Part 4

“Ah well,” said Cooksey, and he didn’t laugh. I was so frankly surprised that my jaw dropped, as people say; I blushed hotly--there yawned between us a pause. “On that subject,” said Cooksey, “I’m afraid we must agree to differ. I happen to hold another view of the force of devotion.” He stared with fixed eyes, munching slowly. I never was more taken aback, and I was young enough to feel a burning shame of my blunder. It seemed so awkward, so gawky of me to have offended in that way; a civilized human being doesn’t jar the harmony of a circle in an amusing old eating-house by the Cancelleria--he is sensitive to the tone of the place. So Cooksey had it all his own way, and I sank in shame. He didn’t let me off, not a tittle; he heavily maintained his stare and his silence. It spoilt the rest of the evening for me, it soured the wine of Velletri; though Cooksey, when he had deliberately finished his gesture of disapproval, agreed to pretend that nothing had happened, changed the subject and talked about the excavations on the Palatine. Before long he was merrily continuing the story of his day, part of which he had spent with a German archeologist in the House of Augustus; he told us how his ill-luck had pursued him still, how he had accidentally sat on the camera of the German and reduced it to powder; he ignored the black hole I had made in the talk and turned his back on it. But there it was, and I couldn’t forget it; my clumsiness fretted me.

Cooksey had it all his own way at the time, but I reacted afterwards and I didn’t fail to perceive that he had treated me unfairly. I was hot with indignation, and it was long before I felt any kindness in return for not a little on his part towards me. He was friendly, he was helpful; it was assumed that we “agreed to differ” upon certain subjects, and on that footing he gave me his protection. And I am sure I don’t now grudge him the fun of his severity when I tried in my presumption, that first evening, to take a hand in his game. It was _his_ game, and I couldn’t expect him to admit an outsider like me; it was mine to look on, a home-bred novice, and be a trifle fluttered and shocked. Deering, I observed, was highly amused at my discomfiture; he sat a little apart, looking pale and penetrating by contrast with Cooksey’s red breadth and weight, and he watched us with a charming sneer that was lost upon Cooksey, not upon me. He enjoyed the sight of my indoctrination, my collision with this new little bit of the world of Rome. If he couldn’t show me a cardinal he could produce an associate of cardinals--or at any rate a man who had chased Monsignor Mair with a mop on the backstairs of the Vatican, which was surely as good. Already I had the means of correcting my fancy about the palace of the Cancelleria--another illusion dispelled! Ascetic faces, solitary study, proud aloofness indeed! Cooksey’s pranks and rogueries told a different story; the guarded fortress of distinction that I had imagined--I had now an inkling of its tone, in Deering’s opinion.

I don’t know about that; but Cooksey was undoubtedly a queer novel case for my attention. He was showing off, it was clear; he was flourishing his levity at an outsider; and his unexpected slap at my intrusion, when you think of it, was extremely enlightening. He did so enjoy, you see, his place as a member of the ring, inside the fortress; years had not withered the freshness of it, had not staled the complacency of his position. “Look at me, look,” he seemed to say, like a child who has climbed a tree and balances on a branch; and then “look again,” like a man walking familiarly on the terrace of a great grand house, while a party of sightseers are marshalled by the butler. “See how easily we carry our high estate--don’t you wish you were one of us, sharing the fun?” And then, if you venture to presume, “Ah, _would_ you? No you don’t--take _that_!” If you ever were the guest of the grand house and happened to be pacing the terrace, carelessly, while the public were shuffling through the state apartments and looking out of the windows, you would sympathize completely with the mind of Cooksey. I can imagine the sensation--who has not admired the nonchalant figure upon the terrace, the creature of privilege at whom the public gaze from afar? See him stroll at his ease, pause carelessly, call and wave lightly to a companion under the sacred trees. Ah it is good to let the uninitiate see how free one is, how playfully at home in the sanctuary of their envy--for one can’t doubt that they do feel envy and are quick to be conscious of their exclusion. Sweet, to be sure, are the uses of parade, sweet and fresh after many a year.

One can’t have the public, however, stepping into the enclosure and blundering into the fun of the talk; one draws back coolly if they begin to take a liberty; and that too is a movement and a gesture enjoyable in its quiet dignity. Cooksey, at the moment when he was delivering his rebuke to me, was intensely dignified; I clearly remember the calm decency with which he set me down. “On _that_ subject we must agree to differ”; it was as though I had dealt him an ugly blow, but he could make allowances for my want of the finer feelings. At the same time it was more than a personal matter, and he couldn’t let me off my punishment; so he gravely stared and allowed the lesson to sink home. It was all the heavier for the contrast of his disapproval with the gay rattle of his ordinary style. Cooksey, I had to admit, was much nearer the heart of Rome than either Deering or I. He had arrived from as far afield as we; but he had not only detached himself from Bath and Wells, he had become a responsible member of the Roman state and had the right of chastising us in its name. All the majesty of Rome was at his back--majesty I say advisedly, for you don’t look for anything majestic in modern Rome, you didn’t in those days at any rate, save in the historical shadow of the Vatican. Cooksey was himself explicit upon this point. He happened to make some allusion to the vulgar new gingerbread (so he described it) of the upstart Italian monarchy, the coarse intruder whom the Vatican was coldly staring down in its ancient pride. Cooksey, needless to say, was whole-heartedly on the side of the noble and patient old sufferer against the upstart and the bully; and indeed as he put the matter the Vatican seemed the only fit place for a gentleman of feeling. The moral support behind him was immense, and his flippant style was accordingly the more suggestive. Where would be the charm, where the consequence, of a jest about slop-pails and butter-slides, if they belonged to the household of the upstart? But in the midst of the immemorial state of the other place it is very amusing, no doubt, to find them in their homely incongruity, or to say you have found.

So Cooksey was really the first person I had ever come across who had a foothold, as it struck me, square and firm upon the soil of Rome, in spite of his loud orange boots and his globe-trotting check suit. If I had a doubt at all upon the subject it was due to something else--to his absurd little passage with Amerigo, wherein I felt sure that Amerigo had been humouring and playing down to him, with the dexterity of much practice. Cooksey, no, was not in a position to meet the chinless master of the Goose on equal terms; he had much to learn, like the rest of us, before he could presume to treat the guileful Roman as a plaything. But in the shelter of the Vatican he was securely entrenched, at any rate on the backstairs. I didn’t clearly understand his position there, I judge it was a modest one; but at least he had a real job of work to be done, which “kept him in Rome,” as he said, and which gave him a hold upon the city of enchantment. “Yes, I know Rome well enough,” said Cooksey, as we prepared to depart at the end of our meal; “I can say I know something of Rome, and of the Romans too.” He bowed gallantly to the lady at the desk, and she looked down on him with her brilliant eyes like a good shrewd aunt upon a rather uproarious school-boy.

IV. ST. PETER’S

Cooksey was helpful, even more helpful than I desired; he carried me on a round of church-visiting, the very next afternoon, and showed me a number of delicious old nooks and corners which I had already discovered for myself. In peregrinations of that kind he could teach me little; I could moon and roam and quote my red handbook with the best. I was still considerably annoyed with him and not much inclined to accept him as my guide, so long as he only guided me back again to my familiar haunts. I had some difficulty in allowing him to believe that he was befriending me with his superior knowledge; but indeed he scarcely waited for my consent--he instructed me, as we made our round, without noticing the tact of my compliance. No matter for that afternoon, however, which brought me no new picture of Roman life; it was on an early morning a day or two later that Cooksey presented me with an impression for which I was grateful, at least I hope so.

I ought to have been grateful; for without the help of Cooksey I shouldn’t have had occasion to set forth from my lodging, very early in the day, clad as though for a dinner-party at eight in the morning. Rakish and raffish it seemed to be stepping across the Piazza di Spagna, in that April freshness, wearing a swallowtail coat and a polished shirt-front, like a belated reveller of last evening; I shrank from observation, my clothes of state looked jaded and green in the sweet air. But in Rome this morning appearance of a strayed roysterer is not misunderstood; the cabman whom I hailed knew whither I was bound, and he rattled me off through the empty streets in the direction of the Tiber and the Bridge of St. Angelo. We crossed the river, and presently we were cantering over the vast open space of the Square of St. Peter, between the showering fountains. Hundreds and hundreds of people were scattered over the square, converging upon the slope which ascends to the steps of the church; and there I joined the throng and pushed forward in its company beneath the leather curtain of the portal--a pilgrim, one of I don’t know how many thousands, gathered from the ends of the earth and now assembling in the morning to receive an august benediction.

The great floor of the church was open to all the world; the crowd spread over it and was gradually packed to density under the dome, a mass that steadily grew as the stream of concourse poured and poured through the doorways and along the nave. It was a crowd of many languages and of all conditions, and an immense hum of excitement surged from it, breaking readily into applause and acclamation--though there were hours to wait before the climax should be reached and expectation crowned. It was a grand event, I suppose, but not of the grandest; it was a reception of some few thousands of votaries, for whom the basilica was this morning the chamber of audience. How many thousands will the chamber hold? It had filled to over-flowing before the morning had passed, and the hum as it deepened grew fervid and passionate with the loyalty of a strangely mingled army. These people had been drawn to Rome from afar like the rest of us, like myself, like Deering and Cooksey; but the voice of their enthusiasm had a profounder note than ours. I picked my way among the assembling tribes, listening to snatches of their talk and trying to identify the outlandish forms of their gabble. My place, however, was not in their midst; for by the kindness of Cooksey I had admission to some special enclosure or tribune, lifted above the heads of the mob; and that is why I was dressed for a party at this untimely hour--it is the rule.

I found my place of honour on a kind of scaffold, raised in the choir at a point that commanded the splendid scene. The pilgrims thronged and thickened just beneath us; but they seemed far away in their murmurous confusion when I had taken my seat on the scaffold, among the black-arrayed group already established there aloft. We were a dozen or so, men and women; we looked not at all like pilgrims, and instead of joining in the jubilant roar that soon began to sway to and fro in the thousands of throats beneath us--instead of crying aloud in our homage before the shrine of Rome--what could we do but look on as at a spectacle, a display which we had luckily chanced upon and overtaken in time? We had nothing to do with it, no share in that rising passion of fidelity;--or perhaps indeed I should speak for myself alone, for my neighbour on the scaffold had presently attracted my attention by a sudden movement, springing to her feet (she was a middle-aged woman), throwing up her hands and cheering--cheering with a strange uncertain bird-like note that shockingly embarrassed the rest of us. She had been carried away by a sympathetic enthusiasm and she wanted to join in the full-throated roar; but she was detached from it, isolated in a little ring of decorous silence; so that her queer _hoo-hoo-hoo_ fell upon her own ears too with disconcerting effect, and she faltered rather lamentably in the middle of her outcry. Discreet ladies, black-veiled as they all were, sitting around her on the scaffold, looked rigidly in front of them; and the poor enthusiast subsided as best she could, blushing and effacing herself. That was our only demonstration; the company of the scaffold sat otherwise unmoved to the end of the great affair, talking unobtrusively under that vast dome-full of human sound.

There was a long while to wait before the august and magnificent entry which we were expecting. Cooksey appeared very soon, and with him was a neat and slender and priestly figure to which I instantly gave the name of Father Holt. You remember the figure, of course, in Thackeray’s gallery--the polished and enigmatic gentleman of the world, who wrought so vividly upon the boyhood of Esmond. If Cooksey’s friend had chanced to take me in hand when _I_ was a boy, he would indeed have found me easy moulding. He was dark, he was very handsome in the clear-eyed and hard-lipped manner; he had the ghost of a smile and a most musical voice. Cooksey came bustling to the front of the platform, where I was, and Father Holt dropped behind. One of the black-veiled ladies put out a hand to him and he dealt with it urbanely; but he disengaged himself, he held himself aloof in the background; and indeed we were not a party of much distinction, and I didn’t wonder that Father Holt found us a little plebeian. Cooksey breathed heavily in my ear to the effect that the female just behind me was the old wretch of whom he had spoken the other evening, the pet votaress of Father Jenkins--“and I know I shall put my foot in it again,” he said, “because I always make a fool of myself on these solemn occasions.” He chuckled wickedly, and he added that “these old cats” took it all so seriously, one had to be desperately careful.

The elderly gentlewoman in question was taking it very seriously indeed, though she didn’t commit herself to the point of standing up and cheering. She had forgiven Cooksey his assault upon her in church, and she now drew him into a conversation that I followed with interest. I can’t reproduce it, for it was highly technical, full of odd phrases and allusions that were strange to me; Cooksey and Lady Mullinger (that was her name) conversed in the language of a secret society from which I was excluded. It struck me as very picturesque, and it exhaled a cloud of suggestion--“puff on puff,” not exactly of “grated orris-root,” but of a pleasant and pungent effluence that reminded me of many things. This vein of Roman talk never seems to me to have any of the associations of an ancient history, of a long-seasoned tradition, of a bygone grace denied to those who are not of the society. Oh no, it is intensely modern and angular; it reminds me of raw new buildings, filled with chalk-blue and shrimp-pink imagery; it reminds me of deal praying-chairs and paper roses and inscriptions in ugly French lettering. When Cooksey and Lady Mullinger talk together they appear to delight in emphasizing their detachment, their disconnexion from all the sun-mellowed time-hallowed sweetness of antiquity; but of course it is exactly this odd modernity of their tone which makes their talk so picturesque in the hearing of an outsider. I was a complete outsider; and the manner in which these two spoke of the rites and forms and festivals of their society was a manner quite fresh to me, and I enjoyed it.

Lady Mullinger was elderly and plain. Catching sight of Father Holt, she made him signals so urgent that he had to come forward; she beset him with smiles and gestures and enquiries under which he stood patient and courteous, a picture of well-bred disdain. Lady Mullinger had no misgiving, and she rallied him archly, she appealed to him, she bunched her untidy amplitude together to make room for him at her side. He looked at her sidelong with his bright eyes, and he took no notice of her advances beyond answering her large sloppy questions with a neatly worded phrase. She made the foolish mistake of coupling Father Holt and Cooksey together in her broadly beaming patronage; Cooksey was well aware that it was a mistake, and his assurance failed him. Father Holt (I can’t call him anything else) glanced from one to the other with a single flit of his cool observation, and it was enough. Cooksey was ill at ease; he had been gossiping quite comfortably with her ladyship, but with Father Holt’s quiet glance on him he tried to disown her. He saw that she was stout and ordinary, and that he himself looked terribly like her; he edged away and did his best to range himself on Father Holt’s side of the colloquy. But Father Holt kept them serenely at a distance, the pair of them; it was easy to see that it was not for Cooksey to stand by his side uninvited.

“No, Lady Mullinger,” said Father Holt, “I can’t, I fear, make you a definite promise in that matter.” He spoke with a charming vibrating bell-tone; it was like the striking of a rod of polished silver in the midst of the sawing of strings out of tune. Lady Mullinger, unsuspecting and unabashed, flung herself the more vehemently into her demand; she wanted him to do this and that, but mainly she wanted him to come to tea with her on Thursday and to have a little talk with “poor Charlotte”; she pressed it as an opportunity for poor Charlotte which he mustn’t deny her. Poor Charlotte was in a sad way; nothing seemed to ease her, nobody had proved able to open “the door of her spirit.” So Lady Mullinger said, and she was positive that Father Holt would open the door, he alone, and she would arrange that nobody should disturb them, her _salottino_ would be free (they would have tea in the big room), and he and poor Charlotte could then have a “nice little talk.” Lady Mullinger had set her heart on it--“just a nice little talk, quite informal”; she shouldn’t tell poor Charlotte that he was expected, and he could just draw her aside, after tea, and help the poor thing to “find her way.” The convenience of the _salottino_ was urged once more, and the tact with which Lady Mullinger would keep her other guests out of it; and the ghost of the smile was upon the lips of Father Holt as he repeated, very distinctly, his refusal to make her a promise. Poor Charlotte would evidently have to find the way for herself, and Lady Mullinger abounded in despair.

Cooksey had introduced me to the beautiful priest, and I had one of his sharp glances to myself. For half a second I thought he was going to be interested in me, and I sat up with pleasure; but then I was turned down, I was placed with the rest of the company, and I perceived that I was no finer or rarer or more exquisite than Cooksey himself. It was worse, however, for Cooksey than for me, and the contrast between his natural exuberance and his shrivelled loose-jawed malease under the eye of Father Holt was melancholy indeed. Father Holt was the real thing, Cooksey could only pretend to be the real thing in his absence. You can’t attain to the heart of Rome, after all, by the simple and obvious methods of a Cooksey; you can’t set off from Bath and Wells, travelling to Rome because Rome attracts you, and then expect to find yourself on terms of equality with Father Holt, whose foot was on the stair of the Vatican when Doctor Tusher (your spiritual forbear) was scraping to his lordship and marrying the waiting-maid. Cooksey could impose upon _me_ with the airy flourish of his intimacy with a world from which I was locked out; but he was reduced to the position of a very raw new boy in the company of the born initiate. Poor old Cooksey--it was a shame that I should be there to see it.

He couldn’t renew his pleasant gossip with Lady Mullinger, and he rather stupidly persisted in trying to range himself with Father Holt. He received his measured stint of Father Holt’s admirable manners, and his uneasy gratitude was pathetic. Where was now my Cooksey of the liberal jest, of the gay scuffle with Monsignor Mair? The conversation drooped, and presently Father Holt had slipped off again into the background, where there now arose a small stir of a new arrival. He was at the head of the staircase which ascended to the scaffold, he was welcoming somebody who emerged from below; and this was a little old lady, at whom the eyes of the company were turned with cautious curiosity. Cooksey nudged me, whispering her name and her title, both very splendid; as discreetly as I might, I stared at her with all my attention. None of us ventured to join Father Holt in the graceful and natural ceremony that he made of handing her to her place in the front of the platform. He dropped into the chair by her side, he engaged in a talk with her that we couldn’t overhear, and he was subtly transfigured as he did so. There was no change in his composure and his bland dignity; but he seemed to sink with relief into a society where he felt at home. The rest of us were silent, we couldn’t set up a rival society in the face of _that_ exhibition; and besides we wished, I think, to miss nothing of its effect.