The Alteration

       'No, Ettore, nessuno.'

       'Ma e dui gentiluomi inglesi, maestro—ecco.'

       'Madre de Dio! By St George's sacred... Well. Si si, Ettore, subito.'

       Very soon the usher had admitted two well-attired young men in their later twenties. The shorter of them was an ordinary-looking priest in clerical black and grey, the taller a handsome dark-haired fellow in slashed velvet with pink lace at throat and wrists. What followed was an interval of happy shouts, embraces and hand-wringings.

       'Hubert, my dear! It's truly you, then!'

       'Thomas! Mark! After so long!'

       'You look not a day older, Hubert,' said Mark. 'Quite unchanged.'

       'Oh, taller,' said Thomas. 'Grander. And far richer!'

       Upon that came more laughter and an offer of wine, which both visitors accepted readily.

       'You surprise me, Mark-I remember you as one likely to grow into a famous abstinent.'

       'Oh, Hubert, was I so dismal? Tom and Decuman must have improved me after you left us.'

       'Do you hear of Decuman? Where is he now?'

       Thomas grinned. 'At this moment, most likely in the parlour or bedchamber of some Bulgarian miss. He serves in the troops of occupancy there. Before, he was at the taking of Adrianople and won a cordon for valour.'

       'I can well believe it. By St Peter, what a war that was.'

       'Thirty million Christians dead, men, women and children.'

       'Well, at least we won,' said Thomas, trying to restore a light tone. 'When the Turk entered Brussels I thought we were done for, and then... Strange that he should come so far and be dislodged so fast. Enough. Hubert, your voice is a miracle still. Mark and I have been in raptures.'

       'Thank you both, I'm pleased.'

       'What a career you've had,' said Mark. 'It must be a great satisfaction to you—the practising of the art, I mean.'

       'What do you do in Rome, the pair of you? You didn't come all these miles to hear me sing.'

       'Wrong,' said Thomas. 'In my case, wrong. I am here on just that purpose. Oh, for the rest of the presentation too, and the state of the theatre. Let me explain. I have a post with a weekly journal called the Onlooker. They sent me to write of this occasion and of you especially.'

       'I knew you'd be a writer of some kind.'

       Mark said with a smile, 'He's a writer of another kind as well, though he's too modest to let you know himself. Of a most particular kind.'

       'Not TR?'

       'Certainly TR,' said Thomas. 'Oh yes, it's grown respectable since the war, some say because of the war. Even Mark will read it quite openly.'

       'I never see it now. By the look of you, it must reward you well enough.'

       'Nothing ever seems enough to a man with a wife and a child and another on the way.'

       'I can imagine. You're in Rome about Church affairs, Mark?'

       'Like Tom, to hear you. Or not altogether like Tom: I needed to make a pilgrimage, and I wanted to see the Vatican, but it wasn't till I found he was to come that I needed and wanted pressingly. And you've justified me, Hubert. Such music. Such a prodigious work.'

       'Yes.'

       'You speak as if you could do better,' said Thomas jocularly.

       'Not now.'

       'Do you still compose? Old Master Morley asked me, if ever I saw you, to ask you that.'

       'No. Tell him he was right: there's never time. Oh, don't mistake me-of course this is a prodigious work, but some of that is in its size. Too much. Valeriani couldn't or wouldn't see that what he must do was simply abandon the whole system of...'

       'We'll leave you now, my dear,' said Thomas, breaking the silence. 'Will you sup with us later?'

       'Yes! Wonderful! But I must be host. Come back here afterwards and we'll go in my express.'

       When the time came, Hubertus Incus moved in front of the long glass to be dressed. His eye fell on the reflection of the two crosses he wore round his neck. One of them was Mark's gift; he would produce it at supper and tell of all that had happened from when he received it till his capture aboard the Edgar Allan Poe—to talk of it as a simple capture was easiest and best. The other cross, the blue one, would probably excite inquiry; he would say as usual that it was his mother's gift. That too was easiest and best.

       His wig was fitted; his paint was freshened; he was ready. Soon he stood in the wings, about to launch 'Che e migliore?', by common consent the aria of Valeriani's that made the heaviest demands on skill and musicianship. The double-basses began their pedal and he advanced on to the stage.

       Two corpulent old men sat in the second row of the royal tier. Neither moved so much as a finger until the voice had ceased and the great auditory was filled with applause that quite blotted out the orchestral postlude. Then they turned to each other. Tears covered the face of the older of the two, who nodded his head slowly.

       'Deo gratia,' said Viaventosa.

       'Amen,' said Mirabilis.

THE END