The Saint Part 18

He was transfigured. His form, owing perhaps to the black habit, appeared slighter. His pale, fleshless face, his brow, which seemed to have become higher, expressed a dignity, a gravity, a sad sweetness which Jeanne had never known in him. And the eyes were totally different eyes; in them shone a something ineffable and divine, much humility, much power, the power of a transcendent love, springing not from his heart, but from a mystic fount within his heart; a love reaching beyond her heart, but seeking her in the inner, mysterious regions of the soul, regions unknown to her. Slowly, slowly she clasped her hands and sank upon her knees.

Benedetto carried the forefinger of his left hand to his lips, while with his other hand he pointed to the wall facing the balcony, which opens to the hornbeams of the Francolano hill and to the roar of the river far below. In the centre of the wall, showing black and large, was the word

SILENTIUM.

For centuries, ever since the word had been written there, no human voice had been heard in this place. Jeanne did not look, did not see.

That finger at Piero's lips was enough to seal her own. But it was not enough to check the sob in her throat. She gazed at him intently, her lips pressed tightly together, while great, silent tears rolled down her face. Immovable, his arms hanging close to his sides, Benedetto slightly bent his head and closed his eyes, absorbed in prayer. The great, black, imperious word, big with shadows and with death, triumphed over these two human souls, while from the shining balcony the fierce souls of the Anio and of the wind roared in protest.

Suddenly, a few seconds after Benedetto's eyes had closed to her gaze, she was shaken and rent from shoulder to knee by a great sob, a sob bitter with all the bitterness of her fate. He opened his eyes and looked tenderly at her, while she drank in his look thirstily, sobbing twice, as in sorrowful grat.i.tude. And because this man, her beloved, again raised his finger to his lips she bowed her head in a.s.sent. Yes, yes, she would be silent, she would be calm! Still in obedience to his gesture, to his look, she rose to her feet and drew back, allowing him to pa.s.s out through the open door; then she followed him humbly, her hope dead in her breast, so many sweet phantoms dead in her heart, her love turned to fear and veneration.

She followed him to the chapel which they call the upper church. There, opposite the three small pointed arches inclosing deep shadows through which an altar looms, and where a silver cross shines against the dark phantoms of ancient paintings, Jeanne, upon a sign from him, knelt on the _prie-dieu_ placed on the right side of the great arch, which follows the line of the pointed vault, while he knelt on the one placed on the left. On the drum of the arch a fourteenth century painter had depicted the Great Sorrow. Through a high window on the left, the light fell upon the Mother of Sorrows--the _Dolorosa_; Benedetto was in the shadow.

His voice murmured in a scarcely audible tone:

"Still without faith?"

Softly, as he himself had spoken, and without turning her head, she answered:

"Yes."

He was silent for a time, then he continued, in the same tone:

"Do you long for it? Could you regulate your actions as if you believed in G.o.d?"

"Yes, if I be not forced to lie."

"Will you promise to live for the poor and the afflicted, as if each one of these were a part of the soul that you love?"

Jeanne did not answer. She was too far-seeing, too honest to declare that she could.

"Will you promise this," Benedetto continued, "if I promise to call you to my side at a certain hour in the future?"

She did not know of what solemn and not far distant hour he was thinking, as he spoke thus. She answered, quivering:

"Yes, yes!" "In that hour I will call you," said the voice out of the shadow, "But until I call you, you must never seek to see me again."

Jeanne pressed her hands to her eyes, and answered "No" in a smothered tone. It seemed to her she was whirling in the vortex of such agonising dreams as accompany a raging fever, Piero had ceased speaking. Two or three minutes slipped by. She withdrew her hands from her tearful eyes, and fixed her gaze upon the cross, which shone there in front of her, beyond the pointed arches, against the dark phantoms of ancient paintings. She murmured:

"Do you know that Don Giuseppe Flores is dead?"

Silence.

Jeanne turned her head. The church was empty.

CHAPTER V. THE SAINT

I. The moon had already set, and in the wind of late evening the Anio discoursed, now noisily, now softly, as one who in animated conversation, from time to time, reminds his interlocutor of something which others must not hear. Perhaps the only person who, in all the lovely sh.e.l.l in which Subiaco lies, was listening to this discourse, was Giovanni Selva. Seated on the terrace, near the parapet, on which he rested his elbows, he was gazing silently into the sounding darkness.

Maria and Noemi, who had also come out to enjoy the freshness and the wild odours of the night wind, stood at a little distance. Maria whispered a word in her sister's ear, and Noemi withdrew. When she was alone, Maria approached her husband very softly, and dropped a kiss upon his hair.

"Giovanni," said she. How often, oppressed by the intensity of her love, had she not given him her soul, her whole being, in that one word, spoken under her breath, all others seeming to her inadequate, or worn by too many lips! Giovanni answered sadly, wearily:

"Maria."

No longer feeling her face on his hair he feared he had spoken coldly to her.

"Dearest!" he said.

She was silent for a moment, then placing both hands on his head, began, caressing it slowly, saying:

"Blessed are they who suffer for Truth's sake."

He turned round, smiling, with a thrill of affection. Having a.s.sured himself by a glance that Noemi was no longer present, he raised his arm and drew the dear face down to his lips.

"I need you so much," he said. "I need your strength!"

"That is why I am yours," Maria answered. "I am strong only because you love me."

He took her hand and kissed it reverently.

"Do you understand?" he presently exclaimed, raising his head. "Perhaps you do not know how deep my suffering really is, for it is a dark point even to me, who am old, and yet do not know myself. I was thinking of this just now. I reflected that when we suffer from a wound the cause of our suffering is visible, but when we suffer from a fever the cause is hidden, as in this case, and we never succeed in becoming thoroughly acquainted with it."

A month had not yet elapsed since the meeting at which a league among progressive Catholics had been talked of. No league had sprung from it, but to nothing else could the origin of a series of strange and unpleasant events be attributed. Professor Dane had been recalled to Ireland by his Archbishop. He had immediately called upon an English Cardinal attached to the Papal Court, in order to acquaint him with the unsatisfactory condition of his health, and to solicit his support of a pet.i.tion to the Archbishop for an extension of his leave. His Eminence had opened Dane's eyes. The blow had come from Rome, where he was looked upon with the greatest disapproval. Only out of consideration for the Cardinal himself, who was known to be his friend, and above all out of consideration for the English Government, had the authorities refrained from satisfying those who wished to see his writings placed on the Index, and Dane himself constrained to resign his professorship. The Cardinal advised him to leave Rome, where the heat was beginning to be unpleasant, and to become a little more seriously ill at Montecatini or Salsomaggiore, where he would be left in peace. Don Clemente had not again appeared. Giovanni had sought him out at Santa Scolastica, where the monk had signified to him, with tears in his eyes, that their friendship must be buried like a treasure in times of war. Upon Don Paolo Fare, who had been giving a course of religious instruction for adults at Pavia, silence had been enjoined. Young di Leyn had been reached through his family. His excellent and pious mother had besought him with tears and in the name of his dead father, to break with those dangerous acquaintances, the Selvas; and he believed that this step had been suggested by her confessor. He had resisted, but at the cost of his domestic peace. Finally, a clerical periodical had published three articles on Giovanni's complete works, summing up some partial and grudging praise, and some equally partial and biting censure in a very severe judgment on the character of the works themselves, which the critic p.r.o.nounced rationalistic, and on the intolerable audacity of the author, who, equipped solely with worldly learning, had dared to publish writings in which the lack of theological knowledge was painfully evident. In substance these three articles were a terrible and prohibitive condemnation of the very book Giovanni was then engaged upon, dealing with the rational foundations of Christian morality, and, in the opinion of the initiated, it predicted the Index for his other works.

"Are you in doubt concerning your own views?" Maria asked.

The question was insincere. Notwithstanding her great love for him, she had a deep and clear knowledge of her husband's soul. She believed he was, in his heart, suffering from the presentiment of an ecclesiastical condemnation. Giovanni might speak lightly of certain sentences pa.s.sed by the Congregation of the Index, but his conscience, more respectful towards the authorities than he himself realised, was troubled, so Maria thought, more deeply than he wished it to be by the threatened blow.

And Maria, fearing to wound him by the question, "Are you afraid?"

had insinuated this other doubt, in order to prepare the way for a spontaneous confession of the truth. Giovanni's answer astonished her.

"Yes," said he. "I doubt myself. Not, however, in the way you suppose.

I fear I am a purely intellectual being, and that I exaggerate the importance my views may have in the sight of G.o.d. I fear I do not live up to my views. I fear my indignation is too great against those who do not share them, against my persecutors, against that Swiss Abbe who came here with Dane, and probably talked of what was then said in our midst as he should not have done, and in places where he should have kept silent. I fear my life is one of too great inactivity, of too great ease, of too much pleasure, for to me study is a delight. I even doubt my love of G.o.d, because I feel too lightly the love of my neighbour. I am often reminded that the mystic pleasures may lull my conscience on this point. You, Maria, you live your faith; you visit the sick, work for the poor, you comfort, you instruct. I do nothing."

"I am one with you," Maria whispered. "You made me what I am. Besides, you distribute the alms of the intellect."

"No, no! Those words applied to me are presumptuous!" Maria knew that the loving sense of human fraternity was not strong in Glovanni.

She felt--and she was loath to confess it even to herself--that this deficiency incapacitated her husband for the successful fulfilment of that great religious apostolate which should have resulted from his intellectual powers, and that deep and enlightened faith, which in him was more the fruit of genius, of study, of love of the divine, than of tradition or habit. She reproached herself for having sometimes rejoiced at Giovanni's coldness towards his fellows, for it lent a precious flavour to the treasures of affection he lavished upon herself.

Nevertheless he was conscious of the fraternal obligations, and she had never known him turn a deaf ear to an appeal, or seen him insensible to the grief of others. He did not feel, and therefore did not love G.o.d in man, which is the most sublime flame of charity; he felt and loved man in G.o.d, which is a cold love, as would be the love of one who was kind to his brother solely to please their father. But this last is the temper common to even the best of human hearts. Giovanni's heart was tempered thus; he could not give out that sublime charity of which he humbly and sadly acknowledged himself to be void. Maria, caressing his hair with infinite tenderness, dreamed that sweet, divine, indulgence flowed out upon that head through her heart and her hands.

"Listen," said she. "I am going to propose to you at once an act of charity in which there is much merit. Noemi has received a letter from her friend Jeanne Dessalle, and says she is in need of your help."

"Call her," said he.

Noemi came. A slight cloud had gathered that day between Giovanni and herself. As rarely happened, they had conversed on religion. Noemi clung blindly to her own religion, and disliked discussions. Notwithstanding her tenderness for Maria, and her affectionate respect for Giovanni, she feared she should lean more towards the scepticism of Jeanne than towards the liberal and progressive Catholicism of the Selvas, if she stopped to examine the reasons and nature of her own belief. This Catholicism appeared to her a hybrid thing, and she had perhaps learned from Jeanne to consider it such; for Jeanne, in moments of nervous irritability, defended her own scepticism with acrimony against that faith which, because it shone with spirituality and truth, might prove formidable to her. Noemi was always suspicious, not of her sister, but of Giovanni, fearing he would attempt to convert her, and her suspicion had that day been apparent when, discussing the confessional, she had several times answered him very sharply. Then Giovanni had reminded her, gently and gravely, that error harboured unconsciously, in the sincere and pure desire of truth, is innocent in the eyes of G.o.d, but that if a sentiment foreign to that desire have any part in the repulsion of truth, then sin alone is the outcome. This argument wounded Noemi more deeply still. She had been on the point of asking her brother-in-law by what right he was acting as vice-divine judge. She controlled herself, however, and let the discussion drop.

Upon thinking it over afterwards, she regretted her sullen silence, not so much because Giovanni's words had affected her views, as because she was aware of the sorrow the religious opinions he professed brought him, and because she saw how depressed his spirits were. This was one reason why--when she was called to him, and entreated by her sister to show him much affection--she resolved, for once, to be unfaithful to Jeanne. Of what Jeanne had written to her under the seal of secrecy she had told Maria only as much as was absolutely necessary. Jeanne, still suffering both physically and mentally, had heard of the "Saint of Jenne," who was healing bodies and souls, and she besought Noemi to go to Jenne and see this Saint, and then to write to her about him. Now Noemi could not go to Jenne alone, she must ask Giovanni to accompany her. Her first confidence had stopped here. Now she broke all the seals of secrecy her friend had imposed, and spoke freely.