— But.
— What!
— You and I…
— No, there's no more you and I, Stephen said withdrawing uphill slowly, empty-handed.
— But we. . all the things you've said, we. . the work, the work you were, working on. .?
— The work will know its own reason, Stephen said farther away, and farther, — Hear. .? Yes, we'll simplify. Hear?. .
— But. .
— The old man, ringing me on.
The man in Irish thorn-proof did look a good deal older, by the time he'd picked himself up and got back to his room behind the walls. He meant to wash immediately he returned, but came in fumbling in a pocket with a wad of paper, which he brought out, saw there in his own hand, Dilige et quod vis fnc, which he took out only long enough to annotate, "What mean?" and would, before his stay was out, find, as an unheartening curiosity, and drop on the floor (since there was no wastebasket).
He had left his windows opened, and the bird was sitting on one of the framed pictures when he came in, and closed the door behind him.
But he had already paused to make his notation, "What mean?" before he saw it, when it fluttered across the room to the other picture, and though he tried frantically to chase it toward the front, toward the windows and out, it fluttered the more frantically from one picture to the other, and back across the room and back, as he passed the mirror himself in both directions, where he might have glimpsed the face of a man having, or about to have, or at the very least valiantly fighting off, a religious experience. Aux Clients Reconnus Malades l'ARGENT ne sera pas Remboursé
— Notices posted in brothels. Rue de l'Aqueduct, Orati
Stanley was sprayed with green paint and had a finger broken on his first day in Rome. It happened when the band of Pilgrims he accompanied visiting the Basilica of Saint John Lateran was mistaken by alert police for a demonstration by a notorious political group, and set upon with as much ardor as the Saracens showed mauling those early Pilgrims to the Holy Land. Lonely, already tired before he started, unnerved by that violence, nettled to the extreme even by such small things as his constant re-encounters with the trundling, enamel-nailed, clicking (keeping tabs on Mystery!) fat woman, when he overheard mention of the Via Flaminia he remembered overhearing it named once before, lurking lonely in hospital corridors as he lurked now in Rome. He sought Mrs. Deigh, and reached her with less trouble than he might have expected. She sent the Automobile for him immediately.
Like other monuments of antiquity in the Eternal City, the Daimler stood at an impressive height, and moved, when it did so, with all of the dignity possible under such vulgar circumstances as locomotion. Stanley sat up front with the chauffeur; and though they rolled imperiously past streets and buildings which he'd crossed the ocean to see, he spent most of the ride gazing over his shoulder into the empty interior behind him, and the single seat there. Eventually, Mrs. Deigh might well insist that she'd got the car straight from the Vatican garage after the ascent of Benedict XV to a landscape where he would have no use for it (for, as an eminent Spaniard supplies, mortal man must triumph over distance and delay because his vital time is limited: among the immortals, motorcars are meaningless). But she was generally the first to admit responsibility for installing the stained glass windows herself.
Once arrived, the silent chauffeur let Stanley in, rang a bell, and left him standing quite forlorn beside a piece of bronze statuary. But only for a moment. A blond figure in organdy and white fox swept up, extended a muscular arm which, on a man, might have been called brawny, froze Stanley with what, man or woman, was most certainly a wink, and was gone. Stanley wilted against the bronze, and dropped the hand he had held out in greeting. Then he straightened up and pretended to be inspecting the voluptuous nineteenth-century triumph of Judith over Holofernes, as he heard footsteps in the hall behind him.
— So this is Stanley!. . and he's already admiring our Dona-tello… he heard, and turned. — It's his Salome. . but then you knew that, of course. Are you all right, dear boy?
Mrs. Deigh was a stout woman. She wore a knee-length fur cape, a green summer cocktail dress with a scalloped hem, what appeared to be gold paper stars pasted on it, and décolletage which exposed a neckline of woolen underwear. She advanced with a distinct rattling sound, held Stanley's hand in hers, and led him inside where, amidst deep red hangings, marble surfaces, heavily ornate gold frames enclosing obscure squares and rectangles, and more Victorian bronze, she sat him down to tell his story.
Encouraged by such exclamations as, — We are so grateful that He sent you straight to Us!. . Stanley told haltingly of the circumstances of his voyage, though he did not get round to mentioning that he had accomplished it any other wise than alone.
— But you did land all right. At Genoa?
— Well yes except. .
— What, dear boy?
— Nothing. A man got off at Genoa, and they found a… in one of his suitcases they found a body all chopped up.
Mrs. Deigh gasped, and drew back with more rattling and a distinct clank.
— He said it was only. . only some Holy Innocents.
— And was it? she demanded, sitting forward noisily, with interest.
— No, it was… he confessed it was only his best friend.
— Oh! said Mrs. Deigh, with relief and a slight sigh of disappointment. Then there was a distant sound of breakage. Mrs. Deigh looked pained.
— Oh, dear Doni Sucio!. . she murmured, as Stanley went on, in answer to her questions about his work, to tell of his interest in music, and mention his ambitions for Fenestrula.
— But did. . then has your daughter written to you?. . about me?
— Oh no, dear boy! No! She never writes to me, we don't correspond.
— But she. . you know she. .
— She's all right, we know the Lord is watching over her in His own way. Mrs. Deigh smiled a smile which seemed to settle her into the chair, and the brow of a lavish mother-of-pearl crucifix climbed from her bosom. It was finally evident that most of the rattling about her came from the long chain, supporting something like a large egg pendulant when she walked, and nestling somewhere in her lap, as it did now, when she sat. Like a Russian Easter Egg, this Thing had a tiny window in one end fitted with a magnifying pane but, viewing, instead of a creche or a landscape, one saw only a highly enlarged shred of Something: last year, it had been a splinter of the True Cross (which, as Paulinus attested, gave off fragments without itself ever diminishing); more recently, a splinter of Saint Anthony's femur. There was a faint oriental look about her eyes, as though the skin might have been drawn back and tightened, which heightened her quelled expression with its sense that some enthusiasm might burst forth there, but for fear of cracking the extraordinary likeness to the face beneath, which she had managed to create with make-up. She always appeared cheerful, excepting devout moments when a soulful vacancy spread over her face, or moments of concern, when other features mounted anxiously toward the prominent nose, as they did now at a sound of moaning from somewhere. She excused herself saying, — Poor Hadrian, he needs Us… and got off in a clatter, leaving Stanley to clutch the tooth he'd found in his pocket and look about the room.
The paintings in the gilded frames were hallowed by numbers of coats of varnish, each darker than the last for the dirt collected on the one before. Thus it was difficult to tell what they depicted, but obligingly so since, for Mrs. Deigh, each one was a religious episode to which she assigned both the subject and the master's hand it had come from. Even now, Stanley stood impertinently close to inspect a small Annunciation by Tintoretto, with the notion that he saw a dog carrying a game bird in one corner. Then the sound of busy footsteps turned him round. — That is… he commenced, looking up at eye-level, and it seemed a full minute before he could bring his eyes down to meet the sharp glance of the figure scuttling through the room behind him. At that instant an arm shot out and Stanley recoiled from what, he realized afterward, must have been a sign of benediction, as the cassock came up and the little figure disappeared in the swirl oí a black mantle. — Dom Sucio!. , Mrs. Deigh called, hard on his heels. — Did Dom Sucio pass this way? she asked when she appeared.