Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  “There is Tullia Del Ferice!” exclaimed Sant’ Ilario in surprise.

  “I do not know her, except by sight,” observed Orsino indifferently.

  The countess was very imposing in her black veil and draperies. Her red face seemed to lose its colour in the dim church and she affected a slow and stately manner more becoming to her weight than was her natural restless vivacity. She had got what she desired and she swept proudly along to take her old place among the ladies of Rome. No one knew whose card she had delivered up at the entrance to the sacristy, and she enjoyed the triumph of showing that the wife of the revolutionary, the banker, the member of parliament, had not lost caste after all.

  She looked Giovanni full in the face with her disagreeable blue eyes as she came up, apparently not meaning to recognise him. Then, just as she passed him, she deigned to make a very slight inclination of the head, just enough to compel Sant’ Ilario to return the salutation. It was very well done. Orsino did not know all the details of the past events, but he knew that his father had once wounded Del Ferice in a duel and he looked at Del Fence’s wife with some curiosity. He had seldom had an opportunity of being so near to her.

  “It was certainly not about her that they fought,” he reflected. “It must have been about some other woman, if there was a woman in the question at all.”

  A moment later he was aware that a pair of tawny eyes was fixed on him. Maria Consuelo was following Donna Tullia at a distance of a dozen yards. Orsino came forward and his new acquaintance held out her hand. They had not met since they had first seen each other.

  “It was so kind of you,” she said.

  “What, Madame?”

  “To suggest this to Gouache. I should have had no ticket — where shall I sit?”

  Orsino did not understand, for though he had mentioned the subject, Gouache had not told him what he meant to do. But there was no time to be lost in conversation. Orsino led her to the nearest opening in the tribune and pointed to a seat.

  “I called,” he said quickly. “You did not receive—”

  “Come again, I will be at home,” she answered in a low voice, as she passed him.

  She sat down in a vacant place beside Donna Tullia, and Orsino noticed that his mother was just behind them both. Corona had been watching him unconsciously, as she often did, and was somewhat surprised to see him conducting a lady whom she did not know. A glance told her that the lady was a foreigner; as such, if she were present at all, she should have been in the diplomatic tribune. There was nothing to think of, and Corona tried to solve the small social problem that presented itself. Orsino strolled back to his father’s side.

  “Who is she?” inquired Sant’ Ilario with some curiosity.

  “The lady who wanted the tiger’s skin — Aranjuez — I told you of her.”

  “The portrait you gave me was not flattering. She is handsome, if not beautiful.”

  “Did I say she was not?” asked Orsino with a visible irritation most unlike him.

  “I thought so. You said she had yellow eyes, red hair and a squint.” Sant’ Ilario laughed.

  “Perhaps I did. But the effect seems to be harmonious.”

  “Decidedly so. You might have introduced me.”

  To this Orsino said nothing, but relapsed into a moody silence. He would have liked nothing better than to bring about the acquaintance, but he had only met Maria Consuelo once, though that interview had been a long one, and he remembered her rather short answer to his offer of service in the way of making acquaintances.

  Maria Consuelo on her part was quite unconscious that she was sitting in front of the Princess Sant’ Ilario, but she had seen the lady by her side bow to Orsino’s companion in passing, and she guessed from a certain resemblance that the dark, middle-aged man might be young Saracinesca’s father. Donna Tullia had seen Corona well enough, but as they had not spoken for nearly twenty years she decided not to risk a nod where she could not command an acknowledgment of it. So she pretended to be quite unconscious of her old enemy’s presence.

  Donna Tullia, however, had noticed as she turned her head in sitting down that Orsino was piloting a strange lady to the tribune, and when the latter sat down beside her, she determined to make her acquaintance, no matter upon what pretext. The time was approaching at which the procession was to make its appearance, and Donna. Tullia looked about for something upon which to open the conversation, glancing from time to time at her neighbour. It was easy to see that the place and the surroundings were equally unfamiliar to the newcomer, who looked with evident interest at the twisted columns of the high altar, at the vast mosaics in the dome, at the red damask hangings of the nave, at the Swiss guards, the chamberlains in court dress and at all the mediæval-looking, motley figures that moved about within the space kept open for the coming function.

  “It is a wonderful sight,” said Donna Tullia in Trench, very softly, and almost as though speaking to herself.

  “Wonderful indeed,” answered Maria Consuelo, “especially to a stranger.”

  “Madame is a stranger, then,” observed Donna Tullia with an agreeable smile.

  She looked into her neighbour’s face and for the first time realised that she was a striking person.

  “Quite,” replied the latter, briefly, and as though not wishing to press the conversation.

  “I fancied so,” said Donna Tullia, “though on seeing you in these seats, among us Romans—”

  “I received a card through the kindness of a friend.”

  There was a short pause, during which Donna Tullia concluded that the friend must have been Orsino. But the next remark threw her off the scent.

  “It was his wife’s ticket, I believe,” said Maria Consuelo. “She could not come. I am here on false pretences.” She smiled carelessly.

  Donna Tullia lost herself in speculation, but failed to solve the problem.

  “You have chosen a most favourable moment for your first visit to Rome,” she remarked at last.

  “Yes. I am always fortunate. I believe I have seen everything worth seeing ever since I was a little girl.”

  “She is somebody,” thought Donna Tullia. “Probably the wife of a diplomatist, though. Those people see everything, and talk of nothing but what they have seen.”

  “This is historic,” she said aloud. “You will have a chance of contemplating the Romans in their glory. Colonna and Orsini marching side by side, and old Saracinesca in all his magnificence. He is eighty-two year old.”

  “Saracinesca?” repeated Maria Consuelo, turning her tawny eyes upon her neighbour.

  “Yes. The father of Sant’ Ilario — grandfather of that young fellow who showed you to your seat.”

  “Don Orsino? Yes, I know him slightly.”

  Corona, sitting immediately behind them heard her son’s name. As the two ladies turned towards each other in conversation she heard distinctly what they said. Donna Tullia was of course aware of this.

  “Do you?” she asked. “His father is a most estimable man — just a little too estimable, if you understand! As for the boy—”

  Donna Tullia moved, her broad shoulders expressively. It was a habit of which even the irreproachable Del Ferice could not cure her. Corona’s face darkened.

  “You can hardly call him a boy,” observed Maria Consuelo with a smile.

  “Ah well — I might have been his mother,” Donna Tullia answered with a contempt for the affectation of youth which she rarely showed. But Corona began to understand that the conversation was meant for her ears, and grew angry by degrees. Donna Tullia had indeed been near to marrying Giovanni, and in that sense, too, she might have been Orsino’s mother.

  “I fancied you spoke rather disparagingly,” said Maria Consuelo with a certain degree of interest.

  “I? No indeed. On the contrary, Don Orsino is a very fine fellow — but thrown away, positively thrown away in his present surroundings. Of what use is all this English education — but you are a stranger, Madame, you cannot und
erstand our Roman point of view.”

  “If you could explain it to me, I might, perhaps,” suggested the other.

  “Ah yes — if I could explain it! But I am far too ignorant myself — no, ignorant is not the word — too prejudiced, perhaps, to make you see it quite as it is. Perhaps I am a little too liberal, and the Saracinesca are certainly far too conservative. They mistake education for progress. Poor Don Orsino, I am sorry for him.”

  Donna Tullia found no other escape from the difficulty into which she had thrown herself.

  “I did not know that he was to be pitied,” said Maria Consuelo.

  “Oh, not he in particular, perhaps,” answered the stout countess, growing more and more vague. “They are all to be pitied, you know. What is to become of young men brought up in that way? The club, the turf, the card-table — to drink, to gamble, to bet, it is not an existence!”

  “Do you mean that Don Orsino leads that sort of life?” inquired Maria Consuelo indifferently.

  Again Donna Tullia’s heavy shoulders moved contemptuously.

  “What else is there for him to do?”

  “And his father? Did he not do likewise in his youth?”

  “His father? Ah, he was different — before he married — full of life, activity, originality!”

  “And since his marriage?”

  “He has become estimable, most estimable.” The smile with which Donna Tullia accompanied the statement was intended to be fine, but was only spiteful. Maria Consuelo, who saw everything with her sleepy glance, noticed the fact.

  Corona was disgusted, and leaned back in her seat, as far as possible, in order not to hear more. She could not help wondering who the strange lady might be to whom Donna Tullia was so freely expressing her opinions concerning the Saracinesca, and she determined to ask Orsino after the ceremony. But she wished to hear as little more as she could.

  “When a married man becomes what you call estimable,” said Donna Tullia’s companion, “he either adores his wife or hates her.”

  “What a charming idea!” laughed the countess. It Was tolerably evident that the remark was beyond her.

  “She is stupid,” thought Maria Consuelo. “I fancied so from the first. I will ask Don Orsino about her. He will say something amusing. It will be a subject of conversation at all events, in place of that endless tiger I invented the other day. I wonder whether this woman expects me to tell her who I am? That will amount to an acquaintance. She is certainly somebody, or she would not be here. On the other hand, she seems to dislike the only man I know besides Gouache. That may lead to complications. Let us talk of Gouache first, and be guided by circumstances.”

  “Do you know Monsieur Gouache?” she inquired, abruptly.

  “The painter? Yes — I have known him a long time. Is he perhaps painting your portrait?”

  “Exactly. It is really for that purpose that I am in Rome. What a charming man!”

  “Do you think so? Perhaps he is. He painted me some time ago. I was not very well satisfied. But he has talent.”

  Donna Tullia had never forgiven the artist for not putting enough soul into the picture he had painted of her when she was a very young widow.

  “He has a great reputation,” said Maria Consuelo, “and I think he will succeed very well with me. Besides, I am grateful to him. He and his painting have been a pleasant episode in my short stay here.”

  “Really, I should hardly have thought you could find it worth your while to come all the way to Rome to be painted by Gouache,” observed Donna Tullia. “But of course, as I say, he has talent.”

  “This woman is rich,” she said to herself. “The wives of diplomatists do not allow themselves such caprices, as a rule. I wonder who she is?”

  “Great talent,” assented Maria Consuelo. “And great charm, I think.”

  “Ah well — of course — I daresay. We Romans cannot help thinking that for an artist he is a little too much occupied in being a gentleman — and for a gentleman he is quite too much an artist.”

  The remark was not original with Donna Tullia, but had been reported to her as Spicca’s, and Spicca had really said something similar about somebody else.

  “I had not got that impression,” said Maria Consuelo, quietly.

  “She hates him, too,” she thought. “She seems to hate everybody. That either means that she knows everybody, or is not received in society.”

  “But of course you know him better than I do,” she added aloud, after a little pause.

  At that moment a strain of music broke out above the great, soft, muffled whispering that filled the basilica. Some thirty chosen voices of the choir of Saint Peter’s had begun the hymn “Tu es Petrus,” as the procession began to defile from the south aisle into the nave, close by the great door, to traverse the whole distance thence to the high altar. The Pope’s own choir, consisting solely of the singers of the Sixtine Chapel, waited silently behind the lattice under the statue of Saint Veronica.

  The song rang out louder and louder, simple and grand. Those who have heard Italian singers at their best know that thirty young Roman throats can emit a volume of sound equal to that which a hundred men of any other nation could produce. The stillness around them increased, too, as the procession lengthened. The great, dark crowd stood shoulder to shoulder, breathless with expectation, each man and woman feeling for a few short moments that thrill of mysterious anxiety and impatience which Orsino had felt. No one who was there can ever forget what followed. More than forty cardinals filed out in front from the Chapel of the Pietà. Then the hereditary assistants of the Holy See, the heads of the Colonna and the Orsini houses, entered the nave, side by side for the first time, I believe, in history. Immediately after them, high above all the procession and the crowd, appeared the great chair of state, the huge white feathered fans moving slowly on each side, and upon the throne, the central figure of that vast display, sat the Pope, Leo the Thirteenth.

  Then, without warning and without hesitation, a shout went up such as has never been heard before in that dim cathedral, nor will, perhaps, be heard again.

  “Viva il Papa-Rè! Long life to the Pope-King!”

  At the same instant, as though at a preconcerted signal — utterly impossible in such a throng — in the twinkling of an eye, the dark crowd was as white as snow. In every hand a white handkerchief was raised, fluttering and waving above every head.

  And the shout once taken up, drowned the strong voices of the singers as long-drawn thunder drowns the pattering of the raindrops and the sighing of the wind.

  The wonderful face, that seemed to be carved out of transparent alabaster, smiled and slowly turned from side to side as it passed by. The thin, fragile hand moved unceasingly, blessing the people.

  Orsino Saracinesca saw and heard, and his young face turned pale while his lips set themselves. By his side, a head shorter than he, stood his father, lost in thought as he gazed at the mighty spectacle of what had been, and of what might still have been, but for one day of history’s surprises.

  Orsino said nothing, but he glanced at Sant’ Ilario’s face as though to remind his father of what he had said half an hour earlier; and the elder man knew that there had been truth in the boy’s words. There were soldiers in the church, and they were not Italian soldiers — some thousands of them in all, perhaps. They were armed, and there were at the very least computation thirty thousand strong, grown men in the crowd. And the crowd was on fire. Had there been a hundred, nay a score, of desperate, devoted leaders there, who knows what bloody work might not have been done in the city before the sun went down? Who knows what new surprises history might have found for her play? The thought must have crossed many minds at that moment. But no one stirred; the religious ceremony remained a religious ceremony and nothing more; holy peace reigned within the walls, and the hour of peril glided away undisturbed to take its place among memories of good.

  “The world is worn out!” thought Orsino. “The days of great deeds are over. Let us eat
and drink, for to-morrow we die — they are right in teaching me their philosophy.”

  A gloomy, sullen melancholy took hold of the boy’s young nature, a passing mood, perhaps, but one which left its mark upon him. For he was at that age when a very little thing will turn the balance of a character, when an older man’s thoughtless words may direct half a lifetime in a good or evil channel, being recalled and repeated for a score of years. Who is it that does not remember that day when an impatient “I will,” or a defiant “I will not,” turned the whole current of his existence in the one direction or the other, towards good or evil, or towards success or failure? Who, that has fought his way against odds into the front rank, has forgotten the woman’s look that gave him courage, or the man’s sneer that braced nerve and muscle to strike the first of many hard blows?

  The depression which fell upon Orsino was lasting, for that morning at least. The stupendous pageant went on before him, the choirs sang, the sweet boys’ voices answered back, like an angel’s song, out of the lofty dome, the incense rose in columns through the streaming sunlight as the high mass proceeded. Again the Pope was raised upon the chair and borne out into the nave, whence in the solemn silence the thin, clear, aged voice intoned the benediction three times, slowly rising and falling, pausing and beginning again. Once more the enormous shout broke out, louder and deeper than ever, as the procession moved away. Then all was over.

  Orsino saw and heard, but the first impression was gone, and the thrill did not come back.

  “It was a fine sight,” he said to his father, as the shout died away.

  “A fine sight? Have you no stronger expression than that?”

  “No,” answered Orsino, “I have not.”

  The ladies were already coming out of the tribunes, and Orsino saw his father give his arm to Corona to lead her through the crowd. Naturally enough, Maria Consuelo and Donna Tullia came out together very soon after her. Orsino offered to pilot the former through the confusion, and she accepted gratefully. Donna Tullia walked beside them.