Chapter XVI (1)
That Tristram Hungerford, nearly four months later, should still be in Italy, should, indeed, be walking up and down the Cascine at Florence, among other promenaders, on a fine day in January, was due to the fact that an obscure Italian parroco had received from art a shadowy acquaintance with medicine and from nature, unbounded confidence wherewith to make use of it.
Never again was Tristram likely to allow a physician of souls to try his hand at mending a body, least of all the body of a friend. Priestly surgery, as it had been practised on Dormer, he would henceforth eschew like the plague. For the result of the parroco’s ministrations had been disastrous, and his setting of the broken leg so bungling that at last Tristram had Dormer removed to Florence and procured the services of a first-class surgeon. The latter pulled a long face, and said that if the English signor did not want to walk lame all his days the leg must be re-set. At the stage then reached this involved breaking the bone again. It is probable that Tristram, sitting in the next room with his hands over his ears, suffered quite as much as the victim himself. The surgeon indeed told him afterwards that, had not his friend been a heretic, he might have thought he had been miraculously relieved, as were sometimes the holy martyrs. Not, however, that when he saw Dormer afterwards, Tristram could discern much evidence of alleviation of any kind.
However, in a week or ten days now they were going home. Dormer’s accident had not, at any rate, brought back his headaches; he affirmed, on the contrary, that the long, enforced rest had done just what he needed. He had borne the pain and tedium serenely, almost lightly; the only thing that seemed to try him was his absence from Oxford, and the fact that his misfortune had delayed his friend’s ordination. Their prolonged stay had brought them several acquaintances among the English colony at Florence, and of late they had come to know an Italian gentleman connected with the Court, a certain Signor della Torre Vecchia, who had become smitten with an immense admiration for Dormer. Tristram had indeed rather suffered from this worship, and so, though the Italian had been exceedingly kind to them both, putting a carriage at their disposal and doing his utmost to carry off Dormer from their hotel to his villa at Fiesole, Tristram was not altogether sorry that their benefactor was leaving Florence that very afternoon. For when Signor della Torre Vecchia could get Tristram alone he did nothing but talk about his dilettissimo amico, his charm, his looks (“one would say a portrait by Van Dyck, signore”), his intellectual distinction. He drove Tristram into promising him Dormer’s book on the Non-Jurors, for he had been in England and manifested a most inexplicable interest in the English Church, though, despite their endeavours to prove to him that she was a part of the Church Catholic—instancing the Catholicity of her Prayer-Book, while admitting the Protestantism of her practice—he persisted in regarding her as a phenomenon, and they never got any further. Afterwards he would take Tristram aside and reiterate his conviction that nobody like Dormer could possibly remain permanently outside the True Church. The only consolation which Tristram derived from these confidences was the power of chaffing Dormer unmercifully on the effect produced by his “romantic appearance.”
Towards Horatia Tristram’s feelings had changed. He would always, he supposed, love her better than anyone else in the world, but he did not love her now as a lover. Besides the fierce struggle of the past months to tear from his heart what he regarded as sin, a struggle which had slowly been successful, there was the knowledge, conveyed to him by the Rector, that she was about to have a child. Unconsciously this made a difference to him. He felt now as he imagined an elder brother might feel towards a sister who had always been very dear to him, full of an affection essentially protective. The time had been that, even though the sense of sin had left him, he could not receive a letter from her without being plunged in depression. But now he would have been very glad of a letter, for, whether they were lost or delayed in the notoriously uncertain Italian posts, or whether they were non-existent, no communications from the Rector or from Horatia had reached him since August, and he sometimes imagined horrible things, as that Horatia was dead, for he did not know when her child was expected.
Another change, too, had gradually wrought in his spirit, He was, in a sense, quite honest when he mocked at Dormer’s idealisation of the single life, though perhaps his mockery was due to the knowledge that the ideas which he derided were not really so very alien to his mind.
Now, indeed, if the truth were known, they had even begun to have a curious attraction for him—a speculative attraction. What if to some souls there did really come a call to win “that little coronet or special reward which God hath prepared (extraordinary and beside the great Crown of all faithful souls)” as the author of Holy Living had it, for those who had made the sacrifice of earthly affection and ties. And persons did make that sacrifice, in numbers—as witness the not very attractive religious whom he saw about the streets of Florence. Most of all, unforgettable, recurring again and again to his mind, there was the great fresco in the monastery of San Marco, where S. Dominic, kneeling at the foot of the Cross, embraces it in a passion of love and pain, and the Crucified looks down at him. It had taken Tristram’s breath away when first he saw it at the end of the cloister. After some time he went and looked at it again—and came away very sad. Its message was not for him, whose obedience was loveless. All that the picture’s spiritual beauty could do for him now was to remind him painfully of Keble’s words, so applicable to himself, of the shame of the thought—
“That souls in refuge, holding by the cross
Should wince and fret at this world’s little loss.”
Yes, to walk among the lilies might be given to such an one as Dormer, but not to a commonplace person like himself, who had been forced into sacrifice. He had nothing to give of his own free-will. That he would henceforth live without earthly ties was not because he had been smitten by a vision from on high, but because the woman he loved had been taken from him. It was enough for him if he could echo the close of those same lines—
“Wash me, and dry these bitter tears,
O let my heart no further roam,
’Tis Thine by vows and hopes and fears
Long since——”
Some way off a stir among the promenaders and the sight of the Ducal livery, portending, probably, that the Grand Duke was taking the air, reminded Tristram of Torre Vecchia, and his impending departure. Pulling out his watch, he hurried off.
As he entered the hotel he was stopped by the porter.
“The post is in, Excellency, and there are two English letters for you.”
The letters were both addressed in Mr. Grenville’s handwriting, and one had been posted no less than three months before.
(2)
Dormer crumpled up the paper on which he had been scribbling and pushed it under his cushions, where he lay on a couch near a window looking out on to the Arno. The translation which he had been making of a portion of Andrewes’ Preces Privatae did not please his difficult taste, and he took up instead the other book lying beside him—Serenus Cressy’s edition of Father Augustine Baker’s Sancta Sophia, or Directions for the Prayer of Contemplation, a relic of one of his Jacobite ancestors who had afterwards become a Benedictine, which he had found, at his mother’s death, among her books. He glanced at the title page, where the hand which more than a hundred years ago had written its owner’s name—and his—Carolus Dormer—had traced below a cross and the family motto, ‘Ciò che Dio vuole, io voglio—God’s Will my will’; and began to read the chapter “Of the Great Desolation.” Perhaps because he lived almost always in the conscious presence of God the description of “this most sharp purgatory of love” had for him a curious fascination.
“For what has a soul left to fear that can with a peaceable mind support, yea, and make her benefit of the absence of God Himself.”
He closed the book and lay back, gazing out of the window, yet San Miniato and its cypresses were nothing but a blur....
The door opened, and the landlord admitted a tall, fair Italian, wrapped in an ample cloak.
“Do not rise, do not rise, my dear friend, I implore you!” exclaimed the visitor, swooping down upon Dormer and seizing both his hands. “And how do you find yourself this afternoon? Not in pain, I trust!”
“But I am perfectly well,” protested Dormer, laughing. Accustomed as he was to these effusive greetings, he was always glad when Tristram was not by to witness them. “In a few days we, too, shall be leaving Florence.”
Standing over him in his great black cloak, Signor della Torre Vecchia shook his head dolefully. “I doubt if it is wise—whether you will really be fit to travel.”
At this point the landlord, with many apologies, desired to be permitted to set down the coffee on the table near the couch, and the guest had to make way for him.
“Your Excellencies have everything they require?” asked he. “Signor Ungerford is just come in; he reads his correspondence. The courier has arrived, but there are no other letters.” One overflowing smile, he bowed himself out.
“Pray sit down, Signore,” said Dormer. “We will not wait for Mr. Hungerford.” And he stretched out his arm to the coffee.
“Ah, but you must allow me, in the circumstances, to do that!” said Torre Vecchia quickly, and he snatched away the tray. “With what pleasure should I not have done this for you up at Fiesole,” he observed wistfully, as he poured out the coffee. “It will always be a life-long regret to me that you would not permit me to remove you to Villa San Giuliano.”
“As if I were not sufficiently indebted to you without that!” exclaimed the Englishman. “For all your kindness to a stranger I can make no return but to hope that, when you visit England again, you will come to Oxford as my guest.”
Torre Vecchia gave him, with his coffee, a promise that he would do so, and flowed on in a gentle but swift-running stream of converse, while Dormer began to wonder why Tristram did not join them. Finally he apologised for him, suggesting that he did not know of the Italian’s presence. Torre Vecchia made a large gesture that excused him.
“We were told,” said he, “that he is reading his letters, and who can say whether there is not one from his betrothed. Pray do not have him disturbed.... You know, Signore, that your Church is very fortunate in possessing material of the type of Signor Hungerford for her pastors—for I understand that he is about to enter that estate. Is it not true that the English country gentleman has an equal, if not a superior, in the parson, who is a man of the world, with a training of the University, whereas ours are... to put it delicately, not high born, and seminary bred.... But here I am on this topic again—and I hope, Signore, that in our most interesting conversation of yesterday, when I said how much I disliked our system of enforced celibacy for the clergy, I did not seem to be criticising Holy Church, of which I trust I am a faithful son.”
Dormer relieved him of this apprehension, and he continued:
“But there are these two points which, when I feel I shall not be misunderstood, I cannot help deploring—most of all the enforced celibacy.” Torre Vecchia dropped his voice and looked round, apparently to make sure that they were alone, ere he went on earnestly, “‘Signore, consider the isolated position of the ordinary priest, consider the number of things enjoyed by his fellow-men that he must renounce—above all, that great happiness, which our holy religion sanctifies for others, but which it forbids him even to think of for himself. His life may inspire respect, even admiration, but it excites—in me, at least—regret for so much rigour, which is surely in contradiction with what Nature and God Himself have implanted.... I find it so extraordinary that you, a divine of the English Church, do not agree with me!”
“But I do, in a sense,” retorted Dormer. “I rejoice that our clergy are free to marry or not to marry; only I would wish to see the majority unmarried.”
“You would deprive them then of those pure pleasures which your Church allows, the pleasures of a home, of a wife, of children?”
“I would not deprive them of these. But I would have the greater number deprive themselves.”
Torre Vecchia lifted his hands and eyes to heaven. “But this is the spirit of Catholic asceticism, and yet you are not a Catholic! I am more puzzled than ever. You and your friends, you tell me, believe in the Real Presence, in the apostolical succession, in the power of the keys, and yet when I was in England last I never met a single person who seemed even to have heard of such things!”
“Perhaps not, but they will hear some day,” said Dormer quietly, and at that moment Tristram entered, full of apologies, which were met by counter-apologies from the Italian, and finally merged into a scene of leavetaking, as the latter discovered that it was later than he thought.
“You must make amends for your absence now, Signore,” he said, smiling at Tristram, “by allowing me to call upon you when next I am in England. And in spite of your friend’s views (which never cease to astonish me) I cannot help hoping that this will be in one of those delicious country parsonages, embowered in roses, bright with wife and child, to which I have before now been welcomed—at what you call the ‘family-living,’ in short!”
He left Tristram deprived of speech and once more bent over Dormer. “And for you, my dear friend, how I wish I could have seen you restored to perfect health before I left! I am putting a carriage at your entire disposal. Every afternoon one of my people shall come round and see if you need it. No, no thanks, I beg... I must veritably fly. Addio, caro amico; I trust I may say a rivederci.” Uttering further swift and polite phrases, and flinging his cloak round him with the art of the South, he was gone.
Almost ere the door had closed Dormer had rolled over like a boy and buried his face in the sofa-cushions. “Why did you not come in before, you wretch!” he ejaculated. “I have been having such a disquisition, all to myself. What on earth were you doing? It was no time for reading letters.” Turning over again, as a thought struck him, he said abruptly: “I hope that well-meaning blunderer did not hurt you?”
“Of course not,” answered his friend. “But... I’ve just had bad news.” And he went and sat down in the Italian’s vacant place.
Dormer struggled off the sofa. “My dear fellow, what is it?”
“She’s been very ill. The Rector had to go over—her child was born prematurely.”
Dormer gave an exclamation. “Did it live?”
“She was in great danger for four days,” said Tristram, running his hands through his hair, “in great danger, and I never knew! It must have been about the time that we got here. The letter was temporarily lost, I suppose. Yes, the child lived. This second letter of the Rector’s, dated about a month ago, which has reached me at the same time as the first, says that he is not satisfied with the reports he has of her, and that he would be very glad if I could see her before crossing the Channel.”