He swept his eyes about the piazza as though noting who was there to see and hear. For ten seconds or more he seemed to be looking directly into the Franks' window at Anthony and at Toussaint whose face worked with emotion. He whispered something to Hullin, who glanced up and shook his head.
"A fine welcome you give me here," he continued turning now on the quaking merchants. From the window across the narrow street Anthony and Vincent could see him clearly and hear every word. His voice rose to a high pitch.
"Do not doubt it. I shall give the English a final lesson. I march on Vienna and then northwards. Hamburg, every hiding place of these water rats shall be ferreted out, swept clean. Then their island next." He beat his left leg with his gauntlets. The leg trembled. Livorno was a bitter disappointment. He had seen the sails of Nelson glimmering away as he entered. Beckoning to an adjutant he reseated himself in the carriage.
To Toussaint it seemed as if Buonaparte had turned on the crowd the unseeing glance of a mummy. There was no speculation in those eyes. Only dull flashes as from the fires of Stromboli over the horizon at night. He was pallid, yellow. His long, sleek, jet-black hair dangled around his face like the locks of a Seminole Indian threading the swamp. He sat there diminutive, youthful, in a worn simple uniform with gloom on his brow.
"No light," thought Toussaint. "Bon Dieu! no light!"
The sabres flashed only lightning once more. Hullin stood on the carriage steps in an attitude of profound respect listening to some last muttered admonitions. Then as suddenly as he had come, and with the same ominous rumble of wheels, Buonaparte was gone.
To Anthony looking down from the window, watching all this, there had come that inexplicable feeling that his own fate had somehow been laid in the hands of the little man whom he had watched getting in and out of his carriage. How and why? Out of what immense ramifications of events had the threads of his own existence been laid in those hands ? One thin thread to be sure, but it was bound up and woven into that thick rope of Europe, those millions of other gossamers tangled into a strong strand by which the world was to be towed along for a while; towed out of stagnant waters into new.
It was a curious thing, but of all the thousands of eyes that had looked on Buonaparte that day in Livorno there was scarcely a pair but took this for granted. For a few moments Anthony had actually watched a section of that strand running through those nervous, white hands. It was a relief to have them gone. He felt as if he had to recapture the skein of his own life again. He did not know where it might lead, but at least he could follow it now himself, even if blindly. "To Havana," Mr. Bonnyfeather said. Anywhere, as long as it led away from Livorno.
For months past all the threads in the town had been warped out of the normal blocks and pulleys through which they ran. All the world now seemed out of gear. His own thread had slipped clear off the familiar pulley where it had been running in what might have become a ceaseless round. Now it flapped free, was hurtling off into the unknown. He was glad of that. It would not be his hands only that would rig it to the tackle of life again. No, there was a strong mysterious drag on it, he felt. He would see the world now. Never could he see enough of it. The void of his first ten years was still deep as a well. One lifetime was not sufficient to fill it. He turned from the window with an unconscious gesture of hail and farewell to find himself in the Franks' room with Toussaint sitting on the sill beside him. The little man sighed.
"It was the gloomy face of a tyrant, Anthony," he said.
Uncle Otto came in trying to recover face and exclaiming "Birbante!" His wife and the little girl and Vincent did their best to soothe him. The small ego of Uncle Otto had met something so cosmic that he looked shattered.
Anthony and Toussaint walked home together, the latter gloomy. But that night at supper Faith began to talk with Toussaint and actually smiled at him. Sunlight burst in upon the little man and shone again from his face. To Anthony there was something sinister about it all. Yet he was surprised to find that much as he disliked Faith he did not care to have her kind to Toussaint. He was enraged with himself at this. What strange unknown depths were in him? Actually he could not tell himself what kind of person he was. What would he do under new circumstances in other worlds? Who and what was he?
He sat half-undressed on the edge of his bed pondering. Now he knew why Mr. Bonnyfeather had said, "God keep you." You did not even know who you were yourself. The face in the miniature came back to him now with comfort. That was what he wanted to be like. Only this morning he had felt he was like that, his mother! Part of him. Who and what was the other part? He wondered. But he could never ask now. His father!
"Father, mother, father, mother," he kept saying the words over again trying to give them some reality, shape, and memory. He was somebody's son. He would some day be a father. Angela might have a child! He had not thought of that. What did it all mean? These human words had always had a sound of prayer about them, still had.
"Mother, son, father—Holy mother," he turned to the Madonna on the wall. The old formulas sprang to his lips full of new meanings. It was a relief to be able to pray that way again! He had not been able to do so for so long. Not until the other day. Whatever he might do he was not to be left alone. The misery, restlessness, and youthful despairs of the past hectic months rushed from his lips in a whispered confession to the Virgin. All doubt had vanished with the blessed relief. Was she not there, on the wall, in heaven, as always! Had she not come to him in his dream with Angela, young and beautiful? He and the Virgin were very old, very old together. He had seen her that night as his soul remembered her, looking back through ancient doors of birth and death made transparent by the light of eternal passion breaking through them. Before, now, and forever, he had seen her merging with the waters at the root of the great tree as he remembered her in the springtime of the world.
"Ah, they called her mother, mother of sorrows. But she was mother of joy as well. Yes, he believed that. She was sitting there now, as always, with the child in her arms. But in the dream there were two of them. The other heavenly twin had come back. Who was he, that lost one ? Was he like Anthony lost for a while on earth ? Was he Anthony ? Anthony who could return to her knees, In dreams ? Ah God! if he could only lay his head on her breast! Be rocked to sleep there as he never had been, forget and forget, already he would forget."
He drew near to her in a dreamful mood in which the life within him seemed to leave his body sitting breathing, while he drew closer to her against the wall. He laid his head there and kneeled looking at her head lost among the stars. Silence and peace and silence. To be and not to think, only to know and feel. Ecstasy.
At last he opened his eyes again and found that he really was kneeling against the wall. By the dim light that burned before her, very dim, except about the little shrine, he seemed to see her now more clearly than ever before. His eyes were wide awake and rested. They were made to peer into far spaces. It was not necessary even to wink. He looked steadily and easily at the statue.
It seemed to him that he saw her there now as the madonna of his dreams, but older, sweeter, with something more tender, more human, the mystic woman of the fountain touched and wafted by some ineffable experience into a being far more beautiful, sympathetic, and divine. And it seemed now to him, too, that for the first time he saw she was holding the child out to him as if he should draw near and touch it. He had been like that once. Was he now? Partly perhaps. The child was her son. Father Xavier had told him the story. Born in the rocky stable amid the oxen under the stars. And there had been more to that story. It was about the babe after he became a man. He had thought very little about that. Perhaps he should think more. Why did she hold him out that way ? Should he really draw near and touch him? He put out his hand. Then he saw that the child was still sleeping on her breast. He dared not awaken him. Not yet. "After a while," he thought. It was as though his lips went on speaking another's words. "After a while when you find him again."