Somewhat to his surprise, she blushed slightly, but did not smile.
“You may think me foolish, or even guilty of sinful pride,” she said with a certain stiffness; “but this is a feeling of which I cannot rid myself. I do not like to sit at table with a person who has once brought me my soup, nor on the same seat in the carriage with one who used to let down the step for me. Of course I recognize and submit to the situation; but I shall go to my own house again immediately.”
“Well!” said the priest, “it takes a good while to get acquainted with people. Here have I known you these ten years and more, have seen you simple, unpretending, humble, apparently, good to the poor, and going freely among them. I thought I knew you thoroughly; yet all at once I come upon the rock in that smooth stream. Have I ever caught a little gray shadow of it before, I wonder? Well, well! I won't undertake to blast it out of the way at once. I am sorry, though, that you do not like John.”
“I like him in liveries,” said Miss Pembroke with dignity.
“I tell you,” persisted the priest, “they are going to be a very happy couple.”
“I haven't a doubt of it,” she replied. “But that is no excuse.”
He laughed, and let her go. The haughty recoil of pride in the fibre was not to be reasoned away.
It was a clear afternoon in mid-autumn; and when Miss Pembroke stepped from the priest's door, she paused a minute on the sidewalk, and hesitated which way to go. She did not wish to return home, and she did not think of any other place where she would rather go.
And then, without looking, she was aware of a tall gentleman, who came down the street, and, still without looking, knew that he had crossed to her side of the street, and was approaching her. And then, with a perverseness which was scarcely natural to her, she turned quite coolly in the opposite direction, and walked from him, perhaps lest he might think that she wished for his company. Not but she and Mr. Schöninger were on the most friendly, and even cordial, terms—it was, indeed, taken for granted in Crichton that they were the best of friends—but—in short, she walked away from him. Perhaps she found his full and prosperous life a little discordant with her saddened one. She almost fancied sometimes that he had an air of triumphant pride, and that he was being spoiled by the adulation paid him on all sides.
She had been wishing lately that she could go to Annette; and, now that Gerald was dead, if the ambiguous letter they had received really meant that, perhaps Annette would like to have her. Miss Pembroke felt strangely lonely in her native town, where she knew everybody, and where she had not, certainly, to complain of any lack of attention. But she would be lonely for ever rather than Mr. Schöninger should think that she waited on F. Chevreuse's step for him. He must have been at the end of the street when she came out, and—surely he would never dare to think that she saw him, and had been giving him time to overtake her!
Mr. Schöninger was meantime walking leisurely behind her quickening steps, intending to overtake [pg 685] her presently, but wishing first to watch her a little, and to think of some things. One was that he did not approve of her wearing black any longer. She was beautiful in anything, but too sad in this; and, besides, it interfered with certain plans of his. He made a slight reckoning, as nearly correct as the masculine mind could make it on such a subject. She might put on gray, or black and white, immediately. That would enable her to wear a rich purple in the winter. He liked to see her in purple. Some day, when she should be older, she must have a trailing robe of purple velvet with diamonds. Well, in the spring, then, she could change her deeper color for one of those delicate lavenders or lilacs that women know how to look pretty in; and then the way would be quite open for white, and rose, and blue, and all the fresh, gay colors a bride might wish to wear.
“We should be married by the first of May, at latest,” thought the gentleman very decidedly.
Miss Pembroke was quite right in fancying that there was something triumphant in Mr. Schöninger's air; but she did not believe, and it was not true, her pettish charge that he was being spoiled by adulation. All was going well with him. Hosts of friends surrounded him—friends as sincere as any one can claim; he did not believe they would stand any great test, but, also, he did not believe that they were hypocrites. In his profession he was winning gold and reputation; and, what no one but himself knew as yet, the fortune for which he had vainly struggled so long was approaching him of itself. Two of those who had stood between it and him had died, and there remained now but a feeble old man. With his death all other claims would die. And not least in his cause of congratulation was his conviction that this fair woman, who walked before him with the black drapery fluttering back from her light foot, the braid of hair just showing its glossy bronze beneath the mourning veil, and, as she turned the corner of a street, the curve of her smooth cheek glowing like a peach, was his own.
What made her cheek so red now?
“Honora!” he said, quickening his pace.
She stopped with a start.
“Mr. Schöninger!”
“I beg your pardon!” he exclaimed, recollecting that he had never called her by her Christian name before. “I was thinking, and I forgot.”
She walked soberly by his side without asking what the subject of his thoughts had been. His exclamation may have revealed to her something of their nature; but she was far from suspecting that she was engaged, still less that her marriage-day was fixed. She had, indeed, no reason to suppose that Mr. Schöninger had any intention of renewing the suit that she had once rejected.
“You are willing to take a walk?” he asked, and, when she nodded assent, added:
“Let us go up the Cocheco. Last night's frost has added the finishing touch to the trees, and everybody is admiring them.”
A beautiful road, almost as wild as a country lane, led between the river-bank and the flowery cliffs beside it, and here at evening all the youths and maidens, and many of their elders in whom age had not chilled the love of nature, used to walk soberly in the soundless path, or climb the cliffs, or sit [pg 686] on the mossy rocks, or venture out on the rocks that studded the stream. Not a pleasant evening but found people strolling through this romantic avenue.
“Nowhere but in New England does nature dazzle, I think,” Mr. Schöninger said. “See this maple-leaf! It is a fine scarlet, and as glossy as a gem, even when examined closely. And the elm-leaf is as fine a gold. Everywhere else the autumn foliage is dingy when looked at so closely. The sky, too. Look at those long lines of fire that are beginning to stretch overhead, and at the gathering crimsons! In half an hour the heavens will be as brilliant as the earth. In Italy the colors are soft, like the colors in an old painting; they have great depth and richness, but they lack the fresh brilliancy of the skies in the New World. You must go to Italy soon, Honora.”
This time the name was used without an apology.
“I have been thinking of it,” she replied quietly, and began to feel as a stranded seaweed may when, after having lain awhile painfully on the dry sand, it finds the bright sea slipping under it, and lifting it from its hard resting-place. Without a word of explanation she found herself claimed and cared for.
“I wish to go there again as a Catholic,” he continued, “and see with the eyes of faith what I saw before with the eyes of an artist. I shall always admire most the Catholicism of America, or what the Catholicism of America is going to be. It is more intelligent, noble, and reverent. It isn't a sort of devotion that expresses itself in tawdry paper flowers. Indeed, I believe that America is destined to show the world a Catholicism morally more grand than any it has yet seen—a worship of the heart and the intellect, where children shall be delighted, and yet common sense find nothing to regret. Still, Rome is the sacred city of the martyrs, the popes, and the temples. I think we should go there in two years at latest.”
He had spoken earnestly, and had absolutely forgotten how much remained unsaid, so sure was he of her.
Honora's glance of astonishment and incredulity reminded him. He bent a little nearer, smiling, and said softly: “But we shall be married long before that time, dear, shall we not?”
“It is the first I have heard of it,” Miss Pembroke managed to say with a certain degree of composure, after a moment.
“You surely are not vexed!” he said quickly, beginning to fear that he had assumed too much. “I asked you once in the proper, lover-like fashion, and you refused me, not because you were indifferent to me—you never said that—but because you would not marry and would not love one who denied your Saviour. That obstacle no longer exists. You did not imagine that I had become indifferent to you? That is out of the question. Have I made a mistake?”
“No; it is I who have made a mistake,” she answered frankly. “I was afraid that you had given me up.” She hesitated a little, then, since he still listened, added: “I am very glad that you have not.”
“Thank you!” he said.
They walked slowly up the road between the foaming river and the glowing cliffs, praising the skies and the trees as they went, finding everything beautiful, finding each the other more beautiful than all [pg 687] else. And when the evening began to fade a little, they turned their steps, and went down again with the river, filled with that deep and quiet happiness which leaves nothing to wish for and nothing to tell.
The very next morning a little note was sped from Miss Pembroke to Sister Cecilia with the following mysterious announcement:
“My Novena has succeeded perfectly! I will come very soon and tell you all about it.”
Since the matter is settled, we may as well own at once that when Mr. Schöninger first announced himself a Catholic, Honora had said to her friend and confidant at the convent, “If I do not marry him, I shall never marry any one”; and that the result of this confession was a Novena, in which the young woman had asked that she might find favor in his sight.
“I told him about the Novena,” Miss Pembroke said when she made her explanatory visit to the convent. “And I told him that you and all the Sisters joined with me; and he bade me thank you for his part, and say that he hoped you would never be sorry for having done so.”
But Honora did not tell how astonished and touched her lover had been at this confession of what seemed to her the most simple thing in the world.
“I never thought of asking God for you,” he said; “and yet there is nothing in the world so well worth praying for. I am a very ignorant Catholic, Honora, in all except doctrine. You will have much to teach me. But, then,” he added, smiling, “we have all our lives for that.”
“The only blot on my happiness,” Honora said to her friends, “is the thought of Annette. A letter came from her last night which seems to shut us all out from giving her either society or comfort. She evidently does not wish to see any one she has ever known. She says that her time and thoughts are entirely occupied.”
Annette Gerald was fully occupied. She was like one who stands at the head of a long flight of winding stairs, watching another descend, and, beginning to lose sight of the object of her attention, begins to follow slowly, intent, at the same time, not to be too near or too far away.
It was necessary that she should keep Lawrence Gerald in sight without attracting attention either to him or to herself. As a rich lady, driving in her own carriage, she could not do this. She therefore gave up her carriage, and moved to an humbler apartment, where she lived with one servant. Still, the dainty elegance of the widow's attire she had assumed, fastidious in her choice, not consciously, but from habit, pointed her out as of a different class from the people she went most among. To remedy this, it was necessary only to be passive; and in a few months Roman dust and mud and brambles had reduced her to a dinginess almost Roman, and she could go unremarked, could see Lawrence about his work, digging in the excavations, carrying stone and mortar for the masons, doing any rough labor that offered. She could see him in the church, where he spent an hour every morning; she knew that every Sunday he entered the same confessional, and, as she could well guess, told the same tale to the priest, who, when his penitent left him, leaned forward and looked after him with a [pg 688] sad and earnest gaze. More than once, late in the evening, she had looked up from the street where her close carriage stood waiting, and seen, out on the corner of the open roof, to which no one but he had access, his form drawn clearly against the transparent purple of the sky, and, after waiting as long as prudence would allow, had gone away to her lonely apartment, leaving him there in company of the marble angels that clustered about the church front, and the blessed bells, and whatever invisible spirits God should will and his own soul invoke. Never did she see a light in that lofty window; and, after a while, it occurred to her to ask the reason of the padrona, who often came to the church in the hope of receiving money from the lady.
“He never will have a candle,” the woman said. “I think he is very poor. And he never drinks wine or eats meat. And, signora, he is growing very pale.”
That night Annette Gerald extinguished the candles in her own apartment, and never lighted them again. She could weep and pray without light. The next day she dismissed her one servant, and thenceforward waited on herself. No ease or elegance must her life know while his was passed in such poverty. He ate the dry, sour bread of the poor; she ate it too. He discarded every luxury of the table; she also became an ascetic. If she put wine or fruit to her lips, tears choked her, and she set them aside. As he went down, so she followed him, unseen, weeping pitifully, watching constantly, loving utterly.
Without suspecting it, both became after a while objects of interest to those about them. No dinginess or apparent poverty could hide their refinement; and the extraordinary piety of both invested them with a certain sacredness in the eyes of these people, who had walked and talked with saints. The rude workmen ceased, not only to jest with, but to jest in the presence of this man who never smiled, or spoke without necessity, whose pale face was for ever downcast, and who, in the midst of Italian indelicacy, carried himself with the refinement of an angel. In the long noon rest of the hot summer days they withdrew from the place where he threw himself down, faint with fatigue and the heat, and left him to that solitude he unmistakably desired. Only little children ventured near the “penitent,” as he began to be called, and smiled wistfully in his face, and kissed the hand that now and then gave them a soldo.
Once, as he lay asleep on the grass, in the shadow of a ruined arch, an artist, who was just returning home from a morning's sketching in the Campagna, paused to look at him. The other workmen lounged about at a distance, some asleep, some eating their noon luncheon of dry bread, others smoking and talking. This one seemed laid there apart for a picture. Thrown carelessly on his back, with his hand under the cheek turned a little aside, and the hat dropped off, his form and face were fully seen. It was not the form and face of a plebeian. The elegant shape was not disguised by its faded garments; the beauty of the face, delicately flushed with heat, and beaded with perspiration, was even enhanced by the unshorn and untended beard and the confused mass of clustering hair; and the expression of calm melancholy, which was not obliterated even by the unconsciousness of [pg 689] sleep, did not belong to a common nature.
The artist drew softly nearer, and opened his portfolio, too much engaged to give more than a passing glance to a woman who stood by the arch. With a rapid pencil he sketched his subject, trying to catch that hovering sadness and the weary bend of the head.
Drawing back presently to see if he could add anything to his sketch, he perceived that the woman who had been standing by the arch was at his side, watching his progress.
“Don't let the shadow run off so,” she said, looking at the sketch, not at him. “Show how the sunshine comes, close to his feet, so that he has only a step to take to reach it. And do you see how those yellow flowers lean against his hair in the form of a crown? Put them in too; and the group of workmen yonder, and a corner of the excavation, with that beautiful pedestal half uncovered. As you have it, it is only a pretty poem without meaning; give the whole, and it will be a tragical story.”
The artist looked intently at the lady while she spoke. Surely she must be the sister of the sleeper! Their two faces would do to stamp on a coin, the man's profile showing beyond the woman's.
“Finish the sketch quickly before he wakes,” she said. “I will pay you whatever you want for it. Some day I will have you paint it. Don't forget the red poppies at his feet. And can you see, can you show, that there is a blister on his hand?”
Wondering much at this strange sort of poor people whom he found himself among, the artist obeyed.
“But I want to keep the sketch,” he said. “I will make a copy for you, if you will come to my studio for it.”
“Certainly not!” she exclaimed, and for the first time looked at him with a clear and haughty gaze. “You have no right to keep it, for you took it without permission. It would be dishonorable and intrusive of you to show that to any person. We are not contadini!”
The artist rose and bowed.
“Madam, allow me to present my sketch to you,” he said with equal pride.
“Some day you will know, and then you will no longer be offended,” she said calmly, and took the sketch from his hand just as the sleeper stirred and began to awake. “And now, I beg you never to notice him again, or mention him to any one till I come to you for the picture.”
And so three years passed away, and there came an Easter morning such as Easters used to be in the days when the pope was King of Rome, and there was one city in the world where the business was religion.
Who can forget the scene, having once beheld it—the sky built up of sapphires, glitter on glitter of such blue as the queen of heaven might make her mantle of; the full, warm gold of the sunshine looking the sad ruins in the face till they smile, and revealing its hidden rainbows now and then, as the foamy columns of fountains sway in the light breeze, and catch it unawares; the birds, with long, pointed wings, that cut the air, and seem inebriated with the delight of flying. Then the crowd in the piazza of S. Peter's, the millennial mingling of rich and poor, royal and plebeian, making in all a scene to be witnessed nowhere else.
“How familiar, yet how new!” [pg 690] said a lady who stepped from her carriage at the barrier. “It is all I could wish! I am glad, Max, that we did not come sooner to Rome. I would rather my first sight of it should be a festal one.”
This lady was richly dressed, and the black lace of her large Spanish veil was drawn back from a face like a fresh lily.
She was instantly addressed as principessa by all the beggars about.
“I am sorry I cannot give you the title, Honora,” her husband said, and smilingly dropped a coin into each outstretched hand. “So nothing disappoints you? I thought it would be so. Now, we must not linger outside.”
“Let us go slowly up; and please do not speak to me,” Mrs. Schöninger said. “No, I do not want your arm now. I must enter S. Peter's the first time praying.”
They went slowly up the ascent, Honora with her hands clasped, and her eyes dilating as they entered the grand vestibule. Then Mr. Schöninger lifted the heavy curtain, and she crossed the threshold.
At that first step into S. Peter's a Catholic feels as though he had touched the beating heart of mother church.
The crowd pressed in; but still another crowd remained outside, keeping their places for the papal benediction, and listening for the silvery burst of trumpets inside which should tell that the risen God stood on the central altar of Christendom.
Among this crowd was a group, for which they made way, as it crossed the piazza and approached the steps. Yet it was only two poor laborers who supported a sick man between them.
The thin and transparent face of this invalid, bathed now in the perspiration of weakness, showed that he was worn by consumption or by a long and exhausting fever. He was so weak, indeed, that his two assistants supported him in their arms; and when they reached the stone posts at the foot of the steps, he knelt there, and leaned against one of them, almost insensible.
A lady, following closely behind, wet her handkerchief in cologne-water, and handed it over his shoulder to one of the men, but did not herself speak to them. He revived a little at that, and, still leaning against the central post, remained fixed in prayer.
A whisper began to creep among the poor people about. Some of them had seen this man, and knew what they conceived to be his story, and they told it in intervals of listening to the strains of heavenly music faintly heard now and then from the church.
“He is a penitent,” one whispered, “and has been doing penance here as a laborer, though he is so rich—so rich! Some say that he killed his own mother; but who knows? The beautiful signore! Look at his face! She must have provoked him; and perhaps she was a very wicked woman. Ah! I could tell stories of mothers. They are not all like the blessed Madonna.—There are the trumpets! Alleluia! alleluia! Blessed is he who cometh in the name of the Lord!—And so this poor signore has been living a hard life, and is about to die; and he has come at last to get the Holy Father's blessing. He would not ask for it before. But, indeed, he might, for he is as holy as the blessed Labré, though he sleeps in a bed and works for his living, instead of begging it. The [pg 691] pale signora who stands behind him is his sister. She has been in Rome all these years, watching over him, without his knowing it. See! she stands out of his sight now. He worked up to a week ago, and then he fell one day in a faint. She was near by, and called a carriage to take him home. And since then she has had a room in the same house, but told the padrona not to let him know. She is rich, for all her poor clothes. She puts something into every hand that is held out to her. See the way she looks at him!—Ah! there they come.”
Mass was over, and the crowd in the church came pouring out. It was with difficulty that Lawrence Gerald's protectors could keep his place in that pressure. But that he had revived, they could not have done so. With the first intimation that the moment for which he had so long waited was at hand, he had roused himself, and exerted his whole strength. Upright on his knees, with his arms clinging to the post against which he leaned, he fixed his eager eyes upon the balcony where the Pope would in a short time appear. He saw nothing else, not even two familiar forms and faces directly in front of him, which he could scarcely have seen even then with indifference.
“My God!” exclaimed Honora Schöninger, and clung to her husband's arm. “Look, Max! It is Lawrence, and he is dying!”
Mr. Schöninger drew his wife aside. “It is no time to recognize him now,” he said. “And there is Annette behind him. Poor fellow! poor fellow!”
Annette pressed close to her husband, ready to catch him if he should fall. She knew that he had had an exhausting day. He had risen at early dawn to hear Mass and receive communion, though not really able to leave his bed, and had afterwards spent his remaining strength in the first careful toilet he had made for years. After having so long heaped every indignity on his own body, to-day he had seemed desirous of treating it with respect as the temple of God. He still wore the dress of the laborer, but his face was shorn of its ill-tended beard, his hair brushed once more into silken waves, and his linen snowy white. And more exhausting than these efforts had been the excitement of mind under which he labored, and his fear lest in some way he should miss the benediction he so longed for.
“I want to be placed directly in front of the balcony,” he had said, “where I can see the Pope's face. I shall recognize his face at once. Who knows but he may look at me? If he should, then I shall think that at last God looks at me.”
The crowd hushed itself, as the golden cross came in sight, and after it the crowned and mitred heads, all in white save one. And that one, under its glittering tiara, wore a crown of snowy hair dearer to Catholic hearts than gold or jewels. On this central face the eyes of the sick man fixed themselves with a wide and imploring gaze, and his hands stretched themselves out, as if to beg that he might not be forgotten.
“Do not fear!” Annette whispered in his ear. “The Holy Father knows all your story, and pities you; and there is one standing beside him who will remind him that you are here. He will know just where you are.”
To the waiting and trembling penitent this was like a whisper from his good angel. He associated no other thought with the voice.
[pg 692]The silence deepened till nothing could be heard but the swift wings of a bird flying over the piazza, and the soft “zitti! zitti!” of the fountains, and the heart that each one in that vast crowd felt beat in his bosom.
Surely that mild and blessed face was turned his way! the penitent thought. Surely, surely, the Holy Father had looked at him, searching the crowd one instant with his eyes, and finding him!
Then a single voice was heard—the only voice in the universe, it seemed.
“May the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, in whose power and authority we confide, intercede for us with the Lord.”
“Amen!” chanted the choir, as though the world had found voice.
Again the single voice:
“Through the prayers and merits of blessed Mary ever Virgin, of blessed Michael the archangel, of blessed John the Baptist, of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and all the saints, may the omnipotent God have mercy upon you, may all your sins be remitted, and Jesus Christ lead you to eternal life.”
“Amen!”
“Indulgence, absolution, and remission of all your sins, space for true and faithful repentance, hearts ever contrite, and amendment of life, may the omnipotent and merciful God afford you.”
“Amen!”
“And may the blessing of the omnipotent God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, descend upon you, and remain with you for ever.”
“Amen!”
Every stain was washed away! Full and strong the blessing flowed, a divine river from the throne of God himself! On its tide were borne away, not only guilt, but the memory of guilt; not only fear, but the remembrance that fear had been. Supported in the arms of his wife and attendants, and of the old friends of whose presence he was unconscious, Lawrence Gerald lay back with his eyes half closed, and a smile of such peace and ecstasy on his face as could only come from God. His soul was gliding sweetly away on the echoes of that last amen.
The military bands began to play, the guns boomed from Sant' Angelo, the bells of S. Peter's rang out with a joyful clash on the air, and all Rome broke into music over the resurrection.
And there was joy before the angels of God over one sinful soul redeemed.
The End.