Part 36

Dunoisse had long joined the ranks of the deniers. He had determined that for him yonder shining, jeweled tabernacle should thenceforth house no Unspeakable Mystery, shelter no Heavenly Guest. Nothing beyond an amiable superstition, an innocent, exquisite myth, embodying a profound religious truth for two hundred and sixty millions of Christians; modified or rejected by the Lutheran, Reformed, and Presbyterian Churches; ignored by Confucianist, Taoist, and Buddhist, abhorred by the Hindu, the Mohammedan, and the Jew, should henceforth be enshrined there. He had come to the conclusion that it was better so.

The light of faith had been quenched in the man’s heart by his own deliberate act of will. He had said to his soul, unwitting that he had thus spoken:

“If I believed, could I continue to live as I am doing, storing up sharp retribution, dreadful expiation, inconceivable anguish for the world to come? Not so! Therefore I will forget such words as Death and Judgment. For these poignant, embittered, passing joys, I am content to barter the hope of eternal bliss.”

And yet, upon those rare occasions when, as now, Dunoisse found himself in the House of his Maker, the still air, fragrant with the incense of the most recent Sacrifice, oppressed him, and the very silence seemed eloquent as a voice of Divine reproach....

For you may slough your skin of State-patronized, easy-going Protestantism as easily as you can change your political convictions, and presently, with Modern Buddhism, or Spiritualism, or Platonism, Christian Science, Agnosticism, Mormonism, or Hedonism, be covered and clad anew, but Catholicism penetrates the bones, and permeates the very marrow. You cannot pluck that forth; it is rooted in the fibers of the soul.

* * * * *

Dunoisse followed his Fate up the great echoing nave of the Cathedral, ushered by the gyrating von Steyregg. Penitents of both sexes, waiting their turn in lengthy rows outside the occupied confessionals, glanced up from their beads, as, in a whisper that rattled amidst the carved rafters of the lofty roof, the agent announced:

“Here lie Your Serene Highness’s illustrious forefathers!” And ostentatiously dried his sympathetic tear with a vast flapping handkerchief of Isabella hue.

Certainly the sacred fane was populous with departed von Widinitz, from Albertus I., First of the Line, and his spouse, the chaste Philippina; to Ludovicus, the latest departed, whose Bathildis had predeceased him by a generation or two.

You saw them represented from life-size to the quarter-bust, in brass, bronze, lead, marble, porphyry, granite, alabaster--every conceivable medium known to sepulchral Art. And to Dunoisse’s peculiar torment, those tricksy sprites, von Steyregg and Köhler, united in discovering between the cast or sculptured countenances of these worthies and the moody visage of their harassed descendant resemblances of the striking kind. To hear the knaves appeal to one another--warrant, justify, and approve the claim of a thirteenth-century nose to its modern reproduction--to witness them scouring aisles or rummaging chapels in full cry after a chin, or mouth, or ear, or forehead; to see them run the elusive feature from metal or stone to living earth; and congratulate one another on the fortunate issue of the chase; would have provoked a smile on the countenance of a Trappist. Their sacrifice laughed even whilst he writhed.

The ceremony of leaving cards upon the Archbishop of Widinitz followed. A trap-mouthed, blue-shaven ecclesiastic of the humbler sort, who wore a bunch of keys at the girdle of his well-darned cassock, opened the oaken, iron-studded door, and took the proffered oblongs of pasteboard without enthusiasm, intimating that His Lordship did not receive strangers upon days of solemn retreat. With this janitor von Steyregg parleyed vainly, maintaining a brisk exchange of arguments at the top of the Palace doorsteps, whilst his principals waited at the bottom in the yellow barouche.

A sportive Fate at this juncture breaks the thread of the narrative with a Pantomime Interlude. For as, more in sorrow than in anger at the obstinacy of the janitor, the Baron shook off his tear upon the inhospitable threshold, and turned upon his heel--a little white-headed, berry-brown urchin--a bare-legged messenger, arrayed in a tattered shirt and the upper half of a pair of adult breeches, carrying a reed-basket in which reposed a fine, fat, silvery trout, newly-caught and tempting,--dived between the legs that so strikingly resembled balusters, and dodged into the Palace with a flourish of dirty heels.

If a portly Magyar of noble rank, in the act of rolling down a steepish flight of limestone steps, could possibly be regarded as a mirth-provoking object, one might be tempted to smile as von Steyregg, recording each revolution upon his person with grievous bumps and bruises, performed the horizontal descent. Henriette screamed, Köhler beat his bosom, the tag-rag and bobtail roared with glee, while Dunoisse, compelled to share in their amusement despite the sickness at his heart, jumped out of the carriage and picked up the groaning Baron, restored him his battered curly-brimmed hat, the comb, hairbrush, and piece of soap which had escaped from his coat-tails in the course of transit, thrust him into the vehicle, and bade the coachman return to “The Three Crowns.”

LVIII

What the Father Economus said when he found the grocer’s billet under the red-spotted trout we may not hear. How the Archbishop received the warning must be equally a matter of conjecture. Hasten on to the smarting conclusion of the Day of Disgrace that dawned so fairly, that shone so brightly, that promised such a harvest to those who failed to mark how upon the southwest horizon huge formless ramparts of blue black cumuli were steadily building, while faint mutterings of distant thunder presaged the breaking of the storm....

The four adventurers had supped together upon the best the inn could furnish. Now, seated at ease about the relics of the banquet, in the dining-room of the private suite occupied by His Serene Highness and Her Excellency, they discussed the Plan of Campaign. Fragrant vapors of choicest Habanas enhaloed them, by permission of Her Excellency, who held between her exquisite lips a Turkish cigarette. And as they smoked and talked, the contents of a capacious China Bowl of Maraschino Punch (compounded by Köhler, who was a clever hand at such delicious chemistry) sank lower, inch by inch....

You may picture Steyregg, revived by much food and a great deal of liquor; his cuts and scratches plastered with diachylum, the Alpine summit of his bald occiput adorned by a compassionate chambermaid with patches of brown-paper steeped in vinegar, retained in place by a linen bandage of turban-shape, reading from a folio sheet of coarsely printed rag-paper, blackened with ancient Gothic capitals (and filched from where it had fluttered, held by a pin, upon one of the notice-boards exposed in the porch of the Cathedral), the Programme for the following day.

“We begin,” he boomed, after much preliminary throat-scraping, “by Your Serene Highness’s permission--if the Herr Attorney-Oath-Commissioner will snuff the candles I shall be able to see better!--we begin with Deputations from the various Trades-bands and Companies of Handi-craftsmen carrying banners.... Follow....”

The gross man expanded his chest, and rolled out:

“The Charity-Children of both sexes, the boys carrying green branches, the girls bouquets of flowers. Succeed....

“Confraternities of Sodalists, male and female, headed by Persons on Horseback in Roman and Silesian costumes, representing St. Lawrence with his gridiron and St. Hyacinth with his ax.

“A triumphal Car, with a Tableau of St. Helena in Roman Imperial Habit, instructing St. Macarius, Bishop of Jerusalem, where to Dig for the Relic of the True Cross....

“The Four Mendicant Orders of Religious of both sexes, with tapers.

“The Boys of the Dominican Orphanage bearing tapers.

“The Girls of the Carmelite School strewing flowers.

“The Image of Our Lady of the Assumption, attended by Sisters of the Order of the Immaculate Heart.”

Dunoisse started in his chair. A burning heat raced through him, and yet he shivered, oppressed by a deadly sickness of the soul.

“The Secular Clergy,” read von Steyregg, and cleared his throat. “The Archbishop and Chapter. The Sacred Canopy, borne by six Noble Officers of the Garrison in Full Uniform.”...

Dunoisse, with an ashen face, rose up at the foot of the table.... It had been revealed to him as by a lightning-flash, over what a bottomless abyss he hung.... Henriette appeared to notice nothing.... von Steyregg pursued:

“In this unhappy document, Madame, I have suggested an alteration. As here provided, the Mayor and Corporation, the Garrison--in uniform of review--with the towns-people, peasants, children, and beggars were to have brought up the rear of the procession. But my amendment (forwarded in writing to the Archbishop, since that prelate has rudely closed his doors against us), is, that His Lordship and the Chapter should be followed by--grant but a moment!--I will set it down....”

He sucked a black-lead pencil, scrawled on the wide margin of the official programme, and read as he scrawled:

“His Serene Highness, Hector-Marie-Aymont, Prince-Aspirant of Widinitz, carrying a taper, and attended by the _Wohlgeboren_ Herr Attorney-and-Oath-Commissioner Ottilus Köhler, and the _Hochwohlgeboren_ Herr Baron, Rodobald Siegfridus Theodore von Steyregg, Knight of the Most Pious Order of Saint Emmerich.” He added, blowing like a seal, and mopping his great moist countenance with a crumpled table-napkin:

“Take the word of a Magyar nobleman, Your Serenity, that taper of yours will have cooked the Regent Luitpold’s goose for him, all being said and done!”

But His Serene Highness, who had dropped heavily back into the chair, was leaning upon his folded arms, staring with an air of deep abstraction at the polished surface of the dessert-covered mahogany, and might have heard or not.

“Dull dog that you are, my Prince!” said von Steyregg mentally, “this charming Eve of yours is worth a million of you. Were she Princess-Aspirant of this phlegmatic State, it would be a hop, skip and jump into the saddle. With you, had you not a Steyregg at your elbow--_Ps’sst!_--the whole adventure would fizzle off like a damp squib--I would bet my head on it! Now, what picture you are gaping at--with your eyes fixed and your jaw dropping--I would give this glass of punch to know.”

He tossed it off with a flourish and a wink at his rat-faced confederate. The flourish, the wink, were lost upon Dunoisse.

* * * * *

For as a hanging man may see, in the last struggles of asphyxia, the dreadful details of the crime that led to his execution limned in lifelike action and color on the swirling fire-shot blackness, so rose before the mental vision of the son of Marie-Bathilde a picture of the Cathedral, with the great procession of the morrow--headed by the white-robed bearer of the Crucifix, amidst wafts of incense and intoned Litanies, rolling down the nave of the Cathedral and out through its west door upon the streets.

Ah! was Henriette deaf, that she did not hear the chanting voices, and the slow, measured tread of the lay folk, and religious, and the pattering footsteps of the children, as, with reverent demeanor and hushed, rapt faces they moved before or followed the image of the Mother of God?

Did she not see the Canopy of wrought cloth-of-gold, adorned with tassels of pearls, fringed with innumerable little golden bells that tinkled as its bearers bore it onwards? Was she blind to the Figure that stumbled along in its shelter, robed in white linen, bloodstained and torn and dusty, bending almost double under a Cross of roughly-shaped timbers, and wearing a Crown of Thorns?...

The haggard black eyes sought hers in desperate interrogation. But Henriette was dreamily playing with a silver fruit-knife as she listened to von Steyregg. Her own eyes were hidden under their long lashes; her face told no tale, as the intolerable voice of the agent trumpeted:

“As regards a favorable answer from this arrogant prelate, Your Excellency, I will guarantee it within the hour--or two--having, in His Serene Highness’s name, as his business-representative, undertaken that compliance with his desires will be made profitable in the pecuniary sense by a donation of One Thousand Thalers to the Restoration Fund of the Cathedral. Ahem!”

He winked his left eye, which the sliding turban threatened to extinguish, folded up the official programme and threw it on the table, saying:

“This reading dries the throat consumedly. With Her Highness’s--I mean with Madame’s permission, I will take another drop of punch!”

He filled a bumper and proposed a toast: “To the Success of The Adventure!”

Köhler drank the sentiment with enthusiasm. Henriette sipped, smiling at her moody lover, who pushed his glass away. And a resonant, cultured voice said from the doorway:

“Permit me to beg pardon of the company for having entered unannounced!”

The heads of the adventurers turned as by a single impulse. The landlord, who had knocked unheard, and ushered in a stranger under cover of the toast-drinking, was seen to be posed, in an attitude of rigid respect, beyond the threshold. The person who had spoken, a short priest with singularly bright gray eyes shining out of a pale, thin-featured face;--who was wrapped, despite the sultry heat of August, in a voluminous and shabby black cloak, and did not seem at all embarrassed,--was standing just within the door.

He said, and the great volume of his voice seemed to fill the room and flow outwards through the French windows that opened upon a stone balcony overhanging the Market Place:

“May it be understood that I am here as the mouthpiece of the Archbishop of Widinitz?... May I presume that I shall be patiently listened to?... I will be as brief as is compatible with clearness. Pray remain seated, all of you. No, sir, I am obliged!...”

For Henriette had risen languidly and curtsied deeply. Von Steyregg had hoisted himself to those baluster-shaped legs of his. Köhler had got up with his mouth full of almonds and raisins: and Dunoisse, with the polished grace that distinguished him, was offering the little priest his chair.

The ecclesiastic scanned the dark, handsome face and the soldierly, muscular, supple figure with a degree of kindliness. He said, as he waved the offered seat away:

“What I have to say, Colonel Dunoisse, will be best said standing. Your intention to visit this town was not previously notified to the Archbishop. He was not consulted in the matter of your intentions and views. Otherwise you might have been spared the commission of a grievous error, which cannot but create antagonism, prejudice, and contempt in the minds of those whom you would most desire to ingratiate----”

He broke off, for von Steyregg smote upon the table, and bellowed, while the decanters and glasses jingled, peaches hopped from the center dish, and the thumper’s turban fell off and rolled under the board:

“‘Contempt,’ sir, is not a word to be used in connection with His Serene Highness. I, Rodobald von Steyregg, Baron and Knight of the Sublime Order of St. Emmerich, protest against its use!”

Having protested, Steyregg dived for his turban, replaced it on his head, and snorted defiance. The small pale priest regarded him with a faint, lurking smile, and said calmly:

“Sir, the Archbishop received a letter from you this evening. I am charged with the answer to the document herewith.”

He turned to Dunoisse and continued:

“Colonel Dunoisse, the fact of your near alliance by blood with the reigning House of Widinitz is incontestable and undeniable. Did not the Salic law obtain in this principality, upon you would undoubtedly devolve the Hereditary Crown.”

His great voice seemed to be a palpable presence in the room. While he spoke, not by any means at the full pitch of it, the wires of a spinet that stood against the wall vibrated audibly; and the crystal pendants on the chandeliers and mantel-vases tinkled with a gentle musical sound. While another sound, of which Dunoisse had been faintly conscious for some time, and which might have been the muttering of distant thunder; or the humming of innumerable bees; or the purring of a cat of Brobdingnagian proportions, was stilled as though the unknown forces that combined to cause it had caught an echo of the powerful tones, and held their peace to listen.

As the priest went on:

“Undoubtedly, but the fundamental law as it stands strictly excludes the female line and the males derived from it. And were it possible to change this law, even at the eleventh hour, I am deputed to say to you that the procedure would be strenuously opposed _by the person who would in that event stand as the direct dynastic successor to the hereditary authority_!”

“My mother!”

Dunoisse, through whom the words had darted with a shock and thrill resembling the discharge from an electric battery, thrust from him the chair on which he had hitherto indifferently leaned, and turned upon the speaker a face that had suddenly grown sharp and pinched, saying in a voice that was curiously flat and toneless:

“You are in communication with my mother, sir? You have been deputed by her to say this to me?”

The priest bowed assent, and continued calmly:

“For, though it be true that the Almighty, in His Infinite wisdom, has chastened us Catholics of Widinitz by placing over us a sovereign of the Reformed Faith; and, though we cannot but deplore the rigor with which the Regent has treated certain communities of religious hitherto resident in the principality; we are bound to own that in other respects we have been treated with clemency and justice. In addition, the domestic life of our Regent is free from scandal....”

Dunoisse’s ears burned like fire. The little priest’s great voice went on:

“We recognize in His Serene Highness a chaste spouse, a wise father, a prudent governor. How ill-advised should we be to prefer to a ruler such as this a bad Catholic, an individual whose personal history affords a lamentable example of ungoverned passions; who, dead to all sense of shame, blazons his infamy before the eyes of the conscientious and the decent----”

Dunoisse interrupted, saying with stiff lips:

“May I take it that these personalities are leveled at myself?”

The little priest returned, with extraordinarily quiet dignity:

“The rebuke, Colonel Dunoisse, is meant for you. I do not deal in personalities.”

He added, in a voice that sent keen, icy thrills coursing down the spines of his listeners:

“The Archbishop replies to the proposal contained in your agent’s letter emphatically in the negative. He says to you, Colonel Dunoisse, with the voice that speaks to you now: ‘You have offered us a price in money for the privilege of participating in the morrows procession. You have not scrupled to present yourself as a partaker in the solemnities of our Blessed Lady’s Festival. You shrink not at the thought of approaching Him Who is borne beneath the Sacred Canopy, unconfessed, unabsolved--in a state of deadly sin. Shameless, unabashed, you would display yourself to the scandal of Christ’s servants, accompanied by the partner of your lamentable errors--with your acknowledged mistress, the unfaithful wife of another, flaunting by your side!”

Henriette, pale as death, leaped up from her seat as a woman might who had swallowed some deadly alkaloid. Dumbly, as though the poison veritably stiffened her muscles, she writhed, fighting for speech--wrenching at the velvet ribbon that confined her swelling throat.

“You!--you!--you hear these insults?” she at last stammered, pointing a quivering hand at Dunoisse, whom the words seemed to have deprived of the powers of speech and motion. “Are you deaf, sir, that such things are spoken, and you stand there silent as one of those statues in the Cathedral? Are you dumb or paralyzed that you do not order this man to leave my presence? Cannot you see,” she raved, “that this is no messenger from the Archbishop? Some fanatical priest,--some presumptuous secretary,--has dared--has----! Just Heaven!--if my husband had been here, he would have thrown the creature from the room!”

But Dunoisse remained speechless and frozen, under the fiery torrent of her upbraidings. It was von Steyregg who, in absence of any demonstration from his principal, seized his opportunity to be effective and picturesque. He strode haughtily to the door, and, opening it, turned with majesty to the intruder, trumpeting:

“With your person, sir, respecting your cloth as I abhor your sentiments, I will not soil my fingers. But unless you instantly remove yourself from these apartments, private to His Serene Highness and Her Excellency, I will--I will ring for the landlord and have you carried out and put upon the street!”

“That could hardly be,” said the little gray priest mildly, “for I am the Archbishop of Widinitz....”

He showed one lean finger outside the folds of the shabby cloak. Upon the digit a great sapphire gleamed darkly.... And a silence of unspeakable consternation fell upon the conspirators, that was suddenly broken by a half-brick, deftly thrown, that crashed through a pane of one of the French windows, shivered a crystal chandelier full of twinkling wax-lights that hung above the supper-table; and plopped into the punch-bowl, dispersing shivers of Oriental ware and gouts of fragrant liquor into every corner of the room....

LIX

The crash broke the spell that clogged Dunoisse’s faculties. He cried out in savage anger, and tore open the swinging, splintered window, and dashed out upon the balcony, stopping short in sheer astonishment at the spectacle he beheld below.

For the vast white square of the Market Place, that was centered by four crystal, springing fountains, and backed by an August sunset of pale green and clear rose and glorious flaming orange-red, was full of heads of women and men, some bare, some covered, so closely packed that an acrobat might have walked on them without leaping a single gap. And the faces belonging to those Teutonic heads and the vari-colored glittering eyes enameled in all the faces, were intent upon the room to which belonged the window with the shattered pane. And at the sight of Dunoisse the vast assembly sent out its breath as at a single hissing expiration:

_“S’s ss!”_

Beyond that, nothing more. But the very restraint of the vast crowd was worse than sinister. Plainly these lumpish Teutons were not there to waste valuable time in threats. Their silence menaced and appalled beyond all Gallic yells and execrations. And as Dunoisse stood speechless, staring down into all those tigerish eyes, a strong thin hand gripped his shoulder, and the Archbishop’s voice said in his ear:

“You witness the terrible effect of your own insane rashness--the sacrilegious presumption of your agents...! Present yourself upon the streets to-morrow--attempt to join in the procession--and the people will tear you to shreds! Be silent! I will speak to them!”

He plucked Dunoisse back into the room with one imperative hand, unhooking the shabby black cloak with the other. He shook it deftly from his shoulders, removed his soft felt hat, threw it aside, and stepped out upon the balcony, revealed as a small slight figure in a worn black cassock, red-piped, red-buttoned, and sashed, his high-domed baldish head covered with a purple skull-cap, the sacred symbol hanging by its golden chain upon his breast. And at the sight of him a change came over all those waiting faces, and a feline purr of satisfaction came from the great crowd.

The Archbishop said, in a mild and gentle tone, addressing the assemblage: