As We Forgive Them. Le Queux William

with me up to the old city of Lucca, which, travelling by way of Pistoja, we reached about two o’clock in the afternoon.

      At the Universo I was given that enormous bedroom with the wonderful frescoes which was for so long occupied by Ruskin, and just before the Ave Maria clanged away over the hills and plains, I parted from Babbo and strolled tourist-wise into the magnificent old mediaeval church, the darkness of which was illuminated only by the candles burning at the side altars and the cluster before the statue of Our Lady.

      Vespers were in progress, and the deathlike stillness of the great interior was only broken by the low murmuring of the bowed priest.

      Only about a dozen persons were present, all of them being women – all save one, a man who, standing back in the shadow behind one of the huge circular columns, was waiting there in patience, while of the others all were kneeling.

      Turning suddenly on hearing my light footstep upon the marble flags, I met him next second face to face.

      I drew a quick breath, then stood rooted to the spot in blank and utter amazement.

      The mystery was far greater than even I had imagined it to be. The truth that dawned upon me was staggering and utterly bewildering.

      Chapter Eight

      In which the Truth is Spoken

      The fine old church, with its heavy gildings, its tawdry altars and its magnificent frescoes, was in such gloom that at first, on entering from the street, I could distinguish nothing plainly, but as soon as my eyes became accustomed to the light I saw within a few yards of me a countenance that was distinctly familiar, a face that caused me to pause in anxious breathlessness.

      Standing there, behind those scattered kneeling women, with the faint, flickering light of the altar candles illuminating his face just sufficiently, the man’s head was bowed in reverence and yet his dark, beady eyes seemed darting everywhere. By his features – those hard, rather sinister features and greyish scraggy beard that I had once before seen – I knew that he was the man who had made the secret appointment with Burton Blair, yet, contrary to my expectations, he was attired in the rough brown habit and rope girdle of a Capuchin lay brother, a silent, mournful figure as he stood with folded arms while the priest in his gorgeous vestments mumbled the prayers.

      In that twilight a sepulchral chill fell upon my shoulders; the sweet smell of the incense in the darkness seemed to increase with that world of incredible magnificence, of solitude gloomily enchanted, of wealth strangely incongruous with the squalor and poverty in the piazza outside. Beyond that silent monk whose piercing mysterious eyes were fixed upon me so inquiringly were dark receding distances, traversed here and there by rainbow beams that fell from some great window, while far off a dim red light was suspended from the high, vaulted roof.

      Those columns beside which I was standing rose straight to the roof, close and thick like high forest trees, testifying to the patient work of a whole generation of men all carved in living stone, all infinitely durable in spite of such rare delicacy and already transmitted to us from afar through the long-past centuries.

      The monk, that man whose bearded face I had seen once before in England, had thrown himself upon his knees, and was mumbling to himself and fingering the huge rosary suspended from his girdle.

      A woman dressed in black with the black santuzza of the Lucchesi over her head had entered noiselessly, and was prostrated a few feet from me. She held a miserable baby at her breast, a child but a few months old, in whose shrivelled little face there was already the stamp of death. She was praying ardently for him, as the tapers gradually diminished, the penny tapers she had placed before the humble picture of Sant’ Antonio, this sorrowing creature. The contrast between the prodigious wealth around and the rags of the humble supplicant was overwhelming and cruel; between the persistent durability of those many thousand Saints draped in gold, and the frailty of that little being with no to-morrow.

      The woman was still kneeling, her lips moving in obstinate and vain repetitions. She looked at me, her eyes full of desolation, divining a pity no doubt in mine; then she turned her gaze upon the hooded Capuchin, the hard-faced, bearded man who held the key to the secret of Burton Blair.

      I stood behind the ponderous column, bowed but watchful. The poor woman, after a quick glance at the splendour around, turned her eyes more anxiously upon me – a stranger. Did I really think they would listen to her, those magnificent divinities?

      Ah! I did not know if they would listen. In her place I would rather have carried the child to one of those wayside shrines where the Virgin of the contadini reigns. The Madonnas and Saints of Ghirlandajo and Civitali and Della Querica who inhabited that magnificent old church seemed somehow to be creatures of ceremony, hardened by secular pomp. Strange as it may seem, I could not imagine that they would occupy themselves with a poor old woman from the olive mill or with her deformed and dying child.

      Vespers ended. The dark, murmuring figures rose, shuffling away over the marble floor towards the door, and as the lights were quickly extinguished, the woman and her child became swallowed up in the gloom.

      I loitered, desiring that the Capuchin should pass me, in order that I could obtain a further view of him. Should I address him, or should I remain silent and set Babbo to watch him?