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Margarita's Soul: The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty, a novel by Josephine Daskam Bacon |
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Part Six. In Which You Are Shown The River's Very Sources, Far Underground - Chapter 22. Fate Laughs And Baits Her Hook |
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_ PART SIX. IN WHICH YOU ARE SHOWN THE RIVER'S VERY SOURCES, FAR UNDERGROUND CHAPTER XXII. FATE LAUGHS AND BAITS HER HOOK I find to my surprise that these rambling chapters, intended, in the first place, as a sort of study of Margarita's development under the shock of applied civilisation, have grown rather into a chronicle of family history, a detail of tiny intimate events and memories that must surely disappoint Dr. M----l, at whose urgent instance they were undertaken. Margarita was, indeed, at that time, a fit subject for the thoughtful scientist, and hardly one of her conversations with her friends but would serve as a text for some learned psychological dissertation. But it would have been hard, even for a stony savant, to dissect that adorable personality! The points that I had intended to discuss are lost, I find, in her smile; the interest of her relations with the world, as it burst upon her in all its complications and problems, a grown woman, but ignorant as a savage and innocent as a child, is as nothing beside the interest of her relations with us who formed for so long her little special world. However, I cannot offer my scientist nor his distinguished colleague, Professor J----s, a mere tangle of personal reminiscences, so I must try to recall, as accurately as may be, the circumstances of Margarita's introduction to orthodox Christianity. At Miss Jencks's earnest petition Roger, who had grown really attached--as had we all--to the good creature, had finally yielded and allowed her to impart the outline of the New Testament story to her charge. I found her later, a moist handkerchief crumpled in her hand and a tiny worn leather volume on her lap. "It didn't do, then?" I inquired sympathetically, for her plain, competent face was more disturbed by grief than I had ever seen it. "Mr. Jerrolds," she demanded seriously, "do you think she has a soul? Of course that is wrong," she added hastily, "and I should not say such a thing, but do you know she treats it just like any other story? It means nothing to her. She has no respect for the most sacred things, Mr. Jerrolds!" "But how could she have, dear Miss Jencks?" I urged gently. "They are not sacred to her, you must remember. She is what you would call a heathen, you know." Miss Jencks folded her handkerchief thoughtfully. "Yes, I know," she began, "but think, Mr. Jerrolds, think how gladly, how gratefully the heathen receive the Gospel! I shall never forget how the missionary described it that dined with the Governor-General once. It was in Lent, I remember, and the poor man regretted that it should be, he had eaten fish so steadily in the Islands! It was only necessary for him to tell the simple Gospel story, and it won them directly." I bowed silently--it was at once the least and the most that I could do. "And more than that, Mr. Jerrolds," the good woman continued, unburdening herself, clearly, of the results of many days of thought, "look at those wonderful conversions in the slums! Look what this Salvation Army is doing! The Governor-General used to say they were vulgar and that it was all claptrap, but that never seemed to me quite fair. We must have left something undone, we and the Dissenters, Mr. Jerrolds, if this General B----h can reach people we have lost. Isn't that so?" To this I agreed heartily, and after a moment she went on. "Why, the roughest, vilest men weep like children when they understand Our Lord's sacrifice, Mr. Jerrolds, and what it did for them, and surely if they, thieves and drunkards and--and worse, can be so touched, Mrs. Bradley...." "Perhaps," I suggested as gently as I could, "it is just because Mrs. Bradley is neither a thief nor a drunkard nor worse, dear Miss Jencks, that she does not feel the necessity for weeping. The emotionalism of the convert is a curious thing, and the sense of sin together with vague memories of that Story, connected with childhood and childhood's innocence, may produce a state of mind responsible for a great deal that we could hardly expect from Mrs. Bradley." "But we are all sinners, Mr. Jerrolds!" Again I bowed. "Surely you believe this, Mr. Jerrolds?" "I should not care for the task of convincing Mrs. Bradley of it," I replied dexterously. "That was the trouble," she admitted mournfully. "I told her about Adam and Eve, but she said that whatever they had done was no affair of hers, and it could not be wrong to eat apples, anyway, she told me, they were so good for the voice." I choked a little here. "She is very literal," I said hastily, "and the apple has symbolised discord in more than one mythology." "I showed her that beautiful picture of the Crucifixion," Miss Jencks added in a low, troubled voice, "and do you know, Mr. Jerrolds, she refused to look at it or hear about it as soon as she understood! She said it was an ugly story and the picture made her hands cold. She said it could do no good to kill anyone because she had done wrong. 'Religion is too bloody, Miss Jencks,' she said. 'I do not think I like it. If I were you I should try to forget it.' Isn't it terrible, Mr. Jerrolds?" Poor Barbara Jencks! You were an Englishwoman and it was twenty years ago! "Leave thou thy sister when she prays," says the poet, and with all due respect for his presumable nobility of intention, it is certainly the easiest course to pursue! I left Miss Jencks. She followed me a little later, however, and told me that she was not entirely without hopes, for Margarita had been greatly taken with the Revelation of St. John the Divine, and had committed to memory whole chapters of it, with incredible rapidity, saying that it would make beautiful music. That very evening she sang it to us, or rather, chanted it, striking chords of inexpressible dignity and beauty on the piano--the pure Gregorian--by way of accompaniment. It was impossible that she could have heard such chords, for she had never attended a church service in her life and such intervals formed no part of her vocal instruction. Afterward, I read Ecclesiastes to her, and she did the same thing with it, saying that it was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard--she did not care for Shakespeare, by the way, then or later. Tip Elder came to us for a week at that time, and the tears stood in the honest fellow's eyes as Margarita, her head thrown back, her own eyes fixed and sombre, her rich, heart-shaking voice vibrating like a tolling bell, sent out to us in her lovely, clear-cut enunciation the preacher's warning. Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not.... Oh, the poetry of it, the ageless beauty! Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken.... Her voice was grave, like a boy's, and yet how rich with subtle promises! It was mellow, like a woman's, but not mellow from bruising--the only way, Mme. M----i told me once. Those poor women! Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. I can see her now ... there are those, I know, who have guessed my poor secret, and who wonder that I do not "console myself," in the silly phrase of the day. How could I? The twitter of the Hawaiian girls is like that of the beach-birds in my ears, after that golden-ivory voice! It was in October, I think, that she began to grow restless. Roger was full of plans for the coming winter, and had even gone so far as to all but complete the formalities of renting a house in New York, when she startled us all by inquiring of me when I intended to start for Italy. "For I am coming with you," she concluded placidly. "I'm afraid not, cherie," said Roger, "I must get to work, you know. You can take lessons in New York, all you want." "But I do not care to go to New York," she returned quietly. "I like Paris better. I need not nurse the baby, now, and I can sing a great deal. Jerry can take me." "Mr. Bradley means he must be in New York to continue his professional career, dear Mrs. Bradley," Miss Jencks interposed, "and you must go with him, of course." "Why?" asked Margarita. "Because a wife's place is by her husband," said Miss Jencks, after a pause which neither Roger nor I volunteered to fill. "But why?" Margarita inquired again. "I cannot do Roger's pro--professional career!" "No, my dear, but you can help him greatly in it," Miss Jencks instructed placidly (she was invaluable, was Barbara, when it was a matter of proper platitude, which flowed from her lips with the ease of water from a tap--and she believed it, too!) "a man needs a woman in his home. Her influence--" "Yes, I know, you have told me that before. But you could stay with Roger, Miss Jencks, and be that influence," said Margarita sweetly, "and I could go with Jerry." Was she impish, or only ingenuous, I wonder? One could never tell. "How about the baby?" Roger demanded cheerfully. "I am not going to nurse it any more," said the mother of little Mary quietly. "Madame said I had better stop it now--it will be better for my voice. So it will not need me. Dolledge knows all about taking care of it." "But, my dear, are you sure it will be good for Mary not to nurse her? She is not six months old, you know," Miss Jencks suggested mildly. Margarita leaned her round chin into the cup of her hands and gazed thoughtfully at her mentor. "Then why do you not nurse her, dear Miss Jencks?" she asked. At this Roger and I left the room hastily. I am unable to state what the late directress of the Governor-General's family said or did! It was the next day, I remember, that I was called to New York on business connected with my mother's small affairs, and while there I was greatly surprised and not a little amused to receive a telegram from Roger asking me to engage passage for himself, Margarita, Miss Jencks, Dolledge and the baby, on my own boat, if possible, if not, to change my sailing to fit theirs. It is only fair to say that Sears, Bradley and Sears had recently become involved in a complicated lawsuit of international interests and importance, and Roger took some pains to inform me of the very handsome retaining-fee which his knowledge of the workings of English law combined with his proficiency in French quite justified him in accepting in consideration of his giving the greater part of his time to this case--a case almost certain to drag through the winter and require his presence in London and his constant correspondence with Paris. I received this information as gravely as he offered it, but, to use his own phrase, I reserved my decision as to whether the lack of that same international case would have kept the Bradley menage in New York. * * * * * I stayed in Paris long enough to see Margarita and wee Mary, with their respective guardians, installed comfortably and charmingly in the Rue Marboeuf, bade Roger god-speed across the Channel (I could tell from the set of his shoulders how he would plunge into the work there and how well-earned would be his flying trips Parisward!) and then struck south into Italy, bent on a private errand of my own. This was nothing less than the tracing, if possible, of Margarita's Italian ancestry, a mission, needless to say, laid upon me by no one, as she knew nothing of this and Roger, apparently, cared less. My reasons for undertaking this search, which I well knew might prove endless and was almost sure to be long, were a little obscure, even to myself, but I now believe them to have sprung principally from my smouldering rage against Sarah Bradley and her ugly insinuations--a subject I have not dwelt upon in this narrative. But I have thought much of it, and I believe now that my vow was registered from the hour of the finding of the dispatch box which solved one-half of the problem. Sue Paynter was of great assistance to me here, and by judicious questionings of Mother Bradley at the Convent and artless suggestions and allusions when with the other good nuns, to whom she was honestly attached and whom she often visited, she actually procured for me a few vague clues, breathless rumours of those tragedies that rear, now and then, their jagged, warning heads above the smooth pools of cloister life. News travels fast and far among those quiet retreats; some system of mysterious telegraphy links Rome and Quebec and New York, and it was not without the name of a tiny town or two tucked away in my mind and at least three noble families jotted down on the inside cover of my bank-book that I started on my wild-goose chase. They were, however, quite useless. Two of the noble families had held no greater sinner than a postulant whose ardour had cooled during her novitiate, and the third had paid for what was at best (or worst) a slight indiscretion with a broken spirit and rapidly failing health. It required no great exercise of detective powers to beg the genial little doctor of each tiny neighbourhood for Italian lessons and I learned more than his language from each. They were veritable hoards of gossip and information of all sorts, and my ever ready and unsuspected note-book held more than verb-contractions and strange vagaries of local idiom. It was from none of these, however, that I got my first clue, but from the boatman who took me out at sunset for the idle, lovely hour that I love best in Italy and which her name always brings before me. Rafaello was a big, burned creature, beautiful as Antinoeus and as simple and faithful as a dog. He took a huge delight in teaching me all the quaint terms of his fisher dialect, and many a deep argument have we held, I gazing into the burning sulphur of the clouds, he with mobile features flashing and classic brown fingers never still, while he expounded to me his strange, half pagan, half Christian fatalism. He was of the South, "well toward the Boot Heel, signore," but Love, the master mariner, had driven him out of his course and brought him within fifty miles of Rome to court a fickle beauty of the hills, whose brother had come down for the wood-cutting and was friendly to his suit. "These marsh people are a poor sort," said Rafaello contemptuously. "Not that I would take a wife from them, God forbid! Here they have great tracts, with buffalo and wild pig--yes, I have seen them myself, rooting through the wild oak--but have they the brains to invite the foreign signori to hunt there and earn fortunes by it? No. Have they even strength to cut their own timber? Again, no. They lie and shiver with malaria. Not that they are not a little better now," he admitted, shifting the sail so that we looked toward the headlands of Sardinia, a cloud of lateens drifting like gnats between, "now they are ploughing on the plains, the boats are out, the bullocks are busy, and the wind is putting a little strength into the poor creatures. I swear the best man among them is an old woman I took across in my felucca to pleasure my girl's brother--she tended him once when he chopped through his foot near her hut just on the edge of the hills. Seventy years, or nearly, and tough and wiry yet, and can help neatly with a boat. And money laid by, too, but is she idle? Never. She spins her hemp and weaves osiers into baskets and changes them for goats' hams. That with polenta keeps her all winter--and well, too. She is very close. The money, no one knows where it came from." Thus Rafaello babbled on, steering cleverly and suddenly into one of the vast, unhealthy lagoons that shelter so many of the winged winter visitors of Italy--visitors unrecorded in the hotels, unnoted by the guides, but of greater interest than many tourists. I, listening idly to him, caught my breath at the flight of flaming, rosy flamingoes that lighted inland, just beyond us, miracles of flower-like beauty. "From Egypt, excellenz': They are not due till November, but the winter will be cold and they started early. In March they will start back. Why? How should I know? Who sends the wild duck, for that matter? I have seen a half-mile of them at one flight bound for this place. It may be the good God warns them and they go." "It may be, Rafaello." "But then, excellenz', does he send the brown water-hens, too, and if so, why not tell them of the young nobleman whom I brought here to shoot only last week? Is it likely God did not know I would bring him? Of course not." "Perhaps they know, but must go, nevertheless," I ventured, and we were silent and thoughtful. Did they? Did they fly, helpless, to their death, bound by some fatal certainty? Was Alif right, and is it written for us all? "That young Roman was very generous," Rafaello resumed after a while. "A few more like him, and she will think twice before she refuses again. How I bear it, I can't tell. Pettish she is, certainly, but oh, signore, lovely, lovely, like un angiolin'! It was from a nobleman--a foreigner, anyway, I suppose it is all one--that old 'Cina got her money, Lippo thinks. He hunted, too, Lippo says, and 'Cina's brother waited on him--he came from these parts. He took her brother north with him afterward, and well he did, too, for not many good Catholics would help him in what he did, and that brother was wicked enough, I suppose. She has little enough religion herself, the old woman--they say her money is for making peace with the church. For when it comes to the last rattle in the throat, excellenz', the boldest is glad of a little help," said Rafaello knowingly. Night was on us now, and I, well knowing that the air was poisonous for me, could not bring myself to order the boat home. There, while Perseus burned above us and off toward Rome Orion hung steady as a lamp in a shrine, I lost myself in strange, deep thinking, and the marshes were the desert for me and Alif and Rafaello were the same, and I--who was I? What was I? "The signore sleeps?" the man inquired timidly. "I think it is not good to sleep here. Shall we go back?" "I'm not sleeping, Rafaello, but I suppose we'd better turn. I heard all you said. And what had this wicked foreigner done?" "He stole a nun out of a holy convent, excellenz'," said Rafaello in a low voice. I felt my heart jump. "Near here?" I asked, as carelessly as I could. "Oh, no, far away--I do not know. Nobody knows. It was only 'Cina and his sister came from here. Mother of God, does the signore think any woman born hereabouts would have blood enough for that? Look you, signore, she climbed down a tree and went with him in the night! A professed nun! Oh, no doubt she is burning now, that one! For no woman need take the veil, that is plain, but once taken, one is as good as married to God himself, and then to take a man after! Oh, no. She is certainly burning," concluded Rafaello with simple conviction. "But I thought you said she was alive and made baskets," I said, persistently stupid. "No, no, the signore misunderstands. That is 'Cina, who went with her when they sailed away, being sent for by her brother. The wicked one died, of course, and 'Cina came back with all the money. She nearly died, herself, on the great ship. She ate nothing--not a bite nor a scrap--for four days, she was so sick." "He was an Englishman, I suppose?" "No. From the signore's country. Not, of course, that they are all like that," Rafaello added politely, "but the truth must be told, he was." Now it was that my studies in Italian temperament came to my assistance quite as strongly as my knowledge of the rough fisher patois. The Italian must not be questioned nor know that anything of interest or importance hangs on his answer. Even as the Oriental he must be handled guilefully, and it was with a guileful yawn that I dismissed the subject. "It takes an Italian to believe that wild story, Rafaello," I said. "I'm afraid your old 'Cina was teasing Lippo. It all sounds fishy to me. Are we nearly in? I feel cold." "Indeed no, signore, it is the truth. (We shall be in in eight minutes by the signore's watch.) 'Cina will never again speak to an Englishman or--or one from the signore's country. It is a vow. She would die first. Lippo got a chance for her to stand at her spinning for a crazy Englishman to paint in a picture--good money for it, too!--and she spat in his face. Perhaps the signore will believe that?" Again I yawned. "Those stories mean nothing," I said, quivering with impatience. "They are but as old legends without names--and dates and places. Old women like 'Cina never can give those names and dates and places. They do not know if it was ten or twenty or fifty years ago, nor if the man were Austrian or English, or the woman Italian or French or Spanish. Pin them down, and they begin to make excuses. But I don't know why we discuss it--it is not very interesting, even if it is true. Nevertheless, and because you seem offended, Rafaello, and I merely want to show you that I am right, I will cheerfully give a good English sovereign to you or Lippo or the old woman herself, if she can so much as tell you the name of this famous nun and the name of her seducer. You will find she cannot, and then, since I am willing to wager something, you must take me for a fishing-trip free a whole day, in the felucca. Is it a bargain?" His teeth gleamed as he swore it was a bargain and I watched him bustle off from the quay with an excitement I had not felt since my recovery. What would he discover--for that he would discover something I did not doubt. What was Margarita's mother? Some fisher girl, whose father had won an English lady's-maid with his flashing smile? Some little shopkeeper's daughter? Child, perhaps, of some sprig of nobility, caught by a pair of cool, grey English eyes? I did not know, but I felt certain that the old 'Cina did. I cannot linger too long over this part of my story, drawn out already far beyond my idle scheme, and enough is said when I tell you that the name brought me by the childishly triumphant Rafaello opened my eyes and pursed my lips into an amazed whistle. Our little Margarita! Here was something to startle even steady old Roger. Only a few names in Italy are worthy to stand beside the splendid if impoverished House forced by pride to place its unwedded (because undowered) daughter in the convent that needs no dot. Obscure in financial realms alone, it required little search to put my finger on the epitaph of that brother of the cruel letter (a Cardinal before his death), on the father's pictured cruel face--he scorned to eat with the mushroom Romanoffs!--on the carved door-posts where Emperors had entered in the great Italian days, even on the gorgeous sculptured mantel-piece sold by Margarita's grandfather, an impetuous younger brother at the time of his mad marriage with an English beauty, whirled from the stage, whose brightest ornament contemporary record believed she was destined to become, had he not literally carried her, panting, from the scene of her first triumph. Some idea of the relentless iron hands that tamed that brilliant, baffled creature--and hers was the only strain in Margarita that genius need be called on to vindicate!--I won from the old caretaker, a family retainer, who showed me, on a proper day, over the gloomy, faded glories of the musty palace. She was always heretic at heart, the old gossip mumbled, with furtive glances from my gold piece to the pictured lords above her, as if afraid they would revenge themselves for this tittle-tattle, heretic and light. A servant or a duke, a flower-seller or His Eminence, all was one to her crazy English notions. And the truth--how the mad creature told it! Blurted it out to everyone, so that they had to keep her shut up, finally. And would have her dogs about her--eating like Christians! And no money, when all was said. Her children? Four sons, all dead now, and their souls with Christ--one, of the Sacred College. Never a generation without the red hat, thank God. No daughters. Not so much as one? Why should there be? Some were spared daughters, when there was no money, and a blessing, too. What figure had been cut from that group of four youths, cut so that a small hand that grasped a cup-and-ball showed plainly against one brother's sleeve? She did not know--how should she? Perhaps a cousin. It was painted by a famous Englishman and kept because it might bring money some day. Then why cut it? How should she know? There were no daughters and the hour was up. Would the signore follow her? And Sarah was alarmed for the Bradley blood! Sarah feared for the pollution of that sacred fluid derived from English yeomen (at best), filtered through the middle-class expatriates of a nation itself hopelessly middle class beside the pure strain of a race of kings that was old and majestically forgotten ere Romulus was dreamed of! Back, back through those mysterious Etruscans, back to the very gods themselves, an absolutely unbroken line, stretched the forefathers of Margarita. Long before Bethlehem meant more than any other obscure village, long before its Mystic Babe began there his Stations of the Cross and brought to an end at Calvary the sacrifice that sent his agents overseas to civilise the savage Britons and make those middle-class yeomen possible, Margarita's ancestors had forgotten more gods than these agents displaced and had long ceased their own bloody and nameless sacrifices to an elder Jupiter than ever Paul knew. Etruscan galleys swarmed the sea, Etruscan bronze and gold were weaving into lovely lines, Etruscan bowls were lifted to luxurious and lovely lips at sumptuous feasts, in a gorgeous ritual, before the natives of a certain foggy island had advanced to blue-woad decoration! Her people's tombs lie calm and contemptuous under the loose, friable soil of that tragic land that has suffered Roman, Persian and Goth alike (wilt thou ever rise up again, O Mater Dolorosa? Is the circle nearly complete? Would that I might see thee in the rising!) they lie, too, under the angular and reclining forms of many a British spinster tourist, panoplied in Baedeker and stout-soled boots, large of tooth and long of limb, eating her sandwiches over the cool and placid vaults where the stone seats and biers, the black and red pottery, the inimitable golden jewelry, the casques and shields of gold, the ivory and enamel, the amber and the amulets, lie waiting the inevitable Teutonic antiquary. The very ashes of the great Lucomo prince and chieftain lying below this worthy if somewhat unseductive female would fade in horror away into the air, if one of his gods, Vertumnus, perhaps, or one of the blessed Dioscuri, should offer him such a companion or hint to him that the creature was of the same species as the round-breasted lovelinesses that sport upon the frescoes of his tomb, among the lotus flowers. Poor Sarah--I can forgive her when I consider the pathos of her. _ |
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