53.Continuation of Appalling Pieties
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HE was none too soon, because Ninzian rose from this erasement just in time to bump into no other than the energetic tough flesh of Holy Holmendis, who in the cool of the evening was coming up the walkway; and indeed, in rising, Ninzian jostled against the saint rather roughly. So Ninzian apologized for his clumsiness, and explained that he was going fishing the next day, and was digging for worms: and Ninzian was in a bad taking, for he could not know how much this peppery and over-excitable saint from out of Philistia had seen or suspected, or might be up to the very next moment with one or another bull-headed miracle.
But Holy Holmendis said friendlily that no bones were broken, and he went on, with the soul-chilling joviality of the clergy, to make some depressing joke about fishers of men. “And that is why I am here,” said the saint, “for this evening Dame Balthis is to confess to me whatever matters may be on her conscience.”
“Yes, yes,” said Ninzian, fondly, “but we both know,my dear and honored friend, that Balthis has a particularly tender conscience, a conscience which is as sensitive to the missteps of others as a sore toe.”
“That is how everybody’s conscience ought to be,” returned the saint: and he went on to speak of the virtuous woman who is a crown to her husband. And he made a contrast between the fine high worth of Balthis and the shamelessness of that bad beggar-woman upon whom, just outside the gate, the saint had put apoplexy and divine fire for speaking over-lightly of the second coming of Manuel.
Ninzian fidgeted. He of course said sympathizingly that he would send some servants to remove the blasted carcass, and that it ought to be a lesson, and that there was no telling what the world was coming to unless right-thinking persons took strong steps through the proper channels. Nevertheless, he did not like the hard, pinched little mouth and glittering, very pale blue eyes of this gaunt saint; and the nimbus about the thick white hair of Holy Holmendis was beginning to shine brighter and brighter as the dusk of evening thickened. Ninzian found it uncomfortable to be alone with this worker of miracles; piety is in all things so unpredictable: and Ninzian was unfeignedly glad when Balthis came out of the loved house that was no longer Ninzian’s home, and when Balthis held open the door for Holmendis to enter where Ninzian might not come any more.
Yet, so tenacious is the charitableness of women, that even now, as Holmendis went in, Dame Balthis tried to speak, for the last time, sensibly and kindly with her husband.
“Pig with the head of a mule,” she said, in a lowered tone, “do you stop looking at me like a sick calf, and go away! For I must confess in what a state of sin I have been living, as a devil’s wife, and I have little faith in your black magic, and you know as well as I do that there is no telling what blasted tree-trunk or consecrated bottle or something of that sort he may seal you up in until the holy Morrow of Judgment, precisely as he has done all those other evil spirits.”
Ninzian replied, “I shall not ever leave you of my free will.”
“But, Ninzian, it is as if I were putting you into the bottle, myself! For if I do not tell that spiteful old bag of bones”—she crossed herself,—“I mean, that beloved and blessed saint, why, he would never have the sense, or rather, I intended to say that his faith in his fellow creatures is too great and admirable for him ever to suspect you, and so you just see how it is!”
“Yes, my most cruel love,” said Ninzian, “it is quite as if you yourself were thrusting me into a brazen bottle, for all that you know how dependent I am on open-air exercise, and as if you were setting to it the unbreakable seal of Sulieman-ben-Daoud with your own dear hands. But, nevertheless—!”
He took her hand, and gallantly he kissed her finger-tips.
At that she boxed his jaws. “You need not think to make a fool of me! no, not again, not after all these years! Oh, but I will show you!”
Then Balthis also went into the house where the gaunt saint was making ready to hear her mensual confession.