. I feared you would be angry, especially angry because she is a foreigner; but the hour of fate has struck. You will not wonder when you see her. She is as blonde as the dawn and as pure as a pearl. It seems to me that I have never loved any woman at all in my life before. To love her is like plunging one's hand in cool spring-water on a midsummer noon. She is such repose; such innocence; such holiness! In the midst of this crowded, over-colored, vulgar London life--for it is very vulgar at its highest--she seems like some angel of purity. I saw her first standing with a knot of roses in her hand under a cedar-tree, at one of their afternoon clubs on the river. She was drinking a cup of tea: they are always drinking tea. And she is so white. I never saw anything so white except the snow on the Leonessa. She is not in the least like the fast young ladies of England of whom one sees so much in the winter at Rome. I do not like their fast young women. If you want a woman who is fast, a Parisienne is best, or even an American. Englishwomen overdo it.

She is just like a primrose; like a piece of porcelain; like a soft, pale star s.h.i.+ning in the morning. I write all kinds of poetry when I think of her. And then there is something _Sainte-Nitouche_ about her which is delicious because it is so real. The only thing which was wanting in her was that she ought to have been shut up in a convent, and I ought to have had to imperil my soul for all eternity by getting her over a stone wall with a silken ladder. But it is a prosaic age, and this is a very prosaic country. London amuses me; but it is such a crowd, and it is frightfully ugly. I cannot think how people who are so enormously rich as the English can put up with such ugliness. The houses are all too small, even the big ones. I have not seen a good ball-room.

They say there are good ones in the country houses. The clubs are admirable; but life in general seems to me hurried, costly, ungraceful, very noisy, and almost entirely consecrated to eating. It is made up of a scramble and a ma.s.s of food. People engage themselves for dinners a month in advance. Everybody's engagement-book is so full that it is the burden of their days. They accept everything, and, at the eleventh hour, pick out what they prefer, and, to use their own language, "throw over"

the rest. I do not think it is pretty behavior; but n.o.body seems to object to it. I wonder that the women do not do so; but they seem to be afraid of losing their men altogether if they exact good manners from them. People here are not at all well-mannered, to my taste,--neither the men nor the women. They are brusque and negligent, and have few _pet.i.te soins_. You should have come over for my marriage to show them all what an exquisite creature a Venetian patrician beauty can be. Why _would_ you marry that Piedmontese? Only two things seem to be of any importance in England: they are eating and politics. They eat all day long, and are always talking of Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Gladstone _m'embete_!

Half of them say he is the destruction of England, the other half say he is the salvation of England. Myself, I don't care the least which he is; only I know they cannot keep him out of their conversation, one way or another, for five minutes, which, to an unprejudiced foreigner, is a _seccatura_. But to-morrow I go down into the country with my primrose,--all alone; to-morrow she will be mine altogether and unalterably, and I shall hear nothing about Mr. Gladstone or anything that is tiresome. Of course you are wondering that I should marry. I wonder myself; but, then, if I did not marry I should be compelled to say an eternal _addio_ to the Lenten Lily. She has such a spiked wall around her of male relatives and family greatness. It is not the convent wall; there is no ladder that will go over it; one must enter at the big front door, or not at all. Felicitate me, and yet compa.s.sionate me! I am going to Paradise, no doubt; but I have the uncomfortable doubt as to whether it will suit me, which all people who are going to Paradise always do feel. Why? Because we are mortal or because we are sinners? _A rivederci, cara mia Teresina!_ Write to me at my future Eden: it is called Coombe-Bysset, near Luton, Bedfords.h.i.+re. We are to be there a month. It is the choice of my primrose.

_From the Lady Mary Bruton, Belgrave Square, London, to Mrs. D'Arcy, British Emba.s.sy, Berlin._

The season has been horribly dull; quant.i.ties of marriages. People always will marry, however dull it is. The one most talked about is that of the Cowes's second daughter, Lady Gladys, with the Prince of San Zenone. She is one of the beauties, but a very simple girl, quite old-fas.h.i.+oned, indeed. She has refused Lord Hamps.h.i.+re, and a good many other people, and then fallen in love in a week with this Roman, who is certainly as handsome as a picture. But Cowes didn't like it at all; he gave in because he couldn't help it; but he was dreadfully vexed that the Hamps.h.i.+re affair did not come off instead. Hamps.h.i.+re is such a good creature, and his estates are close to theirs. It is certainly very provoking for them that this Italian must take it into his head to spend a season in London, and lead the cotillon so beautifully that all the young women talked of nothing else but his charms.

_From the Lady Mona St. Clair, Grosvenor Square, London, to Miss Burns, Schooner-yacht Persephone, off Cherbourg._

The wedding was very pretty yesterday. We had frocks of tussore silk, with bouquets of orchids and Penelope Boothby caps. She looked very pretty, but as white as her gown,--such a goose!--it was ivory satin, with _point de Venise_. He is quite too handsome, and I cannot think what he could see in her. He gave us each a locket with _her_ portrait inside. I wished it had been _his_. I dare say Hamps.h.i.+re would have been better for her, and worn longer, than Romeo. Lord Cowes is furious about Romeo. He detests the religion and all that, and he could hardly make himself look pleasant even at church. Of course they were two ceremonies. The Cardinal had consented at last, though I believe he had made all kinds of fuss first. Lady Gladys, you know, is very, _very_ High Church, and I suppose that reconciled a little the very irreconcilable Cardinal. She thinks of nothing but the Church, and her missions, and her poor people. I am afraid the Roman prince will get dreadfully bored. And they are going down into Bedfords.h.i.+re, of all places, to be shut up for a month! It is very stupid of her, and such a wet season as it is! They are going to Coombe-Bysset, her aunt Lady Caroline's place. I fancy Romeo will soon be bored, and I don't think Coombe-Bysset at all judicious. I would have gone to Homburg, or Deauville, or j.a.pan.

_From the Princess di San Zenone, Coombe-Bysset, Luton, Bedfords.h.i.+re, to the Countess of Cowes, London._

DEAREST MOTHER,--

I am too, too, too happy. It is no use writing about it. I would if I could, but I _can't_. He is delighted with Coombe, and says the verdure is something wonderful. We got here just as the sun was setting. There were all Aunt Carrie's school-children out to meet us with baskets of roses. Piero said they looked like bigger roses themselves. He is enchanted with England. It is very fine to-day, and I do so hope it won't rain; but the gla.s.s is falling. Forgive a hurried word like this.

I am going to take Piero on the lake. I know you haven't liked it, dear; but, I am sure, when you see how happy I am you will say there was never any one like him on earth.

_From the Countess of Cowes, Cowes House, London, to the d.u.c.h.ess of Dunne, Wavernake, Worcesters.h.i.+re._