That Tristram Hungerford, nearly four months later, should still be in Italy, should, indeed, be walking up and down the Cascine at Florence, among other promenaders, on a fine day in January, was due to the fact that an obscure Italian parroco had received from art a shadowy acquaintance with medicine and from nature, unbounded confidence wherewith to make use of it.
Never again was Tristram likely to allow a physician of souls to try his hand at mending a body, least of all the body of a friend. Priestly surgery, as it had been practised on Dormer, he would henceforth eschew like the plague. For the result of the parroco's ministrations had been disastrous, and his setting of the broken leg so bungling that at last Tristram had Dormer removed to Florence and procured the services of a first-class surgeon. The latter pulled a long face, and said that if the English signor did not want to walk lame all his days the leg must be re-set. At the stage then reached this involved breaking the bone again. It is probable that Tristram, sitting in the next room with his hands over his ears, suffered quite as much as the victim himself. The surgeon indeed told him afterwards that, had not his friend been a heretic, he might have thought he had been miraculously relieved, as were sometimes the holy martyrs. Not, however, that when he saw Dormer afterwards, Tristram could discern much evidence of alleviation of any kind.
However, in a week or ten days now they were going home. Dormer's accident had not, at any rate, brought back his headaches; he affirmed, on the contrary, that the long, enforced rest had done just what he needed. He had borne the pain and tedium serenely, almost lightly; the only thing that seemed to try him was his absence from Oxford, and the fact that his misfortune had delayed his friend's ordination. Their prolonged stay had brought them several acquaintances among the English colony at Florence, and of late they had come to know an Italian gentleman connected with the Court, a certain Signor della Torre Vecchia, who had become smitten with an immense admiration for Dormer. Tristram had indeed rather suffered from this worship, and so, though the Italian had been exceedingly kind to them both, putting a carriage at their disposal and doing his utmost to carry off Dormer from their hotel to his villa at Fiesole, Tristram was not altogether sorry that their benefactor was leaving Florence that very afternoon. For when Signor della Torre Vecchia could get Tristram alone he did nothing but talk about his dilettissimo amico, his charm, his looks ("one would say a portrait by Van Dyck, signore"), his intellectual distinction. He drove Tristram into promising him Dormer's book on the Non-Jurors, for he had been in England and manifested a most inexplicable interest in the English Church, though, despite their endeavours to prove to him that she was a part of the Church Catholic—instancing the Catholicity of her Prayer-Book, while admitting the Protestantism of her practice—he persisted in regarding her as a phenomenon, and they never got any further. Afterwards he would take Tristram aside and reiterate his conviction that nobody like Dormer could possibly remain permanently outside the True Church. The only consolation which Tristram derived from these confidences was the power of chaffing Dormer unmercifully on the effect produced by his "romantic appearance."
Towards Horatia Tristram's feelings had changed. He would always, he supposed, love her better than anyone else in the world, but he did not love her now as a lover. Besides the fierce struggle of the past months to tear from his heart what he regarded as sin, a struggle which had slowly been successful, there was the knowledge, conveyed to him by the Rector, that she was about to have a child. Unconsciously this made a difference to him. He felt now as he imagined an elder brother might feel towards a sister who had always been very dear to him, full of an affection essentially protective. The time had been that, even though the sense of sin had left him, he could not receive a letter from her without being plunged in depression. But now he would have been very glad of a letter, for, whether they were lost or delayed in the notoriously uncertain Italian posts, or whether they were non-existent, no communications from the Rector or from Horatia had reached him since August, and he sometimes imagined horrible things, as that Horatia was dead, for he did not know when her child was expected.
Another change, too, had gradually wrought in his spirit, He was, in a sense, quite honest when he mocked at Dormer's idealisation of the single life, though perhaps his mockery was due to the knowledge that the ideas which he derided were not really so very alien to his mind.
Now, indeed, if the truth were known, they had even begun to have a curious attraction for him—a speculative attraction. What if to some souls there did really come a call to win "that little coronet or special reward which God hath prepared (extraordinary and beside the great Crown of all faithful souls)" as the author of Holy Living had it, for those who had made the sacrifice of earthly affection and ties. And persons did make that sacrifice, in numbers—as witness the not very attractive religious whom he saw about the streets of Florence. Most of all, unforgettable, recurring again and again to his mind, there was the great fresco in the monastery of San Marco, where S. Dominic, kneeling at the foot of the Cross, embraces it in a passion of love and pain, and the Crucified looks down at him. It had taken Tristram's breath away when first he saw it at the end of the cloister. After some time he went and looked at it again—and came away very sad. Its message was not for him, whose obedience was loveless. All that the picture's spiritual beauty could do for him now was to remind him painfully of Keble's words, so applicable to himself, of the shame of the thought—
"That souls in refuge, holding by the cross
Should wince and fret at this world's little loss."
Yes, to walk among the lilies might be given to such an one as Dormer, but not to a commonplace person like himself, who had been forced into sacrifice. He had nothing to give of his own free-will. That he would henceforth live without earthly ties was not because he had been smitten by a vision from on high, but because the woman he loved had been taken from him. It was enough for him if he could echo the close of those same lines—
"Wash me, and dry these bitter tears,
O let my heart no further roam,
'Tis Thine by vows and hopes and fears
Long since——"
Some way off a stir among the promenaders and the sight of the Ducal livery, portending, probably, that the Grand Duke was taking the air, reminded Tristram of Torre Vecchia, and his impending departure. Pulling out his watch, he hurried off.