Tomaso braced himself back against his pillar. “If you are a messenger of God, you know who speaks.”
For a moment, the light about the figure seemed to waver, there was a sort of shifting, a sort of changing; and when she spoke again, she spoke with the same voice and yet with a new voice: the voice of a woman, of an ordinary woman, but a woman accustomed to command, accustomed to be obeyed. The voice said sharply: “Tomaso di Goya—you are insolent before God.”
That voice! That voice! He shrank back against the pillar, his heart grown cold within him. How often as a child had he been dragged, one of a reverent procession, to file past the table where the saint lay in her self-imposed imprisonment, to make his clumsy, schoolboy reverence; how often had that sharp voice snapped out at him, at those about him—this same voice that now addressed him by his name, the bright eyes above the black veil piercing the shield of darkness into which he cringed. And all about him, fools cried out in awe and exaltation, ‘Juanita’s voice!’ “A trick!” he called back resolutely. “Don’t believe it! Don’t be taken in! It’s a trick.”
The vision spoke again. “Does heaven play tricks, Tomaso? Do you not know my voice?”
“I and everyone else in San Juan,” he called back boldly. “Every grown man and woman on the island remembers Juanita’s voice. And this is some woman, imitating the voice, some woman from Barrequitas or Toscanita: hired by the priests, taught by them what to say.”
She gave a laugh, a sort of cackling laugh: just such a laugh, whispered his heart with a sickening stab, as Juanita would laugh in those old days when he stumbled over the catechism which it had been her delight to force visiting children to repeat to her, jeering at their mistakes. But she did not reply directly. She said instead: “Bellissima!”
“Juanita?” whispered La Bellissima.
“Speak to me in your own language.…”
“A plant!” cried Tomaso, over the unintelligible interchange.
She laughed again. “There are English ladies in the congregation. You will not suspect them, also, of duplicity?” She said in English: “Will an English lady kindly speak a few words to me?”
No English lady present could, for the moment, find her tongue. Just as Cousin Hat, anxious only to oblige her friend the Grand Duke, was groping for words not too idiotically incongruous, however, another voice came to the rescue. The voice would just like to say, it declared in measured tones, that it was very, very happy and honoured to address a few words to the vision of Saint Jew-ann, and certainly would be most gratified if there was some message which it, the voice, could take to the ladies of the Women’s Club, back home in the United States of America.…
Juanita inclined graciously. “A blessing upon the ladies of your confraternity. I thank you for speaking.” She added sharply: “Tomaso di Goya—did you understand what was said?”
“No,” said Tomaso sullenly.
“No. And neither would ‘some woman from Barrequitas or Toscanita.’”
“An actress, then, imported from abroad.…”
Juanita had had a mannerism, a jerking of the shoulders beneath the long cloak of her habit, when she was—as exceedingly often happened—annoyed. The vision thus jerked its shoulders now. She said sharply: “That is enough. You speak impiously and you speak like a fool. No ‘actress from abroad’ could speak in fluent Juanese, no actress from abroad could recognise you, Tomaso di Goya, out there in the darkness.…”
“And no actress from abroad,” cried Tomaso, suddenly, “could look like Juanita.” And he shouted out at the top of his voice across the heads of the people, flinging down his gauntlet once and for all, flicking his glove across the face of God: “Juanita di Perli, Margherita di San Juan—drop down that veil and let us look upon your face!”
Absolute silence. Absolute stillness. The very stones of the building seemed to hold their breath, lest a draught should flicker a candle-flame in the crystal chandeliers. The radiance wavered about the vision, trembled and shifted: and suddenly pin-pointed her face in a blaze of light and she raised her hand and cried out, “Look, then!” and pulled aside the veil.
Mr Cecil had seen many pictures, many representations of Juanita. You could not avoid it if you spent so much as a day in San Juan. Her photograph (without, alas! the suicidal donkey) hung in every shop window on the island, there was one in each room in the Bellomare Hotel which is under her patronage; at least one, usually more, in every house. In the Duomo there was, of course, her mummified body with its death mask in white and pink wax; and in chapel and home and on the quays of Barrequitas, along the quiet country paths and at every busy street corner, one came across crude plaster statues each in its little niche, often with a night-light guttering before it under its miniature barley-sugar beehive, an inverted dome of coloured glass; always with bunches of flowers. A stocky figure, long in the body, short in the leg; a swarthy face, a piercingly bright brown eye: a pronounced black moustache.… Morning after morning, through two long winters at home, she had gazed up at him from his butter dish, evening after evening had beamed at him from his mantelpiece, her face stretched into a Cheshire cat smile by the curve of a moulded vase; day after day submitted to having cigarettes crushed out upon her pottery person, on a corner of his drawing-desk. He could not mistake her; and he did not mistake her now. It did not take the hiss of a thousand breaths to tell him that, long body, short legs, swarthy face, bright eye—this was Juanita who cried, “Look, then!” and dropped aside her veil.
Tomaso di Goya had been twelve years old when Juanita died. He had seen her many times, had filed past her body while she lay, still on her table, in state before the High Altar of the Duomo. He too knew that this was Juanita who confronted him now. No actress. No island woman with some chance resemblance—no relative who happened to have ‘taken after’ her. Had there existed anyone in San Juan claiming any physical resemblance to their saint, all their tiny world would have known of it: such few as could claim kinship had long ago been sought out and were held in honour. For a moment he toyed with the possibility that some survivor of the family massacre at the hands of Pedro the Vile, might have slipped away and continued a branch of the family abroad; but he knew that it was false. In so small a community and so circumscribed an area, nothing could long be hidden; and every detail of her family history was as familiarly known to her people as the saint’s table-life itself. No. Reconcile it how he might with his atheistical conscience, the fact remained that this could be no impostor who hung in her radiance in the cathedral shadows, the light now fading away from her face, suffused again in a general radiance: Juanita—voice, laugh, mannerisms, memory of things past, Juanita exactly as he himself had last seen her, just before she died.… Juanita: a saint of God, sent here to answer the prayers of the faithful, the good, the simple—who all this time had known better than clever Tomaso di Goya with his foreign travel and superior mind! Sent here by God.…
The thurible! With a clutch at his heart, he remembered the thurible. In a moment the vision would vanish: and then … The Mass would go forward, a Mass of thanksgiving as the old man had said. The Grand Duke would rise once more and stretch out his hand, and this time take the censer.… And this time, no one would stay his hand. The saint?—but she would be gone: and he, Tomaso, would be a murderer, doubly a murderer, for the destruction of the innocent Francisco no doubt would go forward and he be powerless to stop any of it. Nor would the bloodshed end there. And all—for what? Not for his future greatness: for the saint had said the Grand Duchess would have an heir—could only have meant, if the Grand Duke were within this hour to die, that she was already enceinte.… And with that promise, that message from God Himself before them, it was hardly likely that the people would accept Tomaso di Goya in the dead man’s place.…
All about him, sighs, prayers, shouts of joy and acclamation, hands stretched forth, knees shuffling over the bare stones of the cathedral floor, a whole great host of people stretching forward, shuffling, edging, pressing
ever a little forward to be one millimetre nearer to—a miracle. The priests still gazed, spellbound, upward from the altar, the Archbishop knelt, hands clasped, motionless, with that look of rapture on his upturned face: the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess on their knees, bowed submissive heads. All was peace, all was glory, all was unalloyed happiness and hope: the vision hung above them and blessed them with all the promise of the future: indulgence for their sins, prosperity for their island, renewed loving trust in their rulers, the knowledge to hug to their hearts for ever that they, in all the world, have been privileged to hold communion with a saint of God come down from heaven itself.… And he, Tomaso di Goya, two minutes after the vision had left them—was to destroy it all.
His hands clawed back against the pillar behind him, his feet dug into the marble carving of the empty font. He prayed: ‘Juanita—save me! Save me!’ And suddenly, sharply—he knew what to do. If this were indeed a vision sent by God.… He called out sharply, hardly knowing what he said: “If you are a vision sent by God—perform a miracle! Let the Grand Duke take the Cellini thurible and offer incense to you, from the people of San Juan! Let incense rise up out of the thurible, and nothing more! If you are a saint from heaven—you know what miracle there will be in this.…”
Oh, dear, thought Cousin Hat: what ever mischief would this young man be up to next? A horrid, sly fellow, she had warned Winsome against him, time after time. She whispered, hissing it out of the side of her mouth under cover of a stifling handkerchief: “What is your boy friend up to now?”
Winsome, half stupefied with wonder, had been staring, mouth agape, alternately up at the vision and back into the shadows from whence Tomaso’s voice imperiously cried out. “Winsome” insisted Miss Cockrill, “what’s this all about?”
“It’s a challenge,” said Winsome, still staring, half in awe, half in terrified doubt. “If it’s really a vision, if she’s really the saint …”
“If she’s really the saint—well, what?”
“The incense. We’ve—he’s—doctored the thurible. The smoke of the incense will be pink. This is his private challenge to Juanita—if the smoke comes out white, we shall know she’s a saint.…”
“Good gracious!” said Cousin Hat. It was all most peculiar. But, however, there was no time to go into it now. Unaware, as Tomaso was aware, of the impossibility of anyone existing who could be impersonating the saint, she had accepted the whole thing as a charmingly Juanese fraud; another of the ‘symbols’ the Grand Duke delighted in. And since he and the Duchess would hardly be accepting a fraud without some demonstration if they had not been implicated in it themselves, she had been watching its progress with complacency and wishing them well of it with all her heart. And now … Not if she knew it, was this tiresome Tomaso to be permitted to upset so delightful an apple-cart. “Mr Cecil,” she hissed, “we must do something to stop this nonsense, right away.”
But Mr Cecil also was staring alternately up at the vision and back at the shadows where Tomaso di Goya stood: his face a mask of horrified anticipation, as white as chalk.
I must do something, thought Mr Cecil. I must act, I must stop this thing happening. I must do something now. But he could not. He who had been so ready, so masterful, when there had been time to think and plan, now, caught unprepared, could only gape and stare, limbs petrified in an immobility of indecisive dread. Across the width of the sanctuary, he could see El Gerente’s grey face and knew that he, too, was powerless to move. But his eyes turned to the Arcivescovo and Mr Cecil relaxed: the old man had it all in hand, had but to put up the protest as earlier arranged, and this time with a far more justifiable excuse for interference. Juanita stood, quiet and receptive, in her shadows, the Grand Duke kneeled, unresponsive, at his prie-Dieu. The Archbishop had but to rise now and say that any vulgar, material challenge was an affront to the saint, the censer should be taken away and not used.…
He made no move.
More stridently now, astride the bowl of the font, Tomaso repeated his challenge. “The thurible! Let the Grand Duke offer incense before El Margherita, let her perform the miracle that she alone knows of—and I and all the faithful in all the world will recognise her for a saint out of Paradise.”
The Grand Duke lifted his head and looked directly up at Juanita; she hung, suspended motionless in her shadows, and gave no sign. Mr Cecil looked frantically over at the Archbishop. He remained, unmoving, looking up with that smile of ineffable happiness, at the vision. He thought wildly: The old fool—he’s looking to her to save us! Tomaso called again: “The thurible! If she is a saint in heaven, let the Grand Duke salute her with the thurible!” and Mr Cecil yapped out, suddenly, sharply, above the tumult of the people, “ Arcivescovo! Now is the time …”
But the Archbishop prayed quietly on. The Patriarca rose from his knees and came down slowly from the altar steps towards the Grand Duke’s prie-Dieu. “Exaltida—if this is the people’s wish …?”
“Arcivescovo!” cried Mr Cecil, almost screaming, caught up in an extremity of terror, unable to do more than cry out; and “Arcivescovo!” moaned El Gerente, caught up also, like Laocoon in the toils of fear. “Do something! Speak! Do something …!”
But the Archbishop knelt on: hands clasped before him, face uplifted to his saint—happy at last and for ever, free from fear, free from pain, free from all earthly longings for ever more. In the hour of his exquisite happiness, in the moment of the fulfilment of all his dreams—the soul of His Serenity, El Anitra, Archbishop of San Juan, had passed away quietly into the hands of God.
In the niche above the High Altar, quietly and passively receptive—Juanita. Still kneeling, his eyes turned indecisively towards the thurible—the Grand Duke. To either side of him, panic-stricken into helplessness, Mr Cecil and the Gerente. Astride the marble font in the body of the church, crying it out for the last time over the heads of the people—Tomaso. “What are you all afraid of? If she is a saint from heaven—let him take up the thurible!”
From her prie-Dieu to the right of the altar steps, Miss Cockrill got suddenly to her feet. She hooked the handles of her large brown bag over the elbow-rest of the prie-Dieu. “Look after that,” she said to Winsome, and marched forward to stand almost between the kneeling Grand Duke and the thurible. “Excuse me, Patriarca,” she said to that dignitary who still stood, one hand outstretched, encouraging the Grand Duke, “but I think this should be removed.” And she removed it without more ado, unhooking it from its golden stand, letting it hang by its golden chain, great, lazily-glowing weight that it was, from her neat, gloved hand. “Pink incense,” she hissed in an aside, to the startled Grand Duke. Aloud she said: “I think it should be put somewhere else. It is quite disgraceful that the Grand Duke should be heckled into using it—a most vulgar idea, putting the saint to some cheap test.” She looked round for somewhere to take it to. One sharp, chopped-off cry from Tomaso, decided her. The font! I’ll take it down to the font and dowse out the fire: then they can’t use it. The deadly thing hung, harmless yet infinitely dangerous, like a rattlesnake held up, hissing, by the tail, in her gloved hand. Carrying it carefully, people falling back before her as she went, she marched with it down to the font.
There was a crash and a thud as Tomaso di Goya fell forward to his knees. A miracle! The saint had sent a miracle: had sent this sign, from a quarter more utterly unexpected than any other, to save the Grand Duke from the destruction in store for him. The people parted, in astonishment, making way for her and, very small between the great supporting pillars of the nave, she came forward to where, a glimmer of carved white marble in the dimness, the font loomed up at her. She is bringing it to me! By her means, Juanita is sending it back to me!
Here the crowd was almost solid, packed densely, pressed back ever more thickly as the front ranks gave way before the small, advancing figure with the thurible. He leapt suddenly to his feet. “Give way! Give way! Move back from the carpet of flowers, let no one set foot on the path down the aisle, leave the ai
sle clear …!”
The flowers had long since been scattered by scuffling feet, but where they had been there remained a sort of ill-defined pathway. But the time Cousin Hat came with her burden to the font, a passage had been cleaved by the pressing back of the crowd to right and left, clear through to the great West door. He climbed down slowly from the font and confronted her. She was rather pink in the face from the exertion of carrying the great thing, but she handed it to him, holding it steadily. “Put it into the water. I can’t reach.”
“Senorita,” he said, “the font is dry. There is no water there.” And he looked into her face and looked at the golden censer. “There is a bomb in it,” he said.
Far, far away, at the end of an interminable passage, flower-strewn, between two walls of people, dangerously close, there shone the light of the open great West door. She put out her hand for the censer again. “Go before me. Keep the people back. I’ll carry it through and out into the square.”
With his free hand, he made the sign of the cross. “No, Senorita; I will take it.” And he jerked it from her hand, and on the golden chains, the great thing swung: and he screamed out suddenly: “Keep back! Keep back!” and caught it to his breast and, screaming, ran.… Out through the double wall of the people, out on to the broad steps into the golden sunshine, screaming to the crowds that thronged out after him into the great cathedral square, to keep back, keep back, keep back.… Out into the sunshine, down the shallow steps, over the cobbles into the blessed emptiness of the centre of the square; and there alone with his wickedness and folly, his treachery and his greed—threw himself, hugging his own murder to his heart, down to the ground on top of the deadly thing; and screamed out his last prayer, offering his life in reparation to God.
But Tomaso’s friends in Naples, traitors no less to their own cause than to any other, had run true to form. The golden thurible lay, a little scratched and dented, beneath his breast but otherwise suffered no harm. And after a little while, El Gerente arrived and picked his friend up by the arm and picked up the thurible (but gingerly) and led him back into the church.
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