Читать книгу Musk and Amber - A. E. W. Mason - Страница 11

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“We should consider San Januarius the spiritual descendant of Virgil,” Monsignor Vitello Lappa began. “Virgil at Posilippo set up on a rock a bronze archer with the shaft of his arrow drawn back to his ear and the barb pointed at Vesuvius. I need hardly apprise you that the threat of that archer kept the volcano quiet through many generations.”

There were some present at the table who knew Monsignor Lappa to be a distinguished member of the Arcadian Academy who could turn an elegant sonnet and by the easy standard of that institution passed as a wit. The rest merely stared, thinking the statement unusual and still more unusual as coming from a cleric.

“Unfortunately, a peasant,” Lappa continued, without a twitch diminishing the thin severity of his lips, “with the sense of humour so indigenous amongst Neapolitans of the lower kind, one day flighted the arrow and hit the mountain.”

“But—but—Monsignor!”

It was Julian’s tutor who, with a face behind his big spectacles puckered with bewilderment, and an accent you could cut with a knife, interrupted.

“Yes?” Lappa asked.

“A bronze arrow——” stammered the tutor.

“Its weight no doubt kept its direction straight,” said the ecclesiastic.

“And it struck the mountain, shot from Posilippo?”

“And the impact was at once followed by an eruption of the most terrible character.”

“But surely that was——” the tutor’s manners forbade him to contradict a dignitary of the Church with a red sash about his waist. He caught himself up—“that was—remarkable.”

“Very, very remarkable,” Monsignor Lappa agreed gravely. “But, my dear Doctor, was it any more remarkable than the miracle which our young friend there—” and he waved a shapely white hand towards Julian, “is going to watch this afternoon?”

Doctor Lanford, the tutor, was silenced.

“Obviously,” Lappa resumed, “something had got to be done about it. Virgil was long since dead. No new archer made any difference at all. Not one could quell the angry mountain. The black pall hung over the peak. Molten lava burnt up the fields upon the slopes. Vast masses of stones, causing a great mortality, were flung into the air. Archers were under a cloud, the Vesuvius cloud. Oh, clearly something had to be done. And in the great amphitheatre of Pozzuoli—the Virgil country as you will notice—something was done. San Januarius, during the persecutions of Diocletian, was there thrown to the lions—who at once laid down at his feet.”

“Really! Really!” exclaimed Dr. Lanford, helping himself to a pinch of snuff.

“This pleasant variation from those animals’ usual behaviour in an arena,” Monsignor Lappa continued smoothly, “marked out San Januarius as Virgil’s successor. A Bishop—for San Januarius was a Bishop—at whose feet lions ceased in a moment to feel hunger, was obviously the man to quell the anger of Vesuvius. None the less, the savage Prætorian Timotheus, who had learned no compassion from the lions, cut his head off. A saintly woman happened to be present and in more senses than one kept her head.”

Henry Scoble chuckled, one or two devout ladies looked shocked, and the rest, who had no doubt met other clerics of the same sceptical character, were amused. The one man who neither smiled nor relaxed the austerity of his face was the Monsignor.

“She collected some of the martyr’s blood in a phial. His head was retrieved and encased in a silver bust of the Saint which is kept in a press in the Cathedral. From that point of vantage San Januarius watches over the city. Now it is common for foolish people to ask for a proof; and three times a year, the first Sunday in May being one of the times, the proof is given. The silver bust is brought out on to the porch and at the end of the day, after all the communities have made their processions, the Archbishop leads his. He carries the phial containing the congealed blood of the martyr, and as he holds it on high in the crowded square before the bust, the blood within the phial is seen to melt.”

“And if it didn’t, Monsignor Lappa?” Henry Scoble asked.

Monsignor Lappa’s face assumed an expression of despair.

“We should have to expect calamities such as waited upon Rome when Julius Cæsar fell.”

He recovered himself with a jerk and turning to Henry smiled benevolently.

“But it always does.”

“There have been delays, Monsignor,” said Elliot, speaking for the first time.

“No doubt,” replied Lappa. “A little suspense, a little fear that Naples may have to pay for its sins, may not after all be harmful. In the square before the Duomo, you may see perhaps the women in tears, the men praying fervently and, alas! some of the lazzaroni undutifully abusing the Saint as a yellow-faced old rogue who doesn’t deserve their veneration. But in the end the Saint relents, the congealed blood liquefies, the Archbishop, in the gathering darkness, holds the phial aloft, the banners are raised, the trumpets roll, the people fall upon their knees, the tears of woe become tears of joy.”

“But before that happy moment, Monsignor,” Elliot persisted, “is there not an interval of danger?”

“Of danger?” Lappa answered with a hint of disdain in his voice.

“A boy, for instance,” Mr. Elliot stuck to his objection, “probably of another faith and certainly of gentle birth, might he not in an angry and frightened mob run a grave risk?”

Mr. Elliot looked towards Julian as he spoke and met his eyes. They were watching him, wide open and big as on the night at Grest when they had watched him from the bed; and with just the same prayer darkening their blue, as all emotion did, and asking for his silence. It struck Mr. Elliot suddenly as extraordinary that the boy should set such store on witnessing the miracle.

“I shall be so quiet that no one will notice me,” said Julian eagerly. “Besides, I shall have Domenico the courier with me. Oh, I shall be safe!”

Julian spoke in Italian with a purity of accent which quite surprised Monsignor Vitello.

“Nay,” he said with a smile, “if your Lordship speaks so, not the angriest lazzarone amongst the lot will take you for a foreign heretic. You will be not a son of our brown Naples, to be sure, but of some castle in the Apennines.”

“Besides,” Frances Scoble added, “our Minister, Sir Edward Place, has written to me that he has a room opposite to the Duomo overlooking the square where Julian will be welcome. So if there is any sign of trouble coming, he has a refuge there.”

Mr. Elliot had no more to say. Certainly Julian spoke the Italian tongue like a native. His father had been particular upon that point as upon no other, so deep had been his love for Italy. At the end of the meal the company returned to the drawing-room in the foreign way. There was no drive to-day for the fine people of Naples in their painted carriages with the running footmen. The processions, which were now returning to their monasteries by other roads than those by which they came, occupied the streets. But on the other hand there was music in the drawing-room with the balcony which overlooked the bay. Barbella, Naples’ most finished violinist, Orgitano at the harpsichord, a mandolin, a French horn and a violoncello made a quintette which for one of that company, at all events, caused time to cease and the world to vanish beyond a golden mist of melody. The shadows indeed were beginning to fall when Mr. Elliot came out from his dreams. He was in the mood to expect visions and marvels. Music half opened a door and raised the edge of a curtain for him upon an unknown, entrancing world, so unearthly that he could never describe it, never be more than exquisitely aware of it waiting, a world of delicate, lucent air and colours more lovely than eyes have ever seen. The door was slowly shutting upon him now, the edge of the curtain swinging slowly back into its place, when he saw across the room in that magic doorway the boy Julian Linchcombe standing like some beautiful page who held the keys of entrance.

Julian was standing actually in the doorway of the room with a cloak across his arm and his three-cornered hat under it. A concerto by Niccolo Jommelli was being played and as the boy stood listening with a smile of expectation upon his parted lips, it seemed to Elliot that the melody, which now soared into a cry of passion, now swooned through cadences of moving appeal, was trying to tell him of great overwhelming changes impending over him, as though for him too the doorway was to lead into a new world where all was strange, and whence he was never to return.

But although this message was loud to Elliot’s ears, not a whisper of it, clearly, had reached Julian. He was waiting for the concerto to end, and as soon as the applause died away he crossed the room to his half-sister.

“I am going,” he said. “Domenico is waiting for me downstairs.”

“Very well.”

Frances Scoble walked with the boy to the door. He was to be careful in what he said, not to laugh, and at the first sign of any trouble to seek the shelter of the Minister’s room over the square.

“And wear your cloak, Julian,” Elliot heard her say at the doorway. “It will hide your dress and at the same time protect your throat. Let me see you put it on!”

Could anyone have been more thoughtful, more kind? Frances was outside the door now, but Elliot could see her and Julian. He swung the cloak over his shoulders. It hung down to his ankles and he hooked it across his chest with a chain. But Frances was not satisfied. She drew the edges close beneath his chin and taking a brooch from her dress pinned them together. The brooch flashed and sparkled as she pinned it and Elliot wished that it had been less noticeable and costly. But they made a pretty picture framed in the doorway, the young guardian fussing over her ward, lest he should catch some trumpery cold, and the young ward eager to be off upon his adventure. Mr. Elliot sauntered out on to the balcony a minute afterwards and watched Julian and the courier walk away from the Inn. He remembered Domenico, a sleek, smooth fellow and competent, who had been courier to the boy’s father before him. That recollection pleased Elliot. Domenico would have a sort of lineal interest in his charge; and suddenly Elliot asked himself a question.

“Why shouldn’t I go and watch this regularly-recurring miracle? I need not push myself on to anyone’s attention. But I never have seen the blood of San Januarius melt amidst the tears and blessings of the populace. It seems foolish to be in Naples on the first Sunday in May and not to see it. There are not so many miracles happening about the world that I can afford to miss one within a stone’s throw.”

Thus arguing, he made his bow to his hostess. He too feared the chill of sunset. He went up to his room, slung a cloak over his shoulders and in front of a mirror settled his gold-trimmed hat upon his curls. “You’re a romantic,” he said, rebuking himself with a forefinger. “You find fears in dark corners.”

In the streets all Naples was loitering, chattering, singing, laughing and standing—mostly standing. Elliot dodged up the Via di Toledo and along the narrow Tribunali until he reached the Duomo. Here, although a goodly number of people of all kinds, from lazzaroni in their rags, to shopkeepers, lawyers and nobles, stood in groups, there was quiet. The silver bust gleamed upon a stand in the portico. The smaller processions had made their reverences and gone back to their monasteries. The great culmination of the day was awaited in a suspense, whilst the dusk gathered. “All the better for the miracle,” thought Mr. Elliot; and suddenly a cry was raised. “They are coming!” and suddenly the open space was flooded with such a concourse of men and women, gesticulating and shouting, that except on the outer edges not a stone of the pavement was visible. Mr. Elliot was jostled back against the wall of a house just opposite to the portico, as a way was made for the Archbishop. At this moment, a lackey in a red livery forced his way to Elliot’s side.

“It is Mr. Elliot?”

“Yes.”

“His Excellency, the English Minister, will be glad if Mr. Elliot will make use of his room. The door is close by.”

Elliot followed the man with relief, climbed a stair and found himself in a great room upon the first floor amongst many guests. The Minister, famous for his kindness, his hospitality and his love of the arts, came forward with an outstretched hand.

“I recognized you below where you can see little. You have become a stranger to Naples these last three years, but you will find many friends whom you will remember.”

Mr. Elliot, indeed, was warmly greeted and then a hush fell upon the crowd in the square and all turned to the windows. The Archbishop in his stateliest robes with his mitre on his head led forward the great army of his clergy. He carried the sacred phial, held aloft and enclosed within the palm of his hand. He stopped as he drew near, and an attendant in the portico draped the shoulders of the silver bust in an embroidered robe of purple velvet and crowned it with a mitre which blazed with jewels. Then the Archbishop stepped forward again and, bending low before the image of the Saint, prayed him in the humblest voice to favour his faithful votaries by the melting of his blood; and in that prayer all joined, the women with upturned faces and clasped hands, the men staring at their feet, so that a hum of innumerable bees filled the air. And the hum continued—and in a little while it swelled, and into a sound more urgent. The Archbishop was chafing the phial in his hands. An old monk took it from him, rubbing it himself and gave it back. A few cries rose. “It is hard as a stone!” And the women began to wail with the tears pouring down their faces. If their own Saint turned against them, what disasters might not be looming for the people of Naples?

A few minutes more and another note was heard, perhaps the most frightening of all sounds in the world, the mutterings of anger spreading through a crowd. Sir Edward Place understood the note. He bent forward anxiously over the sill of the window.

“He’s new to it,” he said under his breath. “He’s himself terrified. He should be quick.”

Mr. Elliot caught the words. The Archbishop was fumbling the phial, chafing it so that his shoulders and elbows moved in jerks like a man who works a machine. Bees? Yes, but not bees humming drowsily within the cups of flowers, bees angry, deadly. Elliot looked round the room. He caught the Minister by the elbow.

“Julian?” he cried. “Julian Linchcombe?”

For a moment Edward Place stared at Elliot. Then his eyes swept the room.

“He should be here! He was here!” he cried and then, shouldering his guests aside with a violence which surprised them, he craned his head out of the window.

The cries of anger were mounting. It was almost dark now in the square below. Amidst the passionate appeals of the women words of abuse rang fiercely. “You old yellow-faced rascal! A fine Saint you are!” Was there ever such an ungrateful old rogue? Funny? Amusing? To Mr. Elliot it was sinister. A people turning on its Gods, but not disbelieving their power to hurt and destroy and maim, turning in a blind, impotent rage. Woe upon any victim who stood near! A heretic—perhaps—perhaps a boy who laughed. Sir Edward Place turned back to Elliot, his face white and disordered.

“He slipped away down the stairs. I didn’t see. I can’t see him now”; and as he spoke the sullen, angry roar of the crowd suddenly rose like a black pall lifted in a wind. It was blown away. The fury changed to anthems; hysterical screams of delight took the place of prayers. The Minister turned back with a cry to the windows. Banners were waving, trumpets blowing, men were shaking hands, people pranced; and above their heads the Archbishop was waving the phial from side to side.

The evening was so dark now that no one six yards away from him could see whether the blood had melted or was still congealed. But it flashed like a liquid in the light of a hundred torches and as the Archbishop dropped upon his knees, a Te Deum rolled out from the Cathedral organ through the open doors.

Sir Edward Place drew a breath of relief.

“He won’t make that mistake a second time,” he said grimly, nodding his head towards the Archbishop. “The old fool! There will be no trouble now.”

And there was none. The Saint’s blood had melted. The archer still aimed his bronze shaft at Vesuvius. For four months at all events, from visitations of evil, from plagues, from eruptions, Naples was safe. Elliot watched the crowd disperse in groups, the big flagstones glimmer white like a chequer-board. He listened for footsteps underneath the window, but all the footsteps which he heard were receding. The guests began to take their leave. In the smaller by-streets the little cabriolets, gilded sedan-chairs with a horse instead of porters and a driver with a whip, perched up aloft like the hansom cabman of a later century, were not allowed to ply their trade.

“Julian will find his way back,” said Place. Elliot and he were alone now and the Minister’s voice shook a little as he spoke. His face against the darkness of the room shone as white as wax. “Domenico was with him and Domenico served his father. A man to be trusted, I think.”

He was talking to keep off from him a whole swarm of reproaches for his inattention. Once Domenico had delivered the lad into this room, he should have seen to it that he didn’t escape again until the miracle was satisfactorily accomplished.

“But boys!” he cried, “they slip out of your hands like fish.... We will give him a little time. He may have been carried away in the crowd.” The square was quite empty now. Under the portico the two men could see the silver bust glint palely as the ushers locked it away in its press. Suddenly Sir Edward said with a catch of hopefulness in his voice:

“He may have gone straight back to the Inn with the courier. Oh yes! He probably has.”

But Mr. Elliot remained quite still, quite silent.

“You don’t believe that?” the Minister asked sharply.

“No, Sir Edward.”

“Why?”

“He has the good manners of his father. He would have guessed that you might be anxious. He would have come back to thank you for your hospitality.” Elliot stretched out his hand towards the square. “Nor would he have laughed down there.”

He was leaning on the sill and stood up.

“But there is something we might do. He might not be sure of the house. If we set a candle in the window for a sign?”

“To be sure.”

Something to do at all events. Sir Edward found a tinder-box and lit a taper. There were a couple of candles in candlesticks of the Capodimonte porcelain upon the mantelpiece. He lit them and, as he carried them towards the window, a knock sounded upon the door.

“Come in!” he cried eagerly.

But it was Domenico who came in and he came in alone. His broad, fleshy face was shaking, his eyes distraught with terror.

“His Lordship?” Sir Edward shouted at the man.

But Domenico could not answer. He choked, he swallowed and his hands fluttered at the end of his arms, as though they must speak for him instead of his mouth. Place set down the candles on a table against the wall, poured from a decanter a brimming glass of hock and thrust it into Domenico’s hands. The courier drained it at a single gulp.

“Now speak!”

“I stood by the door, Excellency, on guard. He slipped down the staircase and was past me as I clutched at him. I called to him. I followed. He was an eel, Excellency. And then the Archbishop came—and in a second one was drowned in the crowd. I shouted ‘Milord! Milord!’ and everyone hooted. I knew that his Lordship wanted to be close to the miracle——”

“Yes, that’s true,” Elliot interrupted suddenly.

Domenico uttered a cry and let the glass in his hand fall and splinter upon the floor. For a few seconds he was again silent. Then:

“I had not seen you, Signor.”

“What does that matter?”

“Yes, continue,” said the Minister savagely.

“Excellency,” and Domenico turned back again to Sir Edward. Elliot had never seen a man so frightened. His teeth rattled, his body shivered, his eyes glanced from one to the other extraordinarily bright. “I tried to thrust myself to the front too. But a boy can dive under elbows, make a tunnel——” and suddenly he broke off and began to sob. Elliot could see the tears running down his face.

“What will become of me? I shall be blamed, suspected, ruined,” and he wrung his hands together.

“You!” cried the Minister in a voice of scorn, and the man stopped crying.

“I will tell you what I think,” he said in a quieter voice. “When his Lordship got near in the thick of the crowd and the blood in the phial would not melt—he laughed.”

“No!” Elliot interrupted again and violently. “That’s a lie.”

Domenico cringed as though the words were the lash of a whip across his shoulders.

“Your Excellency knows best. I am at your feet. It’s no doubt as you say.”

He stood up again.

“Then I am more afraid.”

“Why?”

“His Lordship’s cloak was fastened at the throat by a big diamond brooch.”

The Minister turned with an exclamation towards Elliot.

“Is that true?”

“Yes,” Elliot returned. “His guardian, Lady Frances—so that he shouldn’t catch cold in the night air—yes, at the last moment, outside the door of her drawing-room, she took a big jewelled brooch from her breast and drew the cloak tight about his throat.”

“Madness!” cried Place.

“No one thought ...” Elliot began lamentably, but no one was listening.

“It may be that he has gone back to ‘The Golden Ox,’ ” Place continued with a wry smile. “For once his good manners may have failed him. You, Domenico, run to the Inn. Mr. Elliot, my carriage is waiting in the street at the back of this house. If you will honour me——”

He ran down the stairs with Elliot at his heels. They drove as fast as the loiterers would allow them, through this and that narrow passage. They broke out at last upon the open shore. The serenity of the moonlit bay appeased them both.

“All’s well, I am sure,” said Mr. Elliot.

In the windows of “The Golden Ox” the lights were golden.