The Cardinal's Snuff-Box

XV.

Beatrice walking with a priest—ay, I am not sure it would n't be more accurate to say conspiring with a priest: but you shall judge.

They were in a room of the Palazzo Udeschini, at Rome—a reception room, on the piano nobile. Therefore you see it: for are not all reception-rooms in Roman palaces alike?

Vast, lofty, sombre; the walls hung with dark-green tapestry—a pattern of vertical stripes, dark green and darker green; here and there a great dark painting, a Crucifixion, a Holy Family, in a massive dim-gold frame; dark-hued rugs on the tiled floor; dark pieces of furniture, tables, cabinets, dark and heavy; and tall windows, bare of curtains at this season, opening upon a court—a wide stone-eaved court, planted with fantastic-leaved eucalyptus-trees, in the midst of which a brown old fountain, indefatigable, played its sibilant monotone.

In the streets there were the smells, the noises, the heat, the glare of August of August in Rome, “the most Roman of the months,” they say; certainly the hottest, noisiest, noisomest, and most glaring. But here all was shadow, coolness, stillness, fragrance-the fragrance of the clean air coming in from among the eucalyptus-trees.

Beatrice, critical-eyed, stood before a pier-glass, between two of the tall windows, turning her head from side to side, craning her neck a little—examining (if I must confess it) the effect of a new hat. It was a very stunning hat—if a man's opinion hath any pertinence; it was beyond doubt very complicated. There was an upward-springing black brim; there was a downward-sweeping black feather; there was a defiant white aigrette not unlike the Shah of Persia's; there were glints of red.

The priest sat in an arm-chair—one of those stiff, upright Roman arm-chairs, which no one would ever dream of calling easy-chairs, high-backed, covered with hard leather, studded with steel nails—and watched her, smiling amusement, indulgence.

He was an oldish priest—sixty, sixty-five. He was small, lightly built, lean-faced, with delicate-strong features: a prominent, delicate nose; a well-marked, delicate jaw-bone, ending in a prominent, delicate chin; a large, humorous mouth, the full lips delicately chiselled; a high, delicate, perhaps rather narrow brow, rising above humorous grey eyes, rather deep-set. Then he had silky-soft smooth white hair, and, topping the occiput, a tonsure that might have passed for a natural bald spot.

He was decidedly clever-looking; he was aristocratic-looking, distinguished-looking; but he was, above all, pleasant-looking, kindly-looking, sweet-looking.

He wore a plain black cassock, by no means in its first youth—brown along the seams, and, at the salient angles, at the shoulders, at the elbows, shining with the lustre of hard service. Even without his cassock, I imagine, you would have divined him for a clergyman—he bore the clerical impress, that odd indefinable air of clericism which everyone recognises, though it might not be altogether easy to tell just where or from what it takes its origin. In the garb of an Anglican—there being nothing, at first blush, necessarily Italian, necessarily un-English, in his face—he would have struck you, I think, as a pleasant, shrewd old parson of the scholarly—earnest type, mildly donnish, with a fondness for gentle mirth. What, however, you would scarcely have divined—unless you had chanced to notice, inconspicuous in this sober light, the red sash round his waist, or the amethyst on the third finger of his right hand—was his rank in the Roman hierarchy. I have the honour of presenting his Eminence Egidio Maria Cardinal Udeschini, formerly Bishop of Cittareggio, Prefect of the Congregation of Archives and Inscriptions.

That was his title ecclesiastical. He had two other titles. He was a Prince of the Udeschini by accident of birth. But his third title was perhaps his most curious. It had been conferred upon him informally by the populace of the Roman slum in which his titular church, St. Mary of the Lilies, was situated: the little Uncle of the Poor.

As Italians measure wealth, Cardinal Udeschini was a wealthy man. What with his private fortune and official stipends, he commanded an income of something like a hundred thousand lire. He allowed himself five thousand lire a year for food, clothing, and general expenses. Lodging and service he had for nothing in the palace of his family. The remaining ninety-odd thousand lire of his budget... Well, we all know that titles can be purchased in Italy; and that was no doubt the price he paid for the title I have mentioned.

However, it was not in money only that Cardinal Udeschim paid. He paid also in labour. I have said that his titular church was in a slum. Rome surely contained no slum more fetid, none more perilous—a region of cut-throat alleys, south of the Ghetto, along the Tiber bank. Night after night, accompanied by his stout young vicar, Don Giorgio Appolloni, the Cardinal worked there as hard as any hard-working curate: visiting the sick, comforting the afflicted, admonishing the knavish, persuading the drunken from their taverns, making peace between the combative. Not infrequently, when he came home, he would add a pair of stilettos to his already large collection of such relics. And his homecomings were apt to be late—oftener than not, after midnight; and sometimes, indeed, in the vague twilight of morning, at the hour when, as he once expressed it to Don Giorgio, “the tired burglar is just lying down to rest.” And every Saturday evening the Cardinal Prefect of Archives and Inscriptions sat for three hours boxed up in his confessional, like any parish priest—in his confessional at St. Mary of the Lilies, where the penitents who breathed their secrets into his ears, and received his fatherly counsels... I beg your pardon. One must not, of course, remember his rags or his sores, when Lazarus approaches that tribunal.

But I don't pretend that the Cardinal was a saint; I am sure he was not a prig. For all his works of supererogation, his life was a life of pomp and luxury, compared to the proper saint's life. He wore no hair shirt; I doubt if he knew the taste of the Discipline. He had his weaknesses, his foibles—even, if you will, his vices. I have intimated that he was fond of a jest. “The Sacred College,” I heard him remark one day, “has fifty centres of gravity. I sometimes fear that I am its centre of levity.” He was also fond of music. He was also fond of snuff:

“'T is an abominable habit,” he admitted. “I can't tolerate it at all—in others. When I was Bishop of Cittareggio, I discountenanced it utterly among my clergy. But for myself—I need not say there are special circumstances. Oddly enough, by the bye, at Cittareggio each separate member of my clergy was able to plead special circumstances for himself I have tried to give it up, and the effort has spoiled my temper—turned me into a perfect old shrew. For my friends' sake, therefore, I appease myself with an occasional pinch. You see, tobacco is antiseptic. It's an excellent preservative of the milk of human kindness.”

The friends in question kept him supplied with sound rappee. Jests and music he was abundantly competent to supply himself. He played the piano and the organ, and he sang—in a clear, sweet, slightly faded tenor. Of secular composers his favourites were “the lucid Scarlatti, the luminous Bach.” But the music that roused him to enthusiasm was Gregorian. He would have none other at St. Mary of the Lilies. He had trained his priests and his people there to sing it admirably—you should have heard them sing Vespers; and he sang it admirably himself—you should have heard him sing a Mass—you should have heard that sweet old tenor voice of his in the Preface and the Pater Noster.

So, then, Beatrice stood before a pier-glass, and studied her new hat; whilst the Cardinal, amused, indulgent, sat in his high-backed armchair, and watched her.

“Well—? What do you think?” she asked, turning towards him.

“You appeal to me as an expert?” he questioned.

His speaking-voice, as well as his singing-voice, was sweet, but with a kind of trenchant edge upon it, a genial asperity, that gave it character, tang.

“As one who should certainly be able to advise,” said she.

“Well, then—” said he. He took his chin into his hand, as if it were a beard, and looked up at her, considering; and the lines of amusement—the “parentheses”—deepened at either side of his mouth. “Well, then, I think if the feather were to be lifted a little higher in front, and brought down a little lower behind—”

“Good gracious, I don't mean my hat,” cried Beatrice. “What in the world can an old dear like you know about hats?”

There was a further deepening of the parentheses.

“Surely,” he contended, “a cardinal should know much. Is it not 'the badge of all our tribe,' as your poet Byron says?”

Beatrice laughed. Then, “Byron—?” she doubted, with a look.

The Cardinal waved his hand—a gesture of amiable concession.

“Oh, if you prefer, Shakespeare. Everything in English is one or the other. We will not fall out, like the Morellists, over an attribution. The point is that I should be a good judge of hats.”

He took snuff.

“It's a shame you haven't a decent snuff-box,” Beatrice observed, with an eye on the enamelled wooden one, cheap and shabby, from which he helped himself.

“The box is but the guinea-stamp; the snuff's the thing.—Was it Shakespeare or Byron who said that?” enquired the Cardinal.

Beatrice laughed again.

“I think it must have been Pulcinella. I'll give you a lovely silver one, if you'll accept it.”

“Will you? Really?” asked the Cardinal, alert.

“Of course I will. It's a shame you haven't one already.”

“What would a lovely silver one cost?” he asked.

“I don't know. It does n't matter,” answered she.

“But approximately? More or less?” he pursued.

“Oh, a couple of hundred lire, more or less, I daresay.”

“A couple of hundred lire?” He glanced up, alerter. “Do you happen to have that amount of money on your person?”

Beatrice (the unwary woman) hunted for her pocket—took out her purse—computed its contents.

“Yes,” she innocently answered.

The Cardinal chuckled—the satisfied chuckle of one whose unsuspected tactics have succeeded.

“Then give me the couple of hundred lire.”

He put forth his hand.

But Beatrice held back.

“What for?” she asked, suspicion waking.

“Oh, I shall have uses for it.”

His outstretched hand—a slim old tapering, bony hand, in colour like dusky ivory—closed peremptorily, in a dumb-show of receiving; and now, by the bye, you could not have failed to notice the big lucent amethyst, in its setting of elaborately-wrought pale gold, on the third finger.

“Come! Give!” he insisted, imperative.

Rueful but resigned, Beatrice shook her head.

“You have caught me finely,” she sighed, and gave.

“You should n't have jingled your purse—you should n't have flaunted your wealth in my face,” laughed the Cardinal, putting away the notes. He took snuff again. “I think I honestly earned that pinch,” he murmured.

“At any rate,” said Beatrice, laying what unction she could to her soul, “I am acquainted with a dignitary of the Church, who has lost a handsome silver snuffbox—beautiful repousse work, with his arms engraved on the lid.”

“And I,” retaliated he, “I am acquainted with a broken-down old doctor and his wife, in Trastevere, who shall have meat and wine at dinner for the next two months—at the expense of a niece of mine. 'I am so glad,' as Alice of Wonderland says, 'that you married into our family.'”

“Alice of Wonderland—?” doubted Beatrice.

The Cardinal waved his hand.

“Oh, if you prefer, Punch. Everything in English is one or the other.”

Beatrice laughed. “It was the I of which especially surprised my English ear,” she explained.

“I am your debtor for two hundred lire. I cannot quarrel with you over a particle,” said he.

“But why,” asked she, “why did you give yourself such superfluous pains? Why couldn't you ask me for the money point-blank? Why lure it from me, by trick and device?”

The Cardinal chuckled.

“Ah, one must keep one's hand in. And one must not look like a Jesuit for nothing.”

“Do you look like a Jesuit?”

“I have been told so.”

“By whom—for mercy's sake?”

“By a gentleman I had the pleasure of meeting not long ago in the train—a very gorgeous gentleman, with gold chains and diamonds flashing from every corner of his person, and a splendid waxed moustache, and a bald head which, I think, was made of polished pink coral. He turned to me in the most affable manner, and said, 'I see, Reverend Sir, that you are a Jesuit. There should be a fellow-feeling between you and me. I am a Jew. Jews and Jesuits have an almost equally bad name!'”

The Cardinal's humorous grey eyes swam in a glow of delighted merriment.

“I could have hugged him for his 'almost.' I have been wondering ever since whether in his mind it was the Jews or the Jesuits who benefited by that reservation. I have been wondering also what I ought to have replied.”

“What did you reply?” asked Beatrice, curious.

“No, no,” said the Cardinal. “With sentiments of the highest consideration, I must respectfully decline to tell you. It was too flat. I am humiliated whenever I recall it.”

“You might have replied that the Jews, at least, have the advantage of meriting their bad name,” she suggested.

“Oh, my dear child!” objected he. “My reply was flat—you would have had it sharp. I should have hurt the poor well-meaning man's feelings, and perhaps have burdened my own soul with a falsehood, into the bargain. Who are we, to judge whether people merit their bad name or not? No, no. The humiliating circumstance is, that if I had possessed the substance as well as the show, if I had really been a son of St. Ignatius, I should have found a retort that would have effected the Jew's conversion.”

“And apropos of conversions,” said Beatrice, “see how far we have strayed from our muttons.”

“Our muttons—?” The Cardinal looked up, enquiring.

“I want to know what you think—not of my hat—but of my man.”

“Oh—ah, yes; your Englishman, your tenant.” The Cardinal nodded.

“My Englishman—my tenant—my heretic,” said she.

“Well,” said he, pondering, while the parentheses became marked again,—“I should think, from what you tell me, that you would find him a useful neighbour. Let me see... You got fifty lire out of him, for a word; and the children went off, blessing you as their benefactress. I should think that you would find him a valuable neighbour—and that he, on his side, might find you an expensive one.”

Beatrice, with a gesture, implored him to be serious.

“Ah, please don't tease about this,” she said. “I want to know what you think of his conversion?”

“The conversion of a heretic is always 'a consummation devoutly to be desired,' as well, you may settle it between Shakespeare and Byron, to suit yourself. And there are none so devoutly desirous of such consummations as you Catholics of England—especially you women. It is said that a Catholic Englishwoman once tried to convert the Pope.”

“Well, there have been popes whom it would n't have hurt,” commented Beatrice. “And as for Mr. Marchdale,” she continued, “he has shown 'dispositions.' He admitted that he could see no reason why it should not have been Our Blessed Lady who sent us to the children's aid. Surely, from a Protestant, that is an extraordinary admission?”

“Yes,” said the Cardinal. “And if he meant it, one may conclude that he has a philosophic mind.”

“If he meant it?” Beatrice cried. “Why should he not have meant it? Why should he have said it if he did not mean it?”

“Oh, don't ask me,” protested the Cardinal. “There is a thing the French call politesse. I can conceive a young man professing to agree with a lady for the sake of what the French might call her beaux yeux.”

“I give you my word,” said Beatrice, “that my beaux yeux had nothing to do with the case. He said it in the most absolute good faith. He said he believed that in a universe like ours nothing was impossible—that there were more things in heaven and earth than people generally dreamed of—that he could see no reason why the Blessed Virgin should not have sent us across the children's path. Oh, he meant it. I am perfectly sure he meant it.”

The Cardinal smiled—at her eagerness, perhaps.

“Well, then,” he repeated, “we must conclude that he has a philosophic mind.”

“But what is one to do?” asked she. “Surely one ought to do something? One ought to follow such an admission up? When a man is so far on the way to the light, it is surely one's duty to lead him farther?”

“Without doubt,” said the Cardinal.

“Well—? What can one do?”

The Cardinal looked grave.

“One can pray,” he said.

“Emilia and I pray for his conversion night and morning.”

“That is good,” he approved.

“But that is surely not enough?”

“One can have Masses said.”

“Monsignor Langshawe, at the castle, says a Mass for him twice a week.”

“That is good,” approved the Cardinal.

“But is that enough?”

“Why doesn't Monsignor Langshawe call upon him—cultivate his acquaintance—talk with him—set him thinking?” the Cardinal enquired.

“Oh, Monsignor Langshawe!” Beatrice sighed, with a gesture. “He is interested in nothing but geology—he would talk to him of nothing but moraines—he would set him thinking of nothing but the march of glaciers.”

“Hum,” said the Cardinal.

“Well, then—?” questioned Beatrice.

“Well, then, Carissima, why do you not take the affair in hand yourself?”

“But that is just the difficulty. What can I what can a mere woman—do in such a case?”

The Cardinal looked into his amethyst, as a crystal-gazer into his crystal; and the lines about his humorous old mouth deepened and quivered.

“I will lend you the works of Bellarmine in I forget how many volumes. You can prime yourself with them, and then invite your heretic to a course of instructions.”

“Oh, I wish you would n't turn it to a joke,” said Beatrice.

“Bellarmine—a joke!” exclaimed the Cardinal. “It is the first time I have ever heard him called so. However, I will not press the suggestion.”

“But then—? Oh, please advise me seriously. What can I do? What can a mere unlearned woman do?”

The Cardinal took snuff. He gazed into his amethyst again, beaming at it, as if he could descry something deliciously comical in its depths. He gave a soft little laugh. At last he looked up.

“Well,” he responded slowly, “in an extremity, I should think that a mere unlearned woman might, if she made an effort, ask the heretic to dinner. I 'll come down and stay with you for a day or two, and you can ask him to dinner.”

“You're a perfect old darling,” cried Beatrice, with rapture. “He'll never be able to resist you.”'

“Oh, I 'm not undertaking to discuss theology with him,” said the Cardinal. “But one must do something in exchange for a couple of hundred lire—so I'll come and give you my moral support.”

“You shall have your lovely silver snuffbox, all the same,” said she.

Mark the predestination!