The Saint Part 4

"The priest," he continued, "likens the black shadow to an evil spirit, which comes and goes round pure spirits (you do not understand the connection, but there is a connection), eager to enter into them, to dwell in them, he, with others worse than himself. Then--and here I have not yet found the connection, but I shall find it--they are led to talk of love. You have crossed the Grande Place. To-night there was no music, but usually there is, and we will suppose that many amorous glances are exchanged, as is everywhere the case. The old tower and the old priest show a certain indulgence; the maiden, on the contrary, finds this phase of love stupid. She scorns it. It is the love of the world, says the priest; and here is the Hotel de Flandre and the wedding dance-music."

"What?" exclaimed Noemi. "Was there really a wedding dance?"

Carlino shrugged his shoulders and clenched his fists, gasping with impatience. After a deep sigh he continued:

"The girl asks, 'But is there a heavenly love?' It was then I told you to stop under the trees of Saint-Sauveur, and you, instead, stopped at the entrance to the square. It makes no difference; the cathedral was in sight, and that is enough. The priest answers: 'Yes, there is a heavenly love,' The majesty of the ancient cathedral, of the night, of the silence, inspires him. He speaks, I cannot now repeat his discourse, it is rather confused in my mind; but at any rate the essence of it is this, that even heavenly love has its birth, but never reaches maturity on earth. The old man almost allows himself to be led into making a confession. With, bursting heart and burning tongue he does confess to not having felt any inclination towards individuals nor indeed any inclination which could cause him shame, but an intellectual and moral aspiration to unite himself with some incorporeal feminine spirit, that should belong completely to his incorporeal being, at the same time remaining sufficiently distant from it, to admit of the intervention of love between the two."

"Gracious!" murmured Noemi. Carlino was so excited, that he did not hear her.

"The old man," said he, "seems to perceive in this union a human trinity similar to the Divine Trinity, and therefore finds it just, finds it a holy thing, that man should aspire to it. At last he is silent, overcome by the things he has said; and walks towards Notre Dame. The maiden takes his arm. Here behold the evil one, the spirit of temptation. You yourselves have seen him! Tell me now, is not all this well thought out, is it not well arranged? The old man and the girl flee from the evil spirit, but like the sky, so their hearts grow dark. Now I need the little window in the clouds, with the tiny star in the centre. The old priest and the girl should silently watch the star quivering in the Lac d'Amour, and many secret workings of their minds should culminate in this idea; perhaps, beyond the clouds of the earth, there in that distant world!"

Jeanne had not spoken a single word, nor shown in any way that she was listening to her brother's story. Leaning over the parapet, she looked into the dark water. At this point she started impetuously.

"But surely you do not believe this," she exclaimed. "You know that these are delusions--dreams. You would never wish me to believe such things. You would be the first to drive me away from you if I did."

"No," protested Carlino.

"Yes! And for the sake of producing something beautiful in literature you, also, take to nurturing these dreams, which are already enervating humanity to such a degree, already diverting people from the actualities of life! I do not like it at all. An unbeliever like you! One who is convinced, as I myself am convinced, that we are merely soap-bubbles which sparkle for a moment, and then return not into nothing, but into _everything!_"

"I, convinced?" answered Carlino, in astonishment. "I am not convinced of anything. I am a doubter. It is my system; you know that. If now some one were to tell me that the true religion was that of the Kaffirs, or that of the Redskins, I should say, It may well be! I do not know them, I see the falsity of those I do know, and for that reason I should certainly not wish you to become a believing Catholic. As to driving you from home--"

"Perhaps I had better leave before being driven away?"

So saying, Jeanne took Noemi's arm. Carlino begged them to walk round the Lac d'Amour. Who knows, perhaps the little window in heaven would open. He wished it would. Noemi, recalling the conversation of a few hours before, expressed a doubt that Fomalhaut would be the star to appear at the window.

"To be sure," said Carlino thoughtfully. "I had forgotten Fomalhaut. If it is not Fomalhaut now, it will be Fomalhaut then."

But Noemi had other difficulties to suggest. What if no star appeared at the window, either large or small? For this difficulty Carlino promptly found a remedy. The star will be there. It may be minute, lost in an immense profundity, but it will be there. The girl does not see it, but the priest sees it with the long-sightedness of decrepitude. Later, through faith, the girl discerns it also.

"And so the poor girl," said Jeanne bitterly, "relying on the faith of an old, dim-sighted priest, will see stars where there are none, will lose her common-sense, her youth, her life, her all. I suppose you will end by having her buried at the Beguinage?"

And she went on with Noemi without waiting for an answer.

They had now walked round the Lac d'Amour, and the two friends paused for some time on the other bridge. But no little window opened in the heavens. The great distant tower of the Halles, the enormous campanile of Notre Dame, a squat tower near the pond, the pointed roofs of the Beguinage stood outlined against the milky clouds, like a venerable a.s.sembly of old men. Carlino, not knowing what better to do, began discoursing in a loud voice on the most appropriate position for his window.

"What day is this?" Jeanne asked her friend under her breath.

"Sat.u.r.day."

"To-morrow I will speak to Carlino, Monday and Tuesday we will settle our affairs, Wednesday we will pack our boxes, and Thursday we will start. You can write to your sister that we shall be at Subiaco the week after next."

"Don't decide so suddenly. Think about it."

"I have decided. I must know. If it is he, I will not be a hindrance in his path. But I wish to see him." "We will talk it over again to morrow, Jeanne. Do not decide yet."

"I have thought it over, and I have made up my mind."

Midnight sounded from the great tower of the Halles. High up in the clouds rang out the long solemn melancholy song of the innumerable bells. Noemi, who had intended to have her own way, was silent, her heart full of despondency. It was as if those melancholy voices from the darkening sky were proclaiming her friend's destiny; a destiny of love and suffering, which must be accomplished.

CHAPTER II. DON CLEMENTE

The light was fading in Giovanni Selva's study, and on the little table covered with books and papers. Giovanni rose and opened the west window.

The horizon was on fire behind Subiaco, along the oblique line of the Sabine hills, which stretch from Rocca di Canterano and Rocca di Mezzo to Rocca San Stefano. Subiaco, that pointed pile of houses large and small which culminates in the Rocca del Cardinale, was veiled in shadow; not a branch stirred on the olives cl.u.s.tered behind the small, red villa with green blinds, rising on the summit of the circular cliff, round whose base winds the public road; not a branch stirred on the great oak beside it, overhanging the little ancient oratory of Santa Maria della Febbre. The air, laden with the odours of wild herbs and recent rain, came fresh from Monte Calvo. It was a quarter past seven. In the sh.e.l.l-shaped tract watered by the Anio the bells were ringing; first the big bell of Sant' Andrea, then the querulous bells of Santa Maria della Valle; high up on the right, from the little white church near the great wood, the bells of the Capuchins, and others in the far-away distance. A woman's voice, submissive and sweet, the voice of five and twenty, came from the half-open, door behind Giovanni, saying almost timidly In French:

"May I come in?"

Giovanni, smiling, turned half round, and stretching out his arm, encircled the young woman pressing her to his side without answering.

She felt she must not speak; that her husband's soul was following the dying night, and the mystic song of the bells. She rested her head on his shoulder, and only after a moment of religious silence did she ask softly;

"Shall we say our prayer?"

A pressure of the arm encircling her was the answer. Neither her lips nor his moved. Only the eyes of both dilated, straining towards the Infinite, and a.s.sumed that look of reverence and sadness which mirrors the thoughts that remain unspoken, the uncertain future, the dark portals which lead to G.o.d. The bells became silent, and Signora Selva, fixing her blue eyes on her husband's eager gaze, offered him her lips.

The man's snowy head and the woman's fair face met in a long kiss which would have filled the world with astonishment. Maria d'Arxel, at one and twenty, had fallen In love with Giovanni Selva after having read one of his books on religious philosophy, translated into French. She wrote to the unknown author in such ardent words of admiration, that Selva, in answering, alluded to his fifty-six years and his white hair. The girl replied that she was aware of both, that she neither offered nor asked for love, she only craved a few lines from time to time. Her letters sparkled with brilliant intellect. They came to Selva when he was pa.s.sing through a dark crisis, a bitter struggle, which need not be related here. He thought this Maria d'Arxel might prove his saving star.

He wrote to her again.

"Do you know what anniversary this is?" asked Maria. "Do you remember?"

Giovanni remembered; it was the anniversary of their first meeting.

During the correspondence the two had bared the very depths of their souls to one another in an inexpressible fervour of sincerity, while as yet unacquainted save by means of portraits. After they had exchanged four or five letters, Giovanni asked his unknown correspondent for her likeness; a request she had expected and dreaded. The girl consented on condition of a speedy rest.i.tution of the photograph, and was in agony until it was returned, accompanied by some very tender words from her friend. He was charmed with the intellectual, pa.s.sionate, and youthful face, with the sweetness of the great eyes, with the symmetry of the figure. Then when they had arranged to meet, he coming from the Lake of Como, she from Brussels to Hergyswyl near Lucerne, both had been in a fever of apprehension. She reflected:

"The portrait pleased him, but the bearing of the real person, a line, the colour of the garments, the manner of meeting, the first words, the tone of voice, may perhaps destroy his love at one blow."

He thought:

"She knows my face, ravaged by time, my white hair, and she loves them in the picture, but I am ageing day by day; perhaps when she sees me this incredible love will be killed at a blow."

He had reached Hergyswyl by boat some hours before her; she, leaving Basel in the morning, arrived by the Brunigbahn in the afternoon.

"Do you know," Maria continued, "when I did not see you at the station, my first sensation was one of relief; I trembled so! The second sensation was different, was one of fright."

Giovanni smiled,

"You never told me that," said he.

The young wife looked up at him and smiled in her turn.

"Perhaps you yourself have never told me quite everything about those moments."

Giovanni placed his hands on her shoulders and whispered in her ear:

"That is true."

She started, and then laughed at herself for starting, and Giovanni laughed with her.

"What, what?" she cried, her face aglow, vexed but still laughing. Her husband whispered again, in a tone of great mystery: