Chapter 7

The men resumed their walk; but for quite a minute John kept his hand on Winthorpe's shoulder, and again and again gently patted it, murmuring, "I am so glad, so immensely glad." Maria Dolores was quite sure that this was what he murmured, for, though no word could reach her, John's beaming face spoke louder than his voice.

At last John let his hand drop, and, eyebrows raised a little, asked a question.

"But how did it happen? But tell me all about it," was what he seemed to say.

And Winthorpe (always with something of that ecstatic light in his eyes) proceeded to answer. But it was a longish story, and lasted through half a dozen of their forward and backward ambulations. Apparently, furthermore, it was a story which, as it developed, became less and less agreeable to the mind of John; for his face, at first all awake with interest, all aglow with pleasure, gradually sobered, gradually darkened, took on a frown, expressed dissent, expressed disapprobation, till, finally, with an impatient movement, he interrupted, and began--speaking rapidly, heatedly--to protest, to remonstrate.

"Ah," thought Maria Dolores, "the priest is to be made a bishop, sure enough,--but a missionary bishop. It isn't for nothing that he looks like an early Christian martyr. He is going to some outlandish, savage part of the world, where he will be murdered by the natives, or die of fever or loneliness. He is a man who has listened to the Counsels of Perfection. But his unascetic friend Prospero (one would say June remonstrating with December) can't bring himself to like it."

John remonstrated, protested, argued. Winthorpe, calmly, smilingly, restated his purpose and his motives. John pleaded, implored, appealed (so the watcher read his gesture) to earth, to heaven. Winthorpe took his arm, and calmly, smilingly, tried to soothe, tried to convince him. John drew his arm free, and, employing it to add force and persuasiveness to his speech, renewed his arguments, pointed out how unnecessary, inhuman, impossible the whole thing was. "It's monstrous. It's against all nature. There's no _reason_ in it. What does it _rhyme_ with? It's wilfully going out of your way to seek, to create, wretchedness. My mind simply refuses to accept it." It was as if Maria Dolores could hear the words. But Winthorpe, calm and smiling, would not be moved. John shook his head, muttered, shrugged his shoulders, threw up his hands, muttered again. "Was ever such pig-headed obstinacy! Was ever such arbitrary, voluntary blindness! I give you up, for a perverse, a triple-pated madman!" And so, John muttering and frowning, Winthorpe serenely smiling, reiterating, they passed round the corner of the Castle buildings, and were lost to Maria Dolores' view.

III

That afternoon, seated on the moss, under a tall eucalyptus tree near to Frau Brandt's pavilion, Maria Dolores received a visit from Annunziata.

Annunziata's pale little face was paler, her big grave eyes were graver, even than their wont. She nodded her head, slowly, portentously; and her glance was heavy with significance.

Maria Dolores smiled. "What is the matter?" she cheerfully inquired.

"Ah," sighed Annunziata, deeply, with another portentous head-shake, "I wish I knew."

Maria Dolores laughed. "Sit down," she suggested, making room beside her on the moss, "and try to think."

Annunziata sat down, curled herself up. "Something has happened to Prospero," she said, _de profundis_.

"Oh?" asked Maria Dolores. "What?" She seemed heartlessly cheerful, and even rather amused.

"Ah," sighed Annunziata, "that is what I wish I knew. He has had a friend to pass the day with him."

"Yes?" said Maria Dolores. "I expect I saw his friend walking with him this morning?"

"_Già_," said Annunziata. "They have been walking about all day. _His_ friend Prospero he calls him. But he doesn't look very prosperous. He looks like a slate-pencil. He is long and thin, and dark and cold, and hard, just like a slate-pencil. He would not stay the night, though we had a bed prepared for him. He is going to Rome, and Prospero has driven him to the railway station at Cortello. I hate him," wound up Annunziata, simply.

"Mercy!" exclaimed Maria Dolores, opening her eyes. "Why do you hate him?"

"Because he must have said or done something very unkind to Prospero," answered Annunziata. "Oh, you should see him. He is so sad--so sad and so angry. He keeps scowling, and shaking his head, and saying things in English, which I cannot understand, but I am sure they are sad things and angry things. And he would not eat any dinner,--no, not that much," (Annunziata measured off an inch on her finger), "he who always eats a great deal,--_eh, ma molto, molto_," and, separating her hands, she measured off something like twenty inches in the air.

Maria Dolores couldn't help laughing a little at this. But afterwards she said, on a key consolatory, "Ah, well, he has gone away now, so let us hope your friend Prospero will promptly recover his accustomed appetite."

"Yes," said Annunziata, "I hope so. But oh, that old slate-pencil man, how I hate him! I would like to--_uhhh!_" She clenched her little white fist, and shook it, threateningly, vehemently, while her eyes fiercely flashed. ... Next instant, however, her mien entirely changed. Like a light extinguished, all the fierceness went out of her face, making way for what seemed pain and terror. "There," she cried, pain and terror in her voice, "I have offended God. Oh, I am so sorry, so sorry. My sin, my sin, my sin," she murmured, bowing her head, and thrice striking her breast.

"I take back every word I said. I do not hate him. I would not hurt him--I would not even stick a pin in him--if I had him at my mercy. No--I would do anything I could to help him. I would give him anything I had that he could want. I would give him my coral rosary. I would give him"--she hesitated, struggled, and at last, drawing a deep breath, gritting her teeth, in supreme renunciation--"yes, I would give him my tame kid," she forced herself to pronounce, with a kind of desperate firmness. "But see," she wailed, her little white brow a mesh of painful wrinkles, "it is all no good. God is still angry. Oh, what shall I do?" And, to the surprise and distress of Maria Dolores, she burst into a sudden passion of tears, sobbing, sobbing, with that abandonment of grief which only children know.

"My dear, my dear," exclaimed Maria Dolores, drawing her to her. "My dearest, you mustn't cry like that. Dear little Annunziata. What is it? Why do you cry so, dear one? Answer me. Tell me."

But Annunziata only buried her face in Maria Dolores' sleeve, and moaned, while long, tremulous convulsions shook her frail little body. Maria Dolores put both arms about her, hugged her close, and laid her cheek upon her hair.

"Darling Annunziata, don't cry. Why should you cry so, dearest? God is not angry with you. Why should you think that God is angry with you? God loves you, darling. Everyone loves you. There, there--dearest--don't cry. Sweet one, dear one."

Transitions, with Annunziata, were sometimes inexplicably rapid. All at once her sobbing ceased; she looked up, and smiled, smiled radiantly, from a face that was wet and glistening with tears. "Thanks be to God," she piously exulted; "God is not angry any more."

"Of course He isn't," said Maria Dolores, tightening her hug, and touching Annunziata's curls lightly with her lips. "But He was never angry. What made you think that God was angry?"

Annunziata's big eyes widened. "Didn't you notice?" she asked, in a hushed voice, amazed.

"No," wondered Maria Dolores. "What was there to notice?"

"He made them draw a cloud over the sun," Annunziata whispered. "Didn't you notice that when I said I would like to--when I said what I said about that friend of Prospero's--just then they drew a cloud across the sun? That is a sign that God is angry. The sun, you know, is the window in Heaven through which God looks down on the world, and through which the light of Heaven shines on the world. And when the window is open, we feel happy and thankful, and wish to sing and laugh. But when we have done something to make God angry with us, then He sends angels to draw clouds over the window, so that we may be shut out of His sight, and the light of Heaven may be shut off from us. And then we are lonely and cold, and we could quarrel with anything, even with the pigs. God wishes to show us how bad it would be always to be shut off from His sight. But now they have drawn the cloud away, so God is not angry any more. I made a good act of contrition, and He has forgiven me."

Maria Dolores smiled, but under her smile there was a look of seriousness, a look of concern.

"My dear," she said smiling, and looking concerned, "you should try to control your vivid little imagination. If every time a cloud crosses the sun, you are going to assume the responsibility for it, and to fancy that you have offended God, I'm afraid you'll have rather an agitated life."

"Oh, no; not _every_ time," exclaimed Annunziata, and she was manifestly on the point of making a fine distinction, when abruptly the current of her ideas was diverted. "Sh-h! There comes Prospero," she cried, starting up. "I can see the top of his white hat above the rhododendron bushes. He has driven his friend to Cortello, and come home. I must run away, or he will see that I've been crying. Don't tell him," she begged, putting her finger on her lips; and she set off running, towards the presbytery, just as John stepped forth from behind the long hedge of rhododendrons.

IV

John stepped forth from behind the rhododendrons, with a kind of devil-may-care, loose, aimless gait, the brim of his Panama pulled brigandishly down over one ear, his hands in the pockets of his coat, his head bent, his brow creased, his eyes sombre, every line and fibre of his person advertising him the prey of morose disgust. But when he saw Maria Dolores, he hastily straightened up, unpocketed his hands, took off his hat (giving it a flap that set the brim at a less truculent angle), and smiled. And when, the instant after, he caught sight of the flying form of Annunziata, his smile turned into a glance of wonder.

"What is the matter with Annunziata? Why is she running with all her legs like that?" he asked.

Maria Dolores had the tiniest catch of laughter. "She is running away from you," she answered.

"From _me_?" marvelled John. "_Je suis donc un foudre de guerre?_ What on earth is she running away from me for?"

Maria Dolores smiled mysteriously.

"Ah," she said, "she asked me not to tell you. I am in the delicate position of confidante."

"And therefore I hope you'll tell me with the less reluctance," said John, urbanely unprincipled. "A confidante always betrays her confidence to some one,--that's the part of the game that makes it worth while."

Maria Dolores' smile deepened.

"In that pale green frock, on that bank of dark-green moss, with her complexion and her hair,--by Jove, how stunning she is!" thought John, in a commotion.

"Well," she said, "Annunziata ran away because she didn't want you to see that she'd been crying."

John raised his eyebrows, the blue eyes under them becoming expressive of dismay.

"Crying?" he echoed. "The poor little kiddie! What had she been crying about!"

"That is a long story, and involves some of her peculiar theological tenets," said Maria Dolores. "But, in a single word, about your friend."

John's eyebrows descended to their normal level, and drew together.

"Crying about my friend? What friend?" he puzzled.

"Your friend the priest--the man who has been passing the day here with you," explained Maria Dolores.

John gave a start, threw back his head, and eyed her with astonishment.

"That is extraordinary," he exclaimed.

"What?" asked she, lightly glancing up.

"That you should call him my friend the priest," said John, wagging a bewildered head.

"Why? Isn't he a priest? He has all the air of one," said Maria Dolores.

"No; he's an American millionaire," said John, succinctly.

Maria Dolores moved in her place, and laughed.

"Dear me!" she said, "I did strike wide of the mark. An American millionaire should cultivate a less deceptive appearance. With that thin, shaven face of his, and that look of an early Christian martyr in his eyes, and the dark clothes he wears, wherever he goes he's sure to be mistaken for a priest."

"Yes," said John, with a kind of grimness; "that's what's extraordinary. He comes of a long line of bigoted Protestants, he's a reincarnation of some of his stern old Puritan forebears, and you find that he looks like their pet abomination, a Romish priest. Well, you have a prophetic eye."

Maria Dolores gazed up inquiringly. "A prophetic eye?" she questioned.

"I merely mean," said John, with thaumaturgic airiness, "that the man is on his way to Rome to study for the priesthood." And he gave a thaumaturgic toss to his bearded chin.

"Oh!" cried Maria Dolores, and leaned back against her eucalyptus tree, and laughed again.

John, however, dejectedly shook his head, and gloomed.

"Laugh if you will," he said, "though it seems to me as far as possible from a laughing matter, and I think Annunziata chose the better part when she cried."

"I beg your pardon," said Maria Dolores, perhaps a trifle stiffly. "I was only laughing at the coincidence of my having supposed him to be a priest, and then learning that, though he isn't, he is going to become one. I was not laughing at the fact itself. Nor was it," she added, her stiffness leaving her, and a little glimmer of amusement taking its place, "that fact which made Annunziata cry."

"I dare say not," responded John, "seeing that she couldn't possibly have known it. But it might well have done so. It's enough to bring tears to the eyes of a brazen image." He angrily jerked his shoulders.

"What?" cried Maria Dolores, surprised, rebukeful. "That a man is to become a holy priest?"

"Oh, no," said John. "That fact alone, detached from special circumstances, might be a subject for rejoicing. But the fact that this particular man, _in_ his special circumstances, is to become a priest--well, I simply have no words to express my feeling." He threw out his arms, in a gesture of despair. "I'm simply sick with rage and pity. I could gnash my teeth and rend my garments."

"Mercy!" cried Maria Dolores, stirring. "What are the special circumstances?"

"Oh, it's a grisly history," said John. "It's a tale of the wanton, ruthless, needless, purposeless sacrifice of two lives. It's his old black icy Puritan blood. Winthorpe--that's his name--had for years been a freethinker, far too intellectual and enlightened, and that sort of thing, you know, to believe any such old wives' tale as the Christian Religion. He and I used to have arguments, tremendous ones, in which, of course, neither in the least shook the other. Darwin and Spencer, with a dash of his native Emerson, were religion enough for him. Then this morning he arrived here, and said, 'Congratulate me. A month ago I was received into the Church.'"

Maria Dolores looked up, animated, her dark eyes sparkling.

"How splendid!" she said.

"Yes," agreed John, "so I thought. 'Congratulate me,' he said. I should think I did congratulate him,--with all my heart and soul. But then, naturally, I asked him how it had happened, what had brought it to pass."

"Yes--?" prompted Maria Dolores, as he paused.

"Well," said John, his face hardening, "he thereupon proceeded to tell me in his quiet way, with his cool voice (it's like smooth-flowing cold water), absolutely the most inhuman story I have ever had to keep my patience and listen to."

"What was the story?" asked Maria Dolores.

"If you can credit such inhumanity, it was this," answered John. "It seems that he fell in love--with a girl in Boston, where he lives. And what's more, and worse, the girl fell in love with him. So there they were, engaged. But she was a Catholic, and his state of unbelief was a cause of great grief to her. So she pleaded with him, and persuaded, till, merely to comfort her, and without the faintest suspicion that his scepticism could be weakened, he promised to give the Catholic position a thorough reconsideration, to read certain books, and to put himself under instruction with a priest: which he did. Which he did, if you please, with the result, to his own unutterable surprise, that one fine day he woke up and discovered that he'd been convinced, that he _believed_."

"Yes?" said Maria Dolores, eagerly. "Yes--? And then? And the girl?"

"Ah," said John, with a groan, "the girl That's the pity of it. That's where his black old Puritan blood comes in. Blood? It isn't blood--it's some fluid form of stone--it's flint dissolved in vinegar. The girl! Mind you, she loved him, they were engaged to be married. Well, he went to her, and said, 'I have been converted. I believe in the Christian religion--your religion. But I can't believe a thing like that, and go on living as I lived when I didn't believe it,--go on living as if it weren't true, or didn't matter. It does matter--it matters supremely--it's the only thing in the world that matters. I can't believe it, and _marry_--marry, and live in tranquil indifference to it. No, I must put aside the thought of marriage, the thought of personal happiness. I must sell all I have and give it to the poor, take up my cross and follow Him. I am going to Rome to study for the priesthood.' Imagine," groaned John, stretching out his hands, "_imagine_ talking like that to a woman you are supposed to love, to a woman who loves you." And he wrathfully ground his heel into the earth.

Maria Dolores looked serious.

"After all, he had to obey his conscience," she said. "After all, he was logical, he was consistent."

"Oh, his conscience! Oh, consistency!" cried John, with an intolerant fling of the body. "At bottom it's nothing better than common self-indulgence, as I took the liberty of telling him to his face. It's the ardour of the convert, acting upon that acid solution of flint which takes the place of blood in his veins, and causing sour puritanical impulses, which (like any other voluptuary) he immediately gives way to. It's nothing better than unbridled passion. Conscience, indeed! Where was his conscience when it came to _her_? Think of that poor girl--that poor pale girl--who _loved_ him. Oh, Mother of Mercy!"

He moved impatiently three steps to the left, three steps to the right, beating the palm of one hand with the back of the other.

"What did she do? How did she take it?" asked Maria Dolores.

"What she ought to have done," said John, between his teeth, "was to scratch his eyes out. What she did do, as he informed me with a seraphic countenance, was not merely to approve of everything he said, but to determine to do likewise. So, while he's on his way to Rome, to get himself tonsured and becassocked, she's scrubbing the floors of an Ursuline convent, as a novice. And there are two lives spoiled." He shrugged his shoulders.

"Oh, no, no," contended Maria Dolores, earnestly, shaking her head, "not spoiled. On the contrary. It is sad, in a way, if you like, but it is very beautiful, it is heroic. Their love must have been a very beautiful love, that could lead them to such self-sacrifice. Two lives given to God."

"Can't people give their lives to God without ceasing to _live_?" cried John. "If marriage is a sacrament, how can they better give their lives to God than by living sanely and sweetly in Christian marriage? But these people withdraw from life, renounce life, shirk and evade the life that God had prepared for them and was demanding of them. It's as bad as suicide. Besides, it implies such a totally perverted view of religion. Religion surely is given to us to help us to _live_, to show us _how_ to live, to enable us to meet the difficulties, emergencies, responsibilities of life. But these people look upon their religion as a mandate to turn their backs on the responsibilities of life, and scuttle away. And as for _love_! Well, she no doubt did love, poor lady. But Winthorpe! No. When a man loves he doesn't send his love into a convent, and go to Rome to get himself becassocked." He gave his head a nod of finality.

"That, I fancy, is a question of temperament," said Maria Dolores. "Your friend has the ascetic temperament. And it does not by any means follow that he loves less because he resigns his love. What you call an inhuman story seems to me a wonderfully noble one. I saw your friend this morning, when he and you were walking together, and I said to myself, 'That man looks as if he had listened to the Counsels of Perfection. His vocation shines through him.' I think you should reconcile yourself to his accepting it."

"Well," said John, on the tone of a man ready to change the subject, "I owe him at least one good mark. His account of his 'heart-state' led me to examine my own, and I discovered that I am in love myself,--which is a useful thing to know."

"Oh?" said Maria Dolores, with a little effect of reserve.

"Yes," said John, nothing daunted, "though unlike his, mine is an unreciprocated flame, and unavowed."

"Ah?" said Maria Dolores, reserved indeed, but not without an undertone of sympathy.

"Yes," said John, playing with fire, and finding therein a heady mixture of fearfulness and joy. "The woman I love doesn't dream I love her, and dreams still less of loving me,--for which blessed circumstance may Heaven make me truly thankful."

The sentiment sounding unlikely, Maria Dolores raised doubtful eyes. They shone into John's; his drank their light; and something violent happened in his bosom.

"Oh--?" she said.

"Yes," said he, thinking what adorable little hands she had, as they lay loosely clasped in her lap, thinking how warm they would be, and fragrant; thinking too what fun it was, this playing with fire, how perilous and exciting, and how egotistical he must seem to her, and how nothing on earth should prevent him from continuing the play. "Yes," he said, "it's a circumstance to be thankful for, because, like Winthorpe himself, though for different reasons, I'm unable to contemplate marriage." His voice sank sorrowfully, and he made a sorrowful movement.

"Oh--?" said Maria Dolores, her sympathy becoming more explicit.

"Winthorpe's too beastly puritanical--and I'm too beastly poor," said he.

"Oh," she murmured. Her eyes softened; her sympathy deepened to compassion.

"She must certainly put me down as the most complacent egotist in two hemispheres, so to regale her with unsolicited information about myself," thought John; "but surely it would need six hemispheres to produce another pair of eyes as beautiful as hers."--"Yes," he said, "I should be 'looking up' if I asked even a beggar-maid to marry me."

Maria Dolores' beautiful eyes became thoughtful as well as compassionate.

"But men who are poor work and earn money," she said, on the tone that young women adopt when the spirit moves them to preach to young men. And when the spirit does move them to that, things may be looked upon as having advanced an appreciable distance, the ball may be looked upon as rolling.

"So I've heard," said John, his head in the clouds. "It must be dull business."

Maria Dolores dimly smiled. "Do _you_ do no work?" she asked.

"I've never had time," said John. "I've been too busy enjoying life."

"Oh," said Maria Dolores, with the intonation of reproach.

"Yes," said he, "enjoying the Humour, the Romance, the Beauty of it,--and combine the three together, make a chord of 'em, you get the Divinity. Or, to take a lower plane, the world's a stage, and life's the drama. I could never leave off watching and listening long enough to do any work."

"But do you not wish to play a part in the drama, to be one of the actors?" asked his gentle homilist. "Have you no ambition?"