CHAPTER L
CASSIDY FINDS A LOST SCENT
On Gordon, in the shock of the fatal news Teresa had brought, the menace of that fateful onslaught had fallen numbly. No issue at that moment would have mattered greatly to himself. But in her piteous cry: “You are aiming at my heart,” he had awakened. That parting glance, shining with fluctuant love, relief and assurance, told him what that tragedy might have meant to her. Absorbed in his grief he had scarcely cared, had scarcely reckoned, of her.
As he stood alone the thought stung him like a sword. He remembered with what tenderness she had tried to blunt the edge of her mournful message.
His reverie passed with the entrance of Fletcher, still uncertain on his feet, and with a look of vast relief at the placid appearance of the apartment. A messenger brought a request from the Rev. Dr. Nott, a name well-known to Gordon in London. The clergyman, just arrived in Pisa, asked the use of the ground floor of the Lanfranchi Palace—he understood it was unoccupied—in which to hold service on the following Sunday.
Over the smart of his sorrow, the wraith of a satiric smile touched Gordon’s lips. He, the unelect and unregenerate, to furnish a tabernacle for Pisan orthodoxy? The last sermon he had read was one preached by a London divine and printed in an English magazine; its text was his drama of “Cain,” and it held him up to the world as a denaturalized being, who, having drained the cup of sensual sin to its bitterest dregs, was resolved, in that apocalypse of blasphemy, to show himself a cool, unconcerned fiend.
And yet, after all, the request was natural enough. The palace that housed him was the most magnificent in Pisa, in proportions almost a castle. And, in fact, the lower floor was empty and unused. Was he to mar this saner existence, in which he felt waking those old inspirations and ideals, with the crude spirit of combativeness in which his bruised pride took refuge when popular clamor thrust him from his kind? If he refused, would not the very refusal be made a further weapon against him?
Had Gordon seen the mottled clerical countenance that waited for answer in the street below he might have read a partial answer to this question.
Cassidy’s ship having anchored at Leghorn, he had embraced the opportunity to distribute a few doctrinal tracts among the English residents of this near cathedral town. Of Gordon’s life in Pisa he heard before he left the ship. In the Rev. Dr. Nott he had found an accidental travelling companion with an eye single to the glory of the Established Church, who was even then bemoaning the lack of spiritual advantages in the town to which he was bound. His zealous soul rejoiced in the acquaintance and fostered it on arrival. The idea of Sabbath service in English had been the clergyman’s; that of the Lanfranchi Palace as a place wherein to gather the elect, had been Cassidy’s. The suggestion was not without a certain genius. To the doctor’s uplifted hands he had remarked with unction that to ask could do no harm; and the request, even if refused, might be precious seed sown. Cassidy mentally presaged refusal—which should make test and material for future discourse of his own.
Waiting at the Lanfranchi entrance he remembered a sermon of which he had delivered himself years before at Newstead Abbey—perched upon a table. He had never forgotten it. He touched his lips with his tongue at the pious thought that he who had then been master of the Abbey—host of that harebrained crew who afterward made him a butt of egregious ridicule in London—was now spurned of the righteous.
Gordon at that hour had no thought of Cassidy, whom he had not seen in years. “Say to the messenger that Mr. Nott is very welcome to the use of the floor,” was the answer he gave the valet.
A moment later Teresa and Count Pietro Gamba re-entered. Teresa’s eyes were wet and shining. Her brother’s face was calm. He came frankly to Gordon and held out his hand.
While the two men clasped hands, the naval surgeon was ruminating in chagrin. Gordon’s courteous assent gave him anything but satisfaction. He took it to Dr. Nott’s lodgings.
As Cassidy set foot in the street again he stopped suddenly and unaccountably. At the Lanfranchi portal in the dusk he had had a view of a swarthy face that roused a persistent, baffling memory. The unanticipated reply to the message he had carried had jarred the puzzle from his mind. It recurred again now, and with a sudden stab of recollection. His teeth shut together with a snap.
He lay awake half that night. At sun-up he was on his way back to Leghorn, with a piece of news for the commander of the Pylades.