"There he is, an incarnated weakness and fastidiousness. His hand is too delicate to draw his own sword. If he really cast out Satan, it must have been by merely staring him down. His helmet rests with no weight upon his curled and perfumed locks—his buckles are soft gold where iron should be. He represents the dull, collective, aristocratic intolerance of Heaven for the only individualist it ever managed to produce. He pretends to be a warrior and is as feminine as your St. Catherine. He is the imperturbable champion of celestial good form, and Dennis, who sees through things, says he is my spiritual husband. He is the weakest of the weak and is too strong for you, Crocker."
For a space that seemed minutes they faced each other, Emma excited, with a diffused indignation that defied impartially the missing St. Michael and the puzzled man before her; Crocker with a perplexity that renewed the old boyish expression in his eyes. He seemed to be thinking, and, as he thought, the tension of Emma's attitude relaxed, she forgot to look at the St. Michael and wondered at the even, steady patience of the big likable boy she was dismissing. She pitied him in advance for the futile argument he must be revolving. She had despatched him as in duty bound and was both sorry and glad.
But his counterplea when it came was of a disconcerting briefness and potency. He said very slowly, "Yes, I see it all. There is your spiritual husband; there are they" (indicating the valley with a sweep of a big hand), "and there are you, Emma, caught in a web of baffling and false ideas; and here am I, a real man who loves you, fearing neither the St. Michael nor them" (another gesture) "nor your doubts. I set myself, Morton Crocker, your lover, against them all and take my own so."
There was a frightened second in which his sturdy arms closed about her. There was a little shudder, as the same big hand that had defied the valley sought her head and pressed it to his shoulder. When Emma at last looked up the mockery she always carried in her eyes had given place to a new serenity, and her hand reached up timidly for his.
Crocker and Emma—we now instinctively gave him the precedence—were inconsiderate enough to remove themselves without making clear the fate of the no longer missing St. Michael. We still speculated indolently as to the nature of the afterpiece in which we assumed this ex-hero of our comedy might yet appear. Then we learned that Emma was to be married without delay from the stone manor house under the Taconics where her people had dwelt since patroon days. Only a handful of friends with Crocker's nearest kin and her inevitable New York aunts were to be present. These venerable ladies had admitted that in marrying, even opulently, out of the family, Emma had once more shown velleities of self-sacrifice. Then we heard of Crocker and Emma on his boat along the coast "Down East." Later we were shocked by rumours of a canoe trip through Canadian waterways. Hereupon the usually benevolent Dennis protested as he glanced approvingly at the well-kept Tuscan landscape. "Crocker needn't rub it in," he opined. "Why, it's the same scrubby spruce tree from the Plains of Abraham to James's Bay-and Emma, who hated being bored! Why, it's marriage by capture; it's barbaric." "It's worse; it's rheumatic," shuddered Harwood as he declined Marsala and took whisky. "But he'll have to bring her back to civilisation some time, if only to hospital. We shall have her again." "He will bring her back, but we shall never have her again," said Dennis solemnly. "She has renounced us and all our works." "Renouncing our works isn't so difficult," smiled Mrs. Dennis, and then the talk drifted elsewhere, to new Emmas who were just beginning to eat the Tuscan lotus.
Before the year had turned to June again we had nearly forgotten our runaways, when a quite unusual activity about her villa and Crocker's warned us that they were coming back. Harwood had seen in transit a box which he thought corresponded to the St. Michael's stature, but was not sure. In a few days came a circular note from Crocker through Dennis saying that they were fairly settled and he glad to see any or all of us. She, however, was still fatigued by the journey and must for a time keep her room.
Harwood straightway volunteered to undertake the preliminary reconnaissance, while Frau Stern engaged to penetrate to Emma herself.
On a beatific afternoon we sat in council on Dennis's terrace awaiting the envoys. Below, the misty plain rose on and on till it gathered into an amber surge in Monte Morello and rippled away again through the Fiesolan hills. Nearer, torrid bell-towers pierced the shimmering reek, like stakes in a sweltering lagoon. In the centre of all, the great dome swam lightly, a gigantic celestial buoy in a vaporous sea. The spell that bound us all was doubly potent that day. The sense of a continuous life that had made the dome and the belfries an inevitable emanation from the clean crumbling earth, lulled us all, and we hardly stirred when Harwood bustled in, saying, "Cheer up. I have seen Crocker, and it isn't there." "You mean," said the cautious Dennis, "that Crocker still possesses only the hole, aperture, frame, or niche that the missing St. Michael may yet adorn." "I only know that it isn't there now," growled Harwood. "I deal merely in facts, but you may get theories, if you must have them, from Frau Stern, who heroically forced her way to Emma over Crocker's prostrate form."
As he spoke we heard Frau Stern's timid, well-meaning ring, and in a moment her smile filled the archway.
"We don't need to ask if you have news," cried Mrs. Dennis from afar.