In the evening, as we sat before the fire, Eric told me the story. [190]

“I had lost my way in the Abruzzi. All the day long I had wandered in fruitless quest of a subject to complete my series of Italian sketches. And now the twilight had fallen upon me with the suddenness of an Italian autumn. Up to this time I had followed the guidance of a faint bridle-path, but on a sudden the ground shelved downwards, and I found myself at the entrance of a narrow ravine, confronted by a blank, precipitous rock, while the path I had been following wandered off to the left, and was lost in the obscurity of the moor beyond. Nothing in the shape of a village, nothing that promised me a shelter for the night, was visible on the moorland I had been traversing. So my only hope lay in the chance of what might lie beyond the rock that barred my progress.

“Stumbling and halting at every step, for the night was falling rapidly and progress rendered difficult by boulders and watercourses, I at length made my way past the obstruction through a fissure at the side, and found to my delight that the subject of my picture lay before me. What it was you have seen to-day.

“Cheered by my good fortune, for the wind was rising rapidly, and there was every suggestion of an autumn gale, I made for one of the larger cottages that faced me. I had chosen well, as the event proved, for I found it to be the residence of the village priest—a kindly and refined old man—who met me at the door with outstretched hands, and with a welcome that in England we accord only to long-established friends.

“‘You are welcome, my son, most welcome,’ he began. ‘Few visitors reach me in this Val Verde—for so I have christened it, not very appropriately, I fear, but in memory of my home in Spain—and when they do come we keep them, be assured, for as long as they will stay. But now let me show you my guest-chamber. Poor as it is, it is better than would have fallen to your lot if you had missed the entrance to our valley. And in an hour Annetta will be ready with our evening meal, and afterwards we will sit and talk over a flask of Chianti till late into the night. Or rather, you shall talk and I will listen, for news of the outer world is the payment we exact from our visitors for such welcome as we can give them.’“Annetta was still busy with her preparations when I rejoined him in the little sitting-room, so comfortable in its contrast with the world outside, where a hurricane raged and roared through the ravines that fell away from either side of the house.

“I went to the window and looked out at the tiny lights blinking from the cottages like glow-worms that had lost their confidence. And right on the top of the grim rock facing me gleamed the red light from the church that crowned its summit.

“‘The story of a terrible tragedy attaches to that lamp,’ said my host, who had come forward to join me. And his words, by a strange coincidence, came almost as an answer to my thought. ‘When we settle down,’ he added, ‘for our evening chat, my contribution to our entertainment shall be the story of the tragedy that it commemorates. Meanwhile, as Annetta is behindhand with her preparations, and will not serve us yet awhile, do you feel bold enough to climb that hill with me in face of the storm, and see for yourself what my church contains? It can boast, at any rate, of one good picture, which, by the way, you ought to study before you hear the story I have promised you, and with which it is connected.’

“‘With pleasure,’ was my reply, ‘though surely it is hardly fair to judge a picture on a night like this, and by what looks like the glimmer of one feeble lamp. It would be difficult, I imagine, to devise worse conditions for appreciating an artist’s work.’

“‘As a rule, no doubt. But remember that pictures, like music, may be composed to suit certain accompaniments; and this is one of them, as I think you will admit, if you are content to take my words on trust and brave the storm in faith of them.’“Lantern in hand, the old man sallied forth, and I followed him. The distance was not so great as I had anticipated, nor the wind so overpowering. The church was really nearer than I had judged it to be in the twilight of the approaching night, and the precipice up which our pathway lay acted as a barrier to the wind, which had gathered in the moorland beyond, and, parted into two currents, swept the defiles on either side of us.

“On entering the church I saw at once that the main building was in darkness, save for the glimmering flame before the sanctuary. But from a side chapel that opened on the choir streamed another and fuller radiance, which had been concentrated by a careful adjustment on the picture I had come to study.

“It was a ‘Descent from the Cross,’ left by the artist, as I gathered at a glance, in an unfinished state. Nothing indeed had been attempted except the central Figure, which lay unattended and alone at the foot of the Cross. One weak and wavering line, visible only to the expert’s eye, might have been taken to imply that, worn out by his task, the painter had flung down his brush, and, satisfied or dissatisfied with the result, had never cared to re-touch his work.

“Yet satisfied he surely must have been, for, in spite of numerous faults, it was great, immeasurably great, in rough untutored power. What most impressed me was the terrible truthfulness with which he had realised the details. Surely, such total collapse, such limp and inert limbs, such lights and shadows on the livid skin, were never the outcome of the painter’s consciousness? Death alone, and death that was only just not life, had been the model from which he drew.

“And then, as I studied it more closely, other minor details grew out of the obscurity and impressed themselves upon me. It was unfinished, as I said, and had been painted with lightning rapidity, probably at a single sitting. It had been painted, too, by artificial light—the tone of the colouring proved it—but painted certainly to suit its surroundings, and probably on the very spot where we stood to view it. Now and again, as the wind forced its way through the time-worn casement, it swayed the draperies that hung around the picture—only another accessory, or so it seemed, to which the painter had attuned his work.

“‘Strong and terrible as a Ribera,’ was my verdict, ‘but a Ribera inspired and glorified.’ For this was no morbid study of Death the Destroyer’s handiwork. No; the artist had carried his subject far beyond the dominion of Death, when he transfigured the Face on the canvas with the light of an Everlasting Love.”