The City of Beautiful Nonsense Part 35

John sat there blinking his eyes and the windows in the houses on _San Giorgio_ blinked back in sleepy recognition as though the heat was more than they could bear. Away down the _Giudecca_, the thin bare masts of the cl.u.s.tering vessels tapered into the still air--giant sea-gra.s.s, which the sickle of a storm can mow down like rushes that grow by the river's edge. Their reflections wriggled like a nest of snakes in the dancing water, the only moving thing in that sleepy day. Everything else was noiseless; everything else was still.

John gazed at it all through half-closed eyes, till the point of the Campanile across the water seemed to melt in the quivering haze, and the dome of the chiesa was lost in the light where the sun fell on it. What had changed? What was different to his eyes that had been for the eyes of those thousands of workers who had toiled and fought, lived and died, like myriads of insects to build this timeless city of light, this City of Beautiful Nonsense? What had altered? A few coping stones, perhaps, a few mosaics renewed; but that was all. It was just the same as it had been in the days of the Council of Ten; just the same as when Petrarch, from his window on the _Riva degli Schiavona_, sat watching the monster galleys ride out in all their pomp and blazonry across the pearl and opal waters of the lagoons.

In another moment the present would have slipped from him; he would have been one of the crowd upon the Piazetta, watching the glorious argosy of Domenico Michieli returning from the Holy Land, with its sacred burdens of the bodies of St. Isidore from Chios and S. Donato from Cephalonia; in another moment he would have been seeing them unload their wondrous spoils of the East, their scents and their spices, their silks and their sandalwood, had not a most modern of modern hawkers, his little tray slung by straps from his shoulder, chosen him out for prey.

"Rare coins, signor," he said--"coins from every country in the world."

And for the price of one lira, he offered John an English penny.

John looked him up and down.

"Is this your idea of humour?" he asked in Italian.

The man emphatically shook his head.

"Oh, no, signor! It is a rare coin."

John turned away in disgust.

"You'd better go and learn your business," he said. "That's an English penny. It's only worth ten centesimi."

The hawker shrugged his shoulders and walked away. He had got the coin from a Greek whose s.h.i.+p lay in the _Giudecca_ there. It was no good saying what the Greek had said. The signor would never believe him. He cast a wandering eye at the s.h.i.+ps and shrugged his shoulders once more.

John watched his retreating figure with a sense of irritation--irritation because the man had gone away thinking him an English fool--irritation because, unasked, the hawker had betrayed to him his loss of a sense of humour.

To be offered an English penny for one lira! To be told quite seriously that it was a rare coin! And to take it in all seriousness; to go to the trouble of saying in an injured voice that it was only worth ten centesimi! Was this what he had fallen to? Was his sense of humour so far gone as this? Of course it was a rare coin! Had there not been times when an English penny would have saved him from the dire awkwardness of an impossible position. How about the chair in Kensington Gardens? How about the friend who mounted the 'bus with him in the cheerful expectation that he was going to pay? Of course it was a rare coin! Why, there were times when it was worth a hundred lire!

He called the hawker back.

"Give me that coin," he said.

The man took it out with a grin of surprise.

"It cost me half a lira, signor," he said, which was a lie. But he told it so excellently that John paid him his price.

"Do you think they'll find it worth a candle at the shrine of St.

Anthony?" asked John.

"You have lost something, signor?"

He said it so sympathetically.

"My sense of humour," said John, and off he strode to St. Mark's, the hawker gazing after him.

Without laughter in it, the voice is a broken reed; without laughter in it, the heart is a stone, dullened by a flaw; without laughter in it, even a prayer has not the lightness or the buoyancy of breath to rise heavenwards.

Can there be one woman in the world who has never prayed to St. Anthony in all seriousness for some impossible request which, by rights, she should have enquired for at the nearest lost property office--for a lost lock of hair that was not her own--one of those locks of hair that she ties to the wardrobe in the morning and combs out with all the seriousness in the world? Surely there must have been one out of the thousands? Then why not for a lost sense of humour? There is no office in the world that will return you such valuable property as that, once it has slipped your fingers. He has the sense himself, has St. Anthony.

Think of the things he has found for you in your own hands, the jewels that he has discovered for you clasped about your own neck! Why, to be sure, he must have a sense of humour. And if it is impossible to pay an English penny for his candle in an Italian church--an English penny, mind you, which has profited some poor beggar by the sum of one lira; if it is a sacrilege, a levity, to ask him for the return of so invaluable a quality as a lost gift of laughter, then why pray at all, for without laughter in it, even a prayer has not the lightness or the buoyancy of breath to rise heavenwards.

If, when one drops upon one's knees at night and, beginning to deceive oneself in one's voluntary confessions, making oneself seem a fine fellow by tardy admissions of virtue and tactful omissions of wrong, if when one shows such delightful humanity in one's prayers as this, and cannot laugh at oneself at the same time, cannot see that it is but a cheating at a game of Patience, then it might be as well not to pray at all. For the humour in which a prayer is prayed, is the humour in which a prayer will be judged, and if, seriously, one deceives oneself into believing that one is a fine fellow, just so seriously will that deceit be weighed; for there are mighty few of us who are fine fellows, which is a great pity, for so mighty few of us to know it.

By the time John had reached the shrine of St. Anthony in the Duomo, by the time his English penny had rattled in the box along with all the other Italian coins, by the time the first words of his prayer were framed upon his lips, a laugh began to twinkle in his eyes; he had found his sense of humour, he had found his gift of laughter once more. It was in his own prayer. Before he could utter it, he was smiling to think how St. Anthony must be amused by the whole incident. Then, all it needed was for him to be grateful and, dropping his head in his hands, he expressed his grat.i.tude by asking for other things.

St. Mark's is one of the few churches in the world where you can pray--one of the few churches in the world where they have not driven G.o.d out of the Temple, like a common money-changer, driven Him out by gaudy finery, by motley and tinsel. Ma.s.s at the High Altar there, is the great Pa.s.sion Play it was meant to be, performed upon a stage unhung with violent colours, undecked with tawdry gems. They had no pandering fear of the G.o.d they wors.h.i.+pped, when they built that theatre of Christianity in the great Square of St. Mark's. The drama of all that wonderful story has a fit setting there. No stage is lit quite like it; no tragedy is so tragic in all its awful solemnity as when they perform the Ma.s.s in the duomo of St. Mark's. As the Host is elevated, as that sonorous bell rings out its thrilling chime and as the thousand heads sink down within two thousand hands, a spirit indeed is rus.h.i.+ng upwards in a lightning pa.s.sage to its G.o.d.

Once his head was bowed, once his eyes were closed, John was lost in the contemplation of his prayer. He did not observe the party of people who came by. He raised his head, but his eyes were fixed before him towards the little shrine. He did not see one separate herself from the party, did not notice her slip away un.o.bserved and, coming back when they had gone on, seat herself on the chair close by his side.

Only when his thoughts were ended, when St. Anthony had listened to all that he had lost, to all the aching story of his heart, did he turn to find what St. Anthony had brought him.

His lips trembled. He rubbed and rubbed his eyes.

There on the seat beside him, her hands half pleading, her eyes set ready to meet his own, sat Jill.

CHAPTER x.x.x

THE QUALITIES OF IGNATIA

In amazement, John put out his hand. He touched her to see if she was real. Her hand answered. She caught his finger. Then she let it fall.

"Are you sorry?" she whispered.

He looked up at the image of St. Anthony, then back at her; around the church, then back once more at her.

"Where have you come from?" he asked.

"From home--from London."

"When?"

"I arrived last night."

"Alone?"

"No! No! With the Crossthwaites."

"Then what has happened?"

"Why--nothing has happened--and----" her voice dropped below the whisper--that strange pitch in which you hear not a syllable, yet know the worst--"and everything has happened."

"You're going to be married?"

It sounded no less terrible in his voice because he knew it.

"Yes."