“I know. Nino twitters with superstition. He’s a son of the Church: he fears the devil without believing in him. The Black Mass now. Do tell me what you know about it. I don’t believe there’s anything you don’t know about these wonderful Southerners.”
Mr. Cecil certainly prided himself with reason on his extensive knowledge of subterranean Italian life, and it was hard to resist justifying his conviction.
“Well, as a matter of fact I have some little knowledge of it,” he said. “Indeed I possess a copy of the missal. An extremely rare book.”
“Ah, that’s interesting,” said Colin. “What language? Latin? Italian?”
“No, strangely enough it is in English. In fact the book is probably unique. It was printed in London in the early seventeenth century. How it got into a bookstall in the Via Maurizio I haven’t any idea, but there I found it.”
Colin leaned forward over the table, his face all alight with eagerness. Such exactly might have been the missal in use in that sanctuarium at Stanier, had not his ancestor turned his back on his Lord and Benefactor, and striven by craven acts of loveless piety to shuffle out of his contract before it became due.... Now, three centuries later, it looked as if it was given to him to atone for that lamentable surrender, and here was an opportunity for the furnishing of the chapel that was already being built. Sitting there, with his face vivid and eager, in the matchless charm of his youth and beauty, he looked, in contrast with the flushed little Silenus opposite him, like some young god in whom was incarnate the spirit of physical perfection. Surely no such gracious creature had ever been fashioned in the image of God.
“Mr. Cecil, you’re the most wonderful person,” he said. “You know everything. Take some whisky: what’s that damned boy of mine done with it? Ah, there it is.”
Colin got up to fetch the bottle. As he rose the catch of the shutters gave way under the press of the wind; they swung wide, and with a triumphant whoop the scirocco burst into the room, like some vivid invisible presence. Colin laughed aloud with exultation, and ran to the window, where he wrestled with the shutters. Then, just as suddenly, there came a complete lull, and he fastened them back into place and closed the windows.
“The wind has been wanting to come in all evening to join us,” he said. “Now it has had its way, and it will be content. There’s your whisky: now tell me all about the missal. You will have to let me see it, too.”
Mr. Cecil helped himself.