Last Tales (11 page)

“Lady Flora was a strong and healthy woman, and had never in her life been hindered from an undertaking by ill health. But it so happened that on her first day in Rome she slipped on a marble stair of the palazzo on the Piazza del Popolo of which she had rented two floors, and sprained her ankle. For some time she had to keep to her sofa, and the doctor enjoined her to refrain from all excursions, even by coach. During these weeks Father Jacopo in spite of his many duties found time to visit her. And the thought of her filled his whole mind even when he did not see her.

“So here they sat, two human beings of unique honesty, both singularly free of ever having wronged a fellow-creature,
talking together. In one of them the uprightness and the blameless conduct had produced a sovereign arrogance, in the other an unconditional humility.

“Within the lofty
salon
they went over both the phenomena of earthly existence and the ideas of Paradise and Hell. Lady Flora was skilled in such debates, and was never at a loss for an answer, while on his side Father Jacopo was often struck dumb by her heart-rending irreverence. It seemed to him that were he to answer her at all he must shriek out loud, and he was only able to stifle the shriek by pressing his lips hard together. Neither would he let himself be driven by her to make the sign of the cross, and he therefore during their conversations sat with his hands firmly folded in the lap of his old soutane. But it happened that on his return to his own small room he crossed himself time after time, so vividly did he feel the presence of the demons evoked by her words; aye, it would seem to him that for hours he had conversed with Lucifer himself. In spite of all this, on the morrow he went back to the palazzo, meek as ever.

“In his heart Father Jacopo decided that the unequaled loneliness of the woman and her unequaled arrogance were one and the same mortal sin. For a long time he pondered in what way to encounter her, and he called himself an unworthy priest because he could not find a solution. He fasted and watched in the hope that he might thereby fortify his weak nature and hit upon the right spiritual weapon in their trial of strength. Empty and exhausted, upon his knees on the stone floor, he fought his battle for the woman who at that moment was supping on dainties and generous wine, or sleeping placidly behind the silken hangings of her four-poster.

“For a moment Father Jacopo imagined that Lady Flora’s inconceivable isolation in itself might be a road to salvation. What a hermitess of the desert, what a stylite, famous through the ages, might he not make of her! But he rejected the thought as a dangerous temptation. It was, he felt, at
once too easy and too bold. In his mind—for he was a man of vivid imagination—he saw the Scots noblewoman on top of her pillar, straight and colossal, never giddy, one with the marble on which she stood. From her altitude she would glance down at the men and women round the pillar’s foot, confirmed in her conviction of their pin-size, or she would gaze tranquilly skyward, at last confirmed in her conviction of the emptiness of the heavens. Terrible, terrible the hermitess with the gay, grim smile would be up there!

“ ‘Nay,’ Father Jacopo thought, ‘it is by the low, rough roads of humanity; it is by the streets, lanes and highways trudged by the feet of human beings that my high-flying lady must walk to Heaven.’

“So he spoke to her, first of all, of the oneness of all creation.

“ ‘I know,’ said the lady, ‘your evangelists of oneness will proclaim first of all that one must not be oneself. My own oneness is my integrity. I have not married, I have taken no lover; the idea of children repels me—all because I want to be one, and alone in my skin.’ ”

“ ‘I have not expressed myself well,’ said Father Jacopo, ‘I was thinking of the brotherhood of all human beings.’

“ ‘What!’ Lady Flora exclaimed, ‘are you, my good, pious Father Jacopo, in reality a Father Jacobino? Is it the maxim of
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité
—in the name of which the Government of France did so merrily play ball with the heads of my father’s good French friends—which you are preaching to me?’

“ ‘I know but little of politics,’ said Father Jacopo. ‘The equality of men of which I talk is the likeness of one man to the other—a family likeness, if you want, of which phenomenon you know more than I. We speak of one thing being like another without disparaging the integrity of either; nay, on the contrary, in doing so we acknowledge their essential difference, for nobody will compare two identical things. I do not comment on the likeness of one button of my cassock
to another, but I may well allow myself to hold forth on the likeness between the diamond in your ring, which measures not half an inch, and the clear star in the sky, which according to the astronomers is a sun, if not a whole solar system!

“ ‘This likeness between all things within creation does not, like the
egalité
of which you spoke, claim that they all be treated in the same way. For I cannot set the sun in your ring, and however rare and fine your diamond, it would not, if placed in the sky, shine far about. No, this equality of mine has no claims to make. But it yields proof that all things of this world are issued from one and the same workshop; it is in each thing the authentic signature of the Almighty. In this sense of the word, Milady, likeness is love. For we love that to which we bear a likeness, and we will become like to that which we love. Therefore, the beings of this world who decline to be like anything will efface the divine signature and so work out their own annihilation. In this way did God prove His love of mankind: that He let Himself be made in the likeness of men. For this reason it is wise and pious to call attention to likenesses, and Scripture itself will speak in parables, which means comparisons.’

“ ‘Yes, in pretty comparisons,’ said Lady Flora. ‘King Solomon, I have been taught, prophesies on the relation between Christ and His Church, and tells of the bride—who symbolizes the Church—that she is like a rose of Sharon, and then again that her teeth are like a flock of sheep about to lamb, whereof every one beareth twins, and that her belly is like a heap of wheat!’

“Father Jacopo folded his hands. ‘A rose of Sharon,’ he said. ‘Aye, and does not the rose clearly exhibit to our eyes the signature of the workshop from which she is issued? And does not the heap of wheat, too, exhibit it?’

“And as he realized to what extent his own soul was the lover of the woman’s soul, he added slowly, in a voice which trembled a little because he was clasping his hands so hard,
these lines from the Song of Songs: ‘Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm, for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love’—and for a moment he called to mind Lady Flora’s great wealth—‘it would utterly be contemned.’

“On another day he once more dwelled upon the idea of human fellowship and said: ‘The third article of our creed itself speaks of the Communion of Saints—’

“ ‘Thank you, I know it, I know it by heart,’ Lady Flora interrupted. ‘The Communion of Saints, the Resurrection of the body—’

“ ‘And the Life everlasting,’ Father Jacopo finished tranquilly. ‘Of the Communion of Saints because—amongst human beings—without communion no real sanctity will be obtained. A hand, a foot or an eye only gains the divine signature when integrated into a body. We are all branches on the same tree—’

“ ‘I have always liked trees,’ said Lady Flora, ‘and make no objection to talking about them. But I am a tree in myself, Father Jacopo, and no branch.’

“ ‘We are all,’ Father Jacopo continued, ‘limbs of the same Body.’

“ ‘Oh, do spare me, just for once, your limbs and bodies,’ Lady Flora exclaimed. ‘And do stick to botany, and to that heap of wheat of which the other day you talked so beautifully.’

“ ‘That is not possible,’ Father Jacopo declared with much force. ‘That the wheat is transformed into Body—in this lies the inmost mystery of our communion! You doubt,’ he went on, carried away by his theme, ‘that we be all one!—and yet you are aware that one is dead for us all!’

“ ‘Not for me,’ Lady Flora said briskly. ‘I beg to be excused! Never in my life have I asked any human being—much less any god—to die for me, and I must insist that my
own personal account be kept altogether outside this statement. A great deal of rubbish,’ she went on, ‘in the course of my life I have had foisted upon me—especially here in Italy—and have been paying for it too, in good sound sterling. But what I have neither ordered nor paid for I will not receive.’

“At that Father Jacopo realized that Lady Flora’s great sin was not that she ever refused to give—for more than anyone he was acquainted with her exceptional generosity and beneficence—but that she refused to receive, and he grew heavy at heart. He sat immovable and dumb for such a long time that in the end she turned round toward him in her chair.

“ ‘Alas, Lady Flora, my child,’ he at last said, ‘allow my frail reason time to comprehend the extent of your heroic unreason! I cannot at this moment, not tonight, speak to you of your relation to Heaven. I am an unworthy priest, and it appears as if Heaven will not employ me as its spokesman; when I make the attempt, it withdraws itself from me!

“ ‘But I am a man,’ he continued very slowly and in great agitation of mind, ‘let me speak to you of your relation to mankind.

“ ‘There are many things in life which a human being—and in particular a highly talented and privileged human being like you, my daughter—may attain by personal endeavor. But there exists a true humanity, which will ever remain a gift, and which is to be accepted by one human being as it is given to him by a fellow human. The one who gives has himself been a receiver. In this way, link by link, a chain is made from land to land and from generation to generation. Rank, wealth and nationality in this matter all go for nothing. The poor and downtrodden can hand over the gift to kings, and kings will pass it on to their favorites at Court or to an itinerant dancer in their city. The Negro slave may give it to the slave-owner or the slave-owner to the slave. Strange and wonderful it is to consider how in such
community we are bound to foreigners whom we have never seen and to dead men and women whose names we have never heard and shall never hear, more closely even than if we were all holding hands.’

“ ‘Bah, this is theology,’ said Lady Flora. ‘It is very amusing to discuss theology with you, Father Jacopo. But in my family we have always been practical people.’

“Father Jacopo now realized that he would never by words or arguments prevail against the obstinate lady. Yet here in Rome he was somewhat more hopeful than he had been in her villa in Tuscany. For as he walked about the old squares and streets and entered the churches—ever carrying her with him in his mind—he reflected that the Eternal City itself must possess the remedy against her ailment, and must itself know when and how to use it.

“One day Father Jacopo sat for a long time in the basilica of San Pietro. In here he felt that the dimensions of the mighty building, as if on their own and without our reflecting upon it, would swallow up and do away with all difference of size between human beings. And it came to him that this would be the right place to take Lady Flora.

“So as soon as her invalidism permitted, he asked her to visit San Pietro in his company.

“He had planned beforehand what round to make, and in what order to point out to his companion the treasure of the basilica. But he did not carry out his program.

“ ‘For as by the side of the lady I entered the church,’ he said as he told me his tale, ‘it seemed to me that I was seeing it with her own eyes! This was the very first time that its vault rose above me and that its walls embraced me. And my happiness at the idea that such glory was to be found on earth made me dumb.’

“Nor did Lady Flora speak. For more than three hours she dwelt in the church, and as very slowly she finished her round it seemed to Father Jacopo that her step grew lighter.

“In the end she stood still in front of the statue of St.
Peter himself, and for a long time remained standing before it. She paid no attention to the worshippers, who walked past her in order to kiss the foot of the figure. She raised her eyes to the head of the great Apostle, and for a while looked him gravely in the face. Thereupon she lowered her gaze to the hand of bronze, which holds the key of heaven, and to Father Jacopo it looked as if she compared it to her own, which was clutching the ivory handle of her parasol. The moment to her faithful friend was solemn and strangely joyful. His tongue was loosened, almost without knowing it he broke into the proclamation of the basilica itself: ‘
Tu es Petrus, et super banc petram œdificabo ecclesiam meam!’

“In the coach Lady Flora said, smiling: ‘Is that something great, now—to let oneself be crucified head downward? One would not be able to help laughing!’

“After this day San Pietro became the favorite goal for Lady Flora’s drives in Rome. Her coachman, when she had taken her seat in the carriage, without waiting for orders would steer his team toward the big square, and each time she terminated her walk in the church in front of St. Peter’s own figure.

“One early morning, while the church was still almost empty, Father Jacopo happened to enter it and to see Lady Flora standing, erect as ever, lost in contemplation of the statue. He did not approach, but silently observed the group which the two formed.

“ ‘Is the woman now,’ he asked himself, ‘for the first time in her life, filled with reverence and transported by the greatness of a human form? Her pride of birth is boundless,’ he further reflected, for through his noble penitents he was acquainted with aristocratic arrogance. ‘In disdain even of royal houses she reckons her ancestors, the Scots chieftains, back to heathen ages. Does she, now, dare to feel consanguinity with the fisherman from the lake of Genesareth?’ He could not tear himself from the sight of the immovable seated and the immovable standing figure. His thoughts ran
on, for he was, as I have already said, a man of intuition and imagination.