Surprise is but a short-lived emotion; and when Mr. Schöninger was left alone that night, with the first opportunity in many months of thinking in an unobserved solitude, he wondered more at his own calmness than at anything which had happened to him. The hideous suffering from which he had but just escaped looked far away, and so alien that he could contemplate it almost with a cold inquisitiveness, as something in which he had no part. It was scarcely more to him than the delirious dreams of a fever which had passed away. Indignation and a desire to revenge himself might rise again, would rise again; but for the present they slept. The first joy of freedom, too, was over. Nothing remained but a feeling of quiet and security. Doubtless he had, without knowing it, been soothed by the many kind and regretful words that had been addressed to him that day, and felt less disposed to dwell on his own wrongs when he knew that so many others were thinking and speaking of them.
All round the room assigned to him hung the pictures that had belonged to Mother Chevreuse—an old-fashioned portrait of her husband in the uniform of a French officer, a S. Ignatius of Loyola, a S. Antony preaching to the fishes, a print, on a gold ground, of the miraculous Lady of Perpetual Succor, and a Santa Prassede sleeping on her slab of granite.
Mr. Schöninger held his candle up to examine each of these, all but the portrait familiar to him in their originals; and as he looked, the places where he had first seen them, the stately palaces and the quiet churches, enclosed his imagination within their walls. He saw again the lines of sombre columns leading up to the glowing mosaics of the tribune, where the vision of S. John hung petrified in air; the dim lamp in the mysterious chapel of the Colonna Santa shone out again inside its grating, and the walls glittered dimly back. He saw the thickets of camellias mantled with bloom under an April sky, a little forest of white at the right hand, and a forest of rose-red at the left, and ever the fountains sparkling through.
How strange it was! He set down his candle, almost impatiently, as if a beautiful vision were being melted in the light of it, and blew it out. How strange it was! When he was in Rome, he had hated it while he admired it; but now, as the thought of it came up, his heart yearned out towards it, and grew tender and full with longing [pg 498] for it. How strange that his dearest affections should cluster where his deepest hates had pierced, and that, whenever an accusing thought arose, an excusing one immediately answered it. The city of the Ghetto was becoming to him also the city of the silvery-haired old man who had opened its gates. To remember him was like remembering a pure white star that had shone out one still evening long ago.
Mr. Schöninger put aside the curtain that hardly barred the full moonlight from the room, and leaned out into the night. Not many streets distant Honora Pembroke sat wakeful and mourning, alone with her dead. By what fatality was it that the silent woman lying there, and the weeping one beside her, should have the power to stand, with their softness and their pallor, between him and his remembrance of that gloomy mansion of hate and crime, the shadow of whose portal had but just slipped from him? The cold and trembling hands he had kissed that night had quenched for a time all anger in his heart.
He sighed, thinking of that sad household, and his gaze turned tenderly and steadily in its direction. He would have liked to call down a blessing on the head he loved had it not been so much nearer the source of all blessing than he was. She was right, no matter what she believed. All she held good was good, at least as far as she was concerned, and no blame of false doctrine could be imputed to her.
A ray of light stronger than that of the moon shining across his eyes attracted his attention. It came from F. Chevreuse's sitting-room, the one window of which was at right angles with the window where he leaned. A small, displaced fold of the curtain showed him the priest on his knees there before a crucifix, his hands clasped, his black-robed form as motionless as if it had been carved out of ebony. Here, too! Could he have no other friend than a Christian priest for his hand and heart to cling to?
Yet all was sweet and peaceful, and everything conspired to soothe him. The air touched him with a breath too soft to be called a breeze, the city was still about him, and only a foamy murmur told where the sleepless river flowed.
Triumph, joy, and sweetness he had felt, and at last came gratitude to God and forgiveness of man. One of his last thoughts that night was of pity for Lawrence Gerald.
In that pity he was not alone; for nearly the whole of Crichton shared it. They had known the young man from his childhood, had blamed and petted him, had put every temptation in his way, and been ready to defend him when he yielded. In spite of his haughtiness and assumption, there was not a single person in the city, perhaps, who really disliked him. His captivating beauty and wayward sweetness won more affection than the highest virtues or the noblest gifts of mind would have won. When a stranger and a Jew was accused, they could believe him to have been actuated by the most cruel malignity; but it was impossible to impute such feelings to Lawrence Gerald. He was weak and imprudent, and had become involved, and so led on beyond his intention. Each one could imagine, even before the confession was made public, just how it had happened; and when they read the confession, the feeling was almost universal in favor of his escape. Only a few, sternly just, insisted on hoping that he would be [pg 499] brought to suffer the full penalty of the law. Fathers and mothers whose boys, scarcely more governable than he, had played and grown up with him, looked with terror on their own children; and young men who secretly knew themselves to have been preserved only by what they would have called chance from crimes as bad as his, shuddered at the thought of his being brought back among them to be tried for his life. A sort of panic seized upon all when they saw what horrors could grow out of that which had seemed to be mere youthful errors, and how criminal had been the leniency of public opinion and of the law. Mr. Schöninger's case had held no moral for them, for he was an alien; but what Lawrence Gerald was some of their own might be. They were conspicuously generous, these people, in that charity which stays at home and makes excuses for its own little circle; and for this time, at least, they regretted that their charity had not gone beyond that boundary, and extended to the stranger within their gates.