Presently a strange green light flashed before our eyes, right above the place where the high altar had stood of old; it was gone in a minute, and the calm radiance of the moon was still undisturbed. Seen, as it was, in this dim, silent place of song and worship, it was very impressive; and had it been nothing but what we first took it for—i.e., a railway signal—even then it would have remained in our imagination, idealized into something symbolic. Green is the color of hope, and where is there more room for hope than under the arches of a ruined abbey, once the pride of a Catholic country, the home of learning and charity, the representative of a nation's civilization? We stayed a long while yet, lingering about the dusky arches, catching sight of the starry sky through the Gothic tracery of the windows, repeopling the place in fancy with its silent, prayerful denizens in their white robes and hoods, and wondering what that fitful flash might have been. Next morning we saw in the newspaper that just at that very hour a meteor of greenish hue had appeared and been observed in many [pg 807] places all over England. You may imagine how glad we were to find that it had been no railway signal that had cleft the white moonlight while we were praying in the chancel. It was a beautiful remembrance to carry away from the Abbey of S. Mary at Furness. God does not forget the places where his feet have rested, and there are heavenly, undying flowers yet in the gardens of Paradise which the angels fling down on those consecrated spots which princes once endowed, because they humbly acknowledged that “the roses and flowers of kings, emperors, and dukes, and the crowns and palms of all the great, wither and decay, and that all things, with an uninterrupted course, tend to dissolution and death.”[175]
So we took leave of the beautiful North Country, its lakes, its solemn mountains, its abbeys, and its hardy, independent people, whose character has in it yet all the elements out of which God, infusing into them his grace, moulded the great Northumbrian saint, Wilfrid of York, the Thomas à Becket of the VIth century.
On The Wing. A Southern Flight. VI.
“An evil spirit swept the land,
Of ruin and unrest.”
Not far from the villa we occupied there stood an uninviting house, as it appeared to me, the loggia of which was surrounded on three sides with green trellis-work, and commanded a fine view of Naples and the bay. Outside the door I had noticed barrels of oysters, as indicative of what we might find inside. This was the Caffe Frisio, renowned in Naples, spite of its unattractive appearance. I was somewhat surprised when, a few days after our engagement, Don Emidio suggested to Mary that we should all dine there, including, of course, the Vernons. I remonstrated. I did not see the fun of leaving our own quiet, cool house, with a modest but sufficiently well-cooked dinner prepared by Monica and served with the honest awkwardness of our unpretending Paolino, for the hurry of noisy waiters and the click-clack of other people's plates and glasses. I stood up for my point with my usual undiscerning obstinacy until I thought I saw a puzzled and half-pained expression come over the usually serene brow of my future master. Of course I yielded instantly, and, before I had stammered out a dozen words, found I had gone the length of declaring that my appetite for that day would fail me unless I dined at the Caffe Frisio. That point gained, Don Emidio hurried off (no! I am wrong there; I never as yet have seen him hurry about anything) to press the Vernons to be of our party. From thence he went, no [pg 808] doubt in his usually leisurely style, to order dinner for us. He was no sooner gone out of the room than I turned to Mary a bewildered face of inquiry, and asked her if she could at all understand Emidio's being so anxious we should dine at a caffe. Mary's reply was an indirect one. She look my hand in hers, and said with a smile:
“I sometimes wonder, my dear girl, whether you will quite easily take to the foreign ways of your intended husband.”
“Do you doubt it, Mary? I think, on the contrary, there is something so charming in that strange mixture of childlike simplicity and manly generosity which is so remarkable in the really good and noble Italians. Emidio always reminds me of a high-bred school-boy.”
“That is even more the characteristic, perhaps, of a thoroughly consistent Catholic life from childhood upwards than of any particular nation; though I agree with you that it is generally evident amongst Italians. Joy is the attribute of childhood, as distinct from any other period of life; and a joyful spirit is one of the marks of hidden sanctity. But I was not thinking of anything so serious as this. I mean that I wonder whether you will take easily to the out-of-door, unprivate life which is engendered amongst Italians by their beautiful climate, and which makes it not only a simple, but almost a necessary, thing that Don Emidio should immediately think of celebrating your engagement by dining at the celebrated Caffe Frisio.”