Margarita's Soul Part 21

I think I see the little figure slipping from bough to bough under the stars, the odour of all the vineyards is in my nostrils, the splas.h.i.+ng of the Convent fountain sounds in my ears!

".... _I could not sleep at night after that wicked letter of how you love him--how dare you, a vowed nun, write such sinful words? It must be, as they say, wrong to pray for you! Do not try to excuse yourself because your brother devoted you against your will--you were happy till he climbed the tree and saw you! Only Satan can make it so that one wicked look between the eyes should make a man and woman mad for--I will not remember that sinful letter, I will not! Maria, thou art lost!_"

And so, even as she and Roger looked and could not look away and never after lost each other's eyes, even so, her mother looked at her lover and looking, lost (or so she thought) her soul! The wheel turns ever, as Alif taught me.

".... _What good can such a marriage do? No Catholic could marry you, I am sure. It is no marriage. Your brother wrote you the truth. I do not wonder that you will never read or speak an Italian word again--you have disgraced Italy. But as he says, you are no true Italian--your English mother and her Protestant blood has made this horrible thing possible. Her death was a judgment on you._"

Oh, these cruel, gentle women! And on these b.r.e.a.s.t.s we long to lay our heads!

".... _I do not wonder that all his countrymen are against him, and that he must live alone all his days. Even in that wild land blasphemy has its deserts, then. But I cannot help being glad for you that his kinswoman will be your servant, for you are ill fitted to grow maize with the painted savages, ma plus douce! But how strange that even a distant relative of one so comme il faut should be of a sort to do this!_

"_Alas, I talk as if I were again of the world! If Raoul had not died, I should have been...._"

Here the letter was blotted beyond recognition for a whole, closely written page. It must have been tender here, and one sees the poor Maria fairly kissing it to pieces. I was grateful to the writer.

".... _That you should be a mother! And soon! I cannot comprehend it.

My head swims. Reverend Mother dreamed of you so, suckling it, with a halo around your head, and she awoke in terror and told Sister Lisabetta, who let it out. The devil put it into her dream, to tempt her, Sister Lisabetta says, for she was always too fond of you. She fasted three days and one heard her groaning in the night--she was as white as paper. Oh, Maria, to feel it at one's breast, tugging there!

I think I am going mad. Never write again, for I shall never read it, nor know if it is born._"

Truly G.o.d permits strange things. And yet celibacy is as old as civilisation, and the Will to Live has denied itself since first It was conscious. It cannot be pished and pshawed away, by you or me or another.

"... _I will get this to the baker's daughter, and then when I am sure it is gone, I will confess it all, and whatever penance Reverend Mother puts upon me, I shall be only glad. It may be I shall be cut off from Our Blessed Lord longer than I can bear, and then I shall die, but I think I shall be forgiven finally, for something tells me so, and until I gave you the letter, that day near the fountain, I cannot think of any very great sin, can you, Maria? We were always good, we three. But now I am alone, for they will never let Dolores back. She grew so thin--my heart ached for her._

"_Adieu, adieu--I have tried to hate you, as I ought, but your grey eyes look and look at me in the night, and I feel you tapping my fingers as you used to do--oh, if they will let me I will pray for you every day till I die, and Our Lady will remember that you were always good until he looked at you!_

"_For the last time--_

"_Your Josephine._"

Under this letter was hidden a crude little sketch of the cloister-end of some building on a sheet of drawing-paper, and near it, just outside a high wall, a fair outline of a thick cypress. There was nothing else in the box.

Nor did we ever learn another word or syllable of the life of those two in their lonely cottage. Whether Prynne built it himself or hired labourers for the work we never tried to discover. That he buried himself there with the pa.s.sion of his lonely life, that these flaming lovers, cast off by G.o.d and the world, thought both well lost for what they found in each other, who can doubt? The love she inspired in him I can understand, for I have known her daughter; the love he woke in her, she being what she was, I do not dare to guess. What must that woman's soul have been? What storm of love must have swept her from her cloister-harbour--and on to what rocks, over what eternal depths!

Deal gently with her, Church of her betrayal! Forgive her sins, I beg you, for she loved much.

CHAPTER XXII

FATE LAUGHS AND BAITS HER HOOK

I find to my surprise that these rambling chapters, intended, in the first place, as a sort of study of Margarita's development under the shock of applied civilisation, have grown rather into a chronicle of family history, a detail of tiny intimate events and memories that must surely disappoint Dr. M----l, at whose urgent instance they were undertaken. Margarita was, indeed, at that time, a fit subject for the thoughtful scientist, and hardly one of her conversations with her friends but would serve as a text for some learned psychological dissertation. But it would have been hard, even for a stony _savant_, to dissect that adorable personality! The points that I had intended to discuss are lost, I find, in her smile; the interest of her relations with the world, as it burst upon her in all its complications and problems, a grown woman, but ignorant as a savage and innocent as a child, is as nothing beside the interest of her relations with us who formed for so long her little special world.

However, I cannot offer my scientist nor his distinguished colleague, Professor J----s, a mere tangle of personal reminiscences, so I must try to recall, as accurately as may be, the circ.u.mstances of Margarita's introduction to orthodox Christianity. At Miss Jencks's earnest pet.i.tion Roger, who had grown really attached--as had we all--to the good creature, had finally yielded and allowed her to impart the outline of the New Testament story to her charge. I found her later, a moist handkerchief crumpled in her hand and a tiny worn leather volume on her lap.

"It didn't do, then?" I inquired sympathetically, for her plain, competent face was more disturbed by grief than I had ever seen it.

"Mr. Jerrolds," she demanded seriously, "_do you think she has a soul?_ Of course that is wrong," she added hastily, "and I should not say such a thing, but do you know she treats it just like any other story? It means nothing to her. She has no respect for the most sacred things, Mr. Jerrolds!"

"But how could she have, dear Miss Jencks?" I urged gently. "They are not sacred to her, you must remember. She is what you would call a heathen, you know."

Miss Jencks folded her handkerchief thoughtfully.

"Yes, I know," she began, "but think, Mr. Jerrolds, think how gladly, how gratefully the heathen receive the Gospel! I shall never forget how the missionary described it that dined with the Governor-General once. It was in Lent, I remember, and the poor man regretted that it should be, he had eaten fish so steadily in the Islands! It was only necessary for him to tell the simple Gospel story, and it won them directly."

I bowed silently--it was at once the least and the most that I could do.

"And more than that, Mr. Jerrolds," the good woman continued, unburdening herself, clearly, of the results of many days of thought, "look at those wonderful conversions in the slums! Look what this Salvation Army is doing! The Governor-General used to say they were vulgar and that it was all claptrap, but that never seemed to me quite fair. We must have left something undone, we and the Dissenters, Mr.

Jerrolds, if this General B----h can reach people we have lost. Isn't that so?"

To this I agreed heartily, and after a moment she went on.

"Why, the roughest, vilest men weep like children when they understand Our Lord's sacrifice, Mr. Jerrolds, and what it did for them, and surely if they, thieves and drunkards and--and worse, can be so touched, Mrs. Bradley...."

"Perhaps," I suggested as gently as I could, "it is just because Mrs.

Bradley is neither a thief nor a drunkard nor worse, dear Miss Jencks, that she does not feel the necessity for weeping. The emotionalism of the convert is a curious thing, and the sense of sin together with vague memories of that Story, connected with childhood and childhood's innocence, may produce a state of mind responsible for a great deal that we could hardly expect from Mrs. Bradley."

"But we are all sinners, Mr. Jerrolds!" Again I bowed.

"Surely you believe this, Mr. Jerrolds?"

"I should not care for the task of convincing Mrs. Bradley of it," I replied dexterously.

"That was the trouble," she admitted mournfully. "I told her about Adam and Eve, but she said that whatever they had done was no affair of hers, and it could not be wrong to eat apples, anyway, she told me, they were so good for the voice."

I choked a little here.

"She is very literal," I said hastily, "and the apple has symbolised discord in more than one mythology."

"I showed her that beautiful picture of the Crucifixion," Miss Jencks added in a low, troubled voice, "and do you know, Mr. Jerrolds, she refused to look at it or hear about it as soon as she understood! She said it was an ugly story and the picture made her hands cold. She said it could do no good to kill anyone because _she_ had done wrong.

'Religion is too b.l.o.o.d.y, Miss Jencks,' she said. 'I do not think I like it. If I were you I should try to forget it.' Isn't it terrible, Mr. Jerrolds?"

Poor Barbara Jencks! You were an Englishwoman and it was twenty years ago!

"Leave thou thy sister when she prays," says the poet, and with all due respect for his presumable n.o.bility of intention, it is certainly the easiest course to pursue! I left Miss Jencks.

She followed me a little later, however, and told me that she was not entirely without hopes, for Margarita had been greatly taken with the Revelation of St. John the Divine, and had committed to memory whole chapters of it, with incredible rapidity, saying that it would make beautiful music. That very evening she sang it to us, or rather, chanted it, striking chords of inexpressible dignity and beauty on the piano--the pure Gregorian--by way of accompaniment. It was impossible that she could have heard such chords, for she had never attended a church service in her life and such intervals formed no part of her vocal instruction.

Afterward, I read Ecclesiastes to her, and she did the same thing with it, saying that it was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard--she did not care for Shakespeare, by the way, then or later.

Tip Elder came to us for a week at that time, and the tears stood in the honest fellow's eyes as Margarita, her head thrown back, her own eyes fixed and sombre, her rich, heart-shaking voice vibrating like a tolling bell, sent out to us in her lovely, clear-cut enunciation the preacher's warning.

_Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not...._

Oh, the poetry of it, the ageless beauty!

_Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken...._

Her voice was grave, like a boy's, and yet how rich with subtle promises! It was mellow, like a woman's, but not mellow from bruising--the only way, Mme. M----i told me once. Those poor women!