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A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook
Title: Anthony Adverse (1933)
(In 3 volumes - Volume 2)
Author: Hervey Allen
eBook No.: 0200541bh.html
Language: English
Date first posted: August 2002
Date most recently updated: August 2002
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A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook
Title: Anthony Adverse (1933)
(In 3 volumes - Volume 2)
Author: Hervey Allen
XXVI. The Street of the Image Makers
XXVII. The Pillars of Hercules
XXX. The Miracle in the Chapel of St. Paul, Regla
XXXI. A Decent Mammalian Philosophy
XXXIV. Through a Copy of Velasquez
XXXV. The Temporary Sequestration of the Ariostatica
XXXVI. A Gradual Approach to Africa
XLI. A Glimpse into the Furnace
XLIII. The Image Begins to Melt
XLVI. The Unicorn Charges Home
That great continental knee that curves southward to thrust the leg of Europe into the boot of Italy also encloses its gulf with a twinkling garter of mountains. These are not always clearly to be seen, but once glimpsed are provocative beyond most vistas, even if the traveller is an experienced one. In winter and other doubtful seasons the gulf hides itself in rain, or mists which sweep down like the swirling skirts of cosmic dancers from the slopes of the Maritime Alps.
But in early summer before a sirocco blows it is quite another thing. Then the sky over the gulf is turquoise, and the Mediterranean Homeric blue. By night the planets appear to lower themselves and burn nearer to the earth, and the stars to march higher as they do in tropic latitudes. Dawn comes from Italy, and if you are so lucky or so wise as to be on deck at that early hour, you need have no fear of an anticlimax in your destination, for before you lies Genoa rising unbelievable, white marble terrace above white marble; red tiles, churches, towers, villas, orchards, and castles ringed in by a noble amphitheatre of hills.
It was thus that Anthony Adverse first beheld it from the deck of the Wampanoag one summer morning while the ship's cutwater slipped contentedly through the untroubled seas. Never since his first bright sight of the world from the top of the tree at the convent had he seen anything quite so beautiful. Something of that first, fresh exaltation now returned to him as he leaned over the rail, gazing his eyes full.
They were tacking in slowly against a land breeze, now on a wide reach to port and now close hauled to windward, while the crew slowly took in sail. The sweet, heavy scent of orange groves and the intangible coolness of jasmine and new-mown grass rolled to him across the water. Only now, after nearly an hour of light, the olive orchards were beginning to stand out greyly amid the brighter green of the pink-topped oleanders.
The light widened and the sea grew bluer. Just a few minutes before it had been dark violet. How could he ever sleep; miss a moment of it? Why did men have to die and leave a world like this? Life could not be long enough on a star so beautiful. He wondered if Captain Jorham, who was at the wheel while the steersman helped take in sail, saw or felt anything similar. Philadelphia called them below to breakfast.
Anthony had slept like a child every night since leaving Livorno. His senses were keen, yet soothed and washed limpid by the clear sea air. There was a tang and a zest about everything--about the movements of his arms, of his hands and fingers. He could feel the most delicate surface texture of things. In the quiet ship he could hear the slightest sound. Captain Jorham looked at him and grinned.
"Feelin' pretty keen, eh? I used ter myself. Glad to get away?" Anthony had to admit that he was. All the little objects of furniture, houses; people that had annoyed him; the pain of familiarity with a thousand things that he wished instinctively to avoid but that had possessed some irksome claim upon him had vanished. He was no longer accountable to them. He need be sorry for nothing. Just now he was too happy to regret even those he loved--had loved! What a magical thing was this, the mere transporting of the body!
He within, he felt, remained the same. He himself had not moved. It was merely the outside world that had shifted. The encumbrances about him had vanished.
So he sat in the cabin that morning inhaling his coffee slowly, feeling the surprisingly healthy warmth of it, watching the green water slip by outside the porthole and enjoying one of the noblest of illusions immensely. Travel had set him free.
The blocks rattled on the deck as the ship came about again. Mrs. Jorham galvanized by the smell of coffee opened her panel and thrust her head, dressed in brown curl-papers and a night-cap, through the narrow aperture. Captain Jorham, seating himself upon the chest marked "Jane," began to feed his wife biscuits and bacon. From the biscuits from time to time he gallantly knocked out the weevils. It was a sign that he was in the best of good humour.
"'Strordinary female bird walled in," thought Anthony.
The lips of Mrs. Jorham pointed, came out of the slot, and surreptitiously pecked her husband on his leather cheek. Then she looked at Anthony and rearranged her cap. Properly embarrassed by such intimate domestic details and endearments before a stranger, she smiled, pecked her husband once again, and closed the panel with an overpowering air of virtue and dignity. Throughout the entire meal her manner had been that of a lady-Putnam. That was it. She was not a toucan, she was a Putnam! Anthony saw that even on shipboard, in the intimate presence of strangers and of the ocean itself, Mrs. Jorham contrived to remain elegant and refined. It was a perfection which knocked out the weevils in their own dust. It was "Putnamism." Captain Jorham, who participated in it distantly by marriage, was proud of it, too. He set down the mess-kid in which only the wriggling weevils remained, triumphantly.
After Philadelphia cleared the board the captain took some papers from his desk and spreading them out on the table with a knowing air, dipped his pen, and beckoned to Anthony. As he sat down beside him he noticed that Captain Jorham not only reeked of tobacco but was also redolent of rum.
"Sign here," said the captain, without previous palaver.
Anthony leaned over the paper, which he found to be a roster of the crew. The captain's stubby finger pointed to the vacant line marked mate.
"Died o' smallpox at Lisbon," vouchsafed Captain Jorham.
But Anthony still hesitated with McNab's first lesson in mind.
"It's all fair and above board," continued Captain Jorham a little anxiously. "Didn't yer old man tell ye about it before ye left? He and I arranged it all before supper that night. Ye're to be carried as second mate. That'll keep the Frenchies from askin' any questions about ye at Genoway. I'll tell ye how it is. It's mighty ticklish work these days bein' a neutral and tryin' to make ports and pick up cargoes with the French lordin' it on land and the king's navee on the water. It all depends pretty much on what cargo ye carry. But if I can git a nice cargo of fryin' ile over to Havaner it'll sell high. That's what I'm pushin' into Genoway fer. There's a sight of it piled up there now. Cost nothin'! It's worth the chance. It would go plum against the grain to run empty to Havaner. I'm layin' to pick up some fine blocks of marble for ballast, tew. I expect even the British ul have a hard time calalatin' that as contraband. And the French 'll let us clear all right if we don't have English refugees aboard. Na-ow if ye just sign on as mate, between ye and me sort of ex-officio--no wages, of course,--ye can pass tolerable fer Yankee born. Better say Virginny, though. Your talk's a lot more like that. Ye don't use your nose proper to Bosting way. I'll tell ye another thing, tew, if the British board us at sea it may save yer bein' pressed, ye bein' a mate. Look here!"
He pointed out on the roll the names of six seamen with the notation, "Pressed at Sea off Ushant, February 6, 1796, by H. M. S. Ariadne."
"A fast frigate or she'd never have done it. Most chasers we just sink in the blue, but there's a few on 'em can overhaul us with a followin' wind. That leaves us six hands forward to git home on. Old 'uns all. That English snotty that boarded us did know how to pick his men. Even the babies now have practice in that, dang 'em! Still it ain't such a bad berth bein' a mate on board with a lady in the cabin."
More than convinced by this time Anthony signed. The captain looked pleased and relieved. He opened up "Elisha" and taking out a bottle poured out a double tot.
"Wall, mister," he said with a twinkle, "here's luck to ye, and a fast first run."
The panel opened slightly as the lady-Putnam sniffed through the orifice.
Anthony saw trouble come into the woman's eyes. Her mouth trembled a little, but she said nothing. At last with a look of unhappy resignation she closed herself in again.
The captain drew his hand across his mouth and went on deck. As the ship beat in toward the harbour he descended twice again for a spiritual interview with "Elisha." Before they passed the Molo Vecchio he was in a genially prophetic humour and moved with a superbly confident roll. It was in this semi-rapt condition that the skipper felt himself most able to cope with a bargaining world. "Well iled." But the precise amount of lubricant necessary to fill the Wampanoag with a profitable cargo was hard to gauge. There was one curious thing about it, however. Liquor had brought the captain luck. A cargo of parrots once proved remunerative beyond all sober expectation. He gave a slight hitch to his trousers.
"Goin' ashore, mister?" he asked with a grin. That a young gentleman like Anthony should be his mate tickled him immensely. In his present mood the joke seemed colossal. "Get yer togs on."
Anthony dived into his chest hastily to get his purse and coat. As he opened the chest for the first time since leaving, he found a letter addressed to him in the engraved strokes of Mr. Bonnyfeather. He opened it very impatiently now and read hastily. He reproached himself for this, but with the early morning noises of the new city coming through the port he could not control his impatience.
It was a prolix letter of instruction how to proceed about the collection of the debt. Mr. Bonnyfeather had apparently foreseen all possible contingencies. They were under nine heads. Bother! This could wait till Havana. How coldly it was written. The old man addressed him as if he were nothing but an agent. There were several enclosures, some drafts on Spanish bankers, and two other letters.
Il Signore Carlo Cibo, Regla, Habana, Cuba.
That could wait, too. How cramped the old man's signature was getting now. Well, his hand . . . Then his eyes fell on a postscript.
P. S. I have not cast this epistle in terms of affection lest I should have no eyes left to see with as I write it. Wherever you are when you read this, remember the hand of him who writ it is (as ever in the past) extended to you in blessing (and even from the grave). I have put this in your chest myself. Do you look under your great-coat for further remembrance, my son. Thine,
J. B.
He sat down on his bunk holding the letter which swam grey before him. How had it been possible for him to forget all past benefits in a few hours? He felt he should like to stab himself to make the hard heart in his breast capable of feeling as it should.
Yet, perhaps gratitude was like sorrow, you could not feel it all at once or it would overwhelm you. He looked at the open chest. He could see the madonna wrapped up there in something that made her look like a mummy. Preserved, eh? So the past was still with him. But he would not disturb her now. And he would look under the great-coat later on. He could not bear to receive anything more from that hand "extended even from the . . ." Oh, for just one day without any past behind it and no future before! The old man must still be well in Livorno.
Livorno? Where was that? Was there such a place? It was the noise and smell of Genoa that were coming in through the port.
He roused himself. In order to act it would be necessary to shake off the past, to remember it only in its proper place. Be grateful, yes! But not now, not this morning--in Genoa. He closed the lid of the chest with a bang right on the nose of the madonna and all the rest.
But he had forgotten his purse. He had to open the chest again for that. As he put back Mr. Bonnyfeather's letter which he had unconsciously clutched in one hand all the while, the other enclosure fell out before him.
To the Reverend Father Claude Aquaviva Xavier, S. J.
At the Palazzo Brignole, Genoa.A. A., Deliver this in person. 'Tis the old summer school of the Jesuits in the suburb Albaro. Fail not in this if time permit.
So Father Xavier was in Genoa! Here was the past with a vengeance. How long it had been since he had thought of him! He had sent him his last childish letter to Naples years ago, and he had not answered the last from the priest. Meant to, of course. Naples? These priests of the suppressed Jesuits moved about now from pillar to post. Probably Father Xavier had had no easy time of it. His heart smote him. He might have written him. But it was just after Faith . . . damn it all! How much there was in that chest! Well, he would try to see him. The direction was in Mr. Bonnyfeather's hand, his last request as it were. This time he closed the chest deliberately and locked it, clapped on his hat and went on deck. Captain Jorham eyed him.
"It ain't sea-vility for the mate to keep the captain waitin', mister," he said as they stepped into the boat.
Philadelphia, grinning and sweating, rowed them through the crowded shipping of the old semi-circular harbour. Looking up, Anthony saw the tricolour waving on the massive Fortress of Sperone towering above them on Monte Peraldo. Bugle calls floated down faintly. Here and there along the miles of walls inland the sun glinted on cannon or flashed on bayonets. All the churches were built of black and white marble. There seemed to be any number of their striped façades and towers.
They landed at the Porta Lanterna and it was four mortal hours before the French officers in charge of the port were finished examining papers and quizzing Anthony who had to translate for the captain.
It was not easy to convince the military authorities that a neutral ship was not a legitimate prize of war. They rowed out and made sure she was empty. But they looked disappointed. Captain Jorham had cause to be grateful for his "mate." Finally with his papers reluctantly signed permitting him to purchase "ship's stores, olive-oil, marble, and statuary," he was allowed to go.
"Stat-uary," rumbled the captain, "statoo-ary?"
Anthony laughed. The French had been slow to understand about the marble blocks for ballast. Statuary was made out of marble, marble was statuary. Meldrun! let them buy them both, neither was contraband. The captain kept looking at the document.
"By God, mister, I got an idear!" he suddenly roared.
It was some minutes before Anthony's back stopped stinging between the shoulders as they walked along.
Genoa was a welter of small, crooked streets with narrow, high houses, hunchbacked, twisted, and set at all angles. A perpetual dank shadow lived here as if at the bottom of an old well. Even the stones seemed to be rotten. An odour as of old cheese wrapped in a goatskin weighed on the senses.
The streets swarmed with half-naked urchins, women with baskets of fish or equally redolent dirty clothes on their heads. Soldiers slouched by on unmilitary errands, and every fifth or sixth person was a dark, scurvy-looking priest with a sallow, grimy countenance. Here, about the Porto Franco, where their errands lay that morning, Anthony could scarcely believe that he was really within the walls of the noble city set in green hills that he had seen from the ship.
They passed under endless arcades where the plaster walls had turned black with ages of grime. Festering piles of rubbish and garbage, rag piles, and unspeakable refuse piled against the walls. Yet between the outward-facing arches along the curb the merchants of macaroni and polenta kept their stalls, especially where the sword-like streaks of sunlight descended upon their heads.
The quantity of oil which the captain desired seemed unheard of. Even with his new mate to do the talking, the bargaining took them well past noon. The Ligurian dialects were often difficult, and the Genoese laughed at Anthony's Tuscan. When at last all was completed it took another hour or two to assemble carts to haul the jars to the quay. Captain Jorham was too wise to take his eyes off his purchases for a minute, or to pay until the last jar wrapped in straw ropes was safely deposited in the official confines of the Porto Franco. Then he was forced to see that the custom officials there had good cause to remember him.
But even at that the captain could rub his hands with satisfaction. Since the French had come, trade in Genoa was at a standstill. For that reason he was able to purchase supplies and provisions for the voyage at less than cost. His eyes sparkled, and to Anthony's alarm he showed some signs of being about to clap his newly acquired mate on the back for the second time that day.
Under ordinary circumstances Captain Elisha would have now returned to the ship to take his grub and save his pennies, but the liquor he had taken that morning was already dying out in him by noon. And he had secretly embarked on a long sipping wassail which engaged him for about four months every three years, when he began to hear the stealthy approach of certain footsteps overtaking him out of the past. It was his peculiar habit during the approach of the shadow feet, to mix wine with rum and porter into a potion known as "A Dog's Nose" for the reason that there are no whiskers on it and it drips. Rum and porter he had, but little or no wine.
Also he desired to purchase marble for ballast and to sell that usually unprofitable item at Havana for tombstones. It could be replaced there by ordinary stones, said to be abundant in Cuba. As a cautious measure he desired holes to be drilled in those marble blocks to secure them when once aboard. Then he was pleased with his "mate" for slinging the lingo so well. He intended to use such abilities further.
For above all there was the great "idear."
This was nothing less than to take full advantage of the permission to purchase statuary, so accidentally conferred upon him that morning, and to fill the vacant bunks in the fo'c'sle of the Wampanoag with "idols," to wit: various examples of life-size ecclesiastical statuary, saints, madonnas, and bambinos manufactured at Genoa in vast quantities cheaply, and hence doubtless salable at substantial profit to the less-artistic faithful in Havana. Indeed, the churches in Cuba, as Captain Elisha assured himself, although his data was based on only a few visits of irreverent curiosity, were lamentably bare of "idols." Some Protestant qualms assailed him, but the idea he felt was truly inspired.
Standing on a sunny corner he mopped his brow with a green duster while all this passed rapidly and somewhat confusedly through his troubled old mind. He was hungry, likewise he was very thirsty. Mrs. Jorham was safely "on board." Well, he would get her a present. He would get himself plenty of wine, see the ta-own and make his macaroni mate do the talking.
"Come on, mister, let's find victuals and drink. Lead the way. Captain's and owner's charges."
Anthony was willing. He had been afraid they would go back to the ship. Now he might be able to get time off to see the town--and Father Xavier.
He hailed a French officer passing across the way, an amiable fellow, who led them gayly along a decent, little side street under wrought-iron balconies into a trellised courtyard covered by one huge vine. A party of French officers sat at a big stone table in the centre, their sabretaches, swords and sashes heaped up like tangled trophies on the stone benches. There was a litter of bottles, half-devoured salads, cheeses, loaves, and the remnant of a fine ham garnished with cloves on the wine-stained table-cloth. Corks popped and flew about with oaths. They raised a shout when their comrade appeared. Captain Elisha's eyes brightened. He sensed distraction.
He and Anthony sat down in a corner. A woman with a red petticoat flapping about her bare calves came and placed a small wooden table before them. On this she set a bowl of grape vinegar, a dish of fresh young garlic, salt and a brown loaf.
"Onions," remarked Captain Jorham, "are a sovran remedy for scurvy."
He forthwith fell to and proceeded to eat the entire bowl of garlic, dipping each pearl-like bulb in the vinegar, sprinkling a little salt on it, and then plumping it into his mouth where it disappeared slowly, wagging its green tail nearly to the end. But just before the end, each tail was bitten off at precisely the same distance and spat out upon the floor. After the "onions" he inserted a piece of bran bread off the edge of his knife and rammed it home as if to keep the bullets in place. He looked about him complacently and noted that he was sitting in the centre of a demi-lune of tender garlic tips all pointing outward. He counted them; one to forty-three.
"Scurvy's an awful thing if it gets to you," he said, "makes your fangs loosen." He spat experimentally through his own front teeth again. They were firm. Still he looked a little uneasy about something.
"Liquor, mister," he said, "somethin' hot and stirrin'! I feel them onions prominent in my midst. Ugh! that's better!" The captain plugged with his spoon thoughtfully. "I heard of a schooner from Bermudy what started oncet with a cargo of cedar casks and onions for the whalin' grounds off the South-Shetlands. Them onions was sealed in they casks to keep. That was where trouble started. Afore that ship reached Jamaiky the casks swelled up like a cargo o' newfangled French balloons. Onion gas! The ship went skiddin' along on her side. They couldn't tack her. They had to stave in them casks or they'd a floated clear o' the water and made leeway clear to Afriky. Well, sir, I'm beginnin' to feel like that schooner now. Whiroosh!"
One of the French officers, a man with a long, red beard smeared with salad oil and particles of cheese, looked at him in disgust.
"I'm floatin'," said Captain Elisha, "I'm risin' like bakers' bread. I'm like a bloater when he's tickled, a dead cachalot in the sun. Nothin' but strong cordial will belay it." He reached for the vinegar. Anthony stopped him alarmed. Just then the woman returned with a jug and a large smoking dish. Captain Elisha applied himself to the jug. His throat rippled.
"Coolin'," he said, "but nigh as sour as vinegar." He put it down. Anthony tasted the wine. It was Lachryma Christi. His teeth went on edge. He ordered the sweetest thing available, Mountain-Malaga. The captain gulped a glass of it. He still rumbled but looked more comfortable.
"That's the antidote, mister, now let's sample the grub. I'm blown up fer full capacity."
It was a large basin of rice and boiled chicken. They polished this off between them. It was enough for Anthony. He ordered some muscat of which he was very fond. The captain was captivated with it. After two bottles he looked around on a new world. The "onions" were hopelessly buried.
"Na-ow I allow I'm beginnin' to be hungry." He looked at the empty dish regretfully and at his mate expectantly. Anthony called the woman and ordered further refreshment. Having now some gauge upon the captain's capacity and being enthusiastic with burgundy himself, he commanded a feast.
The captain cut himself a large quid of tobacco, which he stuffed into a round place in his cheek, while he continued to look on approvingly. The woman somewhat awed departed. They heard her giving excited directions in the kitchen. Meanwhile the captain extracted what solace he could from the tobacco, evolving in the process great quantities of saliva. Presently he had attracted the notice of the party of French officers who began to bet on his aim.
At some distance on the pavement before Captain Jorham a small lizard was basking innocently in the sun. The captain's front teeth were bared from time to time and immediately afterward the universe of the lizard dissolved in brown juice. It moved each time like a flash. The eye could not follow it. At a distance of about four feet nearer the wall, and farther away from the captain, another and browner lizard seemed to appear. It was about twenty feet to the wall.
The bets began to become interesting. At each saurian remove the stakes became higher and the odds against the captain rose. But the major with the red beard and salad oil, looking at the mahogany tinge of the captain's teeth, bet a meagre fortune upon him. The major was an artilleryman. Two more shifts of the devastated lizard confirmed the major's faith touchingly. He now staked his watch and placed it on the table. The trajectory he hastily calculated was then about four and a half metres, allowing for the curve of the parabola. It was a long chance. But the captain fetched the lizard. The unfortunate, and by now suspicious, animal paused once more, but this time near a hole in the wall. Whatever happened it had only two inches to flinch, and it was now nearly twenty feet away from the captain. The latter ruminated slowly, accumulating ammunition with a lacklustre look. The stakes were by this time reckless even from a military standpoint. Captain Elisha straightened himself, every eye upon him. Suddenly the lizard was washed into its hole. A yellow rainbow had collapsed accurately upon it.
The consequent enthusiasm was loud and prolonged. The major, who had won a month's pay, insisted that the captain should join him and his companions in celebrating so remarkable an event. The artillery, he maintained, had been gloriously upheld. Anthony participated in the reflected glory. The whole party gathered about the big stone table while Anthony translated for the captain the round of congratulatory toasts that followed. Outwardly unperturbed but inwardly ravished, Captain Jorham sat grey and bleak as Plymouth Rock in a gale of laughter. Nevertheless he was adequate to the international occasion.
"Confusion to the British."
The table roared back at him with delight. The major would have embraced him but even Captain Jorham renigged at the salad oil beard. Instantly he was more popular with the others, captains and lieutenants who had only moustaches. In the offing much more food now appeared. The captain resumed his seat and began to feed. Between dishes they plied him with wine. He drank all and everything, setting down his empty glass each time with obvious regret. For the first time in his life, surrounded by enthusiastic friends, he became entirely gay. Into the frozen swamp of his feelings burst a warm April light. He began to croak and to bellow
"Yankee skipper comin' down the river
Ho, ho, ho, ho HO."
"Incroyable, magnifique! Allons, enfants de la patrie!"
The little courtyard rocked with song. Taking the cue from his mate the captain waved his glass, too. The woman in red petticoats stood by loyally. Shouting something to a mysterious "Batcheetcha" in the kitchen she produced a stage thunder there amid the pans. Things were pounded in a pestle. The two timbres of sizzling denoting roasting and frying arose simultaneously. Chickens died noisily several times. The major was a generous man. Cloths whisked and dishes clicked. Everybody began to eat and drink all over again as if their stomachs had expanded as the generous wine enlarged their souls.
They ate tagliarini, they ate ravioli, they ate cocks' combs and sheep-kidney minced with mutton chops and liver. They imbibed tender pieces of shredded veal fried and heaped upon a vast platter like a miraculous draught of shrimps. They ate chickens and spaghetti and mushrooms and ducks. When all the others were satiated Captain Jorham continued. He polished off a heap of sausages fried with garlic, topped that with a dish of green figs, and washed it all into place like a glacial drift that finds the worst is over and warmer times have come again--with waves of Madeira.
A happy silence compounded of satiety and pure human affability settled down upon the party. They looked at one another with complete approval and admiration. A Gascoigne major whose forefathers had been petty, brawling, and carousing nobles gazed into the eyes of Captain Elisha whose grandfather was an English regicide, and belched little nothings into his ear.
"Surely," thought Anthony, looking at a rat-like quartermaster opposite him, "no more gallant band of heroes has ever assembled to do honours to strong souls from the sea like Captain Jorham and his mate."
It mattered not that nothing which Captain Jorham said could be understood intellectually. What was the intellect? Indeed, where was it? The very sounds the old sailor made were enormously popular. He who had overwhelmed the lizard! Mark you, at six metres! When he told a joke and laughed, the courtyard howled. Two brown, dirty little boys sat in a crook of the great vine looking down from the pergola above. They chattered like little monkeys with their arms about each other watching a feast of lions. Yet even they, Anthony felt, and all the rest he thought felt with him, were part of this pleasant perfect society. To be approved, included, and considered. Yes, everything was perfect. Everybody was delightful. He was. They all were.
He had never drunk quite so much or enjoyed it so greatly before. Wine ran in his blood. He was absolved from all responsibility. The world, though slightly hazy, sparkled like a thicket in the sunshine. The pattern of vine leaves and the shadows on the floor under the trellis were revealed to him as beautiful beyond hope of imitation.
For the first few bottles he had still felt himself as a spectator, at times even a disapproving one. Then, as he had returned again and again to the scarlet glass, he seemed to emerge completely into another atmosphere. Delight, warmth, a delicious lightness and a complete identification with a perfect world ensued. He was convinced that this was the way things really were. A sober vision simply did not reveal them or put one in touch. Everything now became very clear, a little enlarged. The edges of things were framed in amber and the vistas beyond became supernal; bathed in auriferous light. Never had he felt so at home with his fellows as with these men in this courtyard. All of these people, all of them, men that he had never seen before today, were friends. The capacity for trouble had been removed from the universe. He was one in a brotherhood of a paradisiacal company.
Wine, the sun and vines had done this. The sun? He looked up at the sun through the vine leaves. This delicious wash of grape shade and shifting light under the trellis was like being at the bottom of a lake, a lake of air. So he was! He remembered that now. And it was in this kind of light under the plane tree that he had first come to life. No one could remember original darkness. He remembered the full, simple, unquestioning joy of light now. The clear light and the warmth and joy that had become part of him, that was still in him. Nothing could ever destroy that. It was what he was. Like the face in the miniature, that face! He crowed like a child again, moving his hands and feet slowly, feeling them. He thought; he dreamed.
It was the sun that brought all of this food and wine and joy out of the earth. That gave light, that made the eyes live. In that light moved shadows, men and things that ordinarily seemed to be to the light what shadows were, projections of something else. You could never quite understand what was throwing these shadows when you were sober. You forgot the origin of them and so you did not see things, and men themselves. But now, now he felt near to these fellow beings and things at last. He could see them as they actually were. You could draw close and know them. The darkness between them was gone. In the sunlight all were of one substance. All were part of this glory of heat and light beating down into the little courtyard. The very food and wine they had eaten came from it. They ate it and it became part of them. All were of one substance, men and things. All of it came out of the light.
Everybody was always eating and drinking everywhere. He longed to tell them about it but he could not. It was the sun that laid this daily table around which humanity gathered. Or something that made the sun. . . . He rose to his feet overpowered by so sublime a thought, striving for words. Only thick, lowing sounds came from his lips. He could not tell them. They shouted back at him but he did not understand. He felt sad. He wandered off somewhere. The world seemed to open out before him. The light became brighter. It flashed; streamed.
A vast table whose gleaming cloth stretched out like a white road to the horizon lay spread out before him thronged by all the nations of men. He could see them coming and going. Beyond the horizon there was nothing, nothing but clouds rising out of an abyss. He too could draw near to the table and partake with everybody. He dragged his feet a few steps farther and seemed to be standing on the table himself. He sat down on it. The table-cloth shone like the sun on water, dazzled.
He did not want to eat after all. He felt dizzy. He put his hand to his head and leaned against something. An hour passed, another. After a while the horizon cleared enough to see again. The monster table of the sun had vanished. He was sitting on the curb before the door of the restaurant looking up the Strada Balbi, long, white, blinding and silent in the late, hot afternoon.
Oh, yes, he knew now where he was. It was Genoa! He had been thinking about something. About a sacrament? Something like that.
An ancient love feast? Oh, well, nonsense! How long had he been sitting here? Where was the captain? They had something to do. What day was it now? But what did he care about time! He turned and walked back into the courtyard steadying himself. He had a great drink of water. It tasted flat. The woman was laughing at him. Everything was clearer now. He must have slept a long time. Only a sense of tremendous well-being and a little irresponsibility remained. After a while the floor grew steady. Bon!
Captain Jorham lay sleeping, leaning back in a chair propped against the wall. A fly was crawling over his bald head slowly.
Those princes, those best of all good fellows, where were they? Vanished. Yet there was something tangible about them. The major had paid the bill. "'For the honour of the French Army,' signore, he said," thus the woman pocketing Anthony's coin. He felt relieved. All that for a tip! Now he knew he was sober.
Inside the skull over which the fly was crawling the captain was not really asleep. His brain had merely slipped the cogs of time backward some twenty years and transported him hence. He was sitting on a bench before his door in Scituate, Massachusetts. Just across the bay over there was Abner Lincoln's house and mill by the stream. The mill wheel was turning. The swallows dipped and left rings in the shallows. It was sunset. Overhead Jane was putting their child to bed. He could hear her singing and the feet of the child padding about on the floor. Now his wife was humming and rocking the baby monotonously. A note of foreboding crept into her voice. Suddenly the mill across the stream started to grind. It seemed to be uttering the letter "R" for minutes at a time. It was grinding up something. His child! Run, do something about it! If only he could move his feet. "Rrrrrrr." He reached up and brushed the fly out of his ear.
Better! The mill had stopped. Dreaming? Why wake up? How happy he and Jane had been until . . . let him hear the child's feet again. Dead! Oh, yes, he had forgotten! He was afraid he might hear them again, at night. No, no, not dead! Yes, dead! Good lord! "Do not cry, Jane. We will go to the cemetery tomorrow." But it is already tomorrow. "Come, you can take your knitting." He started for the cemetery, and woke with his feet slipping. After a few minutes he remembered. The child was dead years ago. Poor little baba! But he must forget that, not hear the feet, on the deck, anywhere. . . . Shove it down, put the lid on it, live only now. "Remember, Elisha, it is pleasant here now, better now, better now," insisted one part of him to the other. "You can always take a drink and make it now. Take a drink, take a drink!" Captain Jorham arose from his chair roaring for liquor.
"This is the way I put soft shoes on my baby's feet, mister," he said as he downed a glass. "Can't hear 'em then." Anthony was sure the captain was still very drunk. Yet he looked sober.
They stayed the rest of the afternoon at the Café of St. Lawrence the Martyr. They had another little nap while it rained. Felt better, all well. The time seemed to have come to sally forth. The captain, Anthony was relieved to find, was now in a gracious Madeiran mood.
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At six o'clock of a particularly, fine June evening the City of Genoa was already beginning to bestir itself smoothly for the moonlight night that was to follow. After the shower it was very clear, cool. Long, deepening shadows lay across the streets. Yet the sky was suffused with the red light of the approaching sunset. The air was blue and sparkling, just exhilarating and soothing enough to be grateful as an aftermath to the wine which still warmed them. Responsibility had nobly died.
Scarcely caring where they were going, they threaded their way through a maze of streets so narrow that no vehicles could pass. It was far too late to think of going after the marble blocks. In the mood in which he found himself Captain Jorham was willing to go anywhere and readily fell in with Anthony's suggestion that they should visit Father Xavier in the suburbs. Afterwards they could have supper, more wine, return late, or make a night of it. Yes, the marble and statuary could go till tomorrow. Everything could wait until tomorrow. Just at present they were like two fish swimming indolently and without particular direction, suspended, and suspiring in a golden, liquid atmosphere.
Bell-jingling strings of mules going home, sedan chairs for hire, painted private chairs for the nobility preceded through the dark tunnels of streets by carriers with linen lanterns on poles, passed and crossed and recrossed each other in all directions as if a festa were going on. Tall, narrow houses frescoed in glowing colours with pictures of saints, gods, and angels rose all about them, flinging their balconies half-way across the street. Beneath streamed a medley of motley costumes whose weird, cloaked fashions and screaming colours blent with the voluble soft voices and grotesque street cries into the total spectacle of the life that thronged and flowed, gathered and dispersed, gestured and hurried onward.
It was with some difficulty that Anthony prevented the captain from climbing into a gorgeous but lousy sedan whose bearers kept turning up at every corner and offering themselves. God knows where they would have got to in that. He linked his arm through the captain's. He occasionally wobbled a little yet. Keeping a sharp eye on their pockets, they passed on. Suddenly they left behind them the zone of premature evening in the narrow streets and emerged by pure chance on the Strada Nuova where day was dying brilliantly.
The endless street stretched on up into the hills above, narrow, clean, lined with rows of marble fronts where a few lights were already beginning to twinkle on the balconies. The long rays of light struck along it like a cañon. Only illustrious people could live on a street like that. Beggars were out of place there even in Genoa.
They shook off a man with sore eyes who had followed them holding his inflamed lids apart. Calling a gay little carriage drawn by two mules with pompons and bells they left the beggar toiling and cursing after. The fat driver on the tasselled box was in no more hurry than his team. They trotted on indolently inland toward Albaro, rising every moment a little higher and gradually leaving the crowded port behind. It was now that to his great joy Anthony rediscovered the noble city which he had seen from the ship like a happy morning dream. All day he had lost it amid the narrow streets of the stinking water front.
Although the approach to the suburb of Albaro itself is through ribbon-like lanes giving entrance to long, silent villas painted with vast frescoes which the sea air has dimmed--subjects holy, profane, and grim--yet there are many spaces where the main road passes in an arc over crests and opens upon sweeping vistas of the heights above and the sea below.
It was a little after sunset when the mules and driver as if by mutual consent came to a halt at one of these spots. The breathing of the animals, gradually becoming more regular after the labour of the ascent, as they slowly and more slowly inhaled the restful quiet of the evening air, finally seemed to die away altogether and to become one with the silence of the evening. All in the carriage were in unconscious sympathy with this relaxing rhythm, and the process continued to penetrate even further into their minds as they looked about them.
Lofty hills with fortresses on their crags from which banners of evening mist were already flowing leapt above them. On the lower slopes white villas smouldered in the sunset, set deeply in an ever darkening green intaglio of gardens and lawns. The twelve miles of the city's defences streamed and tumbled like the wall of China across the heights. In the valleys of the Bsagnio and Polcevera an opalescent fog had already begun to gather. Out of it flowed the dark rivers under their bridges into the still flashing bay.
Genoa, the wide far-flung city, lay there at their feet, encircling the light-twinkling harbour with the beautiful curve of its white arms, gathering the ships to its breast from the ruined Chapel of S. Giovanni Battista on the rocky seashore to the Porta Lanterna. Beyond all this, limitless and smooth with distance, stretched the violet tables of the open sea. Westward it glowed with submarine fires that reflected themselves upon the sky, and as they cooled and went out, blotched the long horizon with glazed patches of floating scarlet veiled by narrow clouds touched by the lingering pencils of the sun. Slowly even these melted showing stars behind. It seemed now as if everything earthly were dissolving into the sky. It was like the hood over the Virgin's head, thought Anthony. Even the hills slowly expanded and blended into the same engulfing shadow that was swallowing the sea.
At the centre of all this dying world sat Anthony. Only the mules, the dim outline of the driver on the box above, and the captain beside him still remained outside of his mind as another reality. The wheels had for a while been holding him up, he felt, but soon he knew himself just to be floating in the body of the carriage on a sea of twilight. Then no carriage. He and the outside world merged. Or he held it all within him as a slowly darkening image. The place where his eyes ended and the world began had again been swept away. It was a timeless, spaceless levitation . . .
Only a moment ago his being extended thus had felt limitless. Now as darkness grew he was slowly withdrawing himself again into a point bounded by stars as they came out one by one and grew clearer. Soon he would be back within his head again. Something already had begun to remain outside.
The mules stirred. The carriage moved forward a few inches on solid ground. He looked down and saw his own hand on his knee and felt it. He looked around at the face of the captain. He also had lost himself Anthony could see.
His face had grown wide and peaceful, glimmering. The lines of stress and hard care and sorrow were relaxed on his forehead and cheeks. His lips framed themselves wonderfully about the smile of a younger man. Much had been forgotten and caressed away as though Elisha Jorham had once participated in vivid happiness and the vision remained, one which he only needed to be reminded of to resume.
"This is Elisha himself," thought Anthony. "I hope that he can see me as I am, too." He moved slightly. They looked at each other long and silently in the low twilight. They were both at home with, and comforted by the unspoiled glory of the world. That was an important discovery for friendship. Then the captain suddenly resumed the mask which experience had provided him. His face hardened.
"Well," said he, "what little thing happens next, mister? I'm trustin' my events to you now, see?"
"Nothing that matters much, sir, I suppose," replied Anthony shaking the stars out of his head.
"Wall, na-ow ye never can be sartain I calalate. Let's make sail anyway. We've got to be goin' somewhere."
The captain was getting sleepy. He began to nod shortly afterwards. A quarter of a mile farther brought them to the door of a small inn.
"I'll turn in here while you drive on and see yer friend," said Captain Elisha. "It's bed and not victuals I want now. But be sure to call fer me in the mornin' even if you make a night of it. That's orders, mister. Don't leave me stranded, mate," he added anxiously, "I can't swing the lingo, you know."
Anthony reassured him. He would call him for an early breakfast.
"Good! It's marble and statoo-ary tomorrow, and that may take longer than buyin' ile. They're never in any hurry around cemeteries." The captain yawned. "But you can't live that way; do business."
Anthony left him comfortable enough in a bedroom under the eaves where the moonlight was already beginning to filter through the tiles.
"Looks like one of Jane's crazy-quilts," murmured the captain fingering the covers dreamfully. "Say, mister . . ."
But Anthony had already driven on.
Half a mile across the valley from the inn Anthony was driving along the endless garden wall of the Palazzo Brignole. It had once been a summer school of the Jesuits but was long since deserted, as most of that suppressed order had fled to Russia or Poland. The hoofs of the mules echoed against the cracked and peeling stucco of the outbuildings in the empty moonlight. The driver turned in reluctantly enough through a rusty iron gate, and unhitching under a shed, began to make himself and his team as comfortable as the fleas would permit. Supper seemed remote. He was heard to wish fervently that il signore would not be long.
"An hour or two at most," replied Anthony, who then began to pick his way gingerly across a weedy terrace, fingering the letter to Father Xavier. The address upon it now seemed improbable, for in the moonlight he stumbled over piles of rubbish and old stable litter while tribes of owl-eyed cats fled wailing before him.
Even in Genoa Father Xavier could scarcely have found another dwelling which expressed so well the departed grandeur and the present desolation of his order. The vast uncompromising façade of the Palazzo Brignole stretched itself before Anthony on the crest of a series of terraces. Its flat face looked blindly at the moon as if it too were oblivious to change. Its lower apertures were stopped with rubbish like gagged mouths. From its upper windows the cracked and wrinkled shutters, like so many grey cataracts over innumerable eyes, told of nothing but seething darkness in the cells behind them. Two ruined arcades, extending from the house at right angles, stumbled with collapsing arches down the giant steps of the terraces and enclosed within their shattered arms the long approach that had once been a landscaped garden but was now a melancholy wilderness.
It seemed to Anthony as he looked up at the great house, from which not a light shone nor a sound emanated, that the garden was rushing down upon him over its arcades in tangled masses of shrubbery and flowing outlines of serpentine vines. It was a river of dark vegetation in sinister spate. What made it worse was that it had once been meant to be as artificial as a canal and neat as a priest with a new tonsure. It was some moments before he could force himself to follow the cats and plunge into its moon-shadowed mazes toward the house itself. At this hour it was a garden fit only for those that could see in the dark.
He tripped over roots that had forced their way through an old pavement cracked in a thousand directions. At other places the walks gave oozily under his feet. Everything was overgrown with weeds, gaunt, or blackly flamboyant. Frogs croaked in the stagnant stone basins, and as he rose turn after turn up the ruined steps, statues with mossy faces started out at him from their vine-tangled niches or lay prone with leprous spots upon them as if dead in the moonlight. Once he thought he saw a lantern gleaming far before him. But it was only a solitary firefly signalling vainly for an answer. The house remained pale and lampless, and grew even huger and more lonely as he approached it.
At last he stood upon the last pleasance, peering in through an open portal whose doors had long lost their hinges and were now leaning drunkenly against the pilasters of the cavern-like vestibule. Into this he did not care to venture. Indeed, he would have ended his mission here had it not been that now for the first time his ears were saluted by a sound other than that made by frogs and crickets.
At first he thought it was water dripping musically into some abandoned well, but as he stood listening intently the ghost of a tune emerged. Someone was negligently touching the strings of a harp. The sound grew louder. It seemed to emanate from the silent, wandering barracks before him. For a while it had come from nowhere, and the effect of the soft music in the moonlight had been so eery as to halt him where he stood. But to the notes of the harp were now added the slightly flat tones of a feminine voice practising the bravura. One, the highest note, was a dismal failure and made him laugh. It was an entirely human anticlimax. He strode through the vestibule eagerly and almost immediately found himself in the inevitable littered courtyard beyond.
From a porter's lodge in one corner of the quadrangle came a few gleams of light and the sound of the harp although the heavy shutters were closed. There were even heavy bars on the windows. He walked over and knocked at the door but there was no reply. The music had stopped instantly. He heard a few stealthy footfalls behind the shutters and the light went out. At first he was inclined to be angry at this reception, but then he could not help but grin. He knocked again. Silence.
After a long interval a queer voice said softly, "I am not at home. I went away years ago. Let me alone."
"Signora, or ma donna," he said, "I am not a brigand, I do not wish to disturb you. I am looking for a priest, Father Xavier. Do you know him?" He waited anxiously but still there was no reply. Some time passed. Then he knocked again, this time impatiently.
"You must call for him in the court. Call loudly," said the tired voice within. "He is getting a little deaf I think. He no longer cares for my music." That was all. After a while the light reappeared and the harp resumed.
He turned away again. The four walls of the high villa frowned down upon him with tightly-barred windows. The moon looked over one corner of the roof a little tilted. Best do as he had been told!
"Father Xavier, oh, Father Xavier!"
"Ier, ier, ier," mocked the echoes, dying away into a solemn gibberish. The harp dripped and tinkled, and the flat voice in the lodge ran through an eery, windy bar or two again. Somewhere in the shadows a chorus of cats began insultingly. He felt enormously irritated. It was warm and damp here, too. He was sweating. The place was decidedly . . . decidedly so!
"Father Xavier!" he roared again in a sane determined tone.
"What is it, my son?" said a familiar voice so close to his shoulder that he wheeled about, startled in spite of himself.
A few feet away stood a slight, emaciated figure with a black robe fluttering in the night breeze that sighed through the archway. There was a small crucifix hanging from its belt. This, and a shining tonsure of thin, grey locks glinted in the moon. Only the face was the same. At the sight of those familiar features, which standing out above the shadows seemed to be glowing with a quiet light from within, Anthony was transported by the fascination of fond memory into the past. He seemed to be standing again in the court of the Convent of Jesus the Child. Each looked at the other searchingly.
"My father, is it possible you do not know me?" said Anthony.
"Anthony, my son, my son!" cried Father Xavier. "I would rather see you here tonight than an archangel. Where have you fallen from?"
He came forward and put his hands on Anthony's shoulders and looked up into his face.
"I used to look down at you. You remember?"
Anthony could feel how old his hands were. A feeling of pity swept over him. An irritating cadenza of the woman's voice interrupted them. Suddenly he felt embarrassed.
"I have a letter from Mr. Bonnyfeather for you," he said awkwardly.
Father Xavier laughed. "A formal introduction I trust--'Anything you may be able to do to further the fortunes of so estimable and prepossessing a young gentleman will be esteemed as a service rendered to your obedient servant'--eh? So, we are on the formal basis of manhood. Come, my son, I shall receive you as I am sure you deserve, letter or no letter."
He laid his hand on Anthony's arm and led him across the court to a little door with a grille in it, a door so narrow as to be successfully concealed behind a large pillar. Taking a candle from the niche where he had left it, Father Xavier extended a shielding hand before the flame and they began to ascend a series of narrow stairs.
The ramifications of the old house were unimaginable. A thousand closed doors loomed mysteriously on a hundred corridors going nowhere. Anthony suddenly felt an overpowering sensation that he had been here before. It seemed improbable that the priest could ever find the way to his own room again. The silence was oppressive, but somehow as they went higher it was not so hostile as it had been on the ground floor. Inside, the house was merely asleep, not dead. People could come back here and be happy again. It was not like the garden. In summer the house was warm and dry, dusty.
They had both unconsciously fallen into their old step as if sauntering again through the corridors of the convent. Father Xavier walked as though he had a child beside him. Anthony's steps became shorter and faster. He did not notice it but the priest did. The light from the candle made the enlarged, blue veins on Father Xavier's hands stand out in knots. A still, porcelain light filtered through his thin, shielding fingers and fell upon his face as if the glow upon it were from within.
As they walked on through endless corridors and up confusing flights of well-like stairs, Father Xavier gave the impression that with all this paraphernalia of the building about him--with the glimpses of frayed frescoes starting up before the candle and dying away into the darkness like the gliding fringes of a delirious dream--the priest had nothing whatever to do. He alone, in all the passing phantasmagoria of vaguely glimpsed scenes of nature and the works of man, held the light which revealed them--and let them go again. Only his face shining as from within remained. Yes, Father Xavier looked that way tonight. Anthony wondered what such impressions might mean.
At last they paused before a door apparently no different from a hundred others they had passed but to which Father Xavier unhesitatingly applied his iron key.
It swung open upon a small apartment under the leads. The moonlight poured in through a dormer window. Beyond was a glimpse of a few pale stars. Even with only one candle and a little moonlight Anthony felt at home in the place immediately. Father Xavier motioned him to a shadowy chair, and when some more candles were lit, he saw it was one of the old, red ones with tassels that had so intrigued him as a child at the convent. Through what vicissitudes had it been since then, he wondered, to come here?
It was marvellous how with the closing of the door the very memory of the labyrinthian chaos of a house that was below and around them had vanished. They might have been in a comfortably furnished, opaque bubble hung somewhere in space, utterly safe from and independent of the outside universe. A few embers from the faggots which had cooked the priest's supper still glowed and made the place, if anything, too warm. Father Xavier threw the window wider and they heard the notes of the harp at a great distance below them.
The priest turned and touched his forehead significantly.
"She is composing an opera which will never be sung," he said. "An old cousin of the Brignoles who has been permitted to live on here in the lodge these ten years now. It is a little weird at times. Let us close it out tonight. What do you say?"
He shut the window again and going over to the fire poured some water on the embers. As the last hissing died away he extended his arms along the mantelpiece, leaning back and looking at Anthony.
"Do you remember my old room in the little house?"
"I now feel as if I had never left it, father."
"Here are some of your books, the ones with the pictures in them," said Father Xavier smiling and running his hands affectionately over the backs of the leather bindings, without turning to look at them. "That was where your world began, was it not? Ah, those were good times at the convent after all. Better than we knew. And now, to think of it, we have ten years or more to talk away between us. Why, a life-time would not be long enough for that! Have you not found it so, Anthony?"
"I remember some days I think it would take ten years to tell about. I do not think I shall live long enough to find out what really happened in some of them, father. And yet looking at you now it all seems as though I had only dreamed them all. I could almost imagine that harp down there was our old fountain in the court splashing away under the plane tree. That sound of water comes often at night. I hear it then."
"So, does it go that way with you? Yes, we often return to ourselves at night, to what we were, or are. Tell me all about yourself, my son. It is long since we have had a good talk. Do!"
He took down a long pipe from the mantel. "Do you smoke? No? I do. It is one benign, fleshly indulgence to which I have finally succumbed."--He began to rummage around in various curious receptacles for another pipe, carrying his guest's attention from one thing to another, but giving him no chance to speak.--"You must inure yourself to the weed before its true virtues can be evoked. Try this. Just one or two whiffs at first, if you do not really care for it. Real Virginia, very light and sweet. Old. I keep it in this jar with a little damp sponge." He lifted the pipe rapidly and brought a lighter. The stem was in Anthony's mouth and he was drawing in the sweet smoke almost before he knew it.
"I am a little cold after all," said Father Xavier, looking at the fire regretfully. "A second till I change into my wool." His voice now came floating in from his little bedroom just beyond. "I am quite luxurious here you see," he added as he secretly put on a stole under his gown.
Anthony had taken a few whiffs of the pipe. The first few were pleasant but he did not care to go on. He felt himself to be floating just a little free in space, his feet not quite on the floor. It was not dizziness but the beginning of levitation. He was no longer connected with anything in space--with nothing except Father Xavier's voice. That was the only reality--and himself.
"Now tell me about yourself, as you said you would," said Father Xavier coming back into the room and seating himself opposite with an air of one who has come to listen to a moving story. He wrapped the loose gown a little closer over his chest. "Tell me everything. What did happen that day I brought you to the Casa? You had an encounter with a goat, didn't you? I remember something about that."
"Ah yes, the goat!" Anthony began, and without being aware of it launched forth into what gradually and surely grew into the minute autobiography of the years since he had left the convent. If there was anything that he omitted he could not remember it. All the people, the house, the books, the benign and sedate Mr. Bonnyfeather, Toussaint, Faith, and Angela crowded into the little room under the eaves of the Villa Brignole where Father Xavier sat with two fingers across his breast holding his woollen gown. At which two fingers somehow Anthony could not help but look as he went on and on.
At first he was aware only of a certain pleasure in the sheer narrative of his own affairs with so good and trusted a listener. Then a kind of exaltation overtook him on the wings of which his story began to move, but always inward toward the core of his being. He was scarcely conscious of the little exclamations, encouragements, and an occasional query from Father Xavier. Their voices seemed to blend, and it seemed to have been suggested to Anthony that he should ask certain questions of himself rather than that he might answer another person's. He even took a certain vague pleasure in inflicting pain upon himself as he related his struggles and doubts, or discussed the perplexing books on Mr. Bonnyfeather's shelves, the curious philosophy of Toussaint, that day in the room with Arnolfo. Now, strangely enough, he could tell everything, even the burning of that night with Faith. It was a relief. Somehow it did not seem so terrible now that he had told it. Father Xavier said nothing disturbing. So he could tell him of his love for Angela too, and the vision afterward.
As he began to speak of the madonna, his madonna, he began to understand that all he said, all his story of the days he had lived and the nights he had dreamed, were bound up and made one intelligible thing to himself by the feeling about a picture of her that he carried within him. It was inexplicable but it was so. She was the one permanent thing he had known. How could words compass it? It was not the little statue. That was only his particular familiar image of her, an inheritance from childhood. Into what had she grown? How could he tell it to Father Xavier?
"You see what she is lives in me, yet that is what I can speak to when I must speak to something beyond me--or be left alone--or die I guess. Shall I say that in her I, and the world, and what she is meet? At her feet! That is not it, but it is how words put it. It seems to me now I came here just to tell you that. I know it now! I came up from the sea, and through that evil, tangled garden with the dead statues, and into the court tonight. And I heard the music of the mad woman, and then I called to you, and you were there. We are not alone in this deserted house, are we? Tell me we two are not alone, my father. There is something beyond us and yet in us and with us. I believe you know. It is not all like walking up through those meaningless corridors tonight, my father. Thou knowest?"
His voice ceased and the candles burned steadily upright. There was not a sound except the tick and tock of the pendulum over the mantel.
Then he saw the two fingers on Father Xavier's breast move. His hand was moving in the air and his lips in absolution. His gown fell apart where the fingers had been holding it, revealing the stole. Neither said anything for a while. On both of them had fallen a great peace. It seemed to Anthony that now he was free of the past forever. But the clock went on. It was after midnight. It was the morning of July 14, 1796. The clock and the calendar both said so. But in the souls of the priest and the young man it was no time at all.
After a while Father Xavier got up and going over to a cupboard took out some white wine. Anthony now remembered he had had no supper. They both felt stiff. A small blaze in the grate and some wine and bread brought them back to the warm room again and the present.
Father Xavier then made up a pallet in one corner of the chamber and insisted that Anthony should lie down. He pulled up a chair close to the fire, and wrapping his gown about him again, stuck his slippers up before the little blaze. Propped upon one elbow Anthony watched the firelight glancing across the priest's strong but sensitive profile. There was something exquisite and smooth about it, but a strength there that might be stern. His eyes were a little sunken and the grey locks of the tonsure gave him the look of a venerable youth.
"I am sure," said Father Xavier at last, "that we are not alone." The clock seemed to interrupt him again.
"You must tell me about yourself, father," said Anthony. "Here I have taken up the whole long evening about my own precious affairs."
The priest smiled a little sadly.
"I have been busy upon the errands of my order. For a while at Naples, then in Sicily. A starving time there. These are very sad days for us. We Jesuits no longer whisper into the ears of kings. It is very difficult to bear the scorn of the world and to reconcile the bull of the Holy Father against us with obedience to the order--and the service of Jesus Christ. It is difficult in practice, that is. I have stayed in Italy, but I have been hunted at times. Indeed, I lately have been very ill, sick in body and mind." He leaned his head on his hand.
"I was educated in this house, before I went to Rome. Did you know that, Anthony? In the old days it was the summer school for the novices. Please God, it may be so again!" He seemed to be seeing things in the coals and went on in a lower tone.
"Many years ago in the days of the Colonnas it was the Villa Brignole. My mother was one of that family. Now that the Jesuits have been driven out it has fallen into their hands again. I have relatives here. They have let me stay on in these rooms quietly until I am stronger and times are better. Since the French have come things are so disturbed I need hide no longer. There is food, an old servant, and my books. I am writing one myself about our holy martyrs for the faith. It has meant more than I can tell you to have you come here tonight. Most of the work of my life seems to have crumbled. But I take courage in you as I see you now."
"Then so do I, father," said Anthony. "You first encouraged me. Indeed, without you . . ." He could not go on.
They were both silent a little again.
"Perhaps, you had better give me the letter from Mr. Bonnyfeather now," said Father Xavier smiling.
"I had forgotten all about it! Forgive me. I seem to have been interested only in myself tonight. Believe me, it is not entirely so."
Father Xavier reassured him. "You can in part blame me for that tonight. But give Mr. Bonnyfeather some of the credit for having brought us together again," he added as he broke the seal and began to read.
As he read further his brows wrinkled. It was as he had thought. All had gone well with Anthony in the matters of this world. More than well. But Mr. Bonnyfeather was in doubt as to his ghostly state of mind. "I have not neglected it," wrote the old man, "I have done what I could, but my ignorance is great and in your absence I have, alas, felt myself somewhat helpless. Sir, you will forgive me, but I am old. Some things have fallen through my hands. Perhaps I should blame myself for having turned the boy over to the Frenchman.
"Perhaps? Yet I would have you remember, too, that he was to be prepared for the world, and that is not a seminary . . . In the matter of first communion I have been most remiss. He is going on the long journey I mentioned above, so to your care and wisdom I leave the matter. Also in the matter of the will I would have your wisdom exercised as to whether he is to be told now the full extent of his benefits. Do as you think best." So the priest read on for several pages. "And this enclosure to you is only an earnest in advance of that other money matter of which I have spoken." Father Xavier sat pondering for some time.
"Anthony!" said he.
"Yes," replied Anthony sleepily, "sir?"
"Rouse yourself. I have some things I must talk to you about. How long will you be in Genoa?"
"Not over a day or so at most. The ship must sail . . ."
"Yes, I see," said Father Xavier. "Then you must take the sacrament at my hands tomorrow. At least I am still an ordained priest," he added with a proud melancholy half to himself. "I know a chapel where we can go together."
Anthony was sitting up now clasping his knees and thoroughly awake. Somehow he felt a little reluctant. He was not sure. It seemed hurried. He recoiled somewhat.
"I have never taken the wafer, father,--you know?"
The priest nodded and tapped the letter. "So I am told."
"I must pick up the captain too at an inn near here. We have much to do tomorrow--and my confession?"
"It was tonight, have you forgotten already?" Anthony winced. No, he had not forgotten. That was it. Somehow he felt that the confession had been drawn from him. It was unpremeditated--and yet?
"I would not put pressure on you, Anthony--but you are going on a long journey," said Father Xavier looking into the fire. His expression was very sad. He continued after a while. "God knows I would give you more preparation. There are many things I would talk about with you. There is one thing I must say to you tonight lest in my weakness I forget it. There is God and His son as well as the Madonna. No, I would not disturb you in what I may call your faith, in the comfort she has brought you. Continue, but let it lead you on. I would put it this way for your peculiar case. Do you from now on consider that which she holds in her arms." He paused to consider his own phrases. "So Christ came into the world, but so did he not go out of it."
Their concentration on each other was again intense.
"Tomorrow early then," said Anthony after a little, and felt himself relax. He lay back gladly again.
Father Xavier rose. "You have made me very happy," he said. He put a little crucifix on the table and left a candle by it. "There is a piece of worldly news which I was also bidden by Mr. Bonnyfeather to convey to you if I thought it wise to do so." He snuffed the candle carefully. "Well, I do think it wise. You are to be his heir." He stayed a minute looking fixedly at Anthony. Then he turned and went into his bedroom. The candle remained burning by the crucifix.
After a while Anthony got up and put it out. He found it impossible to do anything more than say a Pater Noster. He was in a sleepy tumult within. The night had been an exhausting one. He tried to feel grateful in his heart--and went to sleep.
----------
They were awakened next morning by the lusty bellowing in the court below of the man who had driven Anthony the night before. He was much worried about the disappearance of his fare. Anthony stuck his head out of the window and a hearty exchange of divergent views as to the advantage of spending a supperless night in an abandoned shed went on.
"But you always sleep in your carriage," remonstrated Anthony; "why should I pay you extra for it?"
"Si, signore, but always under a dry archway and with wine in my own belly, and hay for the mules. Last night there was famine, fleas, and fog. The cushions are soaked with dew and I in agony from rheumatism. I shall catch the miasmic fever, I shall die. My wife and ten children, my aged mother, my two aunts . . ."
Anthony laughed and tossed something down to him. "I hire you for all day, with meals at restaurants, wine included," he said.
The man picked up the coin and kissed his hand toward the window. "Pardon, signore, I did not understand I was retained by a nobleman. I remain then till you appear." He looked ridiculous bowing there in the court so far below. An obsequious mouse, Anthony laughed again.
"Will it all go as easily as that did? The heir is feeling generous this morning, eh!" said Father Xavier from the next room.
"Very," said Anthony, "and awfully hungry."
"I am afraid you have forgotten something, my son," smiled Father Xavier, standing by the door with his hat under his arm. "We could not eat now, you know. There is holy food for us this morning."
An inexplicable reluctance swept over Anthony. His promise!
"I am sorry. In the joy of the bright morning, after last night, after finding you, I felt like a boy again. I had forgotten."
They emerged into the court and took their way rapidly to the garden. Along the lower terraces a few wisps of mist were still smoking. The rest of the place lay flashing with dewy laurel thickets, flower-beds a riot of colour, and living green steeples of cypresses pointing up through the tangled vines. The sunlight glinted from a hundred little ponds and rain-filled basins. Down at the far gate tossed the scarlet pompons on the mules' bridles.
Anthony stopped and took a deep breath of the cool air just beginning to be tinged with the heat of the coming day. It was, he felt, right, and a fortunate thing to be alive this morning; just to be alive. Then he remembered their errand again and looked a little guiltily at Father Xavier.
"Rejoice," said the priest, "it is not sinful to be gay and happy. We are not bound on a sorrowful errand. Do you not suppose that I am happy about it too? Ah, yes! I am afraid from Mr. Bonnyfeather, and from those books of his you have imbibed a sombre tinge about the matter. The northern races, you know, do not have a talent for religion. It is, after all, an affair of the heart, liable either to sour or to effervesce if it goes too much to the head. It is between the heart and the head that the church mediates. But come! You would not have me making a homily to you here with that shattered Calypso grinning at us from the grass!"
They began to descend the sweeping steps of the approach. Through the gaping gateway behind them came the distant notes of the harp. Father Xavier shook his head. Anthony wondered if she had been playing all night.
"Sometimes for two days and nights at a time, then she sleeps--and so do I," said Father Xavier.
It was a little uncomfortable, thought Anthony, to have his thoughts replied to this way out of the thin air. There was something in the tone of the harp that had reminded him of the garden the night before, damp moon shadows and dripping moss.
"But very beautiful here this morning," continued Father Xavier, "in full day or by the light of memory it can be very lovely even in its ruin. And I remember it when it was kept to the old marchesa's taste. I spent my childhood here and by a curious chance my novitiate, too, after the fathers took it over, years ago. A long time ago now it seems."
They had descended somewhat into the shades of the vegetation and dense paths.
"To that little pool over there I can remember coming with my mother and sailing a toy boat, a divine little Argo, I assure you. And it was in this grotto I spent a year alone as a novice. You see, Anthony, this is my--my convent." He lifted a heavy branch and they stepped through into a space of open green with an artificial grotto in the rocks behind it.
Before this cave staggered pitifully enough even though in dull green bronze a large figure of a water carrier. Once from the mouth of his receptacle had gushed a refreshing stream into the basin before him. But that now lay cracked and empty with a few plants struggling in its many fissures, dependent for their sustaining moisture solely upon the accidents of heaven. Already in the growing heat of the morning they were beginning to droop. Yet the eye scarcely noticed their small and ordinary tragedy. It was inevitably fixed by the terrible predicament of the water carrier himself. Above his patient human limbs the empty, lead pipe that had once conducted his secret supply was now uprooted and writhing like a snake determined to trip him.
They stood for a minute looking at this. Father Xavier picked a small flower from the basin and put it in his pocket. His lips moved. Then they went on along the terrace and down a flight, along another terrace and down, and still another--and climbed into the carriage at the gate.
The hard road, dustless with the damp of night still on it, and shining before them, clicked cheerfully under the wheels. Under the spell of the exhilarating miracle of motion an enchanted seascape opened itself before them. The Mediterranean sparkling from headland to headland rolled away northward toward France. The still, white town at the foot of the distant hills with the sun upon it might have been an eternal one. For a moment the mood of the day-before possessed Anthony again. He could apprehend the vision of the table. He could not see it any longer, but he felt that he was united again with all men in the bounty of that feast. The feast of the sun and wine! "It was an affair of the heart." The words recurred to him with startling clearness. The head had nothing to do with it. Why meditate?
What was this that Father Xavier was trying to tell him about the holy communion as they drove along over these ineffable hills? What of sorrow and pain and mercy; of the meaning of certain words? It was true that he could not really hear them. Meaning should be attached to words like these. What was it he was about to do? Something for Father Xavier! It would be his pupil who would do it then; who would take the wafer. Not Anthony, not Anthony Adverse. He would not do it. No, that was it, that was it exactly. He, Anthony, would not do it. Presently he would have to tell Father Xavier that he would not. That was going to be hard. He sat back for a minute against the seat and felt the grit of the road crunch reassuringly under the wheels. Clip, clop, clip, clop, rang the iron shoes on reality.
"Thus the communion of saints . . ." said Father Xavier.
"Father," said Anthony suddenly, interrupting him, "I must talk to you now. I must tell you that I cannot take the wafer this morning. It is impossible. It would not be I. You would merely be giving it to me. Don't you see, it would be neither the head nor the heart? Not now at least." His eyes widened. "Not now . . ."
Father Xavier had gone grey. He looked as if something within him had crumbled. He sat very still.
"In the house," he thought, "in the house, before we left this morning. Now it is too late. I had prayed for this but it is not to be given to me. The work of my own hands . . ."
They were climbing a hill again, with no visible ending. The mules began to walk dragging the weight behind them slowly upward.
"Will it always be like this, I wonder?" thought the priest--and then bit his own tongue.
"Forgive me, forgive me, my father. I am sorry to have given you pain," said Anthony. "I would not be so sudden in telling you but . . ."
"In God's time and not mine," replied the priest. The colour slowly came back to his face. "Let us say no more about it. Now where are you going today? Perhaps I can help you. At least I know something about Genoa." He smiled, still quite pale.
It was not until many years later that Anthony understood that he had been present at a miracle that morning after all--a miracle of self-control.
At the top of the hill he unexpectedly found himself driving past the inn where he had left the captain the night before. A hearty "Avast there, mister," apprised him of the fact and revealed Captain Elisha gesticulating from the door with a napkin, while wiping egg from his moustache.
There was something about his portly figure poised on its thick legs like a tree that has gripped the rocks and withstood tempests, which caused Father Xavier to appraise the mariner with approval, nor did a slightly puzzled twinkle in the captain's steady blue eyes escape him. He had seen a deeply concealed but unsolved trouble effervesce in humour like that before.
Captain Elisha on his part soon ceased to regard the kindly priest as a "foreigner." Anthony was more relieved than anyone. It had been impossible for him to imagine upon what grounds these two could meet. It was simply to be as man to man over the breakfast table. Their legs were soon under it.
"I swan to Jesus, mister," said Captain Jorham pouring a little coffee into his rum, "ye're the first mate I ever did have servin' under me that spent his shore leave with the clergy. Beggin' yer pardon, father. Not that I have any pecoolar objectshune. There's wus ways of killin' time I heard tell on. Didn't know Mr. Adverse was of the persuasion." He grew more offhand as he felt himself getting into deeper water.
"You see, Mr. Adverse was a pupil of mine a good many years ago," vouchsafed Father Xavier, "I used to teach him geography and Latin."
"Wall now then," said the captain glad of so naturalistic an explanation of his mate's intimacy with the priesthood, "I did hear him tell ye was by way of bein' an old friend. Sort of a reunion, then eh?"
"Exactly," said Father Xavier.
"I met a priest in Canton oncet that had a whole school o' Chinee orphans. He was a good man for all they might say at home. Heard he was murdered afterwards. One of them slow demises they devils goes in for. Begin with yer fingers and toes and work in." He began to cut up a piece of potato graphically. "It's wonderful how little holdin' ground the soul needs. I've seen a Chinee shaped like an egg and his eyes still bright. Fact! . . . Course it's different with children. They just up anchor and goes." He looked troubled.
"What was the priest's name?" asked Father Xavier.
Captain Elisha could not remember but Father Xavier did. It had been one of his own order. "I have his story in my book."
"Wall, I swan--to man!" said the captain. He began to tell them about his voyages to Canton. They all felt at ease with one another. "Seemed like that poor fellow died jes' to make us better acquaint," he averred finally.
"That has been one remote result," said Father Xavier half to himself. "Who knows?"
Anthony observed that the captain was doing well with his "coffee." The mood of the evening before seemed likely to continue. After a while they got up and smoked a pipe outside. Anthony indulged in one, too. He did not care much for it yet. But after the experience of the night before he had made up his mind to go in for tobacco. It might pay to investigate it as well as wine. He felt just a little light in the knees as they climbed into the carriage. The captain had Anthony interpret while he paid his bill.
"And you might ask the woman," he said, "if they have a child in the house."
"Si, signore, just learning to walk. I trust its cries were not disturbing. She is very little yet."
The captain looked relieved. "'Taint the cryin'," he said. His face seemed to forbid curiosity about his inquiry.
Soon they drove on, merrily enough, it seemed to Anthony. He glanced at Father Xavier curiously. All seemed well there, too. But it had been profane food that morning after all.
"Is your hunger fully satisfied, my son?" said Father Xavier quietly in Anthony's ear. His face did not change. Anthony did not answer.
Not one to neglect any aspect of opportunity, Captain Jorham had been quick to see in the accidental presence of the priest that morning an expert aide and adviser in the purchase of church statuary. As they drove down the hills back to Genoa he began without further ado, or any sense of embarrassment, to unfold his scheme for improving the condition of the church in Cuba.
Somewhat to Anthony's surprise Father Xavier consented to serve in an advisory capacity. Indeed, as the priest listened to the captain's rather remarkable plan unfold an amused smile seemed to be hiding itself in the deep shadows under his eyes. But his mouth remained grave.
Yes, he could undoubtedly aid the captain in making the proper purchases. "It is in the Street of the Image Makers that you will find what you are looking for, I think. As to the marble blocks--I do not know whether I can help you, but I suggest that you ask some of the masons and sculptors at the place that I spoke of. Do you want to go there now?"
Captain Jorham assured him that he did. The less delay the better. Father Xavier directed the driver.
Just where the Albaro Road approaches the city gate they passed a small chapel with a fresco upon its outside walls so striking as to cause Captain Jorham to stop and descend to examine it. Outside the door there was a little money box for the benefit of souls in purgatory. Just above it on either side of the grated portal, behind which an altar could be seen, was an enormous picture of souls frying in hell. The sympathy of the artist had evidently been with the devils who were undoubtedly enjoying themselves. A small baby for the extreme trespass of not having been baptized had had both its thumbs cut off and could find nothing but a hot coal to put in its mouth. This seemed to hold the captain, although the main exhibit was an old-man-soul with a grey moustache and carefully parted hair who was being put feet first into a furnace vomiting flames. Various minor activities of a somewhat frank and painful nature were being carried on in the background. These occasionally caused Captain Jorham to "swan to man." He paused for some minutes, thoughtfully.
"I hope, father," said Anthony taking the opportunity while they were left sitting in the carriage, "that you are not shocked at the captain's scheme for taking the saints to Cuba. I am not responsible, you know."
Father Xavier smiled. "Far from it," he rejoined. "I regard Captain Jorham, and men like him, as respectable means to higher ends. Sailors, soldiers, shopkeepers, and the like are usually commendable in themselves. One should consider what is using them and why. In this case I have my own idea that the end may be a worthy one. But let us say no more, he is returning." They heard a small coin fall in the box. The captain climbed in tilting the carriage slightly. For some distance he seemed inclined to get the priest's views on infant baptism. From these he could derive small comfort.
"Er--na-ow that picture," he went on, "is that your idee of the hereafter?"
Father Xavier was non-committal though not reassuring.
"I'll tell ye some o' the parsons on the Cape could get p'inters from it," he resumed. "It would fill a church down Truro way every Sunday. It's not wasted here I guess. Nope! Do you know I calalate we're all like to be surprised by the way etarnity really is. 'Nearest I ever come to it was oncet off the Andamans when a bolt of fire fell into the sea right plumb off'n the starboard quarter. Left me blind for a week, it did." He paused dreamfully as if remembering something, closing his eyes.
"What did you see on the other side of the lightning, Captain Jorham?" asked Father Xavier very quietly.
The captain opened his eyes and looked at him. "I'm not giving away etarnal information for nothin' ara-ound here," said the captain. The thought of the coin he had dropped in the box for the baby remained with him. With it he had secretly bought a little comfort and was now indignant at himself for having done so.
They were now well within the town again driving through crowded streets. A seemingly endless number of twists and turns finally landed them in front of an apothecary shop that was built into the side of a hill. They told the driver to wait and entered.
As they did so a number of shabby men who were waiting near the door hurried forward to meet them. "We want medicines only," said Father Xavier. Whereupon these physicians, for such they were, sank back disconsolately into their chairs.
They left the light of the street behind them and continued to walk along a bottle-lined passageway that gradually grew darker.
It was some seconds before Anthony's eyes became used to the deepening shadows or comprehended the meaning of a bright patch of sunlight some distance ahead. The air became dank and cool. They ascended a few rock steps, where some white mushrooms flourished, and then suddenly came out of the long tunnel into a drench of sunshine just beyond.
"This," said Father Xavier, "is the Street of the Image Makers. Without me, my son, I do not think you could have come even so far."
"Swan to man, if we ain't come clean through the hill into a lot of old stone quarries," exclaimed the captain shoving his hat back. "Thar's the sky."
The captain was correct. The Street of the Image Makers descended straight before them into a huge, rocky pocket in the hill which had once been an immense stone quarry. From the surrounding white cliffs tall, forbidding houses turned their bleak backs upon it, and from dizzy ledges goats looked down indulgently upon the place. In fact, the only entrance, that through which they had just come, had been mined in ancient times. Hence, where the tunnel ended the street began. It was merely a gash in the living stone, a gradually widening continuation of the tunnel now open to the sky like the bed of a dry canal.
In the walls of this marble prism shops and dwellings had been hollowed out from time to time, and their fronts carved in the various styles which the caprices of the owners had dictated. Before several doors an arcade rested upon Ionic pillars, one solid piece of stone. Another shop affected a classic façade with a temple-like entablature resembling a rock tomb. Some had severely plain fronts pierced by doors and windows only, but even around these openings skilful chisels had traced wreaths of flowers and vines. Farther on the street widened away and descended into the heart of the abandoned quarry, where at the end of its gleaming vista sparkled a dark blue pond.
Completely removed from the noise and sweaty confusion of the city, the first impression of this little community was that of a sepulchral place set apart from the living interests of mankind. It seemed to brood upon its peculiar affairs exclusively, as if the inner moods of its troglodytical inhabitants were reflected by the single eye of the pool in the marble at the end of their curious avenue.
"This is where most of the holy images, shrines, and ecclesiastical carvings in this part of Italy are made," said Father Xavier. "Look, that is a forge over there." He pointed to a hole in the rock topped by a little chimney pot from which smoke and flames were issuing. "There are also several small potteries scattered about. Sculptors work here in both stone and wood. Those who apply colour are a separate fraternity and live farther down the street. I would not be surprised if the images of the gods had been made here when Genoa was a Roman town. Some of these places you can see from the weathered carvings escape the memory of man."
The priest's remarks had by now brought them before the arcaded shops. From these a continuous muffled thudding proceeded. Looking in, they saw a number of workmen with wooden mallets beating upon chamois skins. Stepping to the first window Father Xavier called loudly for "Messer Stefano." An artisan in a leather apron appeared at the door. Tall, thin, and very dark, there was something Egyptian about the man, as he stood peering out into the sunlight with hawklike eyes, small gold earrings, and a short leather apron. "Stefano, I have brought you some customers," said Father Xavier. The man hastened to lay aside his tools.
"This is the potentate of the whole street," whispered the priest to Anthony. "A rather remarkable fellow. You will have to do all your bargaining through him. Humour him. He regards himself with some justice as an artist and a philosopher."
The thudding in the shop had ceased. Only from the forge down the street a thin troll-like clinking could still be heard. As Father Xavier explained the nature of their errand to Messer Stefano at some length it seemed as though not only the padrone but the place itself was listening.
"Go on with your work in there," said Stefano after a while. The hammers of the gold beaters resumed.
"Since the captain here speaks nothing but English," concluded Father Xavier, "you will have to conduct your negotiations with Signore Adverse. You will find him not without a natural insight in this affair, a young gentleman of honour and sensibility, a former pupil of mine." The workman bowed slightly.
"And now," said Father Xavier, turning to Anthony unexpectedly and with a smile that was almost tremulous, "you see I have brought you as far as I can. It is time to say good-bye. Let it be here then."
"To see you again, and when, my father?"
Father Xavier wrung Anthony's hands and hurried up the street. At the mouth of the tunnel he turned. Anthony raised his hand in farewell. He saw that the priest was blessing him. Then he disappeared into the shadow of the tunnel behind.
"If the signori care to, I will show them about the street," said the voice of Stefano smooth but not obsequious. He led the way into the shop.
"All the shops here are now under my direction," the man continued a little proudly, "but the gold leaf is my special care. Would you like to see?"
He drew aside a chamois skin revealing the beautiful, yellow metal underneath spreading out from a lump in the middle in one shining sheet. He showed them the process. "Under a skilful hammer, you see, there will be no holes."
The captain was much impressed. "Wall, sir, I used to think my dad could make gold spread further than any living man. It would have hurt his pride to see this. He was pretty talented though. When I was nine years old he brought me a penny after a successful v'y'ge to Nassau. Sir, I had to show him that coin every Thanksgivin' for ten years. I've kept it so durned long I larned the only Latin off it I ever knowed. 'Expulsis piratus, resti-too-shia commercia.' Kick out the pirates and reopen the stores," he translated, flushed with his own learning. "And that penny was only copper, and here it is."
Stefano had managed to catch the Latin. "We are not pirates here," he said grievously displeased. Anthony was forced to explain. The man summoned a vague laugh from somewhere and laying down his hammer led them out again.
"You will find each little place given up to its own specialty, signore," he explained. "Trade in images has not been very good for nearly a hundred years. My grandfather remembered a better time. With the makers of holy images it now goes hard. War, it is always war! Few churches or shrines are being built. No one makes vows. It is mostly the women and antiquarians who buy now. I have been forced to control things here in Genoa. I buy up even the old figures and retouch them. Only a few of the most popular blesséd ones still sell. In here we make nothing but bambinos."
He threw open a door for them at the side of the street. Inside a number of boys and girls were preparing plaster and pouring it into moulds. From a drying kiln at one end of the room a girl returned with a tray full of white baby dolls and laid them before an old man who sat with brushes and various paints before him. They watched him a while.
"Do not vary the smile, Pietro," said their guide. "How often must I tell you? It is that one beatific expression of Buonarrotti's which I desire you to repeat. What do you know of ecstasy?"
"Si, si, padrone," said the artist deprecatingly as he retouched a few cherubic lips. "But memory plays me tricks with these smiles. I once had children of my own. You should have let me stay moulding resignation into holy hands. I was good at that."
"Not so good as you think," said Stefano as they went out.
"It is very difficult to have to make these artists always do the most perfect thing and keep repeating it," he continued as they went along further. "So many of them have their own ideas. And that would be well enough, signore, if this street were given over to secular art. But you see, in my case, in what I have undertaken to do here, the perfect examples both in life and art have already been given. It is restraint therefore and imitation that are needed . . .
"Si, I have thought much and often as to the effect of these statues upon those who will acquire them. They are to bring to mind the very image of the holy one whose intercession is sought or whose example is to be followed. In that, as in everything, a certain technique is necessary. Have you ever thought of that, signore? Without a technique, a bodily method for faith, morality, religion itself would perish. Without the church as one immortal corporation, without the methodology which it inculcates and even turns into a habit, the memory of divine things would be lost. Or it would be left in the minds of women to be told to babies. It is true most vital things are remembered that way from generation to generation. But our religion is not so simple as that. There must ever be images, concrete moulds into which it can be poured." He flung up his hands excitedly. "But, pardon me, I do not wish to bore you. You see this is my life work, my enthusiasm, this small street. It is not altogether that I live by it. I live in it." He checked himself somewhat embarrassed.
"Tell me what you think," said Anthony. "It is seldom that people will do so. I have often thought about what you are speaking of. Tell me, you would not have them worship the image itself?"
"I would not stop them," said Stefano. "What can you do with such minds as that but give them something outside themselves to adore? Let them play in their divine doll house. Let them dress their saints and be happy. Those who plague such people with abstract ideas about God are foolish. Is it not better to leave them with an image which may lead to something beyond?
"I am not speaking of philosophers and savants, my friend. They are idolaters of ideas. With them both the image and the technique of the ways of life they would inculcate are always lacking. Hence their dreams must be renewed every generation in adults, by the few who can read and understand. God forgive me, I hope I utter no heresy," he crossed himself, "but I have often thought it is not such a mystery after all that God should have embodied himself in human form. Otherwise he would have remained to us unknown, imageless, a vague voice in the winds, mystery in the landscape, the theory of some teacher, or the beautiful dream of an artist in some idol ugly or beautiful as sin. In Christ he became a body, the way, and the life. I believe; I know that." He wiped his brow with his sleeve.
"What is the man saying?" asked Captain Jorham, a little alarmed at being left out so long.
"He is talking about the image of God," said Anthony with secret enjoyment.
"Holy smoke, resti-too-shia commercia, let's be gettin' on!" snapped the captain.
"I see that your friend does not fully understand," said Stefano.
"What I was trying to tell you, signore," he hurried on in a lower voice, "is that in all my images here I have, for reasons that you can now surmise, tried to embody nothing but the most perfect attitudes and gestures. I have studied the works of the old artists in the days of great faith, and have chosen for each saint or bambino or madonna, even for Christ himself, those features which have been found to have the most appeal. Each one of these images is a lasting and a silent preacher. Come, let me show you something wonderful now."
He took out the key for the door before which they now stood. "These are too precious to be worked on except under supervision. The model here is of great value. It is part of the French spoil from Milan. Not now, not of this Buonaparte, but of the French kings many generations ago." He threw open the door.
"Only I and my assistant work here," he said. "All of these models are from my hands. See, here is the original." He pulled a cloth off an almost life-sized figure in the centre of the room where the light fell upon it from the door.
It was a Virgin and Child carved in some soft grained stone. Just the head and bust of a peasant woman wrapped in an ample medieval garment. The stone had been coloured and gilded and a great blue fold of the virgin's cloak swept down over her breast. In the folds of the deep hollow slept the child. It could not be seen from the front. It was completely concealed in the hollow. Only the folds of the cloak and the position of the woman's hands conveyed the fact that something infinitely precious was concealed there.
Stefano pointed to the hands and paid them the compliment of saying nothing at all. Then he turned to the models.
"You see we could not afford to reproduce this in stone," he said. "These are clay replicas. When they are first baked the colour is a little garish but if properly placed in the shadow the effect of the lines and the whole figure is admirable. I think we have caught what those hands are saying . . . and the wonderful sweeping fold!" He ran his hand over the bulge of the blue scarf with satisfaction.
"It is well reproduced, Messer Stefano," said Anthony, "but not so durable as the original I suppose."
"No, signore, but light, even porous, and easy to transport," said Stefano lifting one of the images. "See!"
"The biggest thing we've seen yet," said Captain Jorham. "You might start with one of these, mister." He peered over the edge of the fold. "Just as I thought, she's got a baby, too! The hul thing's complete. Better start in and make your dicker now. This is the kind of thing we want. Nothing small and cheap. How about some o' they life-sized figurines?"
With some censoring of the text Anthony translated.
"If it is large figures," said Stefano, "come this way."
He led them directly across the street and up a few steps into a kind of stone lean-to with its rear wall in the rock itself. Here standing in solemn tiers were twenty or thirty life-sized figures of saints and a large thorn-crowned Christ with the conventional anatomy of the bleeding heart exposed. Its expression of agony was so intense as to make a large St. Lawrence stretched out on his gridiron over terra cotta flames comparatively genial.
"That's the stuff," said Captain Jorham. "Some of them are a little cracked, too. They ought to be knocked down reasonable. Git busy, mister. Why not the hul lot?"
Stefano was surprised at the wholesale gusto of his customer. A little disgusted, too, Anthony could see. For that reason he began by bargaining for one of the fine clay figures of the Virgin they had just seen across the street. The man seemed somewhat mollified by this. After all the young gentleman did understand the pride of an artist.
"As your masterpiece," said Anthony, "we will give you for the model ten crowns less than you ask. And that, as you know, is more than meeting your expectations. For that reason, and because we shall be taking all of this old stock, you must make me, on worn figures at least, a more reasonable rate."
After an hour and a half of chaffering, by which time the captain's hat was shoved clear back on his head and his hands deep in his pockets, an agreement was in sight. Another half hour and it was agreed that Stefano should retouch and repaint where necessary. All of the "old holy ones" were to be made bright and new. It would take two days for the paint and gilding to dry. Anthony would call for them then and take them to the Wampanoag. It was also arranged that they should be transported in carriages. "Every respect must be shown them," explained Stefano. The excitement in the streets at so extensive a flitting of saints would undoubtedly be considerable. After some demur Captain Jorham agreed. He had once seen a religious riot at Lisbon.
"Tell him we'll even put 'em to bed when we get 'em aboard," he said. "I mean it. It won't do to have any of these people breakin' loose in the hold. Besides somethin' might shatter 'em if the cargo shifted. Now how about them marble blocks for ballast?"
But this could not be arranged. It would take weeks to drill the holes.
"Never thought of that," said Captain Elisha. "Ask him about some plain marble slabs. I can batten them down I calalate. We want weight, weight! There ain't profit in water ballast. The crew drinks it."
It was possible to arrange for the slabs. Captain Elisha looked very pleased. The total outlay had not been large and he had obtained more statuary than he had thought possible. They adjourned to Stefano's hut and sealed the bargain over a bottle of bad wine. By sunset they were back on board the brig.
"And a couple of days will just give us time to load stores, water the ship, and do a little calkin' along the water line where that Portegee bumboat rammed her," mouthed the captain through a mouthful of Philadelphia's grub, "and lay in a few kegs of wine," he added looking his wife in the eye. "Say, Jane, don't 'e look solemn about that. Wait till you see who's comin' aboard to keep you company. Taewsday mornin'. Whew!" He paused for a minute with his fork and knife held bolt upright.
"Right on that Putnam sideboard is going to be a heathen idol--with a baby. It's the prize o' the hul lot. It goes to Havaner in the cabin!" He cut a piece of salt pork at one blow. "As for the rest of 'em, there's five empty bunks in the fo'c'sle. I'd like to see the British come aboard now with a press gang. They'd have to prove Jesus Christ was born in Sussex. Still," said he rapping on wood, "some of them post captains could do that all right. It ud take God A'mighty to stop 'em. That it would." He poured some hot water into his rum.
"Mister, you're a macaroni mate and you can't hand, reef, nor steer. But you're goin' to have a hul starboard watch with haloes, and a cargo of tombstones for ballast. There's only one thing I got to say to you as captain of this holy ship. I don't want no miracles occurrin' when I'm below. Do you hear? That goes!" He left the fork quivering in the table.
"Now you get your charts and we'll lay out the course."
The lines about Captain Jorham's mouth began to be a little more drawn as he imbibed a large pitcher of "dog's nose." He gradually became silent and morose as the evening wore away and his wife knitted and knitted.
"More baby clothes?" said the captain at ten o'clock by the chronometer when they prepared to turn in. She nodded and closed the panel. The captain drew off his heavy boots.
"Mister," said he, "you'll do the navigatin'? You kin?" He looked anxious.
Anthony felt sure of it. He took out his new sextant that Mr. Bonnyfeather had given him. The latest London make, he noted. By degrees and by degrees he would soon be slipping over into new latitudes. He went on deck for a while and looked again at the city.
In his room at the Palazzo Brignole, Father Xavier fumbling in his pocket for his pipe found the flower he had picked from the empty basin in the garden that morning. It seemed to him as it lay in his palm that he had also permitted that to wither. His hand shook slightly. But what could one do with wild flowers? Leave them to the winds of God? A sorry argument about predestination failed to comfort his soul. His dreams were sorrowful.
On the Wampanoag next morning they began to bend on a suit of new sails.
Captain Jorham had miscalculated. Nearly a week passed before the Wampanoag could put to sea. Much against his better judgment, because he was so short-handed, he was forced to ship some "Spanish riff-raff" and a few "select" British deserters hanging about the docks at Genoa. The latter, after they sobered up, proved willing hands enough. At least they could be counted on to keep a weather-eye peeled for king's ships. And above all else Captain Elisha was anxious to give British cruisers a wide berth.
At last the brig was watered and her cargo stowed. Five saints were lashed in the fo'c'sle bunks and the grumbling men told to swing hammocks. Late one afternoon they hoisted the anchor merrily enough and a few hours later sunk the peaks which gird in the Gulf of Genoa under the northern horizon.
Under a complete suit of new sails the ship bowled along famously. Philadelphia, happy with an ample supply of olive wood, his favourite fuel, sang at the door of his little galley now surrounded by chicken coops. Forward, two pigs, a milch goat and her kids, and a number of ducks and geese swelled a bucolic chorus that sang of good fare to come.
Captain Jorham had reverted to a kind of man-o'-war discipline for his now motley crew, a discipline with which as an ex-privateersman he was familiar. One Jeb Collins, a middle-aged down-easter with iron-grey hair and a rasping voice, had been appointed "quartermaster" with the authority but not the wages of a second mate. Under the press of sail which the brig was carrying, both of the watches were kept pretty constantly on deck. Captain Jorham had not seen fit to appoint Anthony to either. He took one himself and gave the other to Collins. In the strong and continually freshening breeze pouring out of the east he carried sail till the weather shrouds sang a higher note.
Mrs. Jorham was the only member of the crew who persistently kept below. She sat in her cabin and contemplated with an indignation which only she could control the large terra cotta figure of the Virgin Mary that now occupied the place of her copper coffee urn on the Putnam sideboard. A little less than life-sized, the statue seemed to have thrust aside the urn, which was Mrs. Jorham's chief pride, in wanton intrusion. It occurred to Mrs. Jorham that the Virgin kept wrapping the folds of her ample, blue cloak about her with a calm aloofness that amounted to provocative disdain.
It was only an added exasperation to the captain's wife to find that in the deep fold over the statue's right shoulder a baby lay concealed. Aside from sectarian scruples about "idols," she had also certain personal reasons which made even the statue of a woman with a child in her arms, especially when it was snugly ensconced in her own cabin, peculiarly hard to bear. Besides, as she continued to look at it--and she could scarcely avoid doing so--in the atmosphere of her lonely reveries the thing began to take on the elements of a living personality. She caught herself giving it from time to time a caustic piece of her mind.
That her husband had inflicted this reminder upon her seemed a piece of deliberate cruelty and reproach. Her only consolation was, if he had not been drinking he would not have done so. But in the obstinate state which the captain had now reached, and took care to increase from day to day, remonstrance would be useless. His only reply would be to mix himself another dog's nose. Furthermore, with the primary cause of her husband's drinking Mrs. Jorham was to some extent forced to sympathize. Indeed, she reproached herself in a Biblical manner with having been responsible for it.
Up until now the captain had kept the deck. But the delay at Genoa had advanced his potable calendar considerably, and she foreboded his early and complete retirement to the cabin in no very complacent mood. Meanwhile she sat there reduced to silence, minding her knitting, and brushing away an occasional mist of stinging tears. Under these circumstances she felt it would have been some company and no little protection to have had the new mate keep to the cabin more than he did.
Anthony, however, kept the deck early and late. He was anxious to pick up every item of nautical lore that might come his way, and that in as short a time as possible. His position on the ship was, he realized himself, somewhat ridiculous. To the crew as well as to the captain he was already known as the "macaroni mate." Neither the captain nor the men paid much attention to him at first. He was, as Captain Jorham had said, strictly "ex-officio." He had been inclined to accept this position more or less, but during a dog watch at Genoa Collins, the quartermaster, had leaned over the bulwarks with him one evening while they watched the lights of the city coming out one by one, and unburdened his mind.
"Before we git into the trades, Mr. Adverse, you'll find yourself in real charge," said the quartermaster. "I know the skipper, and he ain't d-ue to last tew long as things are going na-ow. Ye're mate on the roster, and ye'll find that mate ye'll have to be. Na-ow I'll clew all I can, but you might keep that in mind. Authority's authority, and ye either are, air ye ain't."
So Anthony kept it in mind. To be lost on the Atlantic with a ship and crew--to be lost there! It haunted his dreams. He could only pray that Captain Jorham would last. But wishes soon became ridiculous. Already it was a miracle how Captain Elisha could keep going as he did.
"He counts on gittin' us through the Straits," said Collins. "And then--"
"Ah, and then!" thought Anthony. He was glad he had spent his life more or less about ships around the docks at Livorno. The nomenclature and the lingo were familiar. He began now to memorize commands. But above all he began to furbish up his navigation. He even wished he had listened to the mad Mr. Williams' theory of lunar longitude. The Wampanoag's chronometer was obviously a joke. He made a few friends among the older members of the crew. Once at sea he went up on the yards to shake out or take in sail. Collins at least was for him. That was one comfort. And he had learned the ship from trucks to keelson at Genoa while she was lading. After a week he felt the men respected him even if they laughed. He laughed with them, and kept the deck. The first noon out he brought up his sextant but the captain would have none of it.
"Lay off that, mister, till I give the word. I don't need that contraption to tell where we're at na-ow."
"The old man's awful techy about shootin' the sun," whispered Collins. "He'll try to go by dead reckonin' when he kin."
So the new sextant went back to the cabin. But the men had seen it, and some of the old hands who had sailed with Captain Jorham before looked pleased.
The captain's method of navigation, since his faith had been shattered some years before in his pet sextant, was, although he did not condescend to explain it, abundantly plain. In the Mediterranean it consisted in coasting from one well-known landfall to another. In wider, ampler oceans of late years his progress had become truly wonderful. Each voyage had rivalled that of Columbus in view of the possible mysteries ahead. One grand fact had consoled him. Sailing east from Amurakee one was bound to reach U-rup. Undoubtedly the converse might also be true. At any rate he was about to put it to a pragmatic test. In the meantime in a comparatively small place like the Mediterranean he felt at home. With two ex-whalers for lookouts he continued to crack on sail unmercifully.
Once the bend in the coast by Genoa was out of sight he took a long southern slant till he raised the peaks of Corsica. A day later the fishing boats making for Ajaccio allowed him to mark himself down as about 42 N. and 8 E. After that it was comparatively easy going for a while. The east wind, which held and continued to freshen a little every day, suited him well. On that tack the Wampanoag was at her best. He merely squared away a little to be sure to pass to leeward of Asinara and then ran down the coast of Sardinia as far as S. Pietro.
"Call it thirty-nine North," said Captain Elisha. "Gib is just thirty-six and away, and away west."
But he frowned a little as he looked at the chart. The bulge in the coast of Africa was somewhat confusing. He wanted to give Port Mahon and the Balearics a wide berth on account of British cruisers. To make, as he put it, "a good southing" before he squared away before the wind for the Straits. Part of Africa, however, appeared to be in the way. And Algiers was an unhealthy neighbourhood. Between the horns of this dilemma, Algiers and Minorca, he lingered over the chart for an hour or two. The application of a third dog's nose he was glad to see had straightened out the coast of Africa. "Well, he would hold on south; take a good plenty south." And he did so.
Next day the wind showed every sign of freshening to a blow. With some difficulty Collins got permission to reduce sail and finally to send down the royal and t'gallant masts. Not only the ship but its new mate now rode much easier. Watching the yards roll against the sky while the spars came down had given Anthony his first serious qualms. Nothing, however, could persuade the captain to follow the example of several other ships and head west. Collins was obviously worried at this obstinacy.
"Git a sight today if ye kin, Mr. Adverse," he managed to say while the men were lashing the lower topmasts to the shrouds with extra precautions. "This here weather looks like a little patch o' clear before a big blow. For God's sake take advantage of it. I'll try to keep the skipper below at noon. Seems like I could smell Afriky."
When Anthony came up with his sextant a few hours later both the deck and the horizon were momentarily clear. Taking advantage of a patch of clear sky just at noon, when the scud which had been driving for some hours luckily opened out overhead, he made his first observation at sea.
When he worked out his position he made it to be much farther south than the captain's longest guess would admit. Africa must be not far over the southern horizon. He said so, but somewhat too diffidently.
Ordinarily Captain Elisha would have given heed and taken the credit to himself. Under influences more potent than the calculations of his merely titular mate he now argued and held on. He was convinced at dawn by a frantic voice from the masthead and a not too distant glimpse of a long beach dead ahead where breakers bared their fangs and endless sand dunes smoked in the gale. For a few hours he was somewhat sobered. The ship was instantly put before the wind which swept her westward. The trend of the coast soon caused them to man the port braces and give the brig a safe northern slant. After that they all breathed easier.
"Drunken man's luck it wasn't a lee shore," muttered Collins to Anthony. "We'll git more wind sure before tonight."
The incident proved a fortunate one for Anthony. In the estimation of all hands he advanced considerably. A certain subdued humorous tolerance with which he had so far been treated now gave way to a more serious acceptance and respect. From that time on his appearance on deck with a sextant was hailed by the older members of the crew in particular with a secret sigh of relief. The vagaries of the captain's navigation even when sober were only too well known. It was not long before Anthony discovered the cause.
The captain's sextant, he found after a little checking, had once been repaired and its angle altered. Evidently it had had a fall some time prior to the American Revolution. Consequently the more accurate the observation the more certain the error. It was only a few seconds--but at the end of a voyage! To amuse himself he worked out a table of compensation.
But of all this he deter