Hebrew, that was it. Henchard remembered now. The scrolls were Torah scrolls, inscribed with the first five books of the Bible.
At last, tired of squatting on his knees, he stood up and felt for the padlock, his attention diverted by a new question
What Jew had put them there?
There was a commotion on the fondamenta below. Quickly Henchard strode across the room, slammed the door to the stairway, and threw the bolt across. Only then did he look out the window.
It was only the same crew of men who had been shoveling mud out of the canal for weeks. They were yanking out the corrugated iron barriers at both ends. There were shrieks of metal on metal, shouts and curses. One of the men hopped up and down and flapped his hand. Blood flew. Henchard watched until the man stopped hopping and guffawed and wiped his hand on his shirt. He was all right.
The others kept jerking on the barriers. Water began flowing into the drained canal, rushing faster and faster through the gaps in seething waterfalls. At last one of the men pulled out the last of the metal plates and lifted it over his head with a triumphant shout.
Amused, Henchard left the apartment, forgetting to snap the hasp of the padlock into the staple on the frame of the closet door.
*28*
Sam had been telling himself once again that it didn't matter what happened to him anymore. Why didn't he say farewell to all care and just walk away from the library? Why didn't he abandon his unhappy little daughter and his impossible mother-in-law and fly off to Monte Carlo, or Madrid, or Buenos Aires, or the South Pole? Or perhaps the North Pole? Was the North Pole more congenial than the South Pole? Or why didn't he race across to the mainland and hire a cab and tell the driver to set off at once and find Dottoressa Lucia Costanza? Subito! Immediatamente!
But it wasn't working, this cavalier way of thinking. He didn't want to gamble for high stakes in a casino at Monte Carlo. Nor did he want to do any other crazy thing. And there was no omniscient limousine driver in the world who could say, "Si, signore," and rev up his engine and take off in the right direction to find the missing dottoressa.
No, there was nothing to do but go on with what he was doing, handling the problems that came up in the library, which were sometimes grievoussince the exhibition some of the Aldine incunabula were suffering from a new infestation of woodwormand examining the relics loaned to him through the good offices of Father Urbano.
But now, staring at the smashed remains of the vandalized reliquary, Sam felt the last vestiges of his happy-go-lucky unconcern fall away. This disaster could not be shrugged off. There'd be hell to pay for sure.
Despairing, he pulled up a chair to the desk where the reliquary lay and sank his head in his hands. It didn't matter any longer what happened to him, but it did matter what happened to the kindly priest who had entrusted him with all these holy objects. Father Urbano's career as a rising man in the church would come to a crashing halt. He'd never be a monsignor or a cardinal patriarch, he'd never ascend to whatever pinnacle of ambition a healthy middle-aged priest might aspire.
But Sam had four weeks' grace. The reliquary from the Scuola di San Giovanni Evangelista had been loaned to him for a month. Not that it mattered. What good would it do to postpone his awful revelation? The shock and the horrified accusations would be the same.
At Mrs. Wellesley's firm request, Sam always called his mother-in-law by her first name. Ursula too was supposed to call her grandmother Dorothea, but she never did. She never called her anything.
"The word grandmother is so old-fashioned," explained Mrs. Wellesley. But it wasn't really a matter of language, it was simply that she couldn't bear to be thought of as an old lady. Certainly not as una nonna, an Italian grandmother. If Ursula were to call her Grandma, people might think she was no longer a young and vibrant woman.
Dorothea didn't tell herself this in so many words. To Sam her lack of an honest connection with her own brain was the whole trouble. The most boring thing about his exquisitely boring mother-in-law was her everlasting unconscious untruthfulness.
Could it have been Dorothea who had entered his study and committed this vile atrocity? After all, she was even more of an iconoclast than he was himself. She might very well have thought it a cleansing act to destroy this remnant of barbarous superstition. Sam cursed his mother-in-law under his breath, wondering how a woman of such extreme respectability could be so violent.
He knocked on her door and confronted her just as she was picking up her alligator bag to go out. "Dorothea," he said sternly, "have you been in my study?"
She looked at him slyly. There was a slight pause, and then she said, "Of course not. How could I? The door is locked."