A Voyage of Consolation by Sara Jeannette Duncan (top 10 most read books in the world .txt) 📖

candles from the wind that twisted their brown gowns round their legs, with all the anxiety to get it over shown by janitors of buildings of this world.


CHAPTER XIV.

At first through the square chambers of the early Popes and the narrow passages lined with empty cells, nearest to the world outside, we kept together, and it was mainly Eusebius who discoursed of the building of the Catacombs, which he informed us had a pagan beginning.

"But our blessed early bishops said, 'Why should the devil have all the accommodations?' and when once the Church got its foot in there wasn't much room for _him_. But a few pagans there are here to this day in better company than they ever kept above ground," remarked Brother Eusebius.

"Can you tell them apart?" asked Mr. Dod, "the Christians and the Pagans?"

"Yes," replied that holy man, "by the measurements of the jaw-bone. The Christians, you see, were always lecturing the other fellows, so their jaw-bones grew to an awful size. Some of 'em are simply parliamentary."

"Dat," said Brother Demetrius anxiously--as nobody had laughed--"ith a joke."

"I noticed the intention," said poppa. "It's down in the guide-book that you've been 'absolved from the vow of silence'--is that correct?"

"Right you are," said Brother Eusebius. "What about it?"

"Oh, nothing--only it explains a good deal. I guess you enjoy it, don't you?"

But Brother Eusebius was bending over a cell in better preservation than most of them, and was illuminating with his candle the bones of the dweller in it. The light flickered on the skull of the Early Christian and the tonsure of the modern one and made comparisons. It also cut the darkness into solid blocks, and showed us broken bits of marble, faint stains of old frescoes, strange rough letters, and where it wavered furthest the uncertain lines of a graven cross.

"Here's one of the original inhabitants," remarked Eusebius. "He's been here all the time. I hope the ladies don't mind looking at him in his bones?"

"Thee, you can pick him up," said old Demetrius, handing a thigh-bone to momma, who shrank from the privilege. "It ith quite dry."

"It seems such a liberty," she said, "and he looks so incomplete without it. Do put it back."

"That's the way I feel," remarked Dicky, "but I don't believe he'd mind our looking at a toe-bone. Are his toe-bones all there?"

"No," replied Demetrius, "I have count another day and he ith nine only. Here ith a few."

"It is certainly a very solemn and unusual privilege," remarked Mr. Mafferton, as the toe-bones went round, "to touch the mortal remnant of an Early Christian."

"That altogether depends," said the Senator, "upon what sort of an Early Christian he was. Maybe he was a saint of the first water, and maybe he was a pillar of the church that ran a building society. Or, maybe, he was only an average sort of Early Christian like you or me, in which case he must be very uncomfortable at the idea of inspiring so much respect. How are you going to tell?"

"The gentleman is right," said Brother Eusebius, and in considering poppa's theory in its relation to the doubtful character before them nobody noticed, except me, the petty larceny, by Richard Dod, of one Early Christian toe-bone. His expression, I am glad to say, made me think he had never stolen anything before; but you couldn't imagine a more promising beginning for a career of embezzlement. As we moved on I mentioned to him that the man who would steal the toe-bone of an Early Christian, who had only nine, was capable of most crimes, at which he assured me that he hadn't such a thing about him outside of his boots, which shows how one wrong step leads to another.

We fell presently into two parties--Dicky, Mrs. Portheris, and I holding to the skirts of Brother Demetrius. Brother Demetrius knew a great deal about the Latin inscriptions and the history of Pope Damasus and the chapel of the Bishops, and how they found the body of St. Cecilia, after eight hundred years, fresh and perfect, and dressed in rich vestments embroidered in gold; but his way of imparting it seriously interfered with the value of his information, and we looked regretfully after the other party.

"Here we have de tomb of Anterus and Fabianus----"

"I think we should keep up with the rest," interrupted Mrs. Portheris.

"Oh, I too, I know all dese Catacomb--I will take you everywheres--and here, too, we have buried Entychianus."

"Where is Brother Eusebius taking the others?" asked Dicky.

"Now I tell you: he mith all de valuable ting, he is too fat and lazy; only joke, joke, joke. And here we has buried Epis--martyr. Epis he wath _martyr_."

The others, with their lights and voices, came into full view where four passages met in a cubicle. "Oh," cried Isabel, catching sight of us, "_do_ come and see Jonah and the whale. It's too funny for anything."

"And where Damathuth found here the many good thainth he----"

"We would like to see Jonah," entreated Dicky.

"Well," said Brother Demetrius crossly, "you go thee him--you catch up. I will no more. You do not like my Englis' very well. You go with fat old joke-fellow, and I return the houth. Bethide, it ith the day of my lumbago." And the venerable Demetrius, with distinct temper, turned his back on us and waddled off.

We looked at each other in consternation.

"I'm afraid we've hurt his feelings," said Dicky.

"You must go after him, Mr. Dod, and apologize," commanded Mrs. Portheris.

"Do you suppose he knows the way out?" I asked.

"It _is_ a shame," said Dicky. "I'll go and tell him we'd rather have him than Jonah any day."

Brother Demetrius was just turning a corner. Darkness encompassed him, lying thick between us. He looked, in the light of his candle, like something of Rembrandt's suspended for a moment before us. Dicky started after him, and, presently, Mrs. Portheris and I were regarding each other with more friendliness than I would have believed possible across our flaring dips in the silence of the Catacombs.

"Poor old gentleman," I said; "I hope Mr. Dod will overtake him."

"So do I, indeed," said Mrs. Portheris. "I fear we have been very inconsiderate. But young people are always so impatient," she added, and put the blame where it belonged.

I did not retaliate with so much as a reproachful glance. Even as a censor Mrs. Portheris was so eminently companionable at the moment. But as we waited for Dicky's return neither of us spoke again. It made too much noise. Minutes passed, I don't know how many, but enough for us to look cautiously round to see if there was anything to sit on. There wasn't, so Mrs. Portheris took my arm. We were not people to lean on each other in the ordinary vicissitudes of life, and even under the circumstances I was aware that Mrs. Portheris was a great deal to support, but there was comfort in every pound of her. At last a faint light foreshadowed itself in the direction of Dicky's disappearance, and grew stronger, and was resolved into a candle and a young man, and Mr. Dod, very much paler than when he left, was with us again. Mrs. Portheris and I started apart as if scientifically impelled, and exclaimed simultaneously, "Where is Brother Demetrius?"

"Nowhere in this graveyard," said Dicky. "He's well upstairs by this time. Must have taken a short cut. I lost sight of him in about two seconds."

"That was very careless of you, Mr. Dod," said Mrs. Portheris, "very careless indeed. Now we have no option, I suppose, but to rejoin the others; and where are they?"

They were certainly not where they had been. Not a trace nor an echo--not a trace nor an echo--of anything, only parallelograms of darkness in every direction, and our little circle of light flickering on the tombs of Anterus, and Fabianus, and Entychianus, and Epis--martyr--and we three within it, looking at each other.

"If you don't mind," said Dicky, "I would rather not go after them. I think it's a waste of time. Personally I am quite contented to have rejoined you. At one time I thought I shouldn't be able to, and the idea was trying."

"We wouldn't _dream_ of letting you go again," said Mrs. Portheris and I simultaneously. "But," continued Mrs. Portheris, "we will all go in search of the others. They can't be very far away. There is nothing so alarming as standing still."

We proceeded along the passage in the direction of our last glimpse of our friends and relatives, passing a number of most interesting inscriptions, which we felt we had not time to pause and decipher, and came presently to a divergence which none of us could remember. Half of the passage went down three steps, and turned off to the left under an arch, and the other half climbed two, and immediately lost itself in blackness of darkness. In our hesitation Dicky suddenly stooped to a trace of pink in the stone leading upward, and picked it up--three rose petals.

"That settles it," he exclaimed. "Isa--Miss Portheris was wearing a rose. I gave it to her myself."

"Did you, indeed," said Isabel's mamma coldly. "My dear child, how anxious she will be!"

"Oh, I should think not," I said hopefully. "I am sure she can trust Mr. Dod to take care of himself--and of us, too, for the matter of that."

"Mr. Dod!" exclaimed Mrs. Portheris with indignation. "My poor child's anxiety will be for her mother."

And we let it go at that. But Dicky put the rose petals in his pocket with the toe-bone, and hopefully remarked that there would be no difficulty about finding her now. I mentioned that I had parents also, at that moment, lost in the Catacombs, but he did not apologize.

The midnight of the place, as we walked on, seemed to deepen, and its silence to grow more profound. The tombs passed us in solemn grey ranges, one above the other--the long tombs of the grown-up people, and the shorter ones of the children, and the very little ones of the babies. The air held a concentrated dolor of funerals sixteen centuries old, and the four dim stone walls seemed to have crept closer together. "I think I will take your arm, Mr. Dod," said Mrs. Portheris, and "I think I will take your other arm, Mr. Dod," said I.

"Thank you," replied Dicky, "I should be glad of both of yours," which may look ambiguous now, but we quite understood it at the time. It made rather uncomfortable walking in places, but against that overwhelming majority of the dead it was comforting to feel ourselves a living unit. We stumbled on, taking only the most obvious turnings, and presently the passage widened into another little square chamber. "More bishops!" groaned Dicky, holding up his candle.

"Perhaps," I replied triumphantly, "but Jonah, anyway," and I pointed him out on the wall, in two shades of brown, a good deal faded, being precipitated into the jaws of a green whale with paws and horns and a smile, also a curled body and a three-forked tail. The wicked deed had two accomplices only, who had apparently stopped rowing to do it. Underneath was a companion sketch of the restitution of Jonah, in perfect order, by the whale, which had, nevertheless, grown considerably stouter in the interval, while an amiable stranger reclined in an arbor, with