The Saint Part 17

"Simply this, that dressed as he was I did not at once know him; but afterwards I did. It was he."

"Whom do you mean by _he_?"

"Benedetto."

"Who was Benedetto?"

"The monk."

"You are mad! You idiot!" the two men exclaimed together.

Jeanne gave the cripple a silver piece.

"Think well," she said. "Tell the truth!"

The cripple overflowed with benedictions, mingling with them such humble expressions as: "Just as you please, just as you please! I may have been mistaken, I may have been mistaken," and with his string of pious mumblings he took himself off. Jeanne again questioned the herder and the gardener. Was it possible that Benedetto had taken the habit?--Impossible! The beggar was only a poor fool.

Presently the herder left, and Jeanne, entering the kitchen-garden, sat down tinder an olive tree, reflecting that Noemi could easily learn from the door-keeper where to find her. The old gardener, whose curiosity was aroused, asked, with many apologies, if she was a relative of Benedetto's,

"For it is known that he is a gentleman, a rich man!" said he.

Jeanne did not answer his question. She wished rather to find out why this belief in Piero's riches prevailed.--Well, you could see by his manners and by his face; he really had the face of a gentleman.--And he had not become a monk?--Well, no.--And why had he not become a monk?--That was not known for a certainty, There were many tales told.

It was even said he had a wife, and that his wife had played him what the gardener called "a mean trick." Jeanne was silent, and it suddenly struck the gardener that she might be the wife, the woman who had played the "mean trick." She had perhaps repented, and was come to ask his forgiveness.

"If this story about the wife is true," he added, "I don't say she may not have had her reasons; but as far as goodness goes, she surely did not find a better man. You see, signora, these fathers are holy men, that is undeniable; but there is no one so holy as he, either at Santa Scolastica or at the Sacro Speco. That I will swear to! Not even Don Clemente, who is most holy! Still he is not equal to Benedetto. No, no!"

The beggar's words suddenly sounded in Jeanne's heart. Benedetto a monk!

But why? It was discouraging to have them thus return, without a reason, to her heart. Had not the two men said it was nonsense; that the cripple was a fool? Yes, nonsense, she could see that herself; yes, a fool, he had impressed her as such; but still the stupid words beat and throbbed in her heart, as gruesome as masqueraders in comic masks would be should they knock at your door at any other time save during Carnival!

"If you will wait, signora, in less than half an hour he is sure to be here. _Che_! What am I saying? In a quarter of an hour. Perhaps he is in the library studying with Don Clemente, or perhaps he is in the church."

The library, which runs across the narrow lane, communicates directly with the kitchen-garden.

"There he is now!" the old man exclaimed.

Jeanne started to her feet. The door leading from the library to the garden opened slowly. Instead of Piero, Noemi appeared, followed by the big monk. Noemi perceived her friend among the olives, and stopped suddenly, greatly surprised. Jeanne in the garden? Was it possible that--? No, the old man beside her could not be Maironi, and there was no one else with her. She smiled and shook her finger at her. Don Leone took leave of Noemi upon learning that this was the friend who--as she had told him during the visit to the monastery--had remained at the door-keeper's lodge. Of course the ladies would go up to the other convent, and his great size was no longer adapted to the climb to the Sacro Speco.

It was nearly eleven o'clock; they had ordered the carriage to meet them where they had left it at half-past twelve, for dinner was at one at the Selvas'; if Jeanne wished to see the Sacro Speco there was no time to lose, provided her indisposition had disappeared, as would seem to be the case. Noemi encouraged her going, and did not stop to ask, in the presence of the gardener, why she had left Fra Antonio to run off and explore the garden. She merely whispered: "You were making believe, eh?"

Jeanne said that Noemi must certainly start for the Sacro Speco at once, but that she herself intended to wait for her in the garden. Noemi suspected another plot.

"No, no!" she exclaimed, "either you come to the Sacro Speco or--if you do not feel well enough--we will go down to Subiaco at once."

Jeanne objected that it would be useless to go down now, for they would not find the carriage; but Noemi was determined not to yield. They could walk down very slowly, and be ready for the carriage as soon as it arrived. Jeanne refused again, more emphatically than before, having no other argument to set forth. Then Noemi looked searchingly into her eyes, silently trying to read her hidden purpose there. In that moment of silence Jeanne's heart was again a.s.sailed by the beggar's words.

Impulsively she seized her friend's arm.

"You wish me to go to the Sacro Speco?" she said. "Very well, let us go then. You believe something and you do not know! Let Fate decide!"

But before moving a step she dropped her friend's arm, and while Noemi, completely bewildered, stood watching her she wrote in her notebook: "I am at the Sacro Speco. For the sake of Don Giuseppe Flores wait for me!"

She did not sign her name, but tearing out the tiny page gave it to the gardener. "For that man, should he return." Then once more taking Noemi's arm, she exclaimed:

"Let us go!"

The sun's burning rays, smiting the steaming, rocky hillside, brought out damp odours of herbs and of stone, silvered the puffs of mist creeping along the sides of the narrow, wild valley, as far as the enormous ma.s.s resting there, in the background, like a cap on the heights of Jenne, while the mighty voice of the Anio filled the solitude. Jeanne climbed upwards in silence, without replying to Noemi's questions. Noemi was becoming more and more alarmed by her silence, by her pallor, by the nervous twitching of her arm, by the sight of her lips pressed tightly together, to keep back her sobs. Why was she thus moved? During the night and, indeed, until they had reached the entrance to Santa Scolastica, the poor creature had wavered between fear and hope, in a fever of expectancy. Now her fever was of a different nature; at least it seemed so to Noemi. She thought Jeanne must have heard something there in the garden, something of which she did not wish to speak, something painful, frightful! What could it be? The tragic lament of the invisible water, the silent trembling of the blades of gra.s.s on the rocky slope, even the burning heat, made the heart shrink. A few paces from the arch which, standing rigid there, holds in check the black crowd of evergreen oaks, Noemi was relieved to hear human voices.

They belonged to Dane on horseback and to Marinier and the Abbot on foot, who were coming down together from the Sacro Speco,

Dane showed great pleasure at this meeting; he stopped his horse, presented the ladies to the Abbot, and spoke of the Sacro Speco in enthusiastic language. Jeanne, after exchanging a few words with the Abbot, asked him if any one had recently p.r.o.nounced the solemn vows or perhaps taken the habit. The Abbot replied that he had been at Santa Scolastica only a few days, and was not, at that moment, in a position to answer her question; but he did not believe any one had made the solemn profession or a.s.sumed the habit of a novice at Santa Scolastica for at least a year. Jeanne was radiant with joy. Now she understood; she had been a fool to believe it possible, even for a single moment, that in twelve hours Piero the peasant had become Piero the monk. She longed to return at once to the garden at Santa Scolastica; but how could she manage it? what pretext could she invent? She pressed forward, anxious to be done with the Sacro Speco as soon as possible. Noemi proposed resting a few minutes in the shade of the evergreen oaks, which, there on the path of those souls agitated by Divine Love, themselves seem twisted by an inward ascetic fury, by a frantic effort to tear themselves from the earth, and to dart their arms into the sky.

Jeanne refused impatiently. The colour had returned to her face, and the light to her eyes. She started rapidly up the narrow stair where the short walk comes to an end, and in spite of the protests of Noemi (who could not understand the cause of this change) would not stop to take breath at the head of the stairs where, suddenly, the dark, deep spectacle of the valley reveals itself. High up on the left looms the terrible crag, dear to falcons and crows, bulging out above the dreary walls, pierced by unadorned openings which are incrusted upon the bare slope, running crosswise along its face, and form the monastery of the Sacro Speco. In the depths below the convent hangs the rose garden of St. Benedict, and below the rose garden hang the kitchen-garden and the olive groves, sloping to the open bed of the roaring Anio. The ma.s.s of cloud which had rested on the heights of Jenne was rising and invading the sky. A wave of shadow pa.s.sed over the enormous crag, over the monastery, over the parapet upon which Noemi had rested her elbows, lost in contemplation.

"This is magnificent!" she said. "Let us stop here a few seconds at least, now that it is shady,"

But at that moment the little door of the monastery, not two steps from them, opened and a party of visitors, men and women, came out. The monk who had acted as guide, seeing Noemi and Jeanne, held the door open, expecting them to enter. Jeanne hastened to do so, and Noemi, much against her will, followed her,

"Thirteenth century frescoes," said the Benedictine, in the dark entrance-hall, in an indifferent tone, as he pa.s.sed on. Noemi stopped, curiously regarding the ancient paintings. Jeanne followed the Benedictine, looking neither to right nor left, distracted, tormented by a doubt. What if the Abbot had been mistaken, if the beggar had told the truth? She recalled in fancy the happy meeting in the courtyard at Praglia, the intense pallor of his face, the "Thank you!" which had made her tremble with joy. A shiver ran through her blood, and, as though with a sudden pull at the reins of her imagination, she turned to Noemi: "Come!" she said.

She followed the monk, hearing nothing that he said, observing nothing that he pointed out. Noemi found it difficult to hide her own uneasiness, for she had a presentiment of evil on their return. The dangerous point was the garden at Santa Scolastica, which, judging by what she had said to the old gardener, Jeanne intended to revisit. She no longer wished to see this famous Maironi; she longed only to get Jeanne safely back to the Selvas', without any meetings, and she intended to tarry as long as possible at the Sacro Speco, that they might not have time to stop at Santa Scolastica. She therefore pretended to take a lively interest in the precious interior of this monastery, which has such a bare and dreary exterior, while all the while her one wish was to revisit it more peacefully with her sister or her brother-in-law.

Upon descending into that mine of holiness, neither of them understood what road they were following, surrounded as they were by the lifeless, cold atmosphere, the mystic shadows, the yellowish lights falling from above, the odours of damp stone, of smoking wicks, of musty draperies; bewildered by visions of chapels, of grottos, of crosses at the foot of dark stairs; losing themselves in their flight down towards the lower caverns, keeping on a level with their own pointed vaults; of marbles the colour of blood, the colour of the night, the colour of snow; of stiff, pious groups with Byzantine features, crowding the walls, the drums of the arches; of little monks and little friars, standing in the window niches, on the pinnacles of the vaults, along the line of the entablatures, each with his venerable aureole. The visitors did not know what path they were following, and Jeanne hardly felt the reality of it all.

While descending the Scala Santa--the Holy Staircase--the monk leading and Jeanne following closely, while Noemi came last, some five or six steps behind, Jeanne, suddenly throwing out her hands, clutched the guide's shoulder, and then, ashamed of her involuntary action, immediately withdrew them, while the monk, who was greatly astonished, stopped, and turned his head towards her.

"Pardon me!" she said. "Who is that father?"

Between two landings of the Scala, behind a projection of the left wall, a figure, all black in the habit of the Benedictines, stood, erect and still, in the dark corner, its forehead resting against the marble, Jeanne had pa.s.sed it by four or five steps without having perceived it, then she had chanced to look round, and had seen it, while an instinctive suspicion flashed through her trembling heart.

The monk answered:

"He is not a father, signora."

He bent down to unlock the low gate of a chapel.

"What is the matter?" Noemi inquired, drawing near. "He is not a father?" Jeanne repeated.

Noemi trembled at the strange ring in her friend's voice. She herself had not noticed the figure standing erect in the shadow of the wall.

"Who?" she asked.

The monk, who, in the meantime, had opened the gate, misunderstood her, and thought she referred to something that had been said before.

"No," he answered. "The authentic portrait of St. Francis is not here.

Lower down there is a St. Francis painted by the Cavalier Manente. You will see it presently. Please come in."

"What is it?" Noemi said softly to Jeanne. Her friend having answered in a calmer voice, "Nothing," she pa.s.sed her, entering the chapel, and listened to the monk's explanations. Then the black figure moved away from the wall. Jeanne saw it slowly mounting in the dim light, under the pointed arches. On the upper landing the figure turned to the right, and disappeared, to reappear almost immediately on an arm of the stair, crossing the slanting background of the scene, and brilliant in the light of an invisible window. The figure mounted slowly, almost wearily.

Before it vanished behind the enormous flank of an arch, it bent its head and looked down. Jeanne recognised the face!

On the instant, as if in obedience to a lightning will impelling her, as if borne along by the rush of her destiny, pale, resolute, without knowing what she would say, what she would do, she started upwards.

Having crossed the upper landing, she was about to place her foot on the lighter stairway, when she stumbled and fell, remaining for a moment prostrate. Thus Noemi, on leaving the chapel, did not see her, and concluded she had gone down in search of the portrait of St. Francis, Jeanne rose and started forward; she was a poor creature torn by pa.s.sions, to whom the images of celestial peace, grown rigid on the sacred walls, called in vain. All before her was silence and void. She was following paths unknown to her, swiftly, securely, as one in an hypnotic trance. She pa.s.sed through dark and narrow places, through light and broad places, never hesitating, never looking to right or left, all her senses sharpened and concentrated in her hearing, following little sounds of distant whisperings, the faint complaining of one door, the breath of wind from another, the brushing of a robe against the frame. Thus, through the wide-open wings of the last door she pa.s.sed rapidly, and found herself face to face with _him_.

He also had recognised her, at the last moment, on the Scala Santa. He felt almost certain he himself had not been recognised, nevertheless he had sought to avoid the path usually followed by visitors. Upon hearing a swift rustle of woman's drapery approaching that mysterious hall, he understood all, and, facing the entrance, he waited. She perceived him and stopped suddenly, in the very act of entering, standing as though turned to stone, between the wings of the door; her eyes fixed on his eyes, which no longer wore the look of Piero Maironi.