CHAPTER XIX.
VULNERANT OMNES, ULTIMA NECAT.
The ceremony took place at dusk with great pomp and unction. The palatial house of Suertebella was admirably suited to the ostentatious display of a splendid ceremonial, the tribute of worldly wealth to an august mystery. Exquisite flowers, and tapers innumerable are thought the most proper offerings to do honour to the Lord of Lords. Amid such dazzling accessories even the works of human hands showed to greater advantage; as though they too borrowed a reflection of glory from the presence of the Deity. The sounds of weeping which were audible here and there—in a corner of the Chinese boudoir, or from behind some Greek statue, whose majestic features looked like an embodiment of the perfect balance of spirit and matter—added to the melancholy solemnity of the scene. Piety and dread, the one founded on reverence and the other on the approach of Death, were blended into a single emotion.
The priest of Polvoranca brought the sacred Host from the church in a carriage sent for the purpose and followed by a long train in slow procession. The very horses seemed to understand that they ought to make no noise and step quietly. The portico was crowded with people, under the ruddy glare of the torches they held, in liveries and in plain dress—masters and servants, all alike on their knees.
The little bell with its mysterious sound of consolation and awe, echoes through the long corridors rousing the marble figures from their stony dreams. Comic or grave, the works of art seem to put on a semblance of Christian reverence; the polished floors reflect the gleam of tapers; flowers and tapestries seem to bow in silent worship. Footsteps sound heavily on the boards; they might be the distant roll of muffled funeral drums. Presently they fall more dully on the carpets, suggesting a subterranean procession. At last they come to a standstill—there is silence as of the grave: the procession has reached the chamber of death. Then for a while the whole house is deserted; all the inhabitants have collected in the immediate vicinity of the closing scene. Those who cannot actually witness it can fancy themselves in that room, filled with light and suffering, and they sob and revel in the picture, imagining what they cannot see. It is easily conjured up, and their spirits quake before it. In the halls and passages, all deserted and all blazing with tapers, the still air gives an impression of suspended breath, speechless and awe-stricken. There is not a sound—except that in some remote corner there is a rustle—as it were a whisper—of a woman’s dress that stealthily hastens by and is lost in the distance.
Time goes on. Then at first a murmuring drone is heard, steps again—the servants reappear with their heavy tapers—the noise grows louder—the shadows of the living fall on the painted figures on the walls and across the waxed floors—the procession closes with a gaudy array of liveries and dresses of every colour, men and women of every degree; some quite callous faces, others really sad or pitiful—the whole with its accompaniment of prayer and response from the priest and his acolytes. This procession, in which some walk with a sort of rapture of grief while others are chilled with dread, makes its way to the sound of a bell rung by a boy—the very boy known to Monina as Guru—and goes out again through the hall and portico where some kneel to see it depart and others still follow with bared heads.—Within, the scent of the flowers hangs about the house as though it were the mysterious breath of the invisible Guest who has passed through it.
“I am the Way and the Life and the Truth.”
All the family had been present; the marquesa prostrate on the floor in her anguish, unable even to kneel, while her husband and sons were bitterly and sincerely grieved. When the Sacrament was ended they separated, all closely attended by their most intimate friends. Milagros entirely lost consciousness; she was carried to a sofa in the Chinese room where her kind friends plied her with restoratives and sought to give her consolation. The marquis, forgetting his interest in the art and curiosities of the house, fled from his importunate comforters, and begged to be left alone. He buried himself in a recess in the tapestried room, behind a marble Satyr, and gave himself up to meditations on the vanity of human grandeur. Gustavo devoted himself to his mother and submitted to the jeremiades of the poet of “pious raptures” and “white souls.” Leopoldo did nothing but sigh; he was nervous and tremulous, for the cold hand of death had come so near to him that he fancied he could feel its touch.
Numbers of visitors were departing, and in the park stood rows of carriages, the coachmen addressing each other by their master’s name: “Garellano! You there?”—“Cerinola, you’re wanted.”—“Lepanto, move on a little.”