The Cardinal's Snuff-Box Part 16

XV.

Beatrice walking with a priest--ay, I am not sure it would n't be more accurate to say conspiring with a priest: but you shall judge.

They were in a room of the Palazzo Udeschini, at Rome--a reception room, on the piano n.o.bile. Therefore you see it: for are not all reception-rooms in Roman palaces alike?

Vast, lofty, sombre; the walls hung with dark-green tapestry--a pattern of vertical stripes, dark green and darker green; here and there a great dark painting, a Crucifixion, a Holy Family, in a ma.s.sive dim-gold frame; dark-hued rugs on the tiled floor; dark pieces of furniture, tables, cabinets, dark and heavy; and tall windows, bare of curtains at this season, opening upon a court--a wide stone-eaved court, planted with fantastic-leaved eucalyptus-trees, in the midst of which a brown old fountain, indefatigable, played its sibilant monotone.

In the streets there were the smells, the noises, the heat, the glare of August of August in Rome, "the most Roman of the months," they say; certainly the hottest, noisiest, noisomest, and most glaring. But here all was shadow, coolness, stillness, fragrance-the fragrance of the clean air coming in from among the eucalyptus-trees.

Beatrice, critical-eyed, stood before a pier-gla.s.s, between two of the tall windows, turning her head from side to side, craning her neck a little--examining (if I must confess it) the effect of a new hat. It was a very stunning hat--if a man's opinion hath any pertinence; it was beyond doubt very complicated. There was an upward-springing black brim; there was a downward-sweeping black feather; there was a defiant white aigrette not unlike the Shah of Persia's; there were glints of red.

The priest sat in an arm-chair--one of those stiff, upright Roman arm-chairs, which no one would ever dream of calling easy-chairs, high-backed, covered with hard leather, studded with steel nails--and watched her, smiling amus.e.m.e.nt, indulgence.

He was an oldish priest--sixty, sixty-five. He was small, lightly built, lean-faced, with delicate-strong features: a prominent, delicate nose; a well-marked, delicate jaw-bone, ending in a prominent, delicate chin; a large, humorous mouth, the full lips delicately chiselled; a high, delicate, perhaps rather narrow brow, rising above humorous grey eyes, rather deep-set. Then he had silky-soft smooth white hair, and, topping the occiput, a tonsure that might have pa.s.sed for a natural bald spot.

He was decidedly clever-looking; he was aristocratic-looking, distinguished-looking; but he was, above all, pleasant-looking, kindly-looking, sweet-looking.

He wore a plain black ca.s.sock, by no means in its first youth--brown along the seams, and, at the salient angles, at the shoulders, at the elbows, shining with the l.u.s.tre of hard service. Even without his ca.s.sock, I imagine, you would have divined him for a clergyman--he bore the clerical impress, that odd indefinable air of clericism which everyone recognises, though it might not be altogether easy to tell just where or from what it takes its origin. In the garb of an Anglican--there being nothing, at first blush, necessarily Italian, necessarily un-English, in his face--he would have struck you, I think, as a pleasant, shrewd old parson of the scholarly--earnest type, mildly donnish, with a fondness for gentle mirth. What, however, you would scarcely have divined--unless you had chanced to notice, inconspicuous in this sober light, the red sash round his waist, or the amethyst on the third finger of his right hand--was his rank in the Roman hierarchy.

I have the honour of presenting his Eminence Egidio Maria Cardinal Udeschini, formerly Bishop of Cittareggio, Prefect of the Congregation of Archives and Inscriptions.

That was his t.i.tle ecclesiastical. He had two other t.i.tles. He was a Prince of the Udeschini by accident of birth. But his third t.i.tle was perhaps his most curious. It had been conferred upon him informally by the populace of the Roman slum in which his t.i.tular church, St. Mary of the Lilies, was situated: the little Uncle of the Poor.

As Italians measure wealth, Cardinal Udeschini was a wealthy man. What with his private fortune and official stipends, he commanded an income of something like a hundred thousand lire. He allowed himself five thousand lire a year for food, clothing, and general expenses. Lodging and service he had for nothing in the palace of his family. The remaining ninety-odd thousand lire of his budget... Well, we all know that t.i.tles can be purchased in Italy; and that was no doubt the price he paid for the t.i.tle I have mentioned.

However, it was not in money only that Cardinal Udeschim paid. He paid also in labour. I have said that his t.i.tular church was in a slum. Rome surely contained no slum more fetid, none more perilous--a region of cut-throat alleys, south of the Ghetto, along the Tiber bank. Night after night, accompanied by his stout young vicar, Don Giorgio Appolloni, the Cardinal worked there as hard as any hard-working curate: visiting the sick, comforting the afflicted, admonishing the knavish, persuading the drunken from their taverns, making peace between the combative. Not infrequently, when he came home, he would add a pair of stilettos to his already large collection of such relics. And his homecomings were apt to be late--oftener than not, after midnight; and sometimes, indeed, in the vague twilight of morning, at the hour when, as he once expressed it to Don Giorgio, "the tired burglar is just lying down to rest." And every Sat.u.r.day evening the Cardinal Prefect of Archives and Inscriptions sat for three hours boxed up in his confessional, like any parish priest--in his confessional at St. Mary of the Lilies, where the penitents who breathed their secrets into his ears, and received his fatherly counsels... I beg your pardon. One must not, of course, remember his rags or his sores, when Lazarus approaches that tribunal.

But I don't pretend that the Cardinal was a saint; I am sure he was not a prig. For all his works of supererogation, his life was a life of pomp and luxury, compared to the proper saint's life. He wore no hair shirt; I doubt if he knew the taste of the Discipline. He had his weaknesses, his foibles--even, if you will, his vices. I have intimated that he was fond of a jest. "The Sacred College," I heard him remark one day, "has fifty centres of gravity. I sometimes fear that I am its centre of levity." He was also fond of music. He was also fond of snuff:

"'T is an abominable habit," he admitted. "I can't tolerate it at all--in others. When I was Bishop of Cittareggio, I discountenanced it utterly among my clergy. But for myself--I need not say there are special circ.u.mstances. Oddly enough, by the bye, at Cittareggio each separate member of my clergy was able to plead special circ.u.mstances for himself I have tried to give it up, and the effort has spoiled my temper--turned me into a perfect old shrew. For my friends' sake, therefore, I appease myself with an occasional pinch. You see, tobacco is antiseptic. It's an excellent preservative of the milk of human kindness."

The friends in question kept him supplied with sound rappee. Jests and music he was abundantly competent to supply himself. He played the piano and the organ, and he sang--in a clear, sweet, slightly faded tenor. Of secular composers his favourites were "the lucid Scarlatti, the luminous Bach." But the music that roused him to enthusiasm was Gregorian. He would have none other at St. Mary of the Lilies. He had trained his priests and his people there to sing it admirably--you should have heard them sing Vespers; and he sang it admirably himself--you should have heard him sing a Ma.s.s--you should have heard that sweet old tenor voice of his in the Preface and the Pater Noster.

So, then, Beatrice stood before a pier-gla.s.s, and studied her new hat; whilst the Cardinal, amused, indulgent, sat in his high-backed armchair, and watched her.

"Well--? What do you think?" she asked, turning towards him.

"You appeal to me as an expert?" he questioned.

His speaking-voice, as well as his singing-voice, was sweet, but with a kind of trenchant edge upon it, a genial asperity, that gave it character, tang.

"As one who should certainly be able to advise," said she.

"Well, then--" said he. He took his chin into his hand, as if it were a beard, and looked up at her, considering; and the lines of amus.e.m.e.nt--the "parentheses"--deepened at either side of his mouth.

"Well, then, I think if the feather were to be lifted a little higher in front, and brought down a little lower behind--"

"Good gracious, I don't mean my hat," cried Beatrice. "What in the world can an old dear like you know about hats?"

There was a further deepening of the parentheses.

"Surely," he contended, "a cardinal should know much. Is it not 'the badge of all our tribe,' as your poet Byron says?"

Beatrice laughed. Then, "Byron--?" she doubted, with a look.

The Cardinal waved his hand--a gesture of amiable concession.

"Oh, if you prefer, Shakespeare. Everything in English is one or the other. We will not fall out, like the Morellists, over an attribution.

The point is that I should be a good judge of hats."

He took snuff.

"It's a shame you haven't a decent snuff-box," Beatrice observed, with an eye on the enamelled wooden one, cheap and shabby, from which he helped himself.

"The box is but the guinea-stamp; the snuff's the thing.--Was it Shakespeare or Byron who said that?" enquired the Cardinal.

Beatrice laughed again.

"I think it must have been Pulcinella. I'll give you a lovely silver one, if you'll accept it."

"Will you? Really?" asked the Cardinal, alert.

"Of course I will. It's a shame you haven't one already."

"What would a lovely silver one cost?" he asked.

"I don't know. It does n't matter," answered she.

"But approximately? More or less?" he pursued.

"Oh, a couple of hundred lire, more or less, I daresay."

"A couple of hundred lire?" He glanced up, alerter. "Do you happen to have that amount of money on your person?"

Beatrice (the unwary woman) hunted for her pocket--took out her purse--computed its contents.

"Yes," she innocently answered.

The Cardinal chuckled--the satisfied chuckle of one whose unsuspected tactics have succeeded.

"Then give me the couple of hundred lire."

He put forth his hand.

But Beatrice held back.

"What for?" she asked, suspicion waking.