Immemorial vines embower the pleasant, white villas. The cup of the valley receives the bounty of the sun god, the gratitude of man rises in pious incense from the hills. The dead are honoured in the households of the living, and the spirit of the distant emperors in the towns. The magistrates punish vice with the approval of the many virtuous. The rich desire no roses in January; they enjoy them with the peasants in the spring. In the amphitheatres the extreme rage of the barbarian provides spectacles for the multitude and laughter for the cultivated; in the fields his chained vigour enhances the crops. The songs of the tenants are heard upon the estates of great landlords. Fortune is seldom invoked, for no change is desired. Through all the valley winds the River Moselle in three reflecting curves.
Anthony understood from the tones of Mr. Bonnyfeather's voice that he was yearning for something he had lost, trying to find a country where he could be fully alive and at ease at the same time. The book of Marcellinus and that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau which he and Toussaint were reading both placed that country in the past. It was also there in the Bible and in the theologians—that happy garden! Everybody seemed to have lost it and to be trying to get back to it. He himself at times already regretted the convent garden.
The madonna had come from there. He had brought her along with him. She was still in his room. He could return to her at night as an orphan wanderer from the old convent courtyard, or like an exile from the garden or the valley of the Moselle—or whatever it was he lost in the daytime—and be at peace again. The madonna understood. She listened to him. He could tell her of his troubles during the day. Books could not take her away from him, let them say whatever they might. All those crowds of people talking about God stayed outside in the desert. Those who argued could not enter this oasis. He knew! They spent the night howling outside, pouring dust on their own heads. As though from the living boughs of paradise he felt the bright face of the madonna looking down upon him while he slept.
Faith would invariably be waiting for him when he left Mr. Bonnyfeather's room and crossed the hall to go into his own. It was part o£ her routine to see that the house was closed and that all were asleep. At night she felt better and more awake than in the daytime. To watch all the others retire, leaving her to darkness, gave her a sense of superiority and freedom in which she revelled. She prowled, silently. She picked over a chicken and sipped a glass of wine in the kitchen. The embers of the dying charcoal looked at her with small red eyes. She sat in corners and contemplated.
Anthony would find her sitting just behind her own door which was opposite his. He did not see her. He became aware of her. The darkness there was slightly disarranged. Its folds seemed to blend, as the jade lamp burnt dimly, with the distorted shadows of the wings and hour-glass carved above the lintel of Mr. Bonnyfeather's door. Whether she watched him or not he did not know.
After he had gone to bed. she would come in, fold up his clothes, rearrange the covers and bid him good night. There was a hint of affection when she touched him, as she did often, which he felt it wrong to repulse but from which he almost shrank. In the balance he remained passive. From the time she had nursed him just after his arrival, she had thus speciously kept the key of his room as it were in her apron pocket. Sometimes she would sit down by the candles on his dresser and talk.
There was a smooth quality in her voice that soothed him. As she talked, always of personalities about the office and yard, he would watch a curious finger-play of shadows that took place at the foot of his bed on the white wall. Perhaps it was the shadow of the curtain or the flow of the candle. He and the madonna looked at it. Long, black fingers, semi-transparent here and there, kept twitching wantonly at an inflamed point of light. As this went on and her voice accompanied it, he would slowly drift into sleep. Sometimes he would awake a little after she had gone, rise, and close the door to be alone with the madonna. Another presence interfered. He found it necessary to keep it out. As the months slipped by and all became a matter of habit, he grew less sensitive to such feelings. He began to take the real world to bed with him. Only the lashes when they at last rested on his cheeks finally allowed nothing real to pass.
In the cope over the madonna's head the little stars twinkled as the great ones did above the house. The madonna kept looking past the child in her arms into the shadows and darkness of the room as if something were there. Anthony had not noticed that yet. To discover it, her expression must be carefully studied in the light as Don Luis had once done. Don Luis had understood how to use light and shadow only too well.
What was in the darkness bided its time silently.
Chapter XVI. PAGAN MORNINGS
EARLY in the morning, long before the flags were flying from the roof of the Casa da Bonnyfeather, Angela, the cook, drove out in her high-wheeled cart to collect fresh delicacies for the merchant's table from all the country around.
The cart was nothing more than a strong, framed platform resting on a high axle with an underslung rack behind it long enough to lie down upon. The rack with its dangling ropes was really for wine kegs. The shafts, which also formed the beams of the wagon platform, ranged straight forward parallel with the ground but pointed toward each other at the ends—as Anthony thought, like parallel lines becoming intimate near infinity. Between them there was just room enough for the lean shoulders and fat rump of a happy little mule.
To the animal's plump sides the padded shafts of the cart were lashed by looped ropes that passed criss-cross over a yellow pack-saddle. The pack-saddle rested in turn upon a broad scarlet pad. A brown leather collar resembling a huge horseshoe engaged bronze rings on the shaft ends with two brass hooks. It seemed to envelop the forward part of the animal hopelessly. Indeed, from this encumbrance the head of the mule projected like a mounted hunting trophy. But its eyes were shielded by beaded straw blinders, it wore a plaited hair bridle, and before its smooth chest dangled an object like a small, brass umbrella shedding strings of parachutes. These were bells.
To meet Angela and her cart in the early morning upon the country roads about Livorno was a spontaneously exhilarating experience. As the cart approached in a light cloud of dust and a swirl of leaves, a mad rhythm shaking its bells, there was something Dionysian about it. One of the small Christian chapels of the neighbouring hill country might, it seemed, have suffered a pagan relapse during the grape harvest and be revelling along on a heathen pilgrimage at a scandalous rate.
The clean, polished heels of the little mule kicked the pebbles out behind him in a lateral hail. The grey, olive-wood spokes were frequently all but invisible. Behind the mule, the car seemed to float horizontally, or to be falling forward downhill in a mist of speed. It looked as if the mule were pursued by it. And on the platform sat Angela, a fat, abundant Earth Mother, leaning back against a wine cask.
Her scarlet slippers, her bright green dress, her flashing smile under her brilliant red hair matched the colour and design of the ribbed canvas hood overhead embroidered with horseshoes, suns, and shooting stars. Her whip cracked merrily, and stung. But no less so than the pungent Tuscan drolleries with which she was given to favour passing travellers and acquaintances on the road. Franciscan fathers would by sheer instinct, and at the very first glimpse of the cart, hitch the rope about their waist a little tighter, and cross themselves as she passed.